The Press centre of the National Security Service of of Armenia has distributed a statement of the Director of the National Security Service, Goryk Akopyan, in connection with reports of some mass media that the security officers possessing experience of operative work have been leaving the Armenian special service in mass order, 1news.az reports.
«Recently some oppositional newspapers have taken up relay race of the unsubstantiated statements voiced by a number of oppositional figures. Contrary to all to these false publications I declare with full responsibility that no tendency is fixed of increasing outflow in comparison with the last years of officers from the National Security Service of of Armenia. No more than 20 officers engaged by operative activity leave the National Security Service every year, a part of them leaves for pension, other part for another work and, certainly, there are people who leave the system, being at a loss to carry out the duties assigned to them”.
According to Akopyan, there are more than a few hundred of applications of those willing to serve in the National Security Service of of Armenia; he named this fact a proof of positive attitude in the society towards the security services and appropriate evaluation of their work.
ISTANBUL, Turkey — Two bombs exploded within minutes of each other late Sunday in a crowded pedestrian area of Istanbul, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 100 in what the city’s governor called a terrorist attack.
The double bombing appeared to be the worst incident of terrorist violence in Turkey in nearly five years and seemed to take the Turkish authorities completely by surprise. There were no immediate claims of responsibility, although Kurdish separatist militants were initially suspected. The Istanbul neighborhood that was targeted, which is almost completely residential, had no obvious reason to be the object of a terrorism plot.
The first blast, which the police and witnesses said was relatively minor, attracted scores of onlookers curious about the commotion, with at least some of them thinking it was caused by a gas leak explosion. Many of the curious onlookers were hit by flying shrapnel and debris from the second, more powerful blast about 10 minutes later and about 20 yards away, the governor, Muammer Guler, said in a news briefing carried on Turkish television.
Witnesses described a scene of panic with victims lying on the street in pools of blood. The timing of the bombings appeared to deliberately coincide with the summer pastime of many residents of the pedestrian area of Gungoren, in central Istanbul, to stroll in the cool late evening before going to bed.
“It’s surely a terror attack, there’s no doubt,” Governor Guler said. “Because people were gathered after the first explosion, and because the second explosion happened right after, people sitting right across got severely injured.”
Senol Simsek, a witness who provided first-aid to the injured, told the NTV television network that he saw at least five people lying and writhing near a telephone booth that was completely destroyed. Police quickly sealed off the entire area and closed it to all traffic.
Hayati Yazici, deputy prime minister who happened to be visiting Istanbul on Sunday, visited the bombing site and told the Anatolian News Agency: “It is obvious that this is the work of a villain organization, a person or people, however it is not certain as to who this is. Our friends are investigating, it will be discovered for sure.”
The double-bombing appeared to be the most serious terrorism attack here since twin truck bombings at two Istanbul synagogues killed 23 people and wounded more than 300 on Nov. 15, 2003. An obscure group linked to Al Qaeda took responsibility for the synagogue blasts, which were the worst in a series of explosions blamed on Islamic extremist groups that year that killed more than 60 people.
President Abdullah Gul, in a written statement, denounced the attack here Sunday and said Turkey remains committed in what he called the struggle against terror. “Nothing can be achieved by terror, violently claiming lives of the innocent,” Mr. Gul said. “These attacks show the inhumanity and misery of the assailants.”
Officials were continuing investigations and analysis at both explosion sites to determine the precise cause and motives behind the attack, Turkish news outlets reported.
There was initial speculation that the bombings might be the work of the PKK or Kurdish Workers’ Party, in insurgent group that has been fighting the Turkish army for autonomy in the southeast area of the country adjoining Iraq. In recent weeks the military has periodically announced anti-PKK operations near the border and northern Iraq, which the Turks say is used by PKK insurgents as a refuge.
Earlier Sunday, the Turkish military announced that its fighter jets had attacked 12 Kurdish separatest targets in Iraq’s Qandil region and that it had inflicted an unspecified number of “terrorist casualties.”
This undated photo shows İP leader Doğu Perinçek (R), a chief suspect in the Ergenekon case, shaking hands with PKK members during a visit to a PKK camp. The terrorist group's leader, Abdullah Öcalan, walks next to him.
Prosecutors in a landmark case over the investigation into Ergenekon, a criminal network suspected of plotting a coup against the government, have uncovered striking links between the gang and some key outlawed groups behind decades of bloody and provocative acts.
