Turkish Forum

Category: Asia and Pacific

  • Armenian Soccer Body Changes Logo After Uproar

    Armenian Soccer Body Changes Logo After Uproar

     

     

     

     

     

    By Ruben Meloyan

    The Football Federation of Armenia (FFA) said on Wednesday that it has decided to change its new emblem widely criticized for not depicting a biblical mountain in what is now eastern Turkey.

    The FFA’s previous logo, which carried a picture of Mount Ararat, was dropped ahead of last month’s match in Yerevan between Armenia’s and Turkey’s national soccer teams that was watched by the presidents of the two neighboring states.

    The move prompted strong criticism from domestic political groups, notably the pro-government Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), that suggested that it was designed to please the Turks. Dashnaktsutyun leaders cast doubt on the credibility of FFA assurances that there were no political motives behind the change of the logo emblazoned on the jerseys of national and youth team players.

    Located in northeastern Turkey and visible from Yerevan and much of southern Armenia, Ararat is considered by many Armenians a national symbol. The snow-capped peak, the supposed resting place of Noah’s Ark, is depicted in the center Armenia’s national coat-in-arms.

    Ruben Hayrapetian, the FFA chairman who has previously dismissed the Dashnaktsutyun criticism, said on Wednesday that the decision to leave Ararat out of the current logo was a mistake. “I apologize to the entire public for this real mistake,” he told reporters.

    “We did not think that there will be such an uproar,” Hayrapetian said, adding that the FFA has already commissioned graphic designers to develop another Armenian football emblem. He said it will definitely carry an outline of Ararat.

    “In the meantime, our national football teams will wear jerseys with the emblem of the Republic of Armenia,” the FFA’s executive director, Armen Minasian, told RFE/RL.

    Both he and Hayrapetian insisted that the logo change had nothing to do with the Armenia-Turkey World Cup qualifier played in Yerevan on September 6. “We began the process of logo change last year before we knew that are going to play Turkey,” said Minasian. “There was never any deliberate effort to remove Ararat.”

    (Photolur photos: The current, left, and former emblems of the FFA.)

  • Russia Says Karabakh Peace In Sight

    Russia Says Karabakh Peace In Sight

     

     

     

     

     

    By Emil Danielyan

    Russia expects the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to meet again shortly after next week’s Azerbaijani presidential election and reach a framework peace agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a newspaper interview published on Tuesday.

    He stressed the importance of a Nagorno-Karabakh settlement and the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations for Armenia’s security and economic development.

    “There remain two or three unresolved issues which need to be agreed upon at the next meetings of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Lavrov told the “Rossiiskaya Gazeta” daily. “Our understanding is that such meetings will take place shortly after the forthcoming [October 15] presidential elections in Azerbaijan.”

    “As one of three mediators, we have a sense that a denouement is quite real,” he said, adding that the two other mediating powers, the United States and France, also see a “very real chance” of a resolution of the Karabakh conflict.

    The mediators have been trying to get the conflicting parties to accept the basic principles of Karabakh peace that were formally put forward by them in November 2007. Senior French, Russian and U.S. diplomats co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group discussed the possibility of another Armenian-Azerbaijani summit during the most recent talks with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers held in New York late last month.

    Lavrov said the future of the so-called Lachin corridor, which provides for the shortest overland link between Armenia and Karabakh, is now the main stumbling block in the peace talks. He did not elaborate.

    The Russian minister was interviewed by a “Rossiiskaya Gazeta” reporter late last week as he flew to Yerevan to meet with Armenia’s President Serzh Sarkisian and Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian. After the talks with Nalbandian he sounded cautiously optimistic about prospects for a breakthrough in the Karabakh peace process.

    However, a top aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev, struck a cautious note as he commented on Lavrov’s upbeat statements in Yerevan. “Major issues have not been agreed upon,” Novruz Mammadov told the Azerbaijani Trend news agency.

    According to Lavrov, Armenia should be keenly interested in a Karabakh settlement in the wake of the crisis in neighboring Georgia which he said exposed “the vulnerability of its position” and highlighted the importance of having an open border with Turkey. “Armenia has huge difficulties communicating with the outside world,” he said. “It is in the fundamental interests of the Armenian people to unblock this situation as soon as possible.

