As it was reported on Armenian internet forums, government of Armenia banned access of Armenian internet users to the official website of the “Justice for Khojaly” International Civil Awareness Campaign (www.justiceforkhojaly.org)
Please go to the following link to read more about the news: ly.org/?p=nread&q=0
Source: www.justiceforkhojaly.org, 20 July 2009
Turkish writers were pleased about the Nabucco gas pipeline deal signed by Turkey, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania on Monday in Ankara. They saw it as placing their country in an excellent position strategically, particularly with regard to Europe.
But a commentator in one Turkish paper, as well as writers in several Romanian dailies, wanted to know from where the gas for the pipeline would come. This point was also not lost on Iran’s hard-line daily Hezbollah, which believes Europe will have to approach Iran.
Further east, commentators wondered whether Russia’s rival pipeline project, South Stream, would now be scrapped.
The inter-governmental agreement on Nabucco that was signed in Ankara yesterday deals a new “strategic card” to Turkey… through this project Turkey once again shows that it acts as a bridge between the East and West… This strengthens Turkey’s hand in international relations, particularly regarding Europe.
If the Nabucco project is realised and the gas to be carried by this pipeline can be found, our country will further strengthen its “strategic importance” in the eyes of the West. This “new move” by the European Union and US against Russia in the “energy chess game” will bring very important developments politically in terms of the Middle East and Caucasus.
A big pipeline is being built in order to reduce Europe’s dependency on Russian gas. But it is not clear who will provide gas for this pipeline. Iran has gas, but the US has prevented Tehran from joining Nabucco. Russia does not permit the countries in its backyard to participate. In the current situation, it seems that only half of the capacity of the pipeline will be used.
Many experts believe that the gas sources of Central Asia, the Caucasus and even Iraq are not enough to fulfil the demands of the European countries and Turkey for a year, and that sooner or later they must use Iran’s gas sources. That’s why the Turkish prime minister emphasised Iran’s presence during the signing ceremony.
Why should the situation be such that the head of a country, which is merely on the gas pipeline route, is at the focal point of the project; managing and hosting the contract and more importantly, feeling sorry for the second largest holder of gas reserves of the world, i.e. Iran and talking about lobbying to include Iran?
Politically, the deal is an indisputable success. However, beyond the jubilation of a good start, the Ankara deal is still only just on paper and does not eliminate the competition represented by the rival South Stream plan initiated by Russia.
Russia controls all the resources in the region – not only its own but also those of its former satellite states. Or, when it does not have this control, it has the money to buy it. By overpaying for Azeri gas, Russia left this project without any supplier.
The fact that Nabucco project is a priority for the European Union does not solve the main problem: the lack of gas supply.
It is all too obvious that Europe and Asia want an end to threats with the “gas club”. What can you expect? Moscow should not have displayed it so insistently.
Observers suggest that Azerbaijan will blackmail Europe with gas sales to Russia, and Russia with co-operation with Europe.
There is still a high likelihood that Russia, which is not interested in alternative supplies, will have an influence on Turkmenistan’s decision to co-operate with Nabucco.
Moscow’s attempts to hinder the implementation of this project… have failed. Baku expressing its readiness to participate in the Nabucco project, and also Turkmenistan’s statement that it is ready to consider this project as a way to diversify supply routes for its gas, can be viewed as the failure of Moscow’s plans to hinder the construction of this gas pipeline.
The signing ceremony in Ankara can be viewed as the start of a new stage in the years-long geostrategic struggle for Caspian energy.
The latest major foreign policy failure – and the re-orientation of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan towards Nabucco cannot be described in any other way – is entirely due to the short-sightedness of the Russian gas monopolist, which aims only at making immediate profits.
In the game between Nabucco and South Stream, the EU team has gone forward into the next round. The state of play might still change, but Gazprom’s goals seem less realistic than those of the European Union.
The US and Europe believe that the signing of the agreement will force Russia to give up South Stream… After the agreement was signed, it has become clear that Nabucco is significantly ahead of South Stream, owing to the fact that the project has the consolidated political support of practically the whole of Europe… Gazprom’s brainchild, South Stream, cannot boast such consolidated support.
Gazprom’s refusal to purchase Turkmen gas in the amount agreed upon last year and the current total suspension of purchasing has forced Ashgabat to look for a substitute for Russia as the major buyer… Analysts say that the Turkmen-Iranian deals are bad news for Gazprom, which is losing its monopolistic position in the transit of gas from Central Asia.