An İstanbul court on Friday agreed to hear the case over the investigation into Ergenekon, in a move that will kick off the trial process for dozens of suspected gang members, including retired army officers, academics, journalists and businessmen.
Prosecutors in the Ergenekon investigation have demanded that retired Brig. Gen. Veli Küçük, Cumhuriyet daily columnist İlhan Selçuk, Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate press spokeswoman Sevgi Erenerol, former İstanbul University Rector Kemal Alemdaroğlu and Workers’ Party (İP) leader Doğu Perinçek — believed to be leaders of the gang — each be sentenced to two consecutive life sentences and an additional 164 years. These five suspects will face various charges, including, but not limited to, “establishing a terrorist organization,” “attempting to overthrow the government of the Republic of Turkey by force or to block it from performing its duties,” “inciting the people to rebel against the Republic of Turkey,” “openly provoking hatred and hostility,” “inciting others to stage the 2006 Council of State shooting,” “attacking the Cumhuriyet daily’s İstanbul office with a hand grenade” and other similar crimes.
The almost 2,500-page-long Ergenekon indictment has revealed serious connections between Ergenekon and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) and the Turkish Hizbullah (no relation to Lebanon-based Hezbullah).
The PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by a large majority of the international community, including the European Union and the United States, uses northern Iraq as a base from which to make attacks on Turkish soil. Turkey blames the PKK, which is fighting for an ethnic homeland in southeastern Turkey, for the deaths of 40,000 people over the past 25 years.
The PKK has been behind many provocative attacks, some of which have been claimed by the organization itself, while others have been claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK), a PKK-affiliated group known largely for its terrorist attacks in big cities. A destructive explosion last year was set off by the PKK in Ankara. A powerful explosion in front of the Anafartalar shopping mall in the capital’s busy Ulus district during rush hour killed 10 and injured more than 100 on May 22, 2007.
In October police forces averted a disaster in Ankara at the last minute after finding a van packed with explosives near a multistory parking lot. The van was loaded with hundreds of kilograms of explosives. PKK involvement in that incident had also been confirmed.
The DHKP/C is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union and has claimed responsibility for a number of assassinations and bombings since the 1970s. The organization was originally formed in 1978 by Dursun Karataş.
“It is being understood — from evidence in the investigation file, the interrogations and the documents that have been seized — that Küçük, one of the leaders of the Ergenekon terrorist organization, had a close relationship with the DHKP/C terrorist organization, used it in line with the goals and targets of the Ergenekon terrorist organization and kept it under control,” the indictment alleges.
Turkish Hizbullah is a Kurdish, Sunni fundamentalist organization that arose in the late 1980s in southeastern Turkey. In the early 1990s, when the Turkish government’s conflict with the PKK was at its most fierce, Hizbullah began attacking suspected PKK sympathizers.
“Pseudo-terrorist organizations should be established,” says a document allegedly belonging to Ergenekon and included in the indictment. The same document notes that Ergenekon doesn’t aim at destroying certain terrorist organizations, but at taking them under control and using them for its own purposes.
The indictment includes testimonies from two confidential witnesses who had previously been in PKK camps. According to their testimonies, the coup against the elected civilian government on Sept. 12, 1980, which installed a military-civilian cabinet while proclaiming martial law, was announced beforehand to the outlawed PKK. Upon receiving this information, the PKK warned its members through brochures it published and made them flee abroad in groups while and bury its weapons beneath its shelters.
One witness, codenamed “Deniz,” provided information about meetings between Ergenekon and intelligence officers of from other countries and explained that the now-jailed founder of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, left Turkey before the 1980 coup because he had been informed about it beforehand.
Deniz said journalist Yalçın Küçük, also a suspected member of Ergenekon, went to Damascus to meet with Öcalan in 1993 and 1996. He explained that the Küçük guided Öcalan in his armed activities. Stressing that Küçük was like Öcalan’s brain, the witness said in 1996 it was Küçük who saved Öcalan from an assassination in Damascus.
Deniz added that Hizbullah members were trained at the Gendarmerie Command. A reporter who took photographs of this training was later killed, the witness said.
Perinçek is among the founders of the PKK
In the indictment, it is claimed that İP leader Perinçek, who is currently under arrest, often met with Öcalan in Bekaa Valley and that he was among the founders of the PKK. The report also highlights an exchange of views between Perinçek and Öcalan’s attorneys.
