Serbian protest in Belgrade against NATO, Karadzic’s 40-yr sentence

March 25, 2016 By administrator

Serbian radicals in Belgrade are protesting against NATO on the 17th anniversary of the bombing of Yugoslavia. They also rallied against a UN war crimes tribunal which yesterday sentenced former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to 40 years in jail.

The rally was organized by the Serbian Radical Party, which is headed by Vojislav Seselj – who served as deputy prime minister of Serbia between 1998 and 2000.

The protest marked the 17th anniversary of the start of NATO’s bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, which began on March 24, 1999. The demonstrators held banners saying “NATO dropped more bombs on Serbia than all the terrorists in the world.”

“Those who were bombing us in 1999, who were killing our children, those criminals from NATO, have now got the right voted in by parliament to walk freely across Serbia,” Seselj said in his address to the crowds, as cited by the website Balkan Insight.

The protesters also criticized Thursday’s verdict delivered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which sentenced Karadzic to 40 years in prison. The former Bosnian Serb president was found guilty on 10 charges out of 11.

Some of the protesters were carrying portraits of Karadzic.

Karadzic “was convicted [even though] he was innocent… and because he is Serb who found himself at a decisive and historic moment at the head of [the administrative entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina] Republika Srpska,” Seselj said.

The one charge that was dropped related to the allegations that Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide in seven municipalities of Bosnia. However, the 44-month siege of Sarajevo also amounts to a war crime, the judge ruled.

Though Karadzic was indicted by the tribunal in 1995, he was captured 13 years later in Belgrade, where he lived disguised as a faith healer. The Serbian authorities handed him over to international investigators for the trial, which began in 2009.

Terrorist State of Turkey strikes against Kurdish rebels, “After Ankara False-Flag operation”

March 14, 2016 By administrator

f56e6d44814ed9_56e6d44814f18.thumb Turkey has begun security operations against Kurdish rebels in the country’s south-east and in Iraq as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed a crackdown on terror after Sunday’s attack in Ankara that killed at least 37 people, BBC News reports.

According to the source, a curfew was declared in three towns in south-east Turkey, while warplanes struck PKK camps in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Eleven warplanes carried out air strikes on 18 targets including ammunition dumps and shelters in the Qandil and Gara sectors, the army said. The PKK (the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party) confirmed the attacks. Meanwhile curfews have been imposed in two mainly Kurdish towns in south-eastern Turkey, Yuksekova and Nusaybin, as security operations are carried out against Kurdish militants, Anadolu news agency reports.

As reported earlier, at least 37 people were killed and some 125 civilians wounded in a blast in the center of Ankara on Sunday. The car bomb blasted at a bus stop near one of Ankara’s central squares.
No group has admitted carrying out the attack in Ankara, yet government sources have cast suspicion on the PKK.

Earlier unnamed officials said the female bomber was a member of the PKK from the eastern town of Kars who joined the group in 2013.

Russia MFA: Water cannons against freedom of press are ordinary picture in Turkey

March 7, 2016 By administrator

It is an ordinary picture in Turkey: water cannons against freedom of the press.

Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner for Human Rights, Democracy and Rule of Law, Konstantin Dolgov, tweeted the aforesaid criticizing the Turkish authorities’ actions against Zaman daily newspaper of Turkey.

“Will criticism sound against Ankara at the Turkey-EU summit?” Dolgov asked, reported TASS news agency of Russia. “Or will conjuncture be a priority?

On the night of March 5, the Turkish police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the spontaneous demonstration outside Zaman headquarters in Istanbul.

Hundreds of Zaman readers were taking part in this protest against an Istanbul court decision to place Zaman under the management of trustees.

The paper’s journalists, however, believe that as a result, Zaman will no longer be published.

The police had entered the Zaman editorial office and forced all staff members out.

Turkey Demirtas: Erdogan Staged Coup Against Parliament, Ruling Party

March 3, 2016 By administrator

Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-chair Selahattin Demirtas. (Source: DHA)

ISTANBUL (Today’s Zaman) — Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-chair Selahattin Demirtas has said that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan joined ranks with potential coup supporters and carried out a coup against the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government and Parliament in order to prevent anyone from toppling him from power.

“We are living through a coup period right now. We have already had a coup; it’s happened. It was after July 7. And now, we have a coup government leading Turkey,” Demirtas said during an exclusive interview with Haberdar online news portal that was made available on Tuesday and Wednesday.