Nabucco has been officially launched in Ankara. If everything goes as planned, Europe will get a long-awaited gas pipeline bypassing Russia in four years’ time.
Beijing urged Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to retract his statement that China is committing “genocide” against its Muslim minority.
Istanbul – Developments in China’s restive Xinjiang Province and the attacks against the minority Muslim Uighurs there may not have led to vocal protests in most of the Muslim world. But in Turkey, the events in western China have led to large protests in the streets and strong words from Turkish officials.
The comment raising the loudest outcry has been Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s accusation last week that China is committing “genocide” against the Uighurs, a statement that Beijing is now pressuring him to retract.
Experts say that taking its criticism of China too far could backfire on Ankara, which has been working to improve both its diplomatic and trade relations with Beijing.
An estimated 184 people have died in the recent violent clashes between Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Chinese officials have claimed that most of those killed have been Han.
Turkey’s minister of industry and trade, Nihat Ergun, last week called for a boycott of Chinese goods, while Mr. Erdogan, speaking on television last Friday, said: “The incidents in China are, simply put, tantamount to genocide. There’s no point in interpreting this otherwise.”
Uighurs as ‘brothers’
“There is a lot of sensitivity among the Turkish public about the Uighurs. They consider them as real brothers,” says Sami Kohen, a political affairs columnist for Milliyet, a Turkish daily.
“Turks originally came from that part of Asia to Anatolia, and the language that Uighurs use is much closer to the language that Turkey speaks than others in Central Asia,” he continues.
The Turkish president’s official flag, for example, has 16 stars on it, representing “Turkish states” established throughout history. One of the stars commemorates the Uighur state that existed around the 8th century.
Adds Mr. Kohen: “There is quite a large Uighur community in Turkey, and they are quite strong. They have a lobby and they have been quite strong in defending their cause.”
Turkey raises its global profile
Turkey has, in recent years, been working to raise its foreign policy profile and establish itself as a regional political and economic power. Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, actually visited Urumqi as part of a recent state visit shortly before the violence broke out there. Turkey signed a reported $1.5 billion worth of trade deals during the visit.
But analysts say Ankara’s criticism could lead to a rupture with Beijing.
“The Turks really have a tough decision to make, whether they keep this going or back off. This is a major test for Turkey’s new foreign policy,” says Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “This is a serious problem for the Turks from every angle.”
Ankara now also needs to decide if it will grant a possible request to visit Turkey by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur diaspora activist based in the United States whom China has accused of being behind the violence in Xinjiang.
“All hell is going to break loose if she shows up in Turkey, especially after the comment that Erdogan made,” Mr. Aliriza says.
Take it back, China says
The Chinese government now appears to be pushing back against Turkey. A Tuesday editorial in the government-controlled English-language China Daily urged Erdogan to “take back his remarks … which constitute interference in China’s internal affairs.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, in a phone conversation with his Turkish counterpart, blamed the violence in Xinjiang on “three evil forces,” state news agency Xinhua said, referring to “extremism, separatism, and terrorism.”
For Turkey, which has had its share of domestic violence and terrorism, both from Islamic extremists and Kurdish separatists, these are not meaningless words.
The Christian Science Monitor
War of words breaks out as public relations exercise by Baku representatives goes wrong.
By Samira Ahmedbeili in Baku, Sara Khojoian in Yerevan and Anahit Danielian in Stepanakert (CRS No. 501, 10-July-09)
A visit by Azerbaijani officials and cultural leaders to the self-declared state of Nagorno-Karabakh was intended to build ties with its ethnic Armenian rulers, but degenerated into the usual verbal sparring within days.
However, analysts were wrong-footed by an unusually conciliatory statement from Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliev after the trip, in which he appeared sympathetic to some Armenian demands.
Nagorny Karabakh, ruled by Armenians but internationally considered part of Azerbaijan, has been a block to good relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan since Soviet times.
More than a million refugees fled out of both countries before and during the war, which started in 1991 and ended with a ceasefire three years later. Since then, there have been almost no ties between the two neighbouring nations, while Karabakh declared independence unilaterally.
Armenian forces control some 14 per cent of what Azerbaijan considers to be its territory, and exchanges of fire are frequent over the line of control.
The visit to Karabakh, which started on July 3 and was headed by the ambassadors to Moscow of both Armenia and Azerbaijan, was intended to help ease the tensions.
