Turkish Forum

Category: Harut Sassounian

Harut Sassounian is the Publisher of The California Courier, founded in 1958. His weekly editorials, translated into several languages, are reprinted in scores of U.S. and overseas publications and posted on countless websites.<p>

He is the author of “The Armenian Genocide: The World Speaks Out, 1915-2005, Documents and Declarations.”

As President of the Armenia Artsakh Fund, he has administered the procurement and delivery of $970 million of humanitarian assistance to Armenia and Artsakh during the past 34 years. As Senior Vice President of Kirk Kerkorian’s Lincy Foundation, he oversaw $240 million of infrastructure projects in Armenia.

From 1978 to 1982, Mr. Sassounian worked as an international marketing executive for Procter & Gamble in Geneva, Switzerland. He was a human rights delegate at the United Nations for 10 years. He played a leading role in the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the U.N. Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities in 1985.

Mr. Sassounian has a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia University, and a Master’s in Business Administration from Pepperdine University.

  • Coronavirus Provided Opportunity To Pursue the Armenian Cause Online

    Coronavirus Provided Opportunity To Pursue the Armenian Cause Online

    The coronavirus pandemic disrupted the traditional plans of Armenians around the world to commemorate the 105th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24. However, very quickly Armenians discovered new ways to commemorate the Genocide by changing the street protests and large gatherings to online marches and internet programs. In the future, when this pandemic is over, Armenians can use some of the new internet and video methods on April 24 in addition to the public events.

    This year, Armenians in various countries carried out virtual programs on April 24 instead of the traditional street protests and indoor commemorative events. Today I will focus on one of these programs, the HyeID virtual march.

    HyeID is a Glendale, California-based non-profit organization that was formed three years ago to plan the future Diaspora Armenian Parliament. This year, the HyeID group organized a virtual commemoration during the week of April 24, starting on April 22. Within a few days, over 341,000 Armenians and some non-Armenians from around the world endorsed the following message on the April24.Hyeid.org website: “We have to stay home this April 24, but we join the Online March. We demand justice for Turkey’s Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.”

    Within few hours of making this website public, it came under persistent and massive attack from Azerbaijan and Turkey trying to hack the site. Fortunately, the HyeID board member, Aram Ter-Martirosyan, a software engineer, and his team, reacted quickly by blocking the hacking efforts. Such an organized hacking attack could have only come from the governments of Azerbaijan and Turkey. This is called “Denial-of-service attacks” which Wikipedia describes as “a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host connected to the internet. Denial of service is typically accomplished by flooding the targeted machine or resource with superfluous requests in an attempt to overload systems and prevent some or all legitimate requests from being fulfilled.” By working around the clock for two nights, Ter-Martirosyan’s staff was able to block the flood of attacks on the April 24 link.

    Another unfortunate disruptive act was caused by google which blocked the HyeID app on google play that was created by Aram Ter-Martirosyan and his staff. The Turkish and Azeri hackers, having failed in their disruptive efforts, probably complained to google to remove the app that powered the April 24 program. Google’s negative action limited significantly the number of online march participants.

    Google sent the following offensive message to Aram: “We don’t allow apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event.” Google also blocked the google account of Aram’s company, ConnectTo Communications, Inc., disrupting and causing damage to his business. Aram immediately filed an appeal with google, advising that the State of California, where google is headquartered, and the United States had recognized the Armenian Genocide. Google has not responded to Aram’s appeal. I suggest that HyeID or Aram file a lawsuit against google to revoke its wrongful decision on the app.

    The HyeID group also posted its April 24 link on facebook, generating a large number of responses. This virtual march generated over 341,000 participants from 198 countries and territories, which included 310,000 Armenians and 41,000 non-Armenians. A major achievement was that Apple Store ranked the April 24 app as the top 10 downloaded app in the world for iPhones and iPads.