“There could have been a coup against Erdogan; instead, what he did was to join forces with coup supporters and carry out his own coup against the government. All of which is why the government has been completely bypassed at this stage. Not even a police officer will listen to [Prime Minister Ahmet] Davutoglu,” he said.

Since the June 7 general election of last year, in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), Erdogan’s former party, failed to win enough seats to rule as a single party, Turkey has been hit with violence due to clashes between the Turkish security forces and the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) following the end of a settlement process between the government and the PKK last July.

Demirtas said that when Erdogan restarted the war with the PKK, he knew that the government was not in control of all the instruments of the state and that it controlled neither the police, the military nor the bureaucracy.

“When the war that he himself had provoked broke out, Erdogan saw that the government actually couldn’t fight against the PKK effectively. I think Erdogan needed to make a choice. He saw that he was going to lose. The war that he provoked after June 7 caused a level of social outrage he hadn’t predicted as we headed toward the Nov. 1 [2015 snap election]. He had to make a choice. In order to get the state institutions that weren’t tied to him, like the military and the police, to fight for him, he had to strike compromises with them. This is why he had private meetings with the Ergenekon people, the supporters of [ultra-nationalist Workers’ Party (İP) leader Dogu] Perincek, the former BBP [Grand Unity Party] people and so on,” Demirtas said.

Many observers have been surprised by Erdogan’s reconciliation with some factions he was previously distanced from. For instance, he began to speak in friendly terms about Perincek, who recently said that Erdogan is defending what he has advocated. Despite previously supporting the trial of individuals allegedly involved with Ergenekon, a shadowy crime network with alleged links within the state, Erdogan has since said that he was wrong about Ergenekon.

According to Demirtas, Erdogan struck a deal with these factions in order to protect him, his grip on power and the ruling party. This agreement, Demirtas said, required Erdogan to give up his personal aims and his attempts to Islamicize the state, while remaining loyal to the “monstrous [aspect of the] state, which belongs to neither Turks nor Kurds nor Muslims.”

“They told him to be faithful only to supporters of the status quo,” the HDP co-chair said. “So essentially, Erdogan had to make a decision. Erdogan was either going to stand up for his own ‘case’ and problems — and in doing so, was going to be alone — or he was going to ‘sell’ his ‘case’ and in the process save himself. He chose the second option. As a result, he is now in a dirty alliance, having given up on his own case and turned into someone who wouldn’t stand up for his own case,” he explained.

When asked what his new allies could have proposed to Erdogan, Demirtas said it was the protection of his rule, because otherwise he would have had to leave power. “He was already becoming more isolated. Mourners at funerals have been crying that it was Erdogan who started this war. He now understands that a situation has arisen that he didn’t predict. He thought that if he were to start a new war with the PKK, nationalism would increase and that he could benefit from it,” he said.

Erdogan’s War Against Kurds in Southeast Turkey is ‘Part of Business Plan’

February 17, 2016 By administrator

Most construction companies in Turkey belong to Erdogan mafia gang,

Ankara has unleashed a devastating war against Kurds in the southeast Turkey to “urgently nationalize” the affected structures and implement the AKP-led project of Urban Change in Diyarbakir, Istanbul-based independent scholar Dr. Can Erimtan writes, dubbing the process as “disaster capitalism à la Turca.”

The Kurdish peace process launched by Recep Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) back in 2009 has been eventually brought to an end by Ankara, who now has unleashed an all-out war against its own population in southeastern Turkey.

“The Turkish-state-as-led-by-the-AKP has been waging all-out war against the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] ever since the June elections proved unable to produce the desired outcome. In fact, the hostilities began on 24-25 July 2015 when Turkey’s Armed Forces (TSK) undertook Operation Martyr Yalcın aimed at PKK and ISIS [Daesh] positions in northern Iraq (KRG) and northern Syria (Rojava),” Istanbul-based independent scholar Dr. Can Erimtan narrates in his article for New Eastern Outlook.

Citing Human Rights Watch’s December report, the scholar calls attention to the fact that since July 2015 Kurdish civilians including women, children and elderly residents have been killed in the course of the Erdogan government’s military operation in southeastern Turkey.

The severe military crackdown has led to the destruction of numerous buildings and monuments, including mosques and churches.

According to Erimtan, the ongoing operation is not a mere punitive action, but, apparently, part of Ankara’s business plan.