“I want to stress that neither Armenians nor Azeris are going to fly off into space. We must live together, and therefore we need to create contacts, joint ties, create mutual respect between each other,” Polad Bulbuloglu, the Azerbaijan ambassador, told reporters in Karabakh.
But, even before he left the region, he had succeeded in offending the locals by following the terminology used in Azerbaijan to describe Karabakh. He met Bako Sahakian, leader of the self-proclaimed state, but presented it as just a meeting with local civil society figures, outraging political commentator David Babian.
“It is unacceptable that non-constructive statements should be made after a visit, as was done by this Polad Bulbuloglu and his delegates. President Bako Sahakian from the start of the visit held onto the principal of equality of the two sides, stressing that no other format was acceptable, including the so-called possibility of holding talks between two communities,” the commentator said.
“Such meetings are ineffective, since they once more make people angry, instead of creating an atmosphere of trust, as the authors insist.”
The misunderstandings pursued the delegates, who also visited Yerevan and Baku, throughout their journey. On returning to the Azerbaijani capital, one delegate told a local news agency that the Armenian president had told them he understood that Aghdam – a region of Azerbaijan outside Nagorny Karabakh itself which is almost entirely controlled by Armenian forces – was not Armenian land, and that he respected Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.
The comments were disowned by a spokesman for the president, and provoked outrage in Yerevan.
“This is an arrogant lie,” President Serzh Sargsian’s spokesman said. “But we are no longer surprised that the Azerbaijani delegates distorted the facts when they returned to Baku, since they always do. The lack of tolerance from Azerbaijani society is clear.”
Similar distrust was sparked in Baku, where the supposed peacemakers found themselves suspected of selling out the interests of their country. Any suggestion that Karabakh is not actually part of Azerbaijan meets fury in Baku, and Akif Nagi, head of the Organisation for the Liberation of Karabakh, suggested that by meeting Sahakian, the delegates were effectively recognising his rule.
“As a result of such meetings the fact of the Armenian seizure of Azerbaijan’s territory retreats into the background. By making a statement… about visiting Karabakh through Azerbaijan’s territory, they present this as if it’s heroism. But if you meet the head of a separatist, puppet regime, and basically recognise his legitimacy, then it is unimportant how you got there,” Nagi said.
He also expressed disquiet that the delegation had included Mikhail Shvidkoy, the head of the Russian Cultural Agency, and appeared to have been initiated in Moscow. “The visit of the so-called Azerbaijan intelligentsia to Karabakh contradicts the interests of Azerbaijan. This visit was conducted at the orders of Russia. Russia is just demonstrating that the Karabakh conflict is completely under its control and that it can make the two sides play by its rules any time it wants,” he said.
Under the circumstances, therefore, it was not surprising that few observers expected positive results from the trip. However, comments from President Aliev to Russian television after the visit suggested a change of heart in Baku, which has previously been uncompromising in its opposition to any recognition of Armenian rights to Azerbaijan’s territory.
“As for the status of Nagorny Karabakh, that is a question of the future. A resolution of its status is not one of the proposals accepted by us and under discussion at the moment,” Aliev told Russia’s RTR television.
“Of course, Azerbaijan will never agree to the independence of Nagorny Karabakh. I think Armenia understands this. Today we must resolve the results of the conflict and secure an end of the occupation. The security of all nationalities in Karabakh must be secured, after which communication must be restored. We understand that Nagorny Karabakh must have a special status, and we see it as being within Azerbaijan.”
Despite Aliev’s uncompromising refusal to countenance independence for the region, those were still remarkably conciliatory remarks by the standards Baku has set since 1991.
“Over the last month there has been a flurry of activity in the Karabakh negotiations: an intense round of diplomacy, the visit of the intellectuals to Karabakh and the first visit by Armenians to Baku in a long time, [and] a more positive tone from many of the political leaders,” said Tom de Waal, an analyst from the NGO Conciliation Resources and an expert in Karabakh’s history.
“President Aliev adopted a more moderate tone than I can remember in an interview on the Karabakh issue. I was struck by the way he said that ‘we understand the concerns of the people of Karabakh’ and that he said that the status of Karabakh is a ‘matter for the future’. Now of course this was an interview to Russian television. I think things will really change only when the presidents say this kind of thing to a domestic audience, but it is a very positive signal.”
Samira Ahmedbeili, Sara Khojoian and Anahit Danielian are IWPR contributors.
