Author: Harut Sassounian

It is ironic that in this modern age of technology and abundance of information at the fingertips of everyone with an electronic device, it is becoming increasingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, to distinguish fact from fiction.

The Internet, with its vast resources on every conceivable subject, can be a blessing or a curse when one is trying to discern the authenticity of a particular article.

There is no way of knowing if what is being read is true or false, unless the reader is an expert in that specific topic or checks websites like truthorfiction.com or snopes.com to distinguish rumors from reality.

Here are two recent examples of such misinformation that were circulated on the Internet to millions of Armenians and others.

The first is an article supposedly from The Moscow Times, titled: “Russian President to Turkish Ambassador: ‘Tell your dictator President he can go to hell along with his ISIS terrorists; I will make Syria a Big Stalingrad for him!” This article was posted on thousands of websites, e-mailed around the globe, and reprinted in countless newspapers.

Pres. Putin was quoted telling Umit Yardim, the Turkish Ambassador to Moscow, that Russia will cut off diplomatic relations with Turkey immediately unless Erdogan stopped supporting ISIS terrorists in Syria. The article cited “leaked information” as the source of a “two-hour long closed door meeting,” during which Putin reportedly called the Turkish President a “hypocrite” and threatened to turn Syria into a “Big Stalingrad for Erdogan and his Saudi allies,” whom he compared to Hitler.

I received via e-mail several dozen copies of this forged article from Armenians around the world with cheerful exclamations, such as “good for Putin,” “finally someone dared to put Erdogan in his place.” It became tiring to respond to everyone, telling them that this was a fake news story!

Readers and even newspaper editors apparently did not bother to check that there was no such article in The Moscow Times. Furthermore, hardly anyone seems to have wondered how a Russian newspaper could have misspelled Pres. Putin’s name as ‘Purin’?

The second example of misinformation concerns the world famous singer Beyonce who supposedly sang a song dedicated to the Armenian Genocide. The video of the song “I was here,” which opens with the words “Armenian Genocide 1915 April 24,” was posted on YouTube on April 24, 2015 by someone with the nickname ‘Yakosamo.’ The video then displays the words “Never Forget” in bright red letters, followed by footage of visitors at the Armenian Genocide Monument in Yerevan. For the next four minutes, the screen shows three armed Turkish soldiers killing an entire Armenian family and abducting a group of young Armenian girls. The video and the singing end with the words in bright red letters, “1915 April,” right after a Turkish soldier shoots with a pistol, in point blank range, an Armenian boy in the head!

Thousands of Armenians were probably tricked into thinking that this was indeed a Beyonce song dedicated to the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide. The link to the video along with hundreds of appreciative comments were posted on countless facebook pages and YouTube.

I just learned about this song last week. At first, I was somewhat embarrassed that as a newspaper editor I was hearing of such an important song on the Armenian Genocide several months after its release. I checked the lyrics of the song and quickly discovered that it had absolutely nothing to do with Armenians or the Genocide. The singer kept repeating, “I was here, I lived, I loved, I was here….” The words Armenian, Genocide or Turkey were nowhere to be found!

I finally realized that someone had taken a Beyonce song and added to it film footage from a movie on the Armenian Genocide. Regrettably, many Armenians were ecstatic that a world famous singer was publicizing the facts of the Armenian Genocide!

I have no magical formula on how to distinguish fact from fiction for every Internet posting. It may be useful to remember the popular saying: “if something is too good to be true, it probably is” too good to be true! Readers should have a healthy dose of skepticism, without going overboard — by being either too suspicious to believe anything or too gullible, blindly swallowing everything on the Internet!

Last month, only after losing his party’s parliamentary majority, President Erdogan realized that there are dangerous terrorists in neighboring Syria who are a threat to Turkey’s security.

Ironically, these are the same terrorists that Ankara has been arming, assisting their infiltration into Syria, and having them treated in Turkish hospitals. It is estimated that as many as 25,000 foreign and 1,000 Turkish Jihadists have crossed Turkey’s border in recent years trying to topple Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

Using the excuse that a Turkish soldier was killed by a shot fired from Syria last week, Erdogan ordered a series of bombing raids by land and air in Northern Syria and Iraq, as well as rounding up over 1,000 individuals in Turkey suspected of being Kurdish fighters, leftist militants, and ISIS followers.

After several years of reluctance, the Turkish government finally announced on July 24 that it would allow the United States to use one or more of its air bases to launch attacks on Jihadist groups in Syria.