    “It really has few geographic and political options. As soon as the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement becomes a fact, Turkey will be ready to help Armenia forge normal links with the outside world, naturally through the establishment of diplomatic relations between Ankara and Yerevan.”

    The remarks ran counter to a widely held belief in the West that Moscow is disinterested in the normalization of Armenia’s relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey for fear of losing geopolitical leverage against Yerevan.

  • 18th Annual Houston Turkish Festival held in US

    18th Annual Houston Turkish Festival held in US

     

     
     

    [ 07 Oct 2008 17:57 ]

    Baku – APA. 18th Annual Houston Turkish Festival was held in the US. Press service of State Committee on Work with Azerbaijanis Living Abroad told APA that dance group of Houston Azerbaijanis’ Society also participated in the festival. 4000 people attended the festival. Our countrymen performed national dances “Chichekler”, “Uzum”, “Naz-naz” and “Arzu”.
    Houston-Azerbaijan Organization was established in 2004.

  • Armenian Military To Draft Students

    Armenian Military To Draft Students

     

     

     

     

     

    By Anush Martirosian

    The Armenian government intends to abolish temporary exemptions from military service that have long been enjoyed by university students, a senior lawmaker confirmed on Monday.

    Armenian law has until now allowed draft-age men enrolled in state-run universities to perform the two-year compulsory service after completing their undergraduate and/or graduate studies.

    Reports in the Armenian press have said that the government has drafted legal amendments that will scrap the deferments. Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian and other top government officials have pointedly declined to refute those reports.

    Armen Ashotian, the chairman of the Armenian parliament’s committee on science, education and youth affairs, went farther, indicating that the amendments’ submission to the National Assembly is a matter of time. He argued that Armenia’s conscription-based army will increasingly face personnel shortages as it begins to draft young men born in the early 1990s.

    The country’s population and birth rate sharply declined during those years because of the collapse of the Armenian economy and the resulting mass out-migration of hundreds of thousands of its citizens.

    “The draft is reaching [those born during] the years of the so-called demographic slump,” said Ashotian. He said the government and the National Assembly should put in place financial and other incentives that would encourage demobilized soldiers to complete their higher education.

    Vahan Shirkhanian, an opposition politician who had served as deputy defense minister throughout the 1990s, criticized the planned measure, saying it does not represent a fundamental solution to the problem. He said the loss of more mature university graduates, who are typically trained to become sergeants during their service, would hit the army hard.

    Shirkhanian told RFE/RL that instead of drafting 18-year-old students the authorities should increase the number of military personnel serving on a contractual basis. “This is the only way of strengthening Armenia’s army,” he said.

    The percentage of volunteer soldiers serving in Armenia’s Armed Forces has already risen significantly over the past decade.

  • British Ambassador to Kabul ‘says Afghanistan mission is doomed’

    British Ambassador to Kabul ‘says Afghanistan mission is doomed’

    The British Ambassador to Kabul has been drawn into an embarrassing row after a French newspaper published quotes purporting to come from a diplomatic cable that claimed he said the Afghan government had “lost all credit”.

    By Henry Samuel in Paris
    Last Updated: 1:21AM BST 02 Oct 2008

    Sir Sherard is quoted as saying that the American strategy in Afghanistan 'is bound to fail' Photo: AP

    In the diplomatic cable written by François Fitou, the deputy French ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles is also quoted as saying that the coalition’s military presence is “part of the problem not the solution”.

    In the cable, dated Sept 2 and published in the investigative and satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaîne, Sir Sherard is quoted as having said that “the current situation is bad. Security is worsening, but also corruption, and the current government has lost all credit.”

    He is alleged to have gone on to say that “the presence, notably military, of the coalition is a part of the problem, not the solution.

    “Foreign forces are assuring the survival of a regime, which, without them, would quickly crumble. In doing so, they are slowing down and complicating an eventual end to the crisis (incidentally, probably a dramatic one).”

