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Armenian president ruled out unilateral concessions over Karabakh – deputy FM

August 4, 2016 by administrator

In his recent speech delivered at a public meeting with representatives of the Armenian society, Serzh Sargsyan clearly ruled out unilateral concessions over Karabakh, a deputy foreign minister said today, commenting on the president’s statement.
“First, there will be absolutely no unilateral concessions; secondly, it is ruled out for Nagorno-Karabakh to be part of Azerbaijan. His statement is plainly worded,” Shavarsh Kocharyan said at a news conference.
Asked about the possibility of external pressures, the official dismissed such a plan. “What do pressures have to do here at all? Any round of negotiations sees the mediators try to reach a common ground between the parties. And that means they are required to accept certain concessions to approximate approaches. It’s absolutely logical in any negotiation process,” he added.

Meet Turkish Journalist Who Lost Custody Of Kids Over Critical Reporting

May 25, 2016 by administrator

Photo: Arzu Yildiz’s Twitter account.

By Mahir Zeynalov

Journalist/Columnist, Today’s Zaman/Al Arabiya

Relentless crackdown on journalists and media outlets in Turkey is not news. But the censorship has taken a whole new level last week when a Turkish court stripped a prominent journalist of legal rights over her two children for publishing a video about the Syria arms delivery.

Arzu Yildiz, an unwavering journalist mostly reporting about court battles and a fierce critic of the government, was also given a 20-month prison sentence for publishing the video on YouTube last year. The video is a two-hour long court defense of a prosecutor who intercepted a truck in southern Turkey full of arms heading toward a Syrian territory held by Ahrar al-Sham, an Islamist extremist group.

From Supporter To Critic

Yildiz, a mother of two, was actually a staunch supporter of the government back when tens of thousands of people thronged streets across Turkey to protest against then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan‘s increasingly authoritarian rule in the summer of 2013. She later joined Turkiye, a government mouthpiece paper.

In Turkiye, she broke a story about two senior female administrators within the ruling AKP suspected of spying for Iran. The story led to an investigation and several arrests. But the authorities later sued the newspaper over the story. Yildiz wrote a number of high-profile stories during her time in Turkiye, but her editors refused to publish most of them for being too critical of the authorities. A growing discord over the newspaper’s editorial line forced her to resign.

Her departure from Turkiye coincided with a corruption scandal involving Erdogan and his inner circle as well as a raucous election campaign viewed as the one of the most heated and divisive political wrangling.

Stepping Into Minefield

In a Wednesday night in January 2014, Yildiz published a bombshell story on T24, a news portal she joined after quitting Turkiye. Initially it was several paragraphs long, but it was enough to cause an uproar in the public. She reported that prosecutors from Adana, a southern Turkish city, intercepted trucks carrying arms into Syria. She knew that she was stepping into a minefield, because publicly debating or questioning this issue was off-limits.

That story sparked such an outrage from the country’s top leadership that Erdogan made it his life’s mission to cover up the scandal. The arms-filled trucks, allegedly administered by the Turkish spy agency, justified rumors that Turkey helped fostered radical groups in Syria and ultimately the ISIS. Erdogan publicly derided prosecutors and law enforcement who participated in an operation to halt the trucks, calling them “traitors” and accusing them of “spying.”

The prosecutors were later locked up. They still languish in jails, without any prospect of being released anytime soon.

Erdogan and then-President Abdullah Gul repeatedly asserted that the trucks were carrying humanitarian aid to Syrian civilians, but the content of the trucks were “state secrets.” The government, however, could not keep its narrative consistent. Senior AKP official Yasin Aktay acknowledged that the trucks were heading to Syrian rebels. I asked Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin during his visit to Washington last year if this was true. He said he had no idea why that official made such a remark and that the trucks were only carrying humanitarian relief.

But Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu brought into the surface another narrative, claiming that it was carrying arms to Turkmen rebels who were besieged by forces loyal to the Syrian regime. Turkmens fired back: We did not receive any weapons.

While the story slowly ebbed away over the time, the Cumhuriyet daily published photos and footage of medical supplies and arms in the Syria-bound trucks. The revelations infuriated Erdogan. He vowed that Can Dundar, the newspaper’s top editor, “will pay a heavy price” over the story. Journalist Dundar was locked up for three months, survived an assassination attempt and sentenced to five years in prison. Erdogan displayed little flexibility in tolerating stories linked to the Syrian arms delivery.

