Trump orders Pentagon chief to prepare preliminary draft to defeat ISIS within 30 days

January 29, 2017 By administrator

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered Minister of Defence James Mattis to begin search of new partners for the coalition in the fight against Islamic State, RBC reported quoting the White House.

In particular, the Pentagon chief was ordered to prepare preliminary draft to defeat ISIS within 30 days. In turn, the plan should include the search for new partners for the coalition in fight against this terrorist organization and policy on support of partners in the coalition in fight against ISIL and the related groups.

Earlier, the White House said that Trump’s administration would like to work with any country interested in extermination of fighters of ISIL.

Turkey elections: Erdogan’s victory, Turkey’s defeat

November 3, 2015 By administrator

The early elections in Turkey on November 1 are a victory for President Recep Erdogan, but a defeat for Turkey, says Ruben Safrastyan, Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Armenian Academy of Sciences.

The elections enabled the ruling Justice and Development party to get twice as many seats in Turkey’s Parliament, which will allow it to form a one-party government.

“Statistically, Erdogan and his party are winners. But strategically, Erdogan’s policy has created a rather grave situation in Turkey – in both external and internal respects,” Mr Safrastyan said.

Elaborating on the subject, he pointed out the Kurdish problem, Turkey’s worsening relations with its neighbors, Turkey’s involvement in the Syria crisis, which will cost it much.

As regards Turkey’s relations with Russia, it is now in an unprecedented situation.

“Russian armed forces turn out to be deployed not only in Turkey’s northern regions, but also in its south, which is a new event for Turkey. It is the result of its policy in Syria and refusal to support the anti-terrorist activities,” Mr Safrastyan said.

According to him, it will result in Turkey’s international isolation, while isolation is obvious in the Middle East.

“Turkey has severed its relations with Egypt. We can see the situation involving Israel and Turkey. Besides, Turkey has strained relations with Iraq and Iran. And if Iran’s role in the Middle East should rise after sanctions have been removed, it will strain its relations with Turkey,” Mr Safrastyan said.

By forming a one-party government, Turkish authorities will continue their policy.

“It means no new policy to the South Caucasus or to us will be developed,” he said.

The expert does not rule out a possibility of turkey inciting Azerbaijan to escalation to overcome the crisis.

Armenia’s armed forces efficient to defeat Azerbaijan – general

September 28, 2015 By administrator

Azerbaijan is unlikely to unleash a wide-scale war against Armenia in the current efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, says Seyran Saroyan, a retired general who now represents the ruling Republican faction in Armenia’s National Asembly.
According to him, Azerbaijan’s current aggression against Armenia is due to its defeat in the 1990’s war for Nagorno-Karabakh’s liberation.
“Should they [make any attempt to renew the war], our armed forces are efficient enough to take counteraction. And even more,” he told our correspondent.

Turkish President Erdogan’s Triple Defeat

June 7, 2015 By administrator

Voters struck back at the ruling AK Party in parliamentary elections Sunday, depriving it of a majority and likely stopping the president’s latest power grab.

By David A. Graham

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suffered a painful triple defeat in elections on Sunday.

While Erdogan himself was not on the ballot, his Justice and Development Party (or AKP) lost its hold on parliament. The AKP was still clearly the leading party, garnering around 41 percent of the vote in preliminary returns, but it failed to win an outright majority. A second defeat was that one reason for the AKP’s struggles was a surge by the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP. For the first time, the party—a liberal group whose traditional base is Turkey’s Kurdish minority—crossed the magical 10 percent threshold required to actually earn seats in parliament. It did that in part by campaigning against the president. All that combined to produce what might be most galling of all to Erdogan: It means his hopes at changing the constitution to produce an executive presidency more like the U.S. setup are likely dead.

The presidential position is currently largely ceremonial, though there’s no doubt that Erdogan holds the reins of power. He was, however, officially barred from campaigning during the election. While Erdogan insisted he had benign intentions in seeking the new setup, some observers warned that it would be a step on the way to dictatorship.

It may be that Erdogan simply overreached in the last few years. While he’s Turkey’s most popular and powerful leader in decades, his eagerness to expand his reach alienated voters, particularly urban and secular ones. He embarked on a $615 million white-elephant palace project, imprisoned and intimidated the press and his political opponents, tried to block YouTube and Twitter, and feuded with Fethullah Gulen, a religious leader who’d help bring him to power. Anger boiled over in the streets of Istanbul and elsewhere in 2013, sparked by protests over trying to turn a park in the city into a mall. Meanwhile, the economy sputtered.

The Allies at Gallipoli: Defeat in 1915, Disgrace in 2015

April 1, 2015 By administrator

By David Boyajian,

Erdogan Smoke Screen

April 25 will mark 100 years since the Allies – the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and France – made their ill-fated landing on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula during WW1. Having barely gotten off the beaches after months of fighting, the Allies withdrew in defeat leaving over 44,000 dead and 97,000 wounded.

As in recent years, thousands will flock from the Allied countries and elsewhere to Gallipoli for the Turkish-led April 24-25 commemorations. Numerous world dignitaries, including Australia’s and New Zealand’s prime ministers and Prince Charles, will also attend.

