Category: Southern Caucasus

Erdogan Says Going To U.S., Sending Back Turkish Envoy

Saudi Arabia — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a press conference in Jeddah, 20Jan2010

02.04.2010

(Reuters, RFE/RL) – Turkey said on Friday that it is sending its ambassador back to Washington, a month after he was recalled to protest against a U.S. congressional committee recognizing as genocide the World War One massacres of Armenians in Turkey. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan also confirmed that he will attend an international unclear summit to be hosted by President Barack Obama in Washington on April 12-13.

“I received an invitation five, six months ago, to attend an international event that other countries will also be attending and serves a good cause, to prevent the use and spreading of nuclear weapons. I will be going to the United States,” Erdogan told journalists. “My ambassador Namik Tan will be going back to Washington before my visit,” he said.

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian will also take part in the summit. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited him to Washington during a telephone call on March 12 that appeared to have centered on Armenia’s stalled rapprochement with Turkey.

Clinton phoned Sarkisian the day after he suggested that Turkey will not unconditionally normalize relations with Armenia anytime soon and again threatened to annul the U.S.-brokered protocols signed by the two nations in October. Some observers say the Obama administration will use the Washington forum for a last-ditch attempt to salvage the agreements.

It is not yet clear whether the U.S. president will meet Sarkisian and Erdogan on the sidelines of the summit. A spokesman for Sarkisian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service earlier this week that the Armenian leader may hold meetings with “various participants” of the two-day gathering. A senior member of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) said on Friday that a meeting between Sarkisian and Erdogan is “very possible.”

Ankara recalled its ambassador to Washington immediately after Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved on March 4 a resolution urging Obama to “accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide.”

In a telephone call with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu last Sunday, Clinton assured Turkey that the White House opposes further progress of the congressional resolution. It is uncertain whether the resolution will go to a vote of the full House of Representatives or whether it could pass.

AFP news agency quoted Davutoglu as saying on Thursday that Washington has conveyed “increasing messages easing our concerns and meeting our expectations … and [showing] that the strategic dimension of Turkish-U.S. relations is being understood.”

Erdogan likewise spoke of “positive developments” in Turkish-American contacts. “I hope these positive developments will continue also in April,” he said.

It was an apparent reference to Obama’s statement due on the April 24 anniversary of the start of mass killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Ankara hopes that Obama will again refrain from using the word “genocide” to describe the events of 1915-1918.

The United States is keen to smooth over relations with Turkey, NATO’s only Muslim member, and a key ally in trouble spots from Afghanistan to the Middle East. Washington is seeking to convince Turkey, a non-permanent member of the Security Council, to support a fourth round of U.N. economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, while Erdogan has spoken against the use of sanctions.

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/2001131.html

April 2, 2010
Conference on so-called Genocide to Be Held in Ankara on April 24

ANKARA, Turkey—On April 24-25, a symposium on the Armenian Genocide, titled “1915 within its pre and post-historical periods: Denial and Confrontation,” will be held in Ankara. Organized by the Ankara Freedom to Thought Initiative (AFTI), the symposium will not only address the history, but explore issues like the confiscation of Armenian property and reparations.

Confirmed participants include Ragip Zarakolu (publisher), Recep Marasli (author of The Armenian National Democratic Movement and 1915 Genocide), Sait Cetinoglu (activist and writer), Dr. David Gaunt (genocide scholar, author of Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia During World War I), Dr. Henry Theriault (professor of Philosophy, Worcester State University), and Khatchig Mouradian (Doctoral student in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University; editor, the Armenian Weekly).

Dedicated to the memory of Hrant Dink, the symposium will comprise of four sessions: a) the Armenian Genocide from a historical perspective, b) official ideological denial from the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) to Kemalism, c) Turkification of the Economy and the issue of the confiscated Armenian Property, and d) what needs to be done and how?

Asbarez will provide in depth coverage of the conference.

=========== NOTE FROM TURKISH FORUM =========================

It is unbelievable that ARF makes provocation until Ankara. Armenian Weekly is the newspaper of ARF in eastern part of USA; they published calls to murder against archibishop Levon Tourian in 1933, during the months preceding his assassination by 7 Dashnaks, in his proper church; Armenian Weekly published Naziesque articles from 1933 to 1943; Armenian Weekly supported passionately Armenian terrorism of 1970’s and 1980’s, with a openly racist perspective (against the “Turkish Mongol” race), calling even “a success” the assassination of Ahmet Benler, the 27-years-old son of Turkish ambassador in The Heague.