Reporting At a Price

Joining efforts with other journalists who had recently lost their jobs due to the government pressure, Arzu Yildiz co-founded a web-site called grihat, where she continued her critical and exclusive reporting. One of these reporting included the publication of a video of Prosecutor Ozcan Sisman‘s court defense. The video ricocheted across the social media, revealing details of how Turkish public officials aided radical groups in Syria as well as helped terrorists in bombing attacks such as in Reyhanli and Cilvegozu.

He made clear in his defense that he acted out of fear that these arms could end up in the hands of terrorists and that he did not know that the trucks were administrated by the spy agency, whose agents have an immunity to a prosecution.

Obtaining or spreading the footage of the court defense is illegal in Turkey, but the court preferred to punish the journalist who published it, not the one who leaked it. Turkey recently made it a crime to publish any classified document linked to the spy agency, a law that was widely criticized by global rights groups.

As Arzu Yildiz pleaded not guilty in the court, she told the judge that her publication of the video was a pure journalistic activity and that people deserve to know details of such a high-profile case.

At a time when even veteran Turkish journalists are cowed into submission, Yildiz’s brave reporting came with a price. She lost her freedom, but also her children. It is a chilling reminder to other journalists of what they may expect if they go down a similar path. Erdogan did not only threaten Can Dundar, but also other reporters who may choose to report on this sensitive matter.

Turkey to sentence UK teacher to 5-year jail term over PKK links

April 29, 2016 by administrator

Chris Stephenson, a British computer sciences lecturer who works at Bilgi university in Istanbul, Turkey

Turkish juridical officials are to hand down a five-year jail sentence to a British university lecturer on charges of spreading “terror propaganda” for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkish prosecutors have brought criminal indictment against Chris Stephenson, a computer sciences lecturer who works at Bilgi university in Istanbul, and he would be most likely given a jail sentence of between one and five years, Dogan news agency reported.

Stephenson was arrested on March 15 after Turkish authorities alleged that he was carrying brochures in support of the PKK, accusing the Cambridge graduate of “making propaganda of a terror organization.”

The British scholar, in return, has disrupted the charges, arguing that he was detained only after he was found with a bilingual Newroz (Persian and Kurdish new year) celebration invitation with the signature of the provincial presidency of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, also known as the HDP.

Stephenson, who has lived in Turkey for 25 years, is a staunch supporter of four Turkish academics, who signed a petition late last year and denounced the Turkish government’s campaign against the PKK.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in return, dismissed the petition and said it helps the PKK militants “achieve their goals.”

“It might be the terrorist who pulls the trigger and detonates the bomb, but it is these supporters and accomplices who allow that attack to achieve its goal,” he said.

Meanwhile, Turkish officials are to deport a Finnish author from Turkey over alleged “links to terrorism.”

Taina Niemela was detained in the restive eastern Turkish province of Van on April 28 after she attended a funeral for a slain PKK member.

A ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish government collapsed in July 2015 and attacks on Turkish security forces have soared ever since.

President Erdogan said earlier this month that 355 members of the Turkish security forces and over 5,000 Kurdish militants have been killed in operations against the outlawed group.

Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale campaign against the PKK in its southern border region in the past few months. The Turkish military has also been conducting offensives against the positions of the group in northern Iraq and Syria.

The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 2015 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc. More than 30 people died in the attack, which the Turkish government blamed on the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

After the bombing, the PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of supposed reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.

source: presstv

Protests rage across Turkey over deadly #Suruç bombing

July 22, 2015 by administrator

AFP Photo

Protests have continued across Turkey after a suicide bombing attack in the southeastern border town of Suruç on July 20 left at least 32 people dead and more than 100 others injured.

Forty-nine protesters were detained in multiple locations in Istanbul on July 21 for staging protests against the deadly Suruç bombing in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa.

Police seized three hand-made cluster bombs, 203 Molotov cocktails, a pump-action rifle, a blank-firing pistol, 125 pieces of ammunition, two firework-launching platforms and 40 boxes of fireworks used in resistance against security forces as part of the operations, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Eleven protesters were detained on July 21 in Kadıköy, a district on the Asian side of Istanbul, after around 500 protesters gathered at 8 p.m. at a central square in Kadıköy waving black flags, placards and photos of the victims of the Suruç bombing, Doğan News Agency reported late July 21.