In a classified document prepared by Capt. Ceyhan Karagöz on Oct. 25, 1994, it is said that the PKK was founded on Oct. 27, 1978 in the village of Ziyaret in the eastern province of Diyarbakır by 25 people, including Öcalan and Perinçek.
There are other documents indicating a relationship between Perinçek and the PKK. A letter addressed to Perinçek found at the house of journalist and Tuncay Güney, who now lives in Canada and works as a rabbi, a witness in the Ergenekon investigation, features a PKK seal and reads: “In our hard struggle, it is impossible to express your sacrifice and contributions in political, economic and arms-related terms with words. The Kurdish community, which has been exploited and exposed to the massacres of fascist Turkish armies, needs brave people like you who are respectful to human rights, struggle in the war for freedom and support our party without any reservations. … In the periods ahead, our party will be honored to cooperate with people like you. Revolutionary greetings.”
The indictment also reveals that Güney said shipments of weapons to northern Iraq were also related to Perinçek.
AMMAN (AFP) — Thirsty Jordan announced on Sunday that a Turkish firm will begin work next week on a near-billion-dollar project to supply the capital with water from an ancient southern aquifer.Water Minister Raed Abu Soud said GAMA Energy will next Sunday launch the 990-million-dollar plan to extract 100 million cubic metres (3.5 billion cubic feet) of water a year from the 300,000-year-old Disi aquifer 325 kilometres (200 miles) south of Amman.
Infrastructure work on the much-delayed project in the desert kingdom is expected to take around four years, the state-run Petra news agency quoted Abu Soud as saying.
This will include using 250,000 tonnes of steel and digging 55 wells to pump water from Disi to Amman, where per capita daily consumption of its 2.2-million population is 160 litres (42 gallons), he said.
Jordan’s overall population of nearly six million is growing by almost 3.5 percent annually, and it is one of the world’s 10 most water-impoverished countries, relying mainly on rainfall to meet its needs.
“A radical solution to Jordan’s chronic water problems is the Red-Dead Canal project, expected to provide Jordan with 500 million cubic metres (17.5 billion cubic feet) of water” annually, Abu Soud said.
He was referring to a multi-billion dollar plan to build a massive canal to channel water from the Red Sea to the slowly evaporating Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, and to construct a desalination plant.
The demand for water is constantly rising in Jordan, which has seen an influx of around 750,000 Iraqi refugees since the US-led invasion of its eastern neighbour in 2003.
Current water consumption is some 900 million cubic metres (31.5 billion cubic feet) per annum.
The water ministry says Jordan, where 92 percent of the land is desert, will need 1.6 billion cubic metres (56 billion cubic feet) of water a year to meet its requirements by 2015.
RHODES, Greece (AFP) — Dozens of families from around the world gathered Saturday on the Greek island of Rhodes to pay tribute to the man who in 1944 saved 40 Jews from being deported to a Nazi concentration camps.
Selahattin Ulkumen, Turkish consul general on the island in 1943, is remembered for his role in saving the Turkish Jews by persuading a German general to release them the day before they were due to be transported to Auschwitz.
Nearly 2,500 Jews from Rhodes and the nearby island of Kos were deported on July 24, 1944. All but 150 perished in the Nazi gas chambers or concentration camps.
However, some months later Ulkumen persuaded the German general on the island to release the 40 Turkish Jews, by reminding him of Turkey’s neutrality.
“I was 13 years old and I can still picture the long discussions in front of us between Selahattin Ulkumen and the German general,” said Sami Modiano, one of the deportees who survived.
Ulkumen’s 64-year-old son, Mehmet, joined the commemoration and was presented with a plaque by the president of the Central Jewish Council of Greece, Moisis Constantinis.
Ulkumen was arrested at the end of 1944 by the Germans after Turkey sided with the Allies. The Turkish consulate on Rhodes was subsequently bombed and his wife, pregnant with Mehmet, and two employees were wounded. His wife died a week after giving birth.
None of the Holocaust survivors ever returned to live on the island.
An attempt to re-establish the Jewish community there in the 1950s by settling families from different Greek regions did not have much success and the island’s Jewish population currently stands at no more than 40, said secretary of the Rhodes Jewish community Carmen Levi.
Concentration camp survivor Stella Levi said she made the journey to her birthplace from her home in New York every year.
