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Armenia blocks arms deal between Belarus and Azerbaijan

February 11, 2018 By administrator

Armenia has successfully blocked a major arms sale from Belarus to Azerbaijan, Belarusian and Armenian sources reported.

Azerbaijan has long been examining Polonez missiles manufactured in Belarus to counter Armenia’s acquisition in 2016 of Russian Iskander missiles. When Azerbaijan’s Minister of Defense Zakir Hasanov visited Minsk in October, the Ministry of Defense published photos of him in front of a Polonez. The Azerbaijani media reported that the transaction was almost complete. “Azerbaijan responds to Armenia with Lukashenko rockets”, headlined a Haqqin.az newspaper.

But now, a Belarusian military analyst, Aleksander Alesin, said that Armenia had succeeded in blocking this deal. “We wanted to sell Polonezos to Azerbaijan,” he told Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. “But Armenia, our partner in the CSTO, was against it,” he said, referring to the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the military alliance led by Russia. “The deal did not work, and probably the first [export] customer for the Polonez will be Kazakhstan,” said Alesin.

Sputnik Armenia reported that a source at the Armenian Ministry of Defense confirmed this information. “Our source pointed out that Armenia, at the highest level, stressed that the agreements that threatened the balance of power in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone were unacceptable,” said Sputnik. Since 1994, Armenian forces have been controlling the Karabakh territory and the seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan, which Baku has pledged to take back, by force if necessary.

“In its words [from the source], Yerevan has turned a blind eye to the fact that Belarus has in recent years delivered a large quantity of weapons and military equipment, modernized combat aircraft and aircrafts. 25 and Su-27, but now Armenia has decided not to be quiet, “says Sputnik.

According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Belarus has also supplied Azerbaijan with T-72M1 tanks and various artillery pieces over the last ten years.

An Armenian analyst quoted by Sputnik said the deal could have collapsed for reasons unrelated to anything in Yerevan. “It is possible that the agreement was actually canceled,” said analyst Karen Vrtanesyan. “On the other hand, it is possible that this was never planned, since all the noise concerning the Polonez came from the Azerbaijani side. Even the Belarussian press relied on Azerbaijani sources for their statements. “

And it’s not as if Belarus had completely eliminated Azerbaijan. Elsewhere in the interview in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alesin describes Azerbaijan as “one of the greatest partners of Belarus”. We sell them air defense systems, especially modernized Buk-MB air defense systems. In October, there was shooting [in Azerbaijan], Azerbaijanis were satisfied and there are prospects for increased cooperation. He added that Belarus will soon start selling “non-lethal weapons” to Armenia.

The battle between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus is analogous to a bigger battle between the two enemies of the Caucasus and Russia. Russia has sold billions of dollars worth of arms to Azerbaijan, while adhering to a mutual defense pact with Armenia, and supplying weapons to Yerevan at cost.

Despite the apparent success of stopping the sale of Polonez, Armenia can still consider Belarus an unreliable partner. While Russia supplies arms to both sides, it does so in a way that keeps the process “under control,” said MPP Mihran Hakobyan of the ruling Republican party at Tert.am. “Belarus is not the kind of country to sell arms to Azerbaijan and later keep control of the whole process.”

Joshua Kucera

Eurasianet.org

Turkey blocks website of its first atheist association

March 4, 2015 By administrator

The Association of Atheism

It took less than a year for a Turkish court to block the website of the country’s first official atheism association, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

The Association of Atheism, the first of its kind in any Muslim-majority country, was officially founded in Istanbul’s Asian-side neighborhood of Kadıköy in April 2014. The Gölbaşı 2nd Civil Courts of Peace in Ankara has finally blocked the association’s website, according to the group’s statement on March 3, 2015.

As of March 4, Turkish internet users could not have access to www.ateizmdernegi.org without using tools to bypass blockings, such as a VPN.

“Three months ago, the European Space Agency managed to put Philae on a one-km wide comet named 67P, which has a speed of 135,00p km/h, after a 3,907-day-long journey to a location 500 million km away,” the association’s statement said. “Meanwhile, courts in Turkey are still busy with blocking websites, citing laws with vague expressions and trying to make a certain belief dominate the others.”

The court ruling cites Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Law, which forbids “provoking the people for hate and enmity or degrading them.”

The Association of Atheism also described the court’s decision as “a historic example of accumulating legislative, executive and judicial powers in one hand,” claiming that Turkey is “drifting away from the level of modern civilizations as fast as its judiciary system drifts away from reason.”

The association had recently declared in a statement it was officially recognized by the European Union and invited by universities and think-tanks to speak at their events. Morgan Elizabeth Romano, the association’s vice president, had stressed in her recent addresses that Turkey’s free speech problems are worsened with the implications of Article 216.

In an interview with daily Agos last year, the founders of the association, Tolga İnci and Ahmet Balyemez, said they thought there should be a place to provide legal support to people facing problems as atheists.

Only three weeks after its foundation, the association had to install a panic button, which is directly connected to the police center near its headquarters in Istanbul, due to death threats.

In the past, the Turkish government or the courts had blocked access to several popular websites, including YouTube and Twitter. More than 66,000 websites are still blocked in Turkey.

Turkish court blocks access to websites publishing Charlie Hebdo’s cover featuring Prophet

January 14, 2015 By administrator

ISTANBUL

A woman lays a candle next to placards reading ‘I am Charlie’ and ‘we are not afraid,’ as people observe a minute’s silence in Istanbul on Jan. 8 for the victims of an attack by armed gunmen on the offices of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. The attack in Paris on Jan. 7 left 12 dead and many others injured. AFP Photo / Ozan Köse

A local Turkish court has ordered to block access to pages on websites publishing the Jan. 14 cover of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, featuring the Prophet Muhammad.

The issue is the first since a deadly attack on the magazine’s Paris office claimed the lives of 12 people, including prominent cartoonists.

The ruling was announced by a local court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır following a complaint.

The move comes after Turkish daily Cumhuriyet agreed to publish a four-page selection of Charlie Hebdo’s new issue in Turkish. The decision stirred controversy, with a number of prominent government officials unprecedentedly slamming the publication of the Charlie Hebdo images as a “provocation.”

“Those who disregard the sacred values of Muslims by publishing forms allegedly referring to our Prophet are clearly committing a provocation,” Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan said via Twitter Jan. 14.

“The fact that those who irresponsibly target the values of society publically express it via media or through art doesn’t change its aggressive nature,” Akdoğan said.

The move comes days after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu joined other foreign dignitaries during a march in Paris for freedom of expression and against intolerance, with the slogan “Je suis Charlie,” in tribute to the victims of the Paris attack.

January/14/2015