The crux of the matter is that since 2010 the AKP-led government has repeatedly made vain attempts to kick off the Urban Change program in Turkey’s southeast region. The project envisaged that 330 individual buildings would be demolished in the area of Sur in Diyarbakir.

“In view of the numerous protests against this apparently wanton and profit-driven destruction, these controlled demolitions were brought to a halt subsequently. But now that real estate is being destroyed in the course of the ongoing armed conflict, Turkey’s State Housing Agency Directorate (TOKİ) has come to the fore once more,” Erimtan elaborates.

Turkish pro-government media outlets have begun to bang the drum for the AKP-led program of Urban Change in Diyarbakir, claiming that the affected structures should be “urgently” nationalized and rebuilt.

There is something very fishy about the Turkish Ministry for Environment and Urban Planning’s report ‘Urban Change and Diyarbakir,’ issued in February 2015, when nothing hinted at any trouble, the scholar stresses.

“The report deals specifically with the area of Sur within the prefecture of Diyarbakir and proposes the realization of ‘a comprehensive change’ in favor of earlier ‘localized interventions’ or ‘narrow-scope implementations’ in order to accomplish feats of ‘conservation,’ ‘regeneration,’ and ‘renewal’ in the area,” Erimtan explains.

The lucrative project envisioned the construction of 8,000 new buildings and the conservation of 1,000 historical monuments.

What lies beneath Ankara’s punitive operation in southeastern Turkey? Apparently it is Erdogan‘s “disaster capitalism.”

Erimtan refers to Canadian author Naomi Klein’s book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” (2007) that describes the controversial strategy invented by US economist Milton Friedman and then implemented by his followers all over the world.

“Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable,” Friedman wrote in the 1960s.

Klein’s book tells the story of the utter victory of neoliberalism and corporations which used natural and man-made disasters and wars to ruin a region’s economy and infrastructure in order to grab its assets and natural resources.

Remarkably, in 2015 independent Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein released his book “Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe” that echoes Klein’s concept and confirms that disaster has become big business.

Erimtan believes that the Erdogan government is implementing its own version of disaster capitalism in Turkey. Instead of bolstering the country’s productivity and increasing its gross domestic savings, the AKP is pushing ahead with widespread privatization of Turkey’s state assets and enterprises.

The ongoing armed conflict is seen as an ideal business opportunity by Ankara: ignoring the people on the ground the Erdogan government is planning to carry out its lucrative building project in southeast Turkey.

Exclusive: Turkey, the war against the Kurds

December 29, 2015 By administrator

No information, disinformation, poisoning minds, teaching of hatred of the other, even in schools, that is the reality of the field experienced by the people in eastern Turkey, and more particularly to Nusabyn, a city Mardin near the Turkish-Syrian border. This is what we wrote a civilian eyewitness on site where terror reigns.
Separated, for 2 years, with a son barbed wire network, the Syrian and Turkish Kurdistan, “wall of shame” (…)

The testimony from a personality such ^that Ms. Gültan Kisanak can not be doubted. The activist of the first hour for a political solution to the Kurdish question, successively Diyarbakir MP, Co-Chair of the BDP (Party for Peace and Democracy) and now co-mayor of the metropolitan city of Diyarbakir and co President of GABB (Union of Municipalities of southeastern Anatolia) denounces with his usual frankness, in a pathetic appeal to international solidarity, the intolerable situation in which there is the population of Diyarbakir and other towns in the Kurdish region of Turkey.

See more information available: on AKB.bzh

Istanbul: Indictment against state officials in Dink murder case finally accepted

December 9, 2015 By administrator

An indictment against public officials charged with misconduct and negligence in the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007 has finally been accepted by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, after its second rejection last month.

The İstanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office returned the indictment two times to public prosecutor Gökalp Kökçü, who is overseeing the investigation, for allegedly including the names of pro-government police officers as suspects and demanding a prison sentence of up to 25 years for Police Chief Engin Dinç, one of the suspects.

Dinç, currently the head of the National Police Department’s intelligence unit, led the Trabzon Police Department’s intelligence unit at the time of Dink’s murder in 2007.

After its approval, the indictment was sent to the İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court, which hears terror cases. The prosecutor, however, requested the trial be merged with the main Dink murder trial, held at the İstanbul 5th High Criminal Court.

The court has 15 days to either accept or reject the indictment.

The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office returned Kökçü’s first indictment on Oct. 19, on the grounds that the indictment was “deficient.” After changing the indictment, Kökçü sent a new version of the 150-page document to the prosecutor’s office on Oct. 21.