    France has just agreed to increase its deployment in Afghanistan despite public resistance, and send more drones and helicopters.

    In other quotes from the coded cable, addressed to President Nicolas Sarkozy and Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister, the British ambassador is cited as saying that sending extra French troops “would have perverse effects: it would single us out even more clearly as an occupying force and multiply the number of targets (for insurgents).”

    He is quoted as saying that the only solution at present is to support the Americans “but we must tell them that we want to be part of a winning, not a losing strategy.”

    According to the newspaper, Sir Sherard said that the best scenario was that “in five to ten years,” when British troops were no longer present on Afghan soil, the country would be “governed by an acceptable dictator”.

    “This is the only realistic outcome, and we must prepare public opinion to accept it … In the meantime, the American presidential candidates must be dissuaded from getting further bogged down in Afghanistan. (Their) strategy is bound to fail,” he reportedly said.

    However, a British embassy spokesman said the views were not the Ambassador’s.

    “It is not for us to comment on something that is presented as a French telegram, but the views quoted are not an accurate representation of the Ambassador’s views.

    “The UK, with international partners, is committed to working in support of the government of Afghanistan to deliver solutions to the challenges facing the country, through both civilian and military effort.

    “The UK has always acknowledged that success in Afghanistan is a long-term objective, and requires a comprehensive approach to address security, political, social and economic development.

    “The UK and the US are united in the Afghanistan strategy. We work closely with our US allies in all aspects of decision making and regularly review our approach.

    The Foreign Office said yesterday that Britain had decided to withdraw the 60 children of diplomats based in neighbouring Pakistan in the wake of the bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad last month. A spokesman said that spouses would also be offered the opportunity to leave.

    While the review was triggered by the terrorist incident, it reflects the growing instability of the country and reflected the broad views of diplomats. Officials said the ruling will be lifted as soon as conditions permit.

    Speculation was mounting that one of the suspects in the hotel bombing, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, had died of kidney failure. Baitullah Mehsud, who is in his mid-30s is also accused of being responsible for the assassination of the former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, was known to have been unwell for months.

    A doctor who has treated him insisted that Mehsud had a kidney problem but was still alive. But if the rumours prove to be true his death would prove a triumph in anti-terrorist efforts by Pakistan and the West.

    Source: www.telegraph.co.uk, 02 Oct 2008

  • War in Afghanistan ‘cannot be won’, British commander warns

    War in Afghanistan ‘cannot be won’, British commander warns

    The war in Afghanistan cannot be won, Britain’s most senior military commander in the country has warned.

    By Caroline Gammell
    Last Updated: 11:33AM BST 05 Oct 2008

    Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith warned the the public should not expect

    Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith said the British public should not expect “a decisive military victory” and that he believed groups of insurgents would still be at large after troops left.

    He said it was time to “lower our expectations” and focus on reducing the conflict to a level which could be managed by the Afghan army.

    Brig Carleton-Smith, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade which has just completed its second tour of Afghanistan, said talking to the Taliban could be an important part of that process.

    He insisted his forces had “taken the sting out of the Taliban for 2008” as winter and the colder weather approached.

    But he told a Sunday newspaper: “We’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.

    “We may well leave with there still being a low but steady ebb of rural insurgency… I don’t think we should expect when we go, there won’t be roaming bands of armed men in this part of the world.

    “That would be unrealistic.”

    Brig Carleton-Smith said the aim was to move towards a non-violent means of resolving the conflict.

    “We want to change the nature of the debate from one where disputes are settled through the barrel of a gun to one where it is done through negotiations,” he said.

    “If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this.”

    “That shouldn’t make people uncomfortable.”

    A Ministry of Defence spokesman defended the brigadier’s comments and said the aim was to provide a secure infrastructure for the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army.

    “We have always said there is no military solution in Afghanistan. Insurgencies are ultimately solved at the political level, not by military means alone,” the spokesman said.

    “We fully support President Karzai’s efforts to bring disaffected Afghans into society’s mainstream with his proviso that they renounce violence and accept Afghanistan’s constitution.”

    Source: www.telegraph.co.uk, 05 Oct 2008