    Besides publicizing the Armenian Genocide to 41,000 non-Armenians around the world, a by-product of this effort was that for the first time we discovered that there are Armenians in 198 countries and territories.

    The HyeID group was ecstatic that such a large number of Armenians and non-Armenians participated in the April 24 virtual march. Even though this figure is far below the approximately 10 million Armenians worldwide, the HyeID group was surprised to find out that Armenians were dispersed in close to 200 countries. Here is the number of participants in some of the countries/territories:

    Russia: 121,415 Armenians; 10,677 non-Armenians.

    Armenia: 54,065 Armenians; 3,760 non-Armenians.

    United States: 50,390 Armenians; 4,071 non-Armenians.

    France: 13,476 Armenians; 1,797 non-Armenians.

    Georgia: 9,917 Armenians; 1,049 non-Armenians.

    Lebanon: 6,016 Armenians; 828 non-Armenians.

    Canada: 5,598 Armenians; 373 non-Armenians.

    Belgium: 4,565 Armenians; 313 non-Armenians.

    Iran: 4,440 Armenians; 441 non-Armenians.

    Germany: 3,748 Armenians; 522 non-Armenians.

    Argentina: 3,547 Armenians; 966 non-Armenians.

    Netherlands: 2,962 Armenians; 230 non-Armenians.

    Ukraine: 2,885 Armenians; 416 non-Armenians.

    Spain: 2,473 Armenians; 291 non-Armenians.

    Greece: 1,747 Armenians; 187 non-Armenians.

    United Kingdom: 1,664 Armenians; 266 non-Armenians.

    Austria: 1,223 Armenians; 51 non-Armenians.

    United Arab Emirates: 1,174 Armenians; 205 non-Armenians.
    Australia: 1,012 Armenians; 61 non-Armenians.

    Syria: 1,010 Armenians; 83 non-Armenians.

    Artsakh: 961 Armenians; 177 non-Armenians.

    Cyprus: 872 Armenians; 77 non-Armenians.

    Turkey: 795 Armenians; 410 non-Armenians.

    Poland: 651 Armenians; 475 non-Armenians.

    Switzerland: 611 Armenians; 156 non-Armenians.

    Egypt: 425 Armenians; 85 non-Armenians.

    Azerbaijan: 201 Armenians; 99 non-Armenians.

    Nakhichevan: 100 Armenians; 33 non-Armenians.

    Interestingly, there are a handful of Armenian participants in such unexpected places as: Mongolia, Northern Mariana Islands, Wake Island, Indonesia, Wallis and Futuna, American Samoa, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Antarctica, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Madagascar, Mauritius, Chad, Tanzania, Congo, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Africa, Central African Republic, Maldives, Iceland, and Greenland.

    To find out the results of the online march in your own country and city, please go to the interactive report: www.HyeID.org. You can also learn the number of participants near you by selecting the distance from your area. As the saying goes, “amen degh Hay ga” [Armenians are everywhere].

  • It is not Wise for Armenian Officials & Catholicos to be in Conflict

    It is not Wise for Armenian Officials & Catholicos to be in Conflict



    In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic which is killing hundreds of thousands of people around the world, including in Armenia, and paralyzing the economy and societal life as we know it, the biggest controversy these days in Armenia and the Armenian communities in the Diaspora has become a statement issued by His Holiness Karekin II, the Catholicos of All Armenians, and the harsh reaction by various Armenian officials and some members of the media.

    Unfortunately, such a confrontation was not unexpected. Ever since the Velvet Revolution which brought Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to power in Armenia, there has been a tense atmosphere prevailing in Armenia and the Diaspora regarding those supporting Pashinyan’s government and those opposing it. While there is nothing wrong to be on the opposite sides of a political issue, the confrontation is so heated that often insults, cuss words, and even physical threats are exchanged, particularly on social media. In an earlier interview with the Armenian media, I had urged that Armenians should not treat those who disagree with them as enemies! I had said that “we can disagree without being disagreeable.”

