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Robert Kocharyan arrested with charges of “overthrowing the constitutional order”

July 28, 2018 By administrator

Armenia’s second President Robert Kocharyan was arrested for two months according to the Yerevan court ruling issued late on Friday.  Kocharyan was taken into custody from the court hall, his lawyer Aram Orbelyan told reporters.

Earlier, the Special Investigative Service (SIS) of Armenia officially charged Robert Kocharyan in the scope of the criminal investigation into the so-called March 1 events – the post presidential election crackdown in 2008 during which eight civilians and two police officers were killed.

Kocharyan, who served as Armenia’s president at a time of March 1, 2008, declared a 20-day state of emergency, with the approval of the Armenian parliament, banning future demonstrations and charged for “illegally mobilizing Armenia’s Armed Forces against peaceful demonstrators,” that was qualified as a “breach of constitutional order.”

Kocharyan has dismissed the charges as politically motivated.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: arrested, Robert Kocharyan

Five Afghans arrested by border agents after illegally crossing into Armenia from Turkey

July 25, 2018 By administrator

Russian Federal Security Service (FSS) agents have apprehended five border trespassers while patrolling the Armenian-Turkish border.

The five trespassers attempted to illegally cross into Armenia, the Border Department of the FSS said.

The five individuals have been identified as Afghani citizens. They have been handed over to Armenian law enforcement agencies. The FSS said the trespassers are a “criminal group”.

The incident is under investigation.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Afghans, arrested, five

The police arrested Alexander Sargsyan, the brother of the third president of Armenia.

June 25, 2018 By administrator

Alexander Sargsyan

The police arrested Alexander Sargsyan, the brother of the third president of Armenia.

Head of the RA Police Information and Public Relations Department Ashot Aharonyan told Armenpress.

“Alexander Sargsyan was arrested on suspicion of carrying illegal weapons, from Sayat-Nova Street in Yerevan,” Aharonyan said.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Alexander Sargsyan, arrested

Ex-French president Nicolas Sarkozy ‘arrested over campaign financing’ Video

March 20, 2018 By administrator

PARIS,

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was taken into police custody on Tuesday for questioning over suspected Libyan financing of his 2007 election campaign, a source close to the inquiry told AFP.

Sarkozy, 63, had until now refused to respond to a summons for questioning in the case, which drew heightened scrutiny last November when a businessman admitted delivering three cash-stuffed suitcases from the Libyan leader as contributions towards the French leader’s first presidential bid.

GADDAFI

Sarkozy’s detention was first reported by the Mediapart investigative news site and French daily Le Monde and comes several weeks after a former associate, Alexandre Djouhri, was arrested in London and later released on bail.

Djouhri was returned to pre-trial detention in February after France issued a second warrant for his arrest, ahead of a hearing scheduled for March 28.

A source close to the inquiry also said that Brice Hortefeux, a top government minister during Sarkozy’s presidency, was also questioned Tuesday as part of the inquiry.

Before his arrest in January, Djouhri, a 59-year-old Swiss resident, was well known among France’s rightwing political establishment, and had refused to respond to summons for questioning in Paris.

He has been a focus of the inquiry opened in 2013 by judges investigating earlier claims by late Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi and his son Seif al-Islam that they provided funds for Sarkozy’s election effort.

Sarkozy has dismissed the allegations as the claims of vindictive Libyan regime members furious over his participation in the US-led military intervention that ended Kadhafi’s 41-year rule.

Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine said he had made three trips from Tripoli to Paris in late 2006 and early 2007 with cash for Sarkozy’s campaign.

Each time he carried a suitcase containing 1.5 to 2.0 million euros in 200-euro and 500-euro notes, Takieddine claimed in a French media interview, saying he was given the money by Kadhafi’s military intelligence chief Abdallah Senussi.

Source: https://www.nation.co.ke/news/world/French-ex-presidentNicolas-Sarkozy-arrested/1068-4349458-tno2ef/index.html

 

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: arrested, Sarkozy

Turkey jails activist couple of Armenian origin for social media posts

December 4, 2017 By administrator

Uzay Bulut | December 4, 2017,

Two political activists of Armenian origin have recently been arrested by Turkish police due to social media posts that were critical of the Turkish government.

An author and environmental activist, Cemil Aksu, was arrested on October 25 in the city of Artvin for allegedly “praising crime and criminals” in his social media posts. Aksu is the local co-chair of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and is one of the editors of the Gor-Hemshin cultural magazine.