They are killing Hrant Dink a second time. He was rather stupid and ignorant, but he had fair ideas.

Will be somebody to this conference to say the truth to this Dashnak and to the rascal who will be with him on the tribune?

===================================================

If this is design to open discussion about validity of Armenian claims,I understand. Otherwise Symposium ought include the following:

e) Armenian aggression to Azerbaijan

f) Confiscated of non Armenian properties in Armenia

g) Role and participation of Armenian people in PKK activities

Armagan

April 2, 2010
BEGINNING OF THE END FOR ARMENIAN PROPAGANDA AND “HYE”STERIA ?

THIS CITY HAS RESCINDED THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RECOGNITION
DECLARING THE RESOLUTION NULL AND VOID

According to the news article below that appeared on April 2, 2010, in the largest daily in Turkiye, Hurriyet, this Ukranian city of Izyum, population 60,000 and about 80 miles from the capitol of Harkov province, Ukraine, has rescinded on March 26, 2010 the genocide resolution that it passed in December 2009, thus no longer recognizing the Armenian claims at face value. Citing a report by the Crimean News Agency, the article heralds the first decision of its kind anywhere, which may indeed, be a turning point, a beginning of the end, for the diaspora Armenian propaganda efforts.

Rehim Hümbetov, president of the Crimean-Azerbaijani Association, they worked hard to get the Armenian propaganda annulled, by suing the resolution on grounds that it violated Ukranian law, that it should be reviewed and rescinded, and won after intensive efforts.

Rehim Hümbetov stated that the time has come to wage an international effort to overturn all such resolutions misrepresenting Armenian propaganda as settled history.

***

Wow! I wonder if the days of “hye”nas feeding on Turkish corpses of WWI may be over…

Who knows?

Anyway, Here is the original article:

***

BU KENT TANIDIĞI ‘SOYKIRIMI’ IPTAL ETTI

A.A. / hurriyet.com.tr , 2 Nisan 2010

Ukrayna’nın Harkov bölgesindeki bir yerel belediye meclisi, 1915 olaylarına ilişkin Ermeni iddialarıyla ilgili daha önce kabul ettiği kararını iptal etti.

Kırım Haber Ajansı’nın haberine göre, İzyum Şehir Belediye Meclisi, Aralık 2009’da kabul ettiği Ermeni iddialarıyla ilgili kararı, 26 Mart’ta yapılan toplantıda iptal etti.

Haberde, Ukrayna’da alınan bu iptal kararının, dünyada 1915 olaylarıyla ilgili ilk iptal örneği olduğu belirtildi.

Karara ilişkin açıklama yapan ve iptal kararının alınması için çok çalıştıklarını belirten Kırım Azerbaycanlılar Derneği Başkanı Rehim Hümbetov, “Artık Ermeni iddialarına ilişkin kabul edilen kararların iptali için uluslararası düzeyde mücadele etme vaktinin geldiğini” söyledi.

Hümbetov, belediye meclisinin daha önce aldığı kararın, Ukrayna kanunlarına aykırı olduğunu belirterek, incelenmesi ve iptali için İzyum savcılığına da başvurduklarını ve yoğun çabalar sonucunda kararın iptal edilmesini sağladıklarını belirtti.

Yaklaşık 60 bin nüfuslu şehir, Harkov’un merkezinden 120 kilometre uzaklıkta bulunuyor.

April 2, 2010
Azerbaijani-Israeli Relations Enter a New Stage

Gulnara Inandzh

Director
International Online Information Analytic Center Ethnoglobus,

related info

https://www.turkishnews.com/ru/content/

[email protected]

The upcoming June 28th 2009 visit to Baku by Israeli President Shimon Peres, a visit arranged during the May 6th meeting in Prague between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, opens a new stage in Azerbaijani-Israeli relations and reflects among other things Jerusalem’s desire to strengthen relations with former Soviet republics in the aftermath of Israeli operations in Gaza.

In support of that effort, one marked out in the middle of 2008, the Israeli foreign ministry has established separate departments to deal with the European portion of the CIS, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, regions that had been the responsibility of the ministry’s broader Central European and Eurasian Department. The new units are provisionally called Eurasia I (dealing with the European portion of the CIS) and Eurasia II (dealing with the South Caucasus and Central Asia). The head of Eurasia II, which will also deal with Azerbaijan, is Shemi Tsur, the son of a Jewish returnee from the Iranian province of Eastern Azerbaijan (Falkov & Kogan 2009).