    It is understandable that most Armenians viewed the previous leaders as oppressors under whose unjust rule the Armenian people suffered tremendously. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians emigrated to Russia, Europe and North America not just because of economic hardships, but also due to social inequalities. Therefore, to a degree, it is natural that the majority of Armenians would harbor such toxic feelings toward the previous regimes.

    However, I suggest that Armenians should focus on rebuilding the economy of Armenia rather than being consumed with hatred for the rest of their lives. Those who abused their positions and enriched themselves should be tried in courts and properly punished for their misdeeds.

    Turning to the latest episode of the current acrimony, Catholicos Karekin II issued a statement to News.am last week, suggesting that former President Robert Kocharyan’s detention in prison be changed. Here is the translation of the statement by the Catholicos:

    “Under the circumstances of this pandemic, we are seeing that in various countries of the world special attention is being paid to individuals who are detained in prisons, welcome steps are being taken toward releasing those who do not pose a danger to society or changing the terms of their detention, in order to protect them from this virus. In such issues the position of the Church is based on the divine message of love, care, and compassion, and in this context, our counsel is that the authorities of our homeland continue to take the necessary steps in this direction. Regarding Robert Kocharyan, the second President of Armenia, being informed of the expert opinions of doctors about his health, we consider it important that along with implementing justice all preventive means and measures be taken, including the changing of the method of detention, in order to protect his health from future complications during this pandemic period.”

    The next day, Alen Simonyan, the Deputy Speaker of the Armenian Parliament, a member of the ruling party, wrote in his Facebook page the following harsh response to the Catholicos:

    “Today Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II said that he considers it important to change the terms of detention of Robert Kocharyan. Let me say that thousands of citizens of Armenia have already for a very long time considered it important the issue of changing the All Armenian Catholicos. I think citizen Ktrij Nersessian [the layman’s name of the Catholicos] who has been continuously silent, silent and silent for decades, today, under the new conditions, can freely be the guarantor of citizen Robert Kocharyan, and for that sufficient funds can be found.”

    Also reacting to the Catholicos was Mane Gevorgyan, spokeswoman of the Prime Minister. She curtly stated that the government does not intend to comment on the “hopes and desires” of the Catholicos. The spokeswoman also recalled that Priest Vahram Melikyan, spokesman of the Mother See of Etchmiadzin, had presented a guarantee that if businessman Samvel Mayrapetyan is released from jail and goes to Germany for treatment, he would return to Armenia, but has not done so since January 2019.

    To make matters worse, the Deputy Primate of the Diocese of Yerevan, Archbishop Navasard Kchoyan was charged by the Armenian government last week with fraud and money laundering. The National Security Service [NSS] claimed that Archbishop Kchoyan had colluded with an Armenian businessman to defraud a third person. The NSS announced that Kchoyan owned 33% of an offshore company. Archbishop Kchoyan’s lawyer denied the accusation.

    Etchmiadzin reacted by urging government officials and the media to respect Archbishop Kchoyan’s presumption of innocence. The Church headquarters also stated that it is “bewildering” that the NSS announced the charges one day after Catholicos Karekin II called for a change in the detention terms of former President Robert Kocharyan. Several high-ranking clergymen also criticized the officials who had attacked the Catholicos.

    We hope that the mutual accusations will cease as Armenians would become more respectful of everyone’s freedom of speech, without insulting those who disagree with them. At a time that the pandemic is taking many innocent lives and Armenia’s economy is in peril, it would be wiser to concentrate on resolving the grave issues facing our nation.

    Unique Virtual March on April 24

    Since public gatherings are banned in most countries, the HyeID non-profit organization is suggesting a unique way of commemorating the Armenian Genocide this year from the comfort of your homes.

    During the week of April 24, please go to the weblink: April24.hyeid.org and click “join,” indicating your agreement to the following statement: “We have to stay home this April 24, but we join the on-line march… We demand Justice for Turkey’s Genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.” Your agreement will be shown on the worldwide map on screen, indicating the number of those who have joined the on-line march in each country.