The police fired tear gas and water cannon at the protesters, who defended themselves with stones and fireworks before many of them fanned out into the side streets of Kadıköy.

Twenty-five others were detained after attempting to march toward the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) bureau in Istanbul’s Şişli district on July 21. Protesters, political parties and left-wing NGOs have long accused the AKP of offering either direct or tacit support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has been blamed for the Suruç attack. At rallies across the country, protesters frequently shouted “Murderous ISIL, collaborator AKP.”

Thirteen protesters were also detained in Suruç protests in the Istanbul districts of Maltepe, Sultangazi and Küçükçekmece the same day.

In a separate protest in the eastern province of Ağrı, four protesters were detained and four police officers were slightly injured in clashes that erupted after a large number of protesters attempted to hold a sit-in following a press briefing on July 21. After declaring the action illegal, police attacked the activists with tear gas and water cannon.

Gendarmerie forces, meanwhile, discovered a bomb of around 120 kilograms on a road close to Sütlüce village in the eastern province of Tunceli, popularly known as Dersim, the Turkish General Staff said in a written statement on July 21.

Tunceli Gendarmerie Forces while on daily patrol, discovered the remote-controlled explosive device early July 21 in two gas cylinders alongside a road in the Mutlu neighborhood of Sütlüce, the statement said.

The Suruç bombing elicited sorrow and rage from several parties and spurred protests across the country, with people taking to streets to protest the deadly attack.

The suicide bomber, who has been tentatively identified as Şeyh Abdurrahman Alagöz, detonated explosives on July 20 at Suruç Municipality’s Amara Cultural Center as members of the Federation of Socialist Youth Associations (SGDF) prepared to travel to Kobane in Rojava to aid in the town’s reconstruction following its liberation from ISIL forces in January.

July/22/2015

Al-Monitor: Armenian diaspora spread over 70 countries symbolizes survival rather than victimhood

April 18, 2015 by administrator

By Pinar Tremblay
Al-Monitor

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu delivered a heartwarming message Feb. 15: “[The] Armenian diaspora is not an enemy diaspora, it is ours. We will keep reaching out to them.” Yet on March 18, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called upon the Armenian diaspora, saying, “Come let’s go over the archives. We can assign experts to evaluate all documents, bring your documents. It is not ethical to go traveling around different countries, distributing money, establishing lobbies to carry anti-Turkish propaganda.”

The Armenian diaspora has become the scapegoat for the Turkish-Armenian conflict. As the commemoration of the Armenian genocide centennial approaches, the Turkish government keeps sending mixed messages.

For example, on March 24, disturbing graffiti appeared on the wall of an Armenian church in Bakirkoy district of Istanbul. It read: “Who cares if you are all Armenians [referring to the liberal groups standing with the minorities with the slogan ‘We are all Armenians’], one of us being Ogun Samast [the murderer of prominent Armenian Turkish author Hrant Dink] is sufficient.” The graffiti, which caused an uproar on social media, was promptly cleaned up. Another one appeared the next day reading: “Holy Year 1915.”

The existence of the diaspora itself poses the most difficult question: How did the Armenian population decline to 60,000 from 2.5 million at the end of the 19th century in Anatolia? While Turkish views on the Armenian issue are divided, there seems to be a general conviction in Turkey that the Armenian diaspora is now strong enough to affect Turkey’s international politics.

In a piece for the Armenian Weekly, columnist Raffi Bedrosyan expressed the popular perception among Turks about the “evil” Armenian diaspora.

Bedrosyan lives in Canada, as a pianist and engineer working diligently to save the Armenian properties all around Anatolia. In September 2012, he gave the first Armenian piano concert since 1915 in the Surp Giragos church of Diyarbakir. He was also active in the reconstruction of the church.