His wife, Nurcan Vayiç Aksu, another activist of Armenian origin, was also taken into police custody on October 19 in a house raid due to her social media posts. Vayiç is a rights activist and a member of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP). The couple is from the town of Hopa in Artvin, in what is commonly known as the Hemshin region, around 12 miles of the Georgian border.

As long-time political activists and writers, the Aksus have written and spoken out not only about local history and identity in the Hemshin region, but also on environmental matters, women’s rights, and Turkish politics, among other matters.

As a result of the couple’s arrest, their eight-year-old son, Arev, is now being taken care ofby his aunt.

On the day of his wife’s detention on October 19, Aksu posted, in part, on social media:

This is a classic of our country. Our home was raided at the wee hours due to Facebook posts. They searched the house. They detained Nurcan and seized my computer and a few books.

Vayiç remained under police detention for three days without police questioning, which led her to start a hunger strike. On the fourth day of her detention, she was finally questioned, arrested, and jailed for “insulting the Minister of the Interior, Süleyman Soylu,” and “propagandizing for a terrorist organization” on her social media account.

“I do not believe that there is a real offence [she committed]. In the period of those four days, they tried to produce evidence to arrest her,” her husband Aksu responded.

Ironically, a day after Vayiç’s arrest, Aksu himself was jailed. And this is not the first time Aksu has been imprisoned due to his activism. He was also arrested for political reasons in 1996 and was released only in 2004.

In the meanwhile, a group of activists in Hopa wanted to read a statement to the press criticizing the detention on October 23 but was interrupted by police with nightsticks and pepper spray.

Ten people were taken into police custody. One of them, Efraim Vayiç, has been jailed while the rest have been released. See how the police reacted here.

Hemshins: Islamized Armenian-Speakers

The Hemshin, also known as Hamshenis, are a community with Armenian roots who inhabit the Black Sea coastal areas of Turkey, Russia, and Georgia.

Historian and journalist Vicken Cheterian writes about the Hemshin people in his book Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks and a Century of Genocide:

The Hemshins (Hamshenahay in Armenian) are a unique people: though they are Muslim, part of their community has preserved the western Armenian dialect, as well as old pagan Armenian traditions, such as the Vartavar feast, an old Armenian pagan festival, still observed today, which serves as a tribute to Astghik, the goddess of water and fertility.

Yet most of this community’s members refuse to be associated with the Armenians and deny having Armenian ancestry. They were separated from mainstream Armenian culture over the course of several centuries. The mystery surrounding these Islamized Armenians has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars.

From Arab Oppression to the Ottoman Oppression

In the eighth century, the Hemshin Armenians are commonly believed to have migrated from the region that is today the Republic of Armenia to the Byzantine Empire (today’s Turkey), whose eastern part constituted historic Armenian provinces. Turkic tribes from Central Asia arrived in the Armenian highlands (today’s eastern Turkey) as jihadi invaders only in the eleventh century.

Hemshin Armenians fled Arab oppression in Armenia proper and found refuge in the Byzantine Empire, but the collapse of the Byzantines and the takeover by the Ottomans marked the beginning of another page of oppression in the history of the Hemshin Armenians—this time at the hands of Ottoman Turks.

“The roots of the Hemshin community have been attributed to a migration led by Shabuh Amaduni and Hammam Amaduni, from the Amatuni noble family based in the Arakadzodn region, northeast of Yerevan in contemporary Armenia, in the mid-or late-eighth century,” explains Cheterian. “They were seeking to escape to the Byzantine-controlled territories in the north in order to free themselves from the oppression they were suffering at the hands of Arab rulers.”

The total Hemshin population in Turkey, Georgia, and Russia is most often estimated today at around 150,000. Cheterian writes that three distinct Hemshin communities live in three different geographic locations:

The Western Hemshen, who live in Rize and are known as Bash Hemshen after the region, gradually lost their Armenian dialect and became Turkish speakers. The eastern Hemshen, who live in the Hopa and Borcka counties of Artvin, eastern Turkey, continue to speak an Armenian dialect largely due to their insular lifestyle in mountainous regions. The third community is the Christian Hemshens, who left their original settlement during the seventeenth century and resisted Islamization by moving northwards. This community currently resides in Abkhazia, or the Krasnodar region of southern Russia. Moreover, there is also a large number of Islamized Hemshins who migrated westward after the 1878 Russo-Ottoman war: 10,000 of their descendants currently live in the environs of Adapazarı [in Sakarya].