In April, the UK, Australia, and NZ hold Gallipoli remembrances on their own soil and elsewhere. And throughout the year, their citizens visit Gallipoli to pay tribute to the UK’s 21 thousand, Australia and NZ’s 11 thousand, and France’s 10 thousand dead. This is proper and honorable.

However, thronging to April’s sham commemoration staged in and by Turkey, a notorious human rights violator? Which had mistreated Allied POWs? Which today abuses its remaining Christians, as well as Alevis, Kurds, and Jews? Which also committed genocide and pillage against millions of indigenous Christian Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek civilians during the Gallipoli battle and for years afterward? And which arrogantly denies having done so?

The UK, Australia, and NZ themselves have made the Gallipoli ceremonies in Turkey something less than solemn. Smiling lottery winners receive tickets to the event. Youngsters vie to become Gallipoli “youth ambassadors” and win all-expense paid trips. Is Gallipoli the resting place of valorous Allied troops – or Disneyworld Turkey?

Turkey’s Gallipoli Charade

Westerners often do not understand Turkey. The Turkish government does not mourn the Allied dead any more than it cares about the victims of its genocides and the deliberately unmarked, mass graves in which they lie.

Turkey enjoys the spectacle of defeated foreigners trudging to Gallipoli. Indeed, Turkey holds a huge Gallipoli celebration the month before. This year, it displayed a victory banner 1915 meters long. Meanwhile, Turkey’s Defense Ministry has reportedly removed the names of non-Muslims from the list of its soldiers who died at Gallipoli.

2015’s Gallipoli attendees can anticipate a lecture by Turkey’s egomaniacal President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He just built himself a gaudy 1100-room palace for a reported $615 million. In 2013, Erdoğan killed demonstrators in Gezi Square who were protesting his authoritarian rule, and regularly sues and jails journalists.

Genocide and Denial

The Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides in Turkey were reported extensively at the time in Allied countries’ newspapers. France, Great Britain, and Russia issued Turkey this famous warning in May 1915: “The Allied governments … will hold personally responsible … all members of the Ottoman [Turkish] government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.” Australian and New Zealand (Anzac) POWs, such as Captain Thomas Walter White, witnessed and later wrote about the genocides.

Winston Churchill termed them a “holocaust.” “Race extermination,” declared U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau in 1915. It was that extermination which first motivated Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish lawyer who later coined the word “genocide.”

The parliaments of the European Union, Canada, France, Lebanon, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, and many others, as well as a U.N. sub-commission, the Vatican, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), have recognized the Armenian genocide. IAGS has also recognized the Assyrian and Greek genocides. In 1951, the U.S.

referred to the Armenian “genocide” in a filing with the International Court of Justice (World Court).

But the governments of the UK (except for Scotland and Wales), Australia (except for New South Wales), and NZ refuse to acknowledge these genocides. They fear Turkey’s reaction. Contrast their gutlessness with the courage of Allied soldiers at Gallipoli.

By ignoring the Armenian genocide, New Zealand and Australia are “tacitly complicit in” genocide denial, says NZ writer and businessman Stephen Keys. “Is [Turkey] the sort of government we as New Zealanders are proud to stand alongside on April 25, 2015?” Officially, 2015 is “The Year of Turkey in Australia.” A more apt name: “The Year of Turkish and Australian Genocide Denials.”

France, on the other hand, has acknowledged the Armenian genocide despite Turkish threats. A large French delegation headed by President Hollande will be in Armenia on April 24 for the Genocide Centenary. On that day in 1915, Turkey arrested and murdered hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, doctors, priests, writers, and other community leaders as part of the genocide.

Turkish Bullies

Turkey enjoys bullying others over Gallipoli. Five years ago, it initially refused to issue visas to Australian and New Zealand archeologists who were to map Gallipoli’s battlefields. Turkey was angry that Bonnyrigg, a Sydney suburb, had allowed construction of a monument commemorating the Christian Assyrian genocide.

Two years back, Turkey threatened to ban New South Wales MPs from Gallipoli because NSW had recognized the Armenian genocide.

Afraid of further incurring Turkey’s wrath, earlier this year NSW installed – surreptitiously – a plaque in Sydney’s Hyde Park honoring the Turkish hero of Gallipoli, and later president, Kemal Atatürk. The plaque’s fine words, allegedly penned by him, are undoubtedly insincere and perhaps inauthentic. Moreover, this “hero” continued the evil deeds of his predecessors.

Ataturk, Genocide, and Hitler

Atatürk welcomed veteran genocidists, such as Abdülhalik Renda and Şükrü Kaya, into his new government. From 1919 to 1923, Atatürk’s forces murdered and expelled Christians who had survived the genocides.

In 1937, Atatürk directed the slaughter, sometimes using poison gas, of thousands of Alevi Kurdish civilians, including women and children, in the Dersim region. Among the victims were Armenians who had found shelter there.

Hitler admired Atatürk’s brutality. Atatürk was “the greatest man of the century,” the Führer told Turkey’s Milliyet newspaper in 1933, and “Turkey was our role model.” Indeed, in WW1, some German officers took part in the Armenian genocide.