  • Pro-Armenian, Pro-Kurdish Turkish Philanthropist Jailed in Turkey

    Pro-Armenian, Pro-Kurdish Turkish Philanthropist Jailed in Turkey

    It is widely known that the Turkish government deprives the rights of minorities living in the country, whether they are Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, Jews or Kurds. However, the Turks who are the overwhelming majority of the public are the biggest victims of the abuses of the Turkish authorities. Tens of thousands of innocent Turks have been jailed under false pretenses.

    One prominent example of such inhuman treatment is Osman Kavala, a Turkish businessman, philanthropist and human rights activist who has been jailed on trumped-up charges twice. Last February he was released from jail for supposedly trying to overthrow the government and then rearrested the same day before he could be released.

    Kavala’s imprisonment made headlines around the world. The European Court of Human Rights ruled last December that Turkey had jailed him without reasonable cause. “His detention was intended to punish him as a critic of the Government to reduce him to silence as an NGO [non-governmental organization] activist and human-rights defender, to dissuade others from engaging in such activities and to paralyze civil society in the country.” The sinister reason Kavala was released from jail and rearrested the same day was to temporarily comply with the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights and then jail him under new charges which would keep in prison several more years while Kavala’s lawyers contest the new charges in Turkish courts and then in the European Court of Human Rights.

    On April 9, 2020, the New York Times published a lengthy article by Carlotta Gall titled, “From Prominent Turkish Philanthropist to Political Prisoner.” Gall wrote: “Mr. Kavala has become the most prominent political prisoner in Turkey, and as he himself ruefully acknowledged after his rearrest, his case is a prime example of the state of injustice in Turkey today under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His case is just one of half a million prosecutions underway amid a government crackdown since an attempted coup in 2016, but it is one of the most confounding. Best known for his good deeds, he has been variously accused of espionage, links to terrorist groups, and trying to overthrow the government. Even seasoned lawyers, well used to decades of political trials in Turkey, have described the various charges against him as ‘ridiculous.’”

    Kavala studied economics at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom and started work on his doctorate at the New York School for Social Research in New York, but interrupted his studies when his father died in 1982.

    Kavala then got involved in defending human rights. He founded Anadolu Kultur, an organization that supports art and cultural collaboration. Gall reported that “he supported an arts space in Diyarbakir, the biggest Kurdish city in the southeast; cultural memory projects for Yazidis, Kurds, Armenians and other minorities; and a program to encourage a normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia. … He became one of the leading philanthropists in the country, well known among embassies and international donors and an energetic supporter of civic and human rights groups.”

    Gall stated that Kavala was jailed because “he represents the leftist-leaning, secular elite, which in Turkey’s polarized society is the opposite of the president and his supporters. They are from religiously conservative, Islamist circles that were long sidelined from power. ‘Osman represents another culture,’ said Asena Gunal, who runs his flagship organization, Anadolu Kultur. ‘Someone who is open, cultured, who speaks English, can talk to foreigners, active in society; something they see as dangerous.’ As he spent 16 months in detention without knowing the charges against him, the pro-government news media and even Mr. Erdogan himself accused him of nefarious connections, including being part of a Jewish conspiracy led by Mr. Soros. Some analysts say that his work with Armenians and Kurds is hated by elements in Turkey’s security establishment.”

    Kavala has been urging the Turkish government to recognize the Armenian Genocide. He visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on April 24, 2016. He told News.am: “First of all, there has to be a sincere intention to look at history, to look at what had happened, to open up the archives properly, and to have a very sincere dialogue with the Armenians. Fortunately, there are some steps, but we still can’t see that at the political level.”

    In an interview with Civilnet, a website in Armenia, Kavala praised the German Parliament’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide “as an example of a healthy cross-party consensus reviewing the darker chapters of national history.” Kavala also attended the reopening of the Sourp Giragos Armenian Church in Diyarbekir after its renovation.