Apparently, Israeli political technologists have been working on the strengthening of official contacts with Azerbaijan intensively. Jewish groups in the West have been playing a major role in this and have conditioned their support for Azerbaijani interests on Baku’s opening of an embassy in Israel. As official representatives of the two countries have noted, despite the absence of an Azerbaijani embassy in Israel and of a general treaty between Azerbaijan and Israel, there exist various interagency accords which are working extremely well. As a result, Israel receives 30 percent of the oil it needs for internal use through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, and bilateral trade is constantly expanding.

The absence of anti-Semitism in Azerbaijan, the good relations with Jews living in the country also help to fill the diplomatic vacuum. At the same time, the opening of an embassy of a Muslim-majority state in Israel and the visit of the Israeli president to a Muslim country are a moral support and example for Jews of the entire world and the Jewish state itself.

In this connection, it is worth noting that this is the second official visit of a senior Israeli official to Baku over the last decade. In 1998, Benjamin Netanyahu, then and now the prime minister of Israel, after completing a visit to China spent the night in Baku. After that time, no senior Israeli officials visited Azerbaijan for some years. But beginning in 2006, when Avigdor Lieberman, the chairman of the Our Home is Israel party became minister for strategic affairs, the number of visits increased. Lieberman himself visited Baku in the summer of 2007 just after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did.

These efforts by Israeli and Western companies and organizations in Azerbaijan have been viewed by Iranian ideologues as part of a network directed against Iran. One cannot deny that the overthrow of the current Tehran government or the forced change of its aggressive policy and the weakening of its position in the region are one of the key issues for Israel and the West and in particular the US. As a result, the concern of Iran on this score cannot be considered baseless paranoia.

On the other hand, with the assignment at the end of April 2009 of a new director of the Asian infrastructure of the Bureau for Ties with the Russian-language Jewish Diaspora Natif, Israel specified its policy concerning work with the diaspora in the CIS countries. In that, Azerbaijan is presented as a major focus of Natif’s activities (Izrus 2009). It could hardly be otherwise, given the Jewish communities of that country, as well as in Iran, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The Jewish lobby and Israel in recent years have attempted to establish contacts with their compatriots living in Iran. In the meantime, the Southern Azerbaijanis who live in Iran represent another issue for relations between Baku and Tehran. With the goal of removing the World Congress of Azerbaijanis out from under the influence of Iran, for example, a change in the leadership of the organization has occurred. The Committee for work with compatriots was reformed into a structure for work with the diaspora, which thus reduced its focus on compatriots in areas adjoining Azerbaijan where Azerbaijanis have lived from time immemorial on their historical lands.

As was already noted, if the visit of Shimon Peres to Baku bears a moral character for Jews, for Azerbaijan it is one additional opportunity to attract the attention of the world community and the entire Jewish world to Azerbaijan and to define new patterns of cooperation and the inclusion of Azerbaijan in new major trans-regional projects. But as one might expect, Iran’s reaction has been aggressive, including overt threats to Azerbaijan. Baku responded diplomatically but made it very clear that it did not intend to retreat from the meeting or from its expanding ties with the Jewish state.

In spite of its threatening language, it is completely clear that Iran will not violate the borders of Azerbaijan as it did earlier. And clearly, Azerbaijan was prepared for such an Iranian reaction, but in preparing for it, Baku recognized that neither the US nor Israel could advance an effective policy toward Iran without taking Azerbaijan into account. Indeed, now economically and politically strong, Azerbaijan is capable of engaging itself in pro-active regional politics, as opposed to a defensive one it had adhered to before.

References

Falkov, Mikhail & Kogan, Alexander (2009) “Izrail’ otdel’no vzyalsya za Kavkaz I Tsentral’nuyu Aziyu” [“Israel Moved to Separately Deal with the Caucasus and Central Asia”], Izrus, 19 January, available at http://izrus.co.il/dvuhstoronka/article/2009-01-19/3449.html, accessed 13 June 2009.

Izrus (2009) “’Nativ’ Izbral Kuratora po Tsentral’noy Azii I Kavkazu”, Izrus, 1 March, available at http://izrus.co.il/diasporaIL/article/2009-03-01/3883.html, accessed 14 June 2009.

source :

March 31, 2010
Turkey To Allow Worship In Armenian Church

Turkey — A 10th-century Armenian church on the island of Akhtamar in Van province.

25.03.2010

(Reuters) – Turkey announced on Thursday that permission had been given for Christian worship to be held once a year at an abandoned Armenian island church restored as a museum in Eastern Turkey’s Lake Van.