This tribute “is a historic moment for the Jews of Rhodes,” she said.
Once dubbed “Little Jerusalem” Rhodes took in several hundred Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century who joined those already on the island.
Between the two world wars, the Jewish population of the island reached about 6,000.
Some 67,000 Greek Jews perished in the Holocaust, 86 percent of the country’s entire Jewish community.
RIYADH (Reuters) – A Turkish soap opera that flopped when first broadcast in its native Turkey three years ago has taken the Arab world by storm, provoking a flood of Gulf Arab tourists to Turkey that even includes royalty.
“Noor” became an immediate hit when Saudi-owned MBC satellite television began airing it earlier this year, partly because of its unconventional usage of colloquial Arabic dubbing — and because its blond-haired, blue-eyed leading man had women swooning.
Turkey is expecting the number of Saudi tourists this year to top 100,000, including King Abdullah’s wife Hissa al-Shaalan, who has been the subject of YouTube videos showing her swanning through the markets and sweet-shops of Istanbul.
“From 41,000 (tourists) last year to 100,000 this year — the same year this show became phenomenally successful,” said Turkish diplomat Yasin Temizkayn. [sic.] “It’s more than just a coincidence.”
Spanish-language soap operas have been shown on Arab television in the lucrative Saudi and Gulf markets in recent years with classical Arabic voice-overs.
But with “Noor” — the main character whose name means “light” — the names of the characters in the original Turkish soap “Gumus” have been swapped for Arabic, and Syrian vernacular has replaced the formal classical Arabic of modern media and religion.
“I don’t like all that Maria Mercedes nonsense,” says Dania Nugali, 16, referring to a popular Mexican soap. “I feel like I am in Arabic literature class when I watch Mexican shows. But when I watch Noor, I definitely feel that it is entertainment.”
Yet the main pull has been the co-star Muhannad, 24-year-old Turkish actor and model Kivanc Tatlitu.
“It seems most viewers are female,” said Hana Rahman, who runs an Arab entertainment blog (waleg.com). “They’re so swept away by the main character. He’s become a heartthrob here! He has even caused divorce cases in Saudi Arabia.”
The drama, which made poor ratings when first shown in Turkey in 2005, centres around a family whose patriarch strives to ensure his sons focus on the family business and maintain cohesion without straying into romantic temptation.
“We made the series with a Turkish audience in mind,” Tatlitu told al-Arabiya Television during a recent visit to Dubai. “The fact that it has amassed such a following in the Arab world just proves how much our cultures have in common.”
Many Saudi women explained their devotion to the show as a form of escapism from stifling, love-less marriages.
“Our men are rugged and unyielding,” quipped a 26-year-old house-frau who preferred to remain unnamed. “I wake up and see a cold and detached man lying next to me, I look out the window and see dust. It is all so dull. On Noor, I see beautiful faces, the beautiful feelings they share and beautiful scenery.”
(Editing by Summer Said and Mary Gabriel)
Source: Reuters, Jul 26, 2008
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Saudi cleric slams Turkish soaps as “wicked”
RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s top religious figure has slammed Turkish soap operas as “wicked” and “malevolent”, despite the wild popularity of one show, a paper said on Sunday.
Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Shaikh told a seminar in conservative Saudi Arabia this week that Arabic television channels airing the soaps were un-Islamic.
“Any channel that helps to further perpetuate the popularity of these shows is ultimately a warrior against God and his Prophet,” he said in comments cited by al-Watan newspaper.
“It is not permitted to watch Turkish series … They are replete with wickedness, evil, moral collapse and war on virtues that only God knows the truth of.”
He said he was speaking in the name of the Higher Council of Religious Scholars, the government body charged with advising on religious affairs.
It was not clear what specific objection the Mufti had to the programmes. Saudi clerics demand gender segregation in public places and women are not allowed to drive cars.
They have previously objected to young Saudis taking part in popular music talent shows along the lines of American Idol.
The show “Noor” this year became an overnight sensation in the Arab world when it was first aired on Saudi-owned satellite channel MBC. It it was a flop when first shown in Turkey in 2005 with the title Gumus.
It has since spurred a large number of Gulf Arab tourists to visit Turkey, including the Saudi first lady Princess Hissa Al-Shaalan. Its blonde and blue-eyed star Kivanc Tatlitu has become a heart-throb for many Arab women.