    However, despite his liberal and leftist leanings, Kavala was quick to dodge Armenian demands from Turkey to return to Armenians their historic lands. In December 2007, I had quoted him in my column, “Turkey Could Gain More Than Armenians by Acknowledging the Genocide,” stating that “it is not possible to dismiss the issue of compensation so readily.” Kavala responded by sending me an email stating: “I don’t think that, ‘land return’ is a legitimate demand which can be taken seriously. Bringing it up would discredit the arguments for justice and reconciliation.” He naively suggested that we should leave “the ‘land issue’ in the hands of God,” adding that he would happy to meet with me to talk about this issue.

    Nevertheless, the civilized world should speak out for the immediate release of Kavala, one of the many innocent victims of Pres. Erdogan.

  • US Indicts Turkish Halkbank for Illegal Transfer of Billions of dollars to Iran

    US Indicts Turkish Halkbank for Illegal Transfer of Billions of dollars to Iran

     

    Halkbank, whose majority shareholder is the Turkish government, pleaded not guilty in New York on March 31, 2020, to criminal charges that it helped Iran illicitly transfer tens of billions in dollars and gold, wrote Aykan Erdemir and Philip Kowalski in an essay published on April 3 by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute based in Washington, D.C.

    On October 15, 2019, the Federal Southern District Court of New York accused Halkbank of “fraud, money-laundering and sanctions offenses,” alleging that Halkbank and its executives aided Iranian-Turkish gold trader Reza Zarrab in a “multi-billion dollar scheme to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran.”

    Initially, Halkbank refused to appear in court “claiming that the criminal charges are beyond the U.S. court’s jurisdiction,” Erdemir and Kowalski wrote. However, when “prosecutors proposed escalating contempt fines which could have totaled $1.8 billion after eight weeks,” the bank agreed to respond to the court charges.

    Originally, the Turkish and Iranian officials had concocted a scheme to exchange gas for gold to circumvent the U.S. sanctions, by claiming that the gold was headed not to Iranian government entities but to Iran’s “private sector.” Erdemir and Kowalski stated that “the scheme ultimately yielded the Iranian regime some $13 billion in Turkish gold between 2012 and 2013. Once the U.S. Congress introduced legislation to close the ‘golden loophole’ in 2013, Iran used Turkish front companies to issue invoices for fake transactions of food and medicine that fall under the humanitarian exception to U.S. sanctions. In one infamous case of over-invoicing, a Turkey-based luxury yacht company used Halkbank to sell nearly 5.2 tons of brown sugar to Iran’s Bank Pasargad at the price of approximately $240 per pound.”

    This scheme was first exposed in December 2013 by Turkish investigators who implicated then Prime-Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, several of his ministers and other senior officials, including Halkbank’s managers. Erdogan shut down the probe by firing the police officials, prosecutors and judges!

    The scandal resurfaced in March 2016 when Iranian-Turkish ring-leader Reza Zarrab was arrested in Miami after he flew to Florida to visit Disney World with his family.

    In March 2017, U.S. authorities arrested Halkbank Deputy CEO Mehmet Hakan Atilla upon his arrival in New York. Zarrab pleaded guilty and agreed to testify in court against Atilla. Zarrab confessed that he had bribed senior Turkish ministers and top Halkbank executives. He even implicated Erdogan in the corruption scheme, stating that Erdogan had personally approved the illegal actions.

    “Halkbank’s Atilla received a 32-month prison sentence in May 2018, a significantly shorter one than prosecutors had originally sought,” according to Erdemir and Kowalsky. “After Atilla’s return to Turkey, Erdogan rewarded the convicted sanctions buster by appointing him CEO of the Istanbul stock exchange, following the president’s established pattern of rewarding other senior accomplices of Zarrab with cushy appointments.”