Visitors to Gallipoli will bow before Atatürk’s statue unaware of his appalling record.

The Dead Speak

The Allies fought WW1 gallantly. Armenians from many countries were among them. Armenians even formed a special French Foreign Legion unit that fought with particular distinction. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians also served in Allied armies in WW2, while Turkey remained neutral and cozied up to Nazi Germany.

Beneath Gallipoli’s shores and hills, the courageous Allied dead surely whisper, ‘Please, honor our memories by going elsewhere in April, and shun Turkey’s victory dance on our graves and those of millions of Christian innocents.’

The author is a freelance Armenian American journalist. Many of his articles are archived at Armeniapedia.org.

#kobani Islamic State Fighters Admit Kobani Defeat

January 31, 2015 By administrator

VOA News

January 31, 2015 2:39 PM

Islamic State fighters released a video Saturday acknowledging their defeat in the Syrian town of Kobani, but they vowed they would attack again. #kobani

In the video, two men claiming to be militants said airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition were the main reason the group was forced to withdraw from Kobani.

“A while ago, we slowly started retreating from Ayn al-Islam due to the shelling and the murder of some of our brothers,” said one of the fighters in the video, using the name the Islamic State group prefers for Kobani.

Kurdish fighters claimed Monday to have recaptured the embattled border town, after months of fighting there. Much of the city, once home to 200,000 people, is in ruins from the battles.

The turn in the fight for Kobani could prove to be a key defeat for the Islamic State, which over several months has taken control of vast parts of Syria and Iraq.

The KRG should accept responsibility for the current calamity in Kurdistan

August 10, 2014 By administrator

Dr. Hussein Tahiri — Special to Ekurd.net

August 10, 2014

The defeat of Kurdish forces at the hand of a terrorist group sent a shockwave through Kurdistan. It caused the exodus of tens of thousands of Kurdistanis, many deaths, countless rapes and pillages. This cannot be considered as an ordinary defeat or a tactical withdrawal. It has far reaching implications for the Kurds and their image in Kurdistan and beyond.

First, the fact that the Peshmargas evacuated their positions in Shangal, Zumar and other Ezidi populated areas and exposed the defenceless Ezidi population to an onslaught by the Islamic State is unforgivable. The Islamic State is a terrorist group that knows no boundary in savagery and is willing to go as low as a human being can go to satisfy their savage God whose demand for worship is only terror and blood of innocent people. How a defence force of a country can leave their population at the mercy of such savages?

Yes, Kurdistan shares more than 1000 Kilometres with the Islamic State and given the long borders, the Kurdish forces are stretched but the same applies to the Islamic State forces. Don’t the Kurds claim to have a force of 200,000 Peshmargas to defend Kurdistan? What happened to those Peshmargas who could hold up and defeat a huge Iraqi army with their basic weapons?

Whatever the Ezedis might be feeling towards Kurdish nationalism and their Kurdish identity is not relevant at this point. They are Kurdistanis and they must be defended. Leaving the Ezidis at the mercy of a terrorist group is not only a reckless act but crime.

Second, Christians within the border of Kurdistan must be protected like any other Kurdish citizen. In fact, Christians and other minorities should be given priority when it comes to the protection of their lives and properties. They are more vulnerable to terrorists as a minority and as non-Musims. The Kurdistan Regional Government has a duty of care towards them and they must have been protected.

Third, the defeat of Kurdish forces at the hand of a terrorist group undermines the very notion of Kurdistan independence. The Kurds in South Kurdistan are preparing to declare statehood and there is an increasing rhetoric that the Kurds deserve to form their own nation state. If the Kurds declare an independent state how can they defend their boundaries and sovereignty against strong neighbouring states when they cannot defend themselves against a terrorist group?

Fourth, Kurdish freedom movement has always prided itself in having a force, the Peshmarga, who are willing to die for the defence and freedom of Kurdistan. Peshmargas have established a reputation for being brave and fearless fighters. This name has gained sanctity amongst thewww.Ekurd.net Kurds. Kurdish withdrawal in the face of the Islamic State has undermined this image. Or, are we talking about different kinds of Peshmargas, and should we be distinguishing between the traditional Peshmargas who were willing to give their life for freedom of Kurdistan for no material gains and those whose main motives for serving in the Kurdish armed forces are financial gains? If this is the case, the Kurdistan Regional Government should no longer call its armed forces the Peshmarga. The behaviour of Kurdish forces since last week does not befit a Peshmarga force.

Fifth, despite all Kurdish bravados, they are now considered a weak force that are unable to defend themselves and are in need of foreign protection. The Iraqi armed forces became the subject of ridicule across the world for abandoning their positions in the face of a terrorist group. Now the Kurdish forces acted like their Iraqi counterparts. This was neither a surprise attack on the Kurds nor one that could not be anticipated.

The Kurdistan Regional Government should accept responsibility for this calamity and urgently initiate an investigation into this matter and find out what went wrong. Those Kurdish armed forces and leaders who failed in their duties should be hold accountable. Failure to do so will expose Kurdistan to a greater risk.