Forced Conversions to Islam

Starting in the 17th century, the Christian Hemshin Armenians were (often forcefully) Islamized by the Ottoman Turks. Rev. Dr. Abel Manoukian writes in his book New Saints: Canonizing the Victims of the Armenian Genocide:

The Hamshen [Hemshin] Armenians accepted Islam, despite their ethnic differences in order to preserve their existence. Until this day, even though they are Armenian by ethnic origin, they belong to the Moslem religion.

Indeed, many Hemshins in the region maintained their native language even after converting to Islam. Professor Raymond Kevorkian writes in his book The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History that in 1914, “the mountainous region of Hamşin [Hemshin] was home to an Armenian-speaking population that was converted by force to Islam between 1680 and 1710, and was distinguished by conspicuous cultural traits.”

It appears that Hemshin Armenians had to convert to Islam under Ottoman rule largely to escape the heavy Islamic tax (the jizya) that the Ottomans imposed on them and other non-Muslim subjects of the empire, and to avoid deportation or even death.

As Cheterian notes, “Those Hemshins who remained Christian were either deported or killed—in 1860 a number of Christian Hemshins consequently migrated towards the Russian empire, while those that remained were destroyed as a result of the genocide.”

Professor Kevorkian also notes the massacre against civilian Armenian populations in Artvin as well as in several other towns between December and February in 1915 during the Armenian genocide.

Systematic Denial of Armenian-Hemshin Relationship

Even after the genocide, republican Turkey, founded in 1923, not only failed to give Hemshin Armenians the right to return to their former religion, Christianity, or to possess cultural rights, but also further intensified the efforts of Turkifiying them.

Professor Lusine Sahakyan details the systematic assimilation policy of both the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey towards the Hemshins, which led them to lose “their real Armenian national identity, retaining only the local ethnographic description through recollections about their Armenian origin.”

She explains:

Assimilation policy of the Ottoman Empire, and later that of republican Turkey, proceeded in several stages, with violent and various systematized methods, as well as through language assimilation.

Not content with a religious conversion and understanding the role of ethnic differentiation in language, the authorities of Ottoman and republican Turkey found the Turkification of the peoples who were subjected to them of utmost importance in completing their assimilation process. Generations of the Hamshen Armenians, Islamized in this reality, gradually lost important components of Armenian identity in the Ottoman-Turkish environment, such as their language (except for the Hamshens living in Hopa and Borchka districts and a few villages of Sakarya province) and religion, were cut off from Armenian culture and were completely assimilated into Turkish society, preserving only their local ethnographic, as they call it, Hamshen identity.

Official discourse in Turkey, an ostensible NATO ally and a perpetual candidate for European Union membership, still denies the Armenian roots of the Hemshin. Cheterian states that:

In the officially-sanctioned Turkish historiography, the Hemshins do not have an Armenian past but are of Turkish origin, belonging to tribes who have migrated to their current location from Central Asia. They are sometimes described as belonging to the Oghus-Turkmen tribes, while on other occasions they are referred to as being related to the Balkars and the Kipchak Turkic group.

As Rudiger Benninghaus has argued, this policy of seeking to deny the Hemshin-Armenian relationship should be seen as part of the Turkish state’s broader policy of eradicating any Armenian presence from north-east Turkey. However, while the Turkish authorities have sought to deny the Armenian roots of the Hemshins, neighboring ethnic groups remember them as Armenian converts.

Many people in the region are known to deny their Armenian roots today—a quite understandable decision given that the country’s Armenian community still faces continued pressures and hatred from the Turkish government as well as from much of the Turkish press and public.

Apparently, Turkey’s government has become the ultimate expert of targeting and victimizing genocide survivors over and over again.

However, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in October that Turkey’s full membership is the “cure for the chronic problems” of the EU:

We are waiting for European leaders to stop targeting Turkey and to return to common sense. There is no benefit for anyone in escalating xenophobia. Dreaming of getting power by means of anti-Islam campaigns will not be useful.

A Europe without Turkey is destined to loneliness, desperation and internal conflict. Turkey does need Europe, but Europe needs Turkey. Although they don’t want to see it, Turkey is the cure for their chronic problems

Turkey has largely exterminated or forcibly Islamized Eastern Christians for decades. What can a state, whose history is filled with many crimes against Christians that it systematically denies, offer to the West or the EU other than more hatred and brutality against Western Christians?