    Erdogan personally appealed to Pres. Trump and other senior officials to block the court case of Halkbank, claiming that US courts have no right to try Turkish citizens. The Courthouse News Service reported that “One of Zarrab’s shell companies, Royal Holding A.S., listed its address as a 35th floor unit in Trump Towers Istanbul. Before pleading guilty to money laundering, sanctions evasions and bribery, Zarrab retained Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to lead a campaign of shadow diplomacy that echoed the one in Ukraine. Shuttling between Turkey’s capital of Ankara and the White House, Giuliani met with Erdogan, Trump, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and other senior U.S. and Turkish officials in an attempt to negotiate a prisoner swap. The New York Times reported that Tillerson resisted the White House pressure for a deal that would have effectively killed the Zarrab case.”

    Erdogan’s and Giuliani’s efforts succeeded in stalling the prosecution for almost two years, but ultimately failed when the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York went forward with the charges last October.”

    Senator Ron Wyden, the Senate Finance Committee’s top Democrat, told Courthouse News Service: “It sure looked like Donald Trump was doing the bidding of Erdogan and Giuliani, and there were real questions about whether this was about getting Halkbank off the hook, even though there were allegations that they were orchestrating the largest sanctions evasion scheme in history.”

    During Pres. Trump’s Senate impeachment inquiry earlier in 2020, Senators Wyden, Robert Menendez and Sherrod Brown asked a joint question which was read aloud in the Senate by Chief Justice John Roberts: “Has the president engaged in a pattern of conduct in which he places his personal and political interests on top of the national security interests of the United States?”

    Wyden told Courthouse News Service: “Donald Trump has significant financial interest in Turkey,” referring to Trump Towers Istanbul. “We read regularly that his family has forged personal relationships with important Turkish officials. And so, you have to ask — which is what is part of our inquiry — whether the Trump policy toward Turkey is in a significant way colored by his personal and political interests and not the national security of the country.”

    If Halkbank is found guilty of violating U.S. sanctions, the court could impose a hefty penalty, regardless of the wishes of Pres. Trump.

  • Turkey Ignores its Highest Court’s Verdict on Armenian Patriarch’s Election

    Turkey Ignores its Highest Court’s Verdict on Armenian Patriarch’s Election

    Forum 18 News Service of Oslo, Norway, published a lengthy article by Dr. Mine Yildirim on March 25, 2020, explaining the Turkish government’s interference in the election of the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, despite the ruling of the Constitutional Court that the government’s interference “was not prescribed by law and not necessary in a democratic society.”

    Two Armenians of Istanbul, Levon Berj Kuzukoglu and Ohannes Garbis Balmumciyan, had initially filed a lawsuit with the Administrative Court on March 27, 2012. The Court rejected the lawsuit, stating that the Patriarchal election can only take place after the death or resignation of the Patriarch who was in a coma, even though the 1863 Ottoman-era regulations stated that the Armenian Patriarch’s election can take place in the case of “the death of the Patriarch, resignation and other.” The applicants appealed this decision, but the Court of Cassation rejected it on November 23, 2015.

    The two Armenians then appealed to the Constitutional Court claiming that the state’s refusal of their request for the election of a new Patriarch violated their right to freedom of religion. The Court made its judgment in favor of the Armenians five years later in May 2019. However, the Turkish leaders ignored the Court’s decision. “While the judgment includes important findings related to the state’s unjustified interference in the internal affairs of the Armenian community, it also raises questions about whether the Constitutional Court is an effective domestic remedy or an actor that conveniently blocks applications to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, thus closing the door to international supervision,” Dr. Yildirim wrote. “The state had prevented the Armenian community from electing its religious leader between 2009, when the then Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan could no longer perform his duties due to illness, and 2019, when the community finally elected Bishop Sahak Mashalyan as the new Patriarch.”

    It is more than a coincidence that the Constitutional Court gave its verdict on May 22, 2019, following the state’s approval of the Patriarchal election after the March 8, 2019, passing away of Patriarch Mutafyan. The timing of the decision was intended to give the impression that the state was not interfering in the election of a new Patriarch and the Court was not telling the government what to do.