Rather than fighting ISIS terrorists or cooperating with United States military operations in Syria and Iraq, Erdogan’s true intent is to consolidate his own hold on power and accomplish the following self-serving objectives:

1) Turkey’s President realizes that should his ruling party fail to form a coalition government, he would be obliged to call a new round of parliamentary elections. Therefore, by taking bold actions against ISIS and Kurdish fighters, Erdogan hopes that Turkish voters would give his party the few extra seats needed to regain a majority in Parliament.

2) Another important purpose for bombing Northern Syria and PKK bases in Iraq and arresting hundreds of Kurdish militants in Turkey is not fighting ISIS, but preventing Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds from joining hands to create an independent Kurdistan.

3) By carrying out military raids in Syria, Erdogan hopes to accomplish his long sought dream of toppling the Syrian government and installing a puppet regime, thus expanding his personal power as a neo-Ottoman Sultan.

4) Finally, by making brash declarations against ISIS and allowing Americans to use the Incirlik airbase, Turkey intends to convince the United States and Western Europe that it is a reliable NATO ally and loyal partner in the fight against terrorism. Creating such a positive image is particularly important at a time when the major powers are finalizing a nuclear agreement with Iran, which would increase the latter’s strategic role in the region and diminish that of Turkey.

By pursuing the foregoing four objectives, Erdogan is running the risk of destabilizing Turkey and neighboring states:

1) By attacking ISIS targets in Northern Syria, ostensibly in retaliation for the killed Turkish soldier, Ankara is breaking its secret understanding with ISIS to refrain from mutual attacks. ISIS is now compelled to hit back. Last week’s suicide attack in the Turkish town of Suruc, killing 32 persons and wounding over 100, is probably the precursor of such ISIS terror acts throughout Turkey.

2) Turkey broke last week the ceasefire agreement it had signed with the PKK in 2013, by bombing the latter’s bases in Northern Iraq and arresting hundreds of Kurdish militants in Turkey. The PKK has already retaliated by killing several Turkish policemen, and promising more bloodshed. Furthermore, by attacking Kurds in Syria and Iraq, Turkey would be weakening the only force that has successfully fought against ISIS. Since the United States views Kurdish fighters as its substitute troops on the ground, Turkish attacks against Kurds would undermine U.S. military objectives in the region.

3) Should Erdogan invade Northern Syria ostensibly to establish “a safety zone,” Turkish troops are likely to suffer many casualties, battling not only the Syrian army, but also heavily armed Kurdish fighters, and scores of rag-tag Jihadist groups. Turkey could also be confronted by Iranian troops coming to the aid of their Syrian ally and Hizbullah fighters from Lebanon who have been backing the Assad regime.

The Turkish President’s self-serving fake war against terrorism could have the tragic consequence of escalating the violence throughout Turkey and neighboring countries. If Ankara is truly interested in countering the Jihadists, it should have done that long ago, instead of arming and abetting ISIS and other terror groups. Turkish leaders are now going to reap what they sowed. They can only blame themselves!

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has completely destroyed his credibility by making numerous bizarre claims in recent years.

For example, Erdogan told a group of Latin American Muslims visiting Istanbul last year that Muslim Pilgrims discovered America over 300 years before Christopher Columbus:

“It is alleged that the American continent was discovered by Columbus in 1492. In fact, Muslim sailors reached the American continent 314 years before Columbus in 1178. …In his memoirs, Christopher Columbus mentions the existence of a mosque atop a hill on the coast of Cuba. A mosque would look perfect on that hill today.”

When people around the world scoffed at the President’s unfounded assertion, Turkish reporter Oray Egin found out that Erdogan had completely misconstrued what Columbus had written in his memoirs comparing a mountaintop in Cuba to “a pretty mosque.” Turkey’s leader wrongly concluded that Columbus had seen a mosque built by Muslim sailors!

In one of many spoofs poking fun at Erdogan, someone sarcastically alleged that Astronaut Neil Armstrong wrote in his autobiography: “When we landed on the moon, we saw the ruins of a magnificent building. Buzz Aldrin and I were amazed as we approached the ruins. This was a small, elaborately-built Ottoman mosque. When we came back to earth, NASA and the American government ordered us not to talk about it.”

Such outlandish pronouncements attributed to the Turkish leader continue to pop up on the internet. Given Erdogan’s penchant for telling wacky stories, many people tend to believe anything they read about him.