That is why the analysis of Islamic violence or totalitarianism in the region should not begin with the analysis of ISIS (Islamic State) or al-Qaeda. Moreover, before one accuses “Western foreign policy” for all the bloodshed and persecution in today’s Muslim world, one should analyze the region beginning from the seventh century and how Islamist regimes have oppressed religious minorities. Behind almost every story of any nation’s Islamization, there have been horrors including but not limited to forced conversions, threats of violence, kidnappings, rapes, and social, economic, and other types of pressures.

Of course, many Muslims do not murder or violate non-Muslims in the name of religion. But many jihadists do use Islamic scriptures to promote violence while they exterminate, violate, or repress millions of non-Muslims and Muslims. The role of jihad in all the massacres that Muslims have committed against both non-Muslims and different sects within Islam should be therefore discussed and criticized from a human rights perspective.

And that is why the international human rights community should protest the arbitrary imprisonment of the Aksu couple even more rigorously, since they are descendants of a people who have been historically persecuted, violated, and subject to genocide.

—

Uzay Bulut, a journalist and political analyst born in Turkey, is currently based in Washington D.C. She is an associate fellow of the Philos Project and a writing fellow of the Middle East Forum.

Photo Credit: Cemil Aksu and Nurcan Vayiç Aksu, via @artvinden and @sinanerensu on Twitter.

Filed Under: Genocide, News Tagged With: arrested, Cemil Aksu, Turkey

Armenia court chief judge arrested

June 10, 2017 By administrator

Armenia court chief judge arrested YEREVAN. – Gegharkunik District Court of First Instance chief judge Aghvan Petrosyan was arrested on Thursday.

His attorney, Armen Melkonyan, told Armenian News-NEWS.am that his client was immediately taken to court from a hospital in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, and a decision was reached on his arrest.

In Melkonyan’s words, however, the court did not enable him to study the case materials and carry out the necessary defense, and gave him solely 40 minutes to prepare his defense arguments.

He noted that his client has serious illnesses, “and despite all this, they urgently discharged him from hospital and arrested him.”

The attorney added that Judge Petrosyan is charged with taking a large bribe, but he pleads not guilty to the charge brought against him.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Armenia, arrested, court chief judge

Amnesty International lawyer Kilic arrested in Turkey

June 7, 2017 By administrator

Amnesty International lawyer Kilic arrested in TurkeyAmnesty International’s director in Turkey, Taner Kilic, was among 23 lawyers arrested in the western city of Izmir. They are suspected of having ties to the US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Taner Kilic, the chair of Amnesty International in Turkey , was arrested on Tuesday along with 22 other lawyers, the human rights organization has reported. They have all been accused of links to the network of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Kilic was detained by police at his home in Izmir early on Tuesday before being taken to his office, Amnesty announced.

“We are calling on the Turkish authorities to immediately release Taner Kilic along with the other 22 lawyers and drop all charges against them,” Amnesty Secretary-General Salil Shetty said.

“Taner Kilic has a long and distinguished record of defending exactly the kind of freedoms that the Turkish authorities are now intent on trampling,” Shetty said.

Amnesty reported that there was no reason to believe that Kilic’s arrest was connected to his work for the London-based rights group. He has been the local director in Turkey since 2014.

The Turkish government claims that Gulen ordered a coup attempt last July, but the cleric denies the accusation.

Since July, authorities have arrested 50,000 people and sacked or suspended 150,000 government employees – including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants – for alleged links to Gulen’s network and other groups.

es/jm (Reuters, AFP)

Chair of @Amnesty Turkey office among 23 lawyers detained today in post-coup purge. We demand their urgent release! https://t.co/t6QN9pPMgq pic.twitter.com/QJplCGloRM

— Salil Shetty (@SalilShetty) June 6, 2017

Filed Under: News Tagged With: amnesty international, arrested, Kilic, Turkey

Alert: Police detain US consulate employee over allegedly PKK links in Turkey’s Adana

February 24, 2017 By administrator

(hurriyetdailynews) Report Police detained an employee of the U.S. consulate in the southern province of Adana on Feb. 23 on suspicion of involvement with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), according to a police official.      

The suspect, Hamza Uluçay, had been working as a translator at the consulate in Adana for years, the official, who wished to stay anonymous due to restrictions on talking to the media, said.            