Columnist Hasan Celal Guzel comments on the unrest in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. A summary of his column is as follows:
“Do you know what place, outside Turkey itself, has the world’s largest Turkish population? Eastern Turkistan… There are nearly 38 million Uighur Turks living in eastern Turkistan now, despite the genocidal policies they have faced. The Uighur Turks are the grandchildren of a great culture and civilization which established the Hun, Gokturk, Uighur and Karahanli states, and they are our kin. Did you notice the flag a Uighur Turkish woman was carrying in news reports from Urumchi (the region’s capital) this week? This flag is the same as ours, except for its color. The Uighur Turks in eastern Turkistan have a highly developed Turkish consciousness.
Eastern Turkistan voluntarily attached itself to the Ottoman Empire during the Yakup Khan era (1820-1887). Yakup Bey sent his son, Yakup Khan Tore (Hodja Tore), to seek help from the Ottoman Sultan Abdulaziz, who then dispatched ships and weapons to Eastern Turkistan. Unfortunately, the region was invaded by the Chinese after Yakup Bey’s death in 1878, but in the 1930s the Uighur Turks rejected the occupation and, after a series of battles, declared the Eastern Turkistan Islam Republic in 1933, and the Eastern Turkistan Republic in 1944. But following communist China’s 1949 invasion, the territory was renamed the Xinjiang (Sincan) Uighur Autonomous Region, and Eastern Turkistan Turks have been trying to survive China’s occupation, captivity and atrocities ever since.
The late Uighur Turkish leader Isa Yusuf Alptekin, who was my close friend, said that forces have tried to silently erase the Eastern Turkistan Turks from history. The massacre of Uighur Turks by the Chinese army and paramilitaries in Urumchi is happening in front of the eyes of the entire world. Although the official death toll is 156, we know that more than 1,000 Turks have been killed and 6,000 Uighur young people who were detained are being threatened with death. Even as the region’s Chinese governor said that the Turks protesting the cruel regime would be executed, he guaranteed protection to migrant Chinese Hans living there. What’s happening in Eastern Turkistan is no mere massacre, but a genocide. Muslim Turks are used as guinea pigs in nuclear tests; babies are killed due to obligatory abortions; everybody who seeks the right to a humane life and liberty is executed without due process; Chinese militant migrants are being systematically settled in the region year after year; and hundreds of thousands of young people are forced to work in torture work camps. In short, there are widespread and blatant violations of human rights.
In our country, Turks are called to account for Armenians who were made to emigrate 100 years ago, but nobody talks about the millions of Turks who were massacred in Rumeli, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. Some 800,000 Iraqi Turks who were killed and forced to migrate following the US invasion of Iraq are now all but lost. Think about it: if even a small fraction of the events in Eastern Turkistan had happened somewhere else in the world, how loud would the criticism be? Seyit Tumturk, head of the East Turkistan Culture and Solidarity Association, told me that Uighur Turk leader Rabia Kader might be brought from Washington to Ankara to address the Uighur Turks at a press conference and calm down the situation. We welcome this suggestion. If we stay silent in the face of this massacre so as not to ruin our relations with China, we would be culpable in the eyes of the Turkish nation and history. The remarks made so far from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu are praiseworthy. But they need to do more. Alptekin wrote shortly before his death that as long as the Eastern Turkistan issue isn’t solved humanely and the sun of liberty doesn’t rise in his country, a stain will forever mark his people. He added that he hoped Turkey would work to solve the Eastern Turkistan issue. We all should second this wish.”
Turkish Press Review, 9.7.2009
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/11/AR2009071100464.html?hpid=topnews
As ethnic Han gangs roamed the streets of Urumqi on Tuesday at dusk, seeking revenge against Muslim Uighur rioters who killed scores of Han two nights earlier, a balding Communist Party bureaucrat abruptly appeared on the city’s television screens to call for calm.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203547904574279952210843672
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203547904574279952210843672
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/08/AR2009070802718.html?hpid=topnews
Baku – APA. Turkish Prime Minister Racab Tayyib Erdogan took stance on bloody events taking place in Xinjiang-Uighur autonomous region of China, APA reports quoting Haberturk.
Turkey is closely following the developments there: “Our Uighur brothers living in Turkey and Turkish people feeling this pain in their hearts hold protest actions condemning these events. We have always seen our Uighur brothers as a bridge between Turkey and China, the country we have always had normal relations with throughout the history. Necessary measures must be taken to prevent this brutality. We are temporary member of the UN Security Council for 2009-2010. We will also take these events into consideration there”.
08 Jul 2009
APA