In the altered indictment, Kökçü requested that the investigation be merged with the trial of those accused of Dink’s assassination. In this trial Ogün Samast, Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncel stand accused.

On Nov. 2, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office returned the altered indictment to Kökçü, again, on the grounds that the indictment was still “deficient.” It has been claimed that the prosecutor’s office returned the indictment because it included Dinç, who is known to be close to the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), among other state officials who are suspected of being negligent and engaging in misconduct regarding the Dink murder.

According to the claims, the prosecutor’s office allegedly asked Kökçü to remove some names from the list of suspects. There were 25 state officials among the suspects in the investigation. Among those were Dinç, former İstanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah, former İstanbul Police Department Intelligence Unit Chief Ahmet İlhan Güler, the former head of the National Police Department’s intelligence unit Ramazan Akyürek and former İstanbul Police Department Intelligence Bureau Chief Ali Fuat Yılmazer. Those suspects face charges of “forming an organization to commit crime” and “voluntary manslaughter.”

Media reports revealed that Dinç testified to the İstanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office secretly in September and that the Trabzon Police Department’s intelligence unit received intelligence on a probable assassination of Dink in Trabzon, which was sent to İstanbul police in a letter on Feb. 17, 2006. “I also phoned the chief of the intelligence unit of the İstanbul Police Department about the information,” Dinç said in his testimony.

However, during the trial in December 2014, Cerrah and Güler stated in their testimonies that they had not received any intelligence about Dink’s assassination before the murder took place in 2007.

Dink was shot and killed in 2007 by Samast, an ultranationalist teenager. Later, Samast and 18 others were brought to trial. Hayal was sentenced to life in prison for inciting Samast to commit murder.

The retrial began in September 2014, when the İstanbul 5th High Criminal Court complied with a ruling from the Supreme Court of Appeals from May 2013, which overturned a lower court’s ruling that acquitted the suspects in the Dink murder case of charges of forming a terrorist organization. This decision paved the way for the trial of public officials on charges of voluntary manslaughter.

Source: Zaman

French MP Proposes Sanctions Against Turkey Over ‘Siding With Extremists’

November 26, 2015 By administrator

European lawmaker Marie-Christine Arnautu, Vice President for Social Affairs of the National Front spoke to Sputnik in an exclusive interview regarding the downing of the Russian Su-24 bomber by the Turkish Air Force.

“Turkey has created a big problem by attacking the Russian aircraft, which was returning from a mission of combating the terrorists. Turkey has revealed its cards” Arnautu said in an interview.

She further said, “I just raised the question on my website and suggested not only strict sanctions against Turkey but also to stop to all negotiations regarding Turkey’s accession into the EU. It is quite clear that Turkey is sending weapons and money to the Islamists and leaves open its border, which is like a sieve for jihadists. In addition, after this unfortunate incident, which we have just seen I think that Turkey is indeed at war with those who are waging a war against terrorism.”

“This will be a good test for us… we are talking about war, we are at war… We have a pronounced enemy. Now the main question remains which country and what government is really willing to fight together in the first place against this enemy,” the lawmaker told Sputnik.

She added that fast action needs to be taken and according to her the position of French President Francois Hollande is still very blurred and uncertain.

“I think that the meeting between Putin and Hollande will be crucial. After this meeting Hollande will have to make the final choice. Will he give into the pressure of the financial groups; ultimately it all comes to a question of money and oil? Or will he dare to save France and Russia by helping the coalition that really wants to destroy Islamic fundamentalism and then will develop a real alliance with Russia and Syria,” Arnautu told Sputnik.

Davutoglu The God-father of Islamic state calls on US Turks to fight against Armenian, Jewish, Greek, diaspora

September 28, 2015 By administrator

Prime Minister of Turkey Ahmet Davutoğlu, who had previously stated that the Armenian diaspora is also the diaspora of Turkey, urged the Turks living in the US to fight against the Armenian diaspora.

Davutoğlu, who is attending the 70th Regular Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, also met with representatives of the Turkish NGOs in the US, reported Agos Armenian bilingual weekly of Istanbul, Turkey.

At the talk, the Turkish PM called on those in attendance to fight against the Armenian, Jewish, Greek and several other lobbyists.

Ahmet Davutoğlu also thanked the American Turks for holding April 24 rallies supporting Armenian Genocide denial.