He was detained after a top PKK figure codenamed Behzat was killed in Mardin. 

Police apprehended the suspect as he left the consulate building.       

The source accused the suspect of allegedly going to Mardin after the killing and inciting people in favor of the PKK.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: arrested, Kurd, Turkey, US consulate employee

No Journalist Safe in Turkey, German “Die Welt” journalist Deniz Yücel Arrested

February 17, 2017 By administrator

A German correspondent for the daily “Die Welt” newspaper has been taken into custody in Turkey. He is the first German reporter to be held in a widespread crackdown on press freedom in Turkey.

A lawyer for Deniz Yücel said the 43-year-old journalist was being charged with membership in a terrorist organization, spreading propaganda and misuse of information.

The “Die Welt” correspondent had reported on emails that RedHack, a leftist hacker collective, had acquired from the private account of Turkish Energy Minister Berat Albayrak. The minister is a son-in-law and close political ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Another six journalists – all working for Turkish news outlets – have been arrested in connection with the RedHack affair.

Since  Fake coup last year, Turkish authorities have detained hundreds of people, including journalists, academics and suspected sympathizers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Yücel, a dual citizen of Turkey and Germany, turned himself in to police on Tuesday. Under Turkey’s ongoing state of emergency, he can be held for up to 14 days before a judge must decide whether authorities can continue to keep him in custody.

Ulf Poschardt, the editor-in-chief of “Die Welt,” said in a statement that: “The Turkish government has repeatedly noted that Turkey is a state governed by the rule of law. This is why we believe that a fair process will result in him being declared innocent.”

Over 100 media workers jailed

German journalists’ union DJV said Yücel’s arrest showed that Erdogan was “trying to misuse the state of emergency to make disagreeable reporting impossible.” They called on the German government to interfere and to use diplomatic contacts to protect Yücel.

Reporters Without Borders Germany (RoG) said the case brought the prosecution of journalists to a new level. RoG director Christian Mihr said “[o]ther foreign correspondents have been expelled or not let into the country before,” but that detaining a foreign reporter on allegations similar to those faced by Turkish journalists was new.

Foreign reporters have so far enjoyed more liberties in Turkey than local journalists. But Turkish authorities reportedly choose to treat dual-citizen holder Yücel as a Turkish citizen, rather than a German.

According to newspaper “taz,” Yücel had previously been briefly jailed in June 2015 in Sanliurfa, a city in southern Turkey, after posing critical questions regarding refugees to the local governor.

There are currently some 120 media workers jailed in Turkey, according to the European Federation of Journalists. Ankara has rejected this figure and insists no one has been imprisoned for writing news articles.

mb, sms/msh (dpa, AFP, die Welt)

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: arrested, german, Journalist, Turkey

Terrorist State of Turkey Court arrests former Mardin mayor Ahmet Türk

November 24, 2016 By administrator

ahmet-turk-mardin-mayor-arrestedThe ousted mayor of the southeastern province of Mardin, Ahmet Türk, was arrested on “terror” charges on Nov. 24, becoming the latest Kurdish politician to be arrested.

Türk was initially brought to the Mardin Public Prosecutor’s Office in the morning hours following procedures at the police headquarters. He was later referred to a Criminal Court of Peace with a demand for his arrest after testifying to a prosecutor.

Police detained Türk on Nov. 21 after he was dismissed from his post as part of a terror investigation along with the co-mayor of Mardin’s central Artuklu district, Emin Irmak, who is also from the Democratic Regions Party (DBP), the sister party of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

The Interior Ministry appointed Mardin Gov. Mustafa Yaman as Mardin co-mayor in place of Türk on Nov. 17 while trustees were appointed to the municipalities of the eastern provinces of Van, Siirt and Tunceli on the same day following operations to detain and arrest the mayors for terrorism charges.

Meanwhile, the former head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the party’s Antalya deputy, Deniz Baykal, visited Türk’s family in order to voice his support. Baykal chatted with Türk’s wife, Mülkiye Türk, at their home in Mardin.

“Hopefully we will have beautiful days together,” Baykal said on Nov. 24, as he added that “these painful days will be left behind.”

Baykal was later joined by another HDP lawmaker from the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, Altan Tan.

Baykal and the group with him later went to the Mardin Courthouse and talked to the Mardin Chief Public Prosecutor. They then went to the Mardin Governor’s Office.

November/24/2016

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: ahmet turk, arrested, Turkey

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