Bedrosyan told Al-Monitor, “Erdogan, AKP [Justice and Development Party] and generally the Turkish state and state-controlled media misguidedly portray Armenians as three distinct groups: the good, the bad and the poor. The small Armenian community in Istanbul is regarded as the good — obedient, agreeable and easy to manipulate. The diaspora is regarded as the bad — the hateful enemy obsessed with genocide recognition, compensation and reparations. The Armenians in Armenia are regarded as the poor — completely desperate, dependent in every way on the Russians or the diaspora finances. [The] Turkish state and Erdogan fail to see that all three groups share a common pain since 1915 and a common goal for a just resolution. Yes, perhaps the diaspora is the most vocal among the three in pushing for acknowledgment and justice; however, Turkey has completely shut out any attempt for reconciliation with all three groups — closed borders with Armenia and no dialogue with any Armenian entity from neither diaspora nor Armenia regarding 1915. I am a minority within the Armenian diaspora advocating direct dialogue with Turkey, instead of pressuring Turkey through third states, but after several attempts for dialogue, encouraged by Davutoglu’s statements such as ‘Armenian diaspora is also our diaspora,’ I have become disillusioned at the fake attempts by government officials and academia. I see absolutely no willingness at state level to acknowledge historical facts and truths.”

Indeed, Al-Monitor interviewed over 20 prominent Armenian academics, journalists, artists, pundits and pastors from Australia, United Kingdom, France, Canada, Syria and Lebanon, as well as different parts of the United States, and all agreed with Armenians’ demand for Turkey to officially recognize the genocide.

Kevork Oskanian, a research fellow at the Center for Russian, Eurasian and European Studies at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, told Al-Monitor that beyond the shared wish of an official recognition of genocide, “there are actually a great number of different ideas [among the diaspora]. Some believe the matter should stop there; others go so far as to advocate the resurrection of the Sevres Treaty and Wilson’s arbitral award. The overwhelming majority are somewhere in between these two extremes, demanding, say, symbolic acts, or more concrete — financial — forms of compensation.”

Asked about the Armenians of the Levant, he said, “They have a special status in the diaspora partly because they are the oldest and best developed postgenocide communities; the ancestors of many people in France, the USA … passed through Lebanon or Syria before heading West, and, of course, 1915’s ‘killing fields’ were situated mostly in Syria, giving the place an added significance to Armenians worldwide. In that sense, the Syrian civil war has done immense damage to the Syrian Armenian community, which used to be one of the most dynamic in the region, and is considered the ‘mother community’ by many in the diaspora.”

Scout Tufankjian, a photojournalist and author of the upcoming book “There Is Only the Earth: Images from the Armenian Diaspora Project” that documents contemporary Armenian communities in more than 20 countries, told Al-Monitor, “Beyond [the recognition of genocide] views [of the diaspora] really vary — from those who would be satisfied with recognition to others who would push for reparations to others who would want to re-establish Western Armenia in our historic homeland.” A New York resident now, Tufankjian has just returned from a year in Istanbul.

“Views on modern Turkey also really vary,” she added. “Some people hold that the responsibility for recognition lies with every Turkish citizen; others see this more as a governmental issue. Some people have no issue with traveling to eastern Turkey to tour the villages of their ancestors; others would never step foot in a Turkey that does not acknowledge the genocide. Even the attitude that people take toward the Kurdish apology [for their role in the genocide] has varied. Many have accepted it warmly and wholeheartedly and look for opportunities to work together; others distrust it.”

Nigol Bezjian, a filmmaker in Beirut, told Al-Monitor, “Armenians in the Levant may have more pragmatic and practical approach to deal with the past in this modern time due to the proximity to their homeland.” Bezjian, born in Aleppo, Syria, has directed the movie “I Left My Shoes in Istanbul” documenting the travels of a Lebanese Armenian to Istanbul in 2012.

Armen Georgian, a political analyst for France 24, is more pessimistic about the relations between the diaspora and Turkish government and the impact of Syrian civil war. “I see the stalemate continuing,” he told Al-Monitor. “Last year, Erdogan made a statement on the Armenians that would have been unthinkable for a Turkish leader 20 years ago, but it fell far short of the unequivocal apology that the diaspora has been demanding for a century. This year Erdogan has taken a harder line, trying to make sure that the Gallipoli centenary overshadows the centenary commemorations in Yerevan. So I think the rift between him and the diaspora has widened. In addition, some members of the diaspora hold the Turkish government indirectly responsible for the destruction of Armenian heritage in Syria by the Islamic State.”

When asked whether the diaspora’s actions benefits Armenians in Turkey, Georgian said, “I think that international awareness of the genocide centenary makes it difficult for the Turkish government to take measures against Armenians — back in March 2010 the prime minister threatened to deport 100,000 Armenian migrants — but I would not rule out a further spike in tensions after April 24 that could make both Armenian migrants and Turkish citizens of Armenian origin feel uncomfortable.”