Support the Royce-Engel Letter Stand up Against Aliyev’s Growing Anti-Armenian Aggression

September 24, 2015 By administrator

Click Here to take Action

Congressional Sign-On Letter Calls for Sniper Withdrawal, Additional Observers, Deployment of Gunfire Locators.

WASHINGTON, DC – Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) and Ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (D-NY) of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee are asking their Congressional colleagues to join a bipartisan call for renewed U.S. leadership in keeping the peace along the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

The two senior legislators are currently collecting Congressional signatures on a letter addressed to Ambassador James Warlick – the U.S. representative to the OSCE’s Minsk Group tasked with reaching a resolution of Nagorno Karabakh-related security and status issues. In their letter, they specifically call for the U.S. and OSCE to abandon their failed policy of false parity in responding to acts of aggression, noting that: “The longstanding U.S. and OSCE practice of responding to each new attack with generic calls upon all parties to refrain from violence has failed to de-escalate the situation. Instead, this policy of artificial evenhandedness has dangerously increased tensions. There will be no peace absent responsibility.”

The letter proposes three concrete pro-peace steps that would, “in the short-term, save lives and help to avert war. Over the longer term,” the letter notes, “these steps could contribute to a comprehensive and enduring peace for all the citizens of the region:”

— An agreement from all sides not to deploy snipers along the line of contact.

— The placement of OSCE-monitored, advanced gunfire-locator systems and sound-ranging equipment to determine the source of attacks along the line of contact.

— The deployment of additional OSCE observers along the line of contact to better monitor cease-fire violations.

Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh have both expressed support for these life-saving initiatives; Azerbaijan has not.

“We want to thank Chairman Royce and Ranking Member Engel for their leadership in keeping the peace, averting war, and promoting a durable and just negotiated settlement of status and security issues related to Nagorno Karabakh,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “We join with Armenia and Artsakh in supporting each of their three concrete peace-keeping proposals, and welcome – in the wake of yet another round of Azerbaijani aggression – their principled advocacy for replacing the U.S. and OSCE’s failed policy of artificial evenhandedness with an accountability-based approach to peace-keeping.”

The ANCA Royce-Engel action alert is available at: http://www.anca.org/nkpeace

Schiff to Warlick: “The Cause of Peace is Not Served by Ignoring Azerbaijan’s Increasing Belligerence”

In a related move, U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff (D-CA) has called upon the State Department to refrain from responding to future acts of Azerbaijani aggression with statements suggesting a “false equivalence between Azeri and Armenian behavior. In a letter sent this week to Ambassador James Warlick, the State Department’s representative to OSCE Minsk Group peace process, Representative Schiff warned that any “unwillingness to speak plainly about the aggressor in this conflict sends the message to Azerbaijan that it can act with impunity.”

Congressman Schiff stressed that, while he joins with Ambassador Warlick in seeking a peaceful and durable resolution to the Karabakh issue, “I do not believe the cause of peace is served by ignoring Azerbaijan’s increasing belligerence and the suggestion that both parties are equally to blame for violence along the Line of Contact when that is not the case.”

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Text of Royce-Engel Congressional Sign-On Letter to Ambassador Warlick

The Honorable James Warlick

U.S. Co-Chair

OSCE Minsk Group

Dear Ambassador Warlick:

We are writing out of concern over the escalation of violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, resulting in deaths on both sides of the conflict. It is our hope that the United States, through its role in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group, as well as through direct diplomacy with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, will immediately advocate for several steps to promote peace in the region.

We believe that securing the full and public support of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Nagorno-Karabakh for the following steps would, in the short-term, save lives and help to avert war. Over the longer term, these steps could contribute to a comprehensive and enduring peace for all the citizens of the region.

An agreement from all sides not to deploy snipers along the line of contact.

The placement of OSCE-monitored, advanced gunfire-locator systems and sound-ranging equipment to determine the source of attacks along the line of contact.

The deployment of additional OSCE observers along the line of contact to better monitor cease-fire violations.

We also urge you to publicly condemn specific acts of aggression along the line of contact. The longstanding U.S. and OSCE practice of responding to each new attack with generic calls upon all parties to refrain from violence has failed to de-escalate the situation. Instead, this policy of artificial evenhandedness has dangerously increased tensions. There will be no peace absent responsibility.

Thank you for your consideration of these recommendations. We continue to support your efforts to reach a durable and just resolution to this conflict and look forward to your response.