Here is a recent example: “Ottomans were the first to reach the moon, says Turkish President,” wrote Barbara Johnson in the World News Daily Report. She quoted Erdogan saying: “It is alleged that the first man to walk on the moon was Neil Armstrong in 1969. In fact, Muslim space explorers reached our satellite 334 years before that, in 1635. Everyone knows the story of the famous aviator, Lagari Hasan Celebi, the ‘Ottoman Rocket Man,’ who made the first successful manned rocket flight in 1633. What you might not know, is that he attempted to reach the moon two years later and could very well have succeeded.”

According to Turkish mythology, legendary Ottoman aviator Lagari Hasan Celebi launched in 1633 a 7-winged rocket using 140 lbs. of gunpowder. Before his flight, he reportedly proclaimed: “O my Sultan! Be blessed, I am going to talk to Jesus!” After his rocket landed in the sea, Celebi allegedly swam ashore and announced: “O my Sultan! Jesus sends his regards to you!”

Reporter Johnson continued her whimsical story: “Pres. Erdogan’s surprising claim generated some whispers and laughter from the audience, a reaction that clearly angered the Turkish politician. He slammed the skeptics for mocking his claims, adding that he would soon have the proofs to back his claims. ‘Why do you not believe it? Because you’ve never believed that a Muslim can do such a thing…. NASA may have destroyed most of the physical evidence of the Ottoman’s success during the Apollo 11 mission, but we’ll try to find any evidence that might have escaped the cover up.”

Of course, what Johnson wrote was not true. Erdogan never uttered those words. However, it is interesting that many Turks believed the fake story, and posted the following comments in reaction to Johnson’s article:
— Ali Emre Demir: “Unfortunately, he is our President.”
— Berkay: “The scary thing is, if you are living in that nation and witness all the things that man does, and see how many supporters he has. This is an embarrassment.”
— Deniz: “Poor, secular Turkish people! This Tayyip is the embarrassment of Turkey.”
— Huseyin: “You cannot imagine what we have been suffering. He is a solid tyrant…. He is a complete dishonor to us.”

Indeed, Erdogan is a big embarrassment to millions of Turks who are ashamed of him as their President. Unfortunately, the Turkish President’s actions are more ruthless than his words: He jails reporters, orders the shooting of civil rights activists, sues those who disagree with him, stashes away millions of dollars obtained by corrupt means, dismisses judges and law enforcement officials who refuse to carry out his illegal orders, and supports the infiltration of ISIS terrorists into Syria and Iraq.

The international community should worry more about Erdogan’s terrifying actions than his delirious ramblings!

Ruling simultaneously on the Sargsyan vs. Azerbaijan and Chiragov vs. Armenia cases, the European Court of Human Rights decided on June 16, 2015 that Armenia and Azerbaijan had violated the rights of refugees who had fled during the Karabagh (Artsakh) conflict.

Azeri government officials, however, misled their citizens, declaring that Azerbaijan had won and Armenia had lost.

Here are the details of both court cases: On April 6, 2005, six Azerbaijani Kurds filed a joint complaint against Armenia with the European Court. They claimed to have been forced to flee their homes during the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in 1992, after Armenian troops took over the Lachin region which separated Armenia from Artsakh. The Azerbaijani refugees alleged that Armenia had violated their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights: 1) protection of property, 2) right to respect for private and family life, and 3) right to an effective remedy.

On August 11, 2006, Minas Sargsyan filed a similar complaint against Baku in the European Court of Human Rights. He charged that Azerbaijan had violated his rights, the same ones claimed by the six Azerbaijani refugees, since he too was forced to flee in 1992 from his native village of Gulistan in the Shahumian region, controlled by Azerbaijan.

Both parties asked that their property rights be restored and demanded fair compensation.

In March 2010, after years of inactivity, the Court forwarded both cases to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, consisting of 17 judges from Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Cyprus, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, and Ukraine. The Grand Chamber’s decisions are final and not subject to appeal.

A decade after the these cases were first filed, the Grand Chamber issued two identical judgments on June 16, 2015, finding that both Armenia and Azerbaijan had violated the rights of each other’s refugees. In a lengthy document of 221 pages, including the two verdicts and the dissenting and concurring opinions, the Court ruled that the 20-year long peace negotiations did not free the two governments from their responsibility to protect the rights of hundreds of thousands of refugees. The Grand Chamber noted that there are over 1,000 individual applications pending before the Court, filed by Armenians and Azerbaijanis displaced during the Artsakh conflict.

The six Azerbaijani applicants claimed they had suffered $9 million in monetary damages and $330,000 in non-monetary damages. They further estimated their legal expenses to be around $65,000 as of October 2013. The Azerbaijani applicants’ representatives requested that an expert be appointed to evaluate the total damages their clients had incurred.