    In its ruling, the Constitutional Court referred “to the 1863 Regulation for the Armenian Millet (ethno-religious community) and international legal provisions, including the European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) and the 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty’s provisions on the protection of non-Muslims in Turkey,” according to Dr. Yildirim.

    Throughout the existence of the Republic of Turkey, the government made some arbitrary changes during the 1950, 1961, 1990, 1998 and 2019 Patriarchal elections. “The election Directives were based on the Cabinet Decree of 18 September 1961 which had been issued only for that year’s Patriarchal election and which included no provisions for future elections. Despite this, the Interior Ministry has continued to use this Decree,” Dr. Yildirim wrote. The Interior Ministry’s submission to the Constitutional Court stated that the measures taken by the authorities derive from “the state’s positive obligation to organize the religious field.”

    The Constitutional Court countered that argument by ruling that its verdict is based on Article 24 of the Turkish Constitution which protected religious freedom, Article 38 of the Lausanne Treaty which referred to the practice of religion, as well as the various rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. Furthermore, the Constitutional Court ruled that “the appointment of a Patriarchal Vicar-General (in 2010) occurred not as a result of a process that took place within the competing civilian and spiritual initiatives in the Armenian community, but as a result of ‘state pressure that was unconstitutional,’” according to Dr. Yildirim. “In conclusion, the Constitutional Court found that the state has not been able to demonstrate a pressing social need that overrides the ‘spirit of Armenian traditions’ and the ‘Armenian community’s will.’ Therefore the interference in the applicants’ right to freedom of religion or belief by way of refusing the request to hold Patriarchal elections cannot be considered compatible with the requirements of a democratic society, and Article 24 of the Constitution had thus been violated.”

    However, even after the ruling of the Constitutional court, the state continued to interfere in the Patriarchal election. The Turkish Interior Ministry came up with a new restriction, ruling that only those Turkish Armenian bishops who were serving in Turkey at the time could be candidates for the Patriarchal election, thus reducing the number of eligible candidates to two. “This is 100% in contradiction to the Constitutional Court’s judgment,” said Sebu Aslangil, the lawyer in the case. Nevertheless, the Armenian Steering Committee for the Patriarchal election decided not to contest the Interior Ministry’s ruling in order not to further delay the election of a new Patriarch.

    Dr. Yildirim concluded: “The judgment raised the profile of the Constitutional Court as a high court delivering a judgment in line with ECHR jurisprudence. Yet, due to its timing, the judgment had no impact on rectifying the injustice that the Armenian community experienced. It also closed the door for an application to be made to the ECHR in Strasbourg, thus blocking international supervision of the implementation of the judgment.”

    In effect, as the legal axiom states, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

  • Erdogan’s Denial of Coronavirus Crisis Risks the Lives of 80 Million Turks

    Erdogan’s Denial of Coronavirus Crisis Risks the Lives of 80 Million Turks

    The world as we knew it changed dramatically in the last few weeks due to the unexpected spread of the deadly coronavirus. Hundreds of millions of people around the world are isolated in their homes, scared of coming in contact with anyone who might be carrying the virus.

    Several autocratic heads of states were slow to react to the virus denying that it was a serious problem in their countries. Eventually, as more and more people were infected with the virus, these leaders finally saw the light and started to take urgent measures to protect their people.

    One such irresponsible leader is the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote a lengthy article in the March 16, 2020 issue of The National Interest, titled: “Gambling with 80 Million Lives: Why Erdogan Lied about Coronavirus.”

    Rubin referred to Ergin Kocyildirim, a Turkish pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine, who described in an essay “both the Turkish government’s claim to have established an effective testing kit and the fraudulence of its claims.”