The Culture Ministry has given its approval for a religious service to be held once a year in the recently restored Surp Khach (Saint Cross) church on the island of Akhtamar in Van province, the regional governor’s office said.

The 10th-Century church is located in eastern Turkey, which was home to ethnic Armenians before World War One. It reopened in 2007 as a museum. The site has significant symbolic importance for Armenians, and religious leaders had suggested that religious services be allowed once a year.

The Van governor’s office had last year sought permission from the ministry for such a ceremony and the governor was reported as saying by state-run Anatolian news agency that the decision would boost faith tourism in the region.

“Nobody should have any doubt that we will welcome our guests from home and abroad in the best possible way on September 12,” Governor Munir Karaloglu said.

The decision came amid mutual recriminations between Turkey and Armenia over the lack of progress on accords which they signed last year to establish diplomatic ties and open their border. Neither parliament has yet approved the protocols.

Relations have also been soured this month by Erdogan’s threat to deport thousands of Armenian migrants working illegally in Turkey. Neighboring Armenia has compared Erdogan’s warning to the language that preceded the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/1993881.html

March 25, 2010
Ex-General Sees Continued Turkish Linkage Between Karabakh, Armenia Ties

Armenia — Turkish and Armenian flags fly alongside each other during an international sporting event in Yerevan, undated.

25.03.2010

Emil Danielyan

Turkey will not stop linking the normalization of its relations with Armenia to a Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, a retired Turkish army general who was involved in Turkish-Armenian reconciliation initiatives said on Thursday.

In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian service in Yerevan, Sadi Erguvenc acknowledged that chances for the implementation of the Turkish-Armenian normalization protocols are very slim at the moment. “The situation does not seem to be promising,” he said.

Turkish leaders have repeatedly stated that Turkey’s parliament will not ratify the U.S.-brokered protocols until a breakthrough in the long-running Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. A leading member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) reaffirmed this stance during a recent visit to Yerevan.

“It may not look rational from the Armenian point of view, but Turkey values highly its relations with Azerbaijan,” said Erguvenc. “That can not change easily without having a solution to the Karabakh issue.”

“You just can’t deny the Azeris the support that they deserve in our view,” he said. “Their country is occupied to a considerable extent. Quite a number of people are suffering from this situation. So, of course, we feel committed to support them.”

Asked whether Ankara could drop the Karabakh linkage, rejected by Yerevan, anytime soon, Erguvenc replied: “I don’t think so.” This policy enjoys strong public support in Turkey, he said.

Armenia — Armenian and Turkish media professionals and retired state officials meet in Yerevan, 25 March 2010.

The retired air force general spoke to RFE/RL on the sidelines of a Turkish-Armenian seminar held in Yerevan by the Eurasia Partnership Foundation in collaboration with the Global Political Trends Center (GPoT), an Istanbul-based think-tank. The two-day event brought together former government officials and prominent media figures from the two neighboring countries.

Erguvenc, who currently sits on GPoT’s advisory board, had headed the intelligence department at Turkey’s powerful National Security Council and a planning division at the Turkish army’s General Staff before retiring from the military in 1992. He was also a member of the former Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC), a panel of retired diplomats and public figures that was set up in 2001 at the U.S. State Department’s initiative. TARC repeatedly called for the unconditional establishment of diplomatic relations between the two states and opening of their border before being disbanded in 2004.

Erguvenc insisted that the Turkish-Armenian normalization process has not failed and will eventually end in success if both sides stay “forward-looking.” “At least, the Turkish government is very much interested in remaining on the positive track,” he said. “They have a declared policy of ‘zero problems’ with neighbors and they want to stick to it.”

“An opening in the Karabakh question would improve the situation tremendously,” he added.

Yalim Eralp, a retired Turkish ambassador also attending the Yerevan seminar, similarly stressed the importance of Karabakh peace for the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement. “When you get a new friend, you can’t lose an old one,” he said.

Armenian leaders argue that neither protocol makes any mention of the Karabakh conflict and that both agreements should therefore be ratified unconditionally. The United States and the European Union have likewise urged the Turks to honor the deal “without preconditions and within a reasonable timeframe.”

“Turkey places its relations with Azerbaijan above Turkish-Armenian relations,” David Hovannisian, a retired Armenian ambassador and another former TARC member, complained during the discussion.

Hovannisian also made the point that the publics in Armenia and Turkey are “much more prepared for the normalization” than the two governments.

Eralp seemed to agree, saying that both civil societies should continue to “press” their governments. “But we have to use that pressure cleverly,” he cautioned.

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/1993891.html

March 25, 2010