On the other hand, the Armenian applicant Minas Sargsyan had requested the restitution of his property, including the right of return to his home. He claimed $415,000 in monetary damages and $210,000 in non-monetary damages, in addition to non-specified legal fees.

Acknowledging “the exceptional nature” of the two cases, the Court did not make a final determination on awarding compensation or “just satisfaction.” The Grand Chamber asked the Armenian and Azerbaijani governments and the respective applicants to submit their “written observations on the matter” within 12 months, and “to notify the Court of any agreement that they may reach.”

In my opinion, the European Court’s parallel decisions were aimed at pressuring the two governments to expedite a negotiated settlement that would resolve all outstanding issues, including rights of refugees.

One of the most significant, yet unexpected outcomes of these court cases were the two written opinions — 25 pages each — by Judge Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque of Portugal and appended to the court’s verdicts, in which he presented a strong legal case for Artsakh’s independence: “Whenever a part of the population of a State is not represented by its government and the human rights of that population are systematically infringed by its own government, …the victimized population may have recourse ‘as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression,’ to use the powerful formulation of the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The Judge also wrote that when a State systematically abuses the human rights of a seceding population, it is lawful for another State to take military action in favor of the seceding population, after the latter has established control of its territory and declared its secession.

When a group of young Armenians spontaneously gathered in Yerevan’s Liberty Square 10 days ago to challenge the planned increase of electricity rates, no one expected their protest to reverberate around the world.
To everyone’s surprise, the small gathering mushroomed into several thousand mostly young people who marched to the Capital City’s major thoroughfare, the Baghramyan Avenue, where the Presidential Palace, the Parliament, and the Constitutional Court are located, and staged an overnight sit-in. The protests quickly spread to major towns and cities throughout Armenia.
Since the demonstrators refused to vacate the Avenue, the police dispersed them with water cannons, injuring a dozen protesters and arresting 237 others. The police also detained several journalists, damaging or confiscating their cameras and tape recorders.
As images of these confrontations were disseminated through social media and various websites, several thousand more protesters showed up the next day, making crowd control practically impossible. At the time of writing this column — the evening of June 29 — demonstrators were still occupying portions of Baghramyan Avenue.
Who are these young men and women and what do they want? They are not affiliated with any political parties or foreign powers, contrary to baseless accusations, and have no agenda other than demanding that the Armenian government rescind the 17% increase in the cost of electricity, effective August 1. These activists believe that they are legally and morally justified to block city streets because their protest is peaceful and spontaneous! They have named their movement “No to Plunder.”
The authorities made several attempts to persuade these young people to abandon their protest. When President Serzh Sargsyan proposed to meet with them, the protesters declined the request demanding that the meeting be televised live to the public. The government’s offer to subsidize the higher cost of electricity by providing a corresponding increase in aid to over 100,000 destitute families was also rejected. Finally, the President’s decision to freeze the rate increase until an international auditing company reviews the financial records of the Energy Networks of Armenia, a subsidiary of a Russian company, to see if the new rate is warranted, was also turned down.
The first break in the tense standoff came last Sunday night when the protest organizers accepted the police offer and moved back to Liberty Square to avoid another bloody confrontation. They announced on Monday night that they are ending their protest and will decide their next move shortly. Most demonstrators, however, refused to follow the lead of the organizers, spending another night in the middle of Baghramyan Avenue, chanting: “We are the masters of our country.”
This new generation of men and women are disenchanted with both the authorities and the political opposition. However, rather than giving up and leaving the country like so many others, the protest organizers took to the streets to defend the people’s rights. These activists showed that although they have no power, no wealth, and no official position, they are capable of rising to the occasion when necessary and rally the masses around them, commanding the grudging respect of the authorities! One may disagree with the protesters’ tactics, but cannot help but admire their sincerity and commitment to the welfare of their fellow Armenians!
There are three important lessons to be learned from these recent developments:
1) The future of Armenia will be in good hands as long as there are young people in the upcoming generation like those who appeared spontaneously last week in the streets of Yerevan;
2) Opposition political parties in Armenia have little chance of assuming power anytime soon, unless they completely overhaul their policies, attract bright, committed and resourceful young men and women to their ranks, and allow them to rise to positions of leadership;
3) The people of Armenia have had a deep-seated distrust of all successive governments before and since independence. The leaders in power are facing far greater problems than the price of electricity. It is an existential imperative for Armenia to establish a just and democratic society in which the citizenry can live in dignity, prosperity and peace. Armenians would not need to protest in the streets of Yerevan if there are effective mechanisms that people can trust to defend their basic civil rights and secure their economic well-being.