An Australian Armenian, Ashley Kalagian Blunt, told Al-Monitor about the position of the Armenian community in Australia, “The battle at Gallipoli, which began April 25, 1915, was a significant aspect in the formation of Australian national identity. While Australian Armenians are keen to stand up and commemorate the genocide as a community this April, they wish for official recognition from Australia and, of course, official recognition from Turkey.”

One of the biggest diaspora groups is in Southern California, Harut Sassounian, the publisher of the California Courier, expressed concerns about the reactions of rest of the world as well, wondering, “Is it sufficient to criticize Turkey for genocide denial, while ignoring world leaders who attend the Gallipoli ceremonies?”

Whatever your answer is to Sassounian’s question, one cannot deny that diverse and determined Armenian diaspora spread over 70 countries symbolizes survival rather than victimhood.

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London IBT: Kim Kardashian and Pope Francis left Turkey in PR disaster over Armenian genocide

April 14, 2015 by administrator

Some countries are so upset by Holocaust deniers that they make it a crime. There have been calls to do the same in Britain but we have, luckily, avoided such a heavy-handed and grandstanding approach to the freedom of speech of idiots, Simon Heffer wrote in his article, published in the International Business Times.

We prefer to see people who deny the Nazi genocide as idiots – or something stronger – and in a very British way content ourselves that the obloquy, contempt and derision such people heap upon themselves by expressing their offensive views is punishment enough, and comes free of charge, the author says.

It is disputed to this day by Turkey that its Ottoman forebears conducted a genocide against the Armenians in 1915.

Armenians see this as their Holocaust and when an entire nation denies it happened, it is denial on a truly grand and awesome scale. Imagine how the Jews would feel if the present German republic itself – not just handfuls of mentally disturbed anti-Semites – said there had been no German-led genocide against the Jews, and you will understand how the Armenians and those who sympathise with them feel about Turkey, a state about to celebrate 100 years of denial, the author notes.

The historical consensus is that 1.5 million Armenians were murdered. Many countries recognise this as an act of genocide. So too did Pope John Paul II, who issued a declaration in 2001 saying as much. Francis chose to quote his predecessor-but-one’s words: but it still upset the Turks, who immediately recalled their ambassador to the Vatican and demanded the Vatican’s man in Ankara come and explain himself, the article notes.

The Vatican, which is also keen to see a diminution of the conflict in that region, wants good relations with the Turks too, but not, to judge from Francis’s remarks, at the expense of pretending not to notice Turkey’s responsibility for an outrage that happened just outside living memory, the author says.

Armenia itself is building up to a formal commemoration of the genocide on 24 April. Last week, Kim Kardashian and her sister Khloe were in Yerevan to lay flowers at a memorial to the victims: the whole performance was captured on the sisters’ reality TV show, so anyone out there who is not aware of this atrocity may soon be alerted to it.

The author highlights that the combination of the Kardashians and the Pope adds up to a PR disaster for Turkey, at a time when in every other respect it is trying to show itself to be a responsible and progressive member of the family of civilised nations.

Source: Panorama.am

Armenians of Bulgaria welcomed the withdrawal of the Armenian Parliament standardization protocols of Armenian-Turkish relations

February 20, 2015 by administrator

football diplomacy is over

The Association of Armenians in Bulgaria, welcomes the decision of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to remove from Parliament the issue of protocols signed in Zurich in 2009 between Turkey and Armenia allegedly aimed at normalizing bilateral relations. “The Turkish authorities have once again demonstrated to the world that in refusing the desire for peace of Armenia are the direct heirs of those who committed the genocide of the Armenians. The gesture of the President of Armenia is fair and justified because Turkey not only regret the crimes of its past, but strengthens its anti-Armenian policy and its denial of genocide “wrote in a statement the Association of Armenians in Bulgaria. It also says that instead of respecting the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, Ankara moves cynically that day celebrations of the victory of the Battle of Gallipoli. “Almost every day, the Turkish officials use various opportunity to distort history and deny the existence of the Armenian genocide and denying any responsibility for these crimes,” the statement continues by saying that Turkey supports the Azerbaijani government in the conflict opposes in Karabakh “what is foolish in these circumstances to speak of improvement of Armenian-Turkish relations.”

Krikor Amirzayan

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