    Even though the Turkish Health Minister initially denied that there were any coronavirus cases in Turkey, after widespread claims of the spread of the virus, Turkish authorities arrested the whistle-blowers. Another 64 Turks were jailed after being accused of disseminating false and provocative information. Furthermore, members of the state-controlled Turkish press panel insisted that “Turkish genes rendered most Turkic people immune,” Rubin reported.

    Rubin attributed Erdogan’s lies about the absence of the coronavirus in Turkey to his “dangerous combination of arrogance and ignorance…. A larger motivation may be fear. While Turkey’s demography is shifting in Erdogan’s favor as conservative families from Turkey’s Anatolian heartland grow relative to the Europeanized Turks from central Istanbul and the Mediterranean coast, the economy is faltering. In 2010, Erdogan promised that by Turkey’s 2023 centennial, Turkey would be one of the world’s top ten economies. Even before coronavirus, Turkey would be lucky to remain in the top 20 as corruption, nepotism, political interference in business, and broad mismanagement have combined to send confidence in Turkey’s economy into the gutter.”

    Another reason Rubin gives for Erdogan’s cover-up of the spread of the coronavirus in Turkey is his fear of the collapse of the tourism industry. “In 2018, the Turkish tourism industry accounted for nearly $30 billion dollars. Just a year ago, Erdogan promised that Turkey would host 50 million tourists, raising that figure by at least 20 percent. Add into the mix Turkey’s investment of approximately $12 billion in a new Istanbul airport, expected to be the world’s largest, and one in which Erdogan and his family are reportedly heavily invested. It seems Erdogan sought to downplay reports of coronavirus in order to encourage tourist dollars to continue to flow. In doing so, he sought not only to play Russians, Europeans, and Americans for fools, but also endangered their lives. Unfortunately for Turkey, it will be Turks who will most pay the price as Turkey threatens to become the virus’ next big cluster. One Turkish doctor estimates that as many as 60 percent of Turks may now be infected and that Erdogan is retarding testing in order to prevent the scale of the catastrophe from becoming known. Deaths were inevitable, but Erdogan’s dishonesty will likely cause many thousand additional deaths in his country added to the dozens Turkey reportedly has already experienced but will not officially report.”

    To make matters worse, as in several other countries, the Turkish public has invented fake cures for the coronavirus. Nazlan Ertan wrote in the Al-Monitor website that Turks are now resorting to cannabis and sheep soup to fight the vicious virus.

    Abdurrahman Dilipak, a prominent Islamist columnist for the daily Yeni Akit newspaper, suggested that cannabis “can create a major barrier to the global spread of the virus.” Dilipak, who has 700,000 Twitter followers — about six times more than his newspaper’s circulation, also urged his Turkish readers to avoid receiving any vaccines from overseas because they would likely contain sterilization agents, linking such vaccines to an Aryan plot.

    After a Turkish professor suggested the ‘kelle pacha’ (sheep soup) cure, many Turks flocked to local restaurants preferring the soup to social distancing. “The outbreak of coronavirus led to high demand for kelle pacha,” Hurriyet reported on March 16. “After the news articles, the kelle pacha orders both at the restaurant and as take-away have increased,” said a waiter at Ismet Usta, a popular restaurant in downtown Izmir.

    “All of these remedies — from gorging your throat with vinegar to whatever soup, has no use,” Mehmet Ceylan, the president of the nongovernmental Infectious Diseases Association, said in an NTV news program on March 16. “These are unscientific and should not be spread [through the media or word of mouth].”

    Fortunately, in recent days, there has been a turnaround in the approach of Turkish officials to the virus. They are now urging the population to stay indoors in self isolation to avoid more infections. I hope that these measures are not too late and millions of Turks are not already at risk. The announced numbers of 1236 infections and 30 deaths due to the coronavirus do not reflect the real figures.

    At this critical time, we wish everyone good health, regardless of nationality, religion or skin color. We hope that this malicious disease has inadvertently helped to bring people and nations closer to fight together the common invisible enemy.