Author: Babajanian Karo

TURKEY SUPPORTS WITHDRAWAL OF FRANCE FROM OSCE MINSK GROUP

State Telegraph Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan
January 29, 2012 Sunday

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has stressed the need to
discuss the chairmanship of France in the OSCE Minsk Group which was
founded to settle Nagorno Karabakh conflict in 1992 and has Turkey
as its member. Davutoglu told CNN Turk that it was time to discuss
the withdrawal of France from OSCE Minsk Group,

Being a member of the Minsk Group, Turkey will ask how the country,
whose parliament passed such a law (a bill criminalizing the denial
of the soc-called Armenian genocide) can be a mediator. Later it will
ask it for the sake of the rights of the fraternal Azerbaijan, 20%
of which has been occupied. It is high time for us to discuss it,
the Turkish FM noted.

Either Turkey must sit at the table along with the co-chairs, or
France must be withdrawn. This is the position of Turkey, he added.

TURKISH MINISTER: “ALL THE INVESTMENTS OF FRENCH ENTREPRENEURS WILL BE UNDER THE TUTELAGE OF TURKEY”

APA
Jan 27 2012
Azerbaijan

Baku – APA-ECONOMICS. France plays an important role in the Turkish
economy, the minister of economy Zafer Caglayan told reporters,
APA repots citing Turkish media.

“French companies employ a large number of Turkish citizens. These
companies make an important contribution to the economy,” Mr Caglayan
said.

The minister said that all the investments of French entrepreneurs
will be under the tutelage of Turkey. French entrepreneurs also oppose
the law on “Armenian genocide,” Mr Caglayan added.

He said: “As for the Turkish companies, they will choose themselves
whether or not to work with French companies.”

TURKISH FIRST LADY SNUBS FRENCH AMBASSADOR’S WIFE

Trend
Jan 27 2012
Azerbaijan

In reaction to the French Senate’s approval of a bill that criminalizes
denying the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces in the early
20th century, first lady Hayrunnisa Gul has not invited Sabine Bili,
the wife of the French ambassador to Turkey, Laurent Bili, to a lunch
meeting, Today’s Zaman reported.

Gul will host a luncheon for female ambassadors, wives of ambassadors
and female representatives of international organizations serving
in Ankara.

Gul will deliver a speech welcoming 90 guests to the event, which
will be held at the Cankaya presidential palace next Thursday.

Speaking to reporters at the 25th anniversary of the Zaman daily,
Bili confirmed that his wife has not been invited to the lunch and
called on Ankara to remain calm. “France attaches great importance
to bilateral relations with Turkey. I will do my best to normalize
the relationship, but it mostly depends on the Turkish government,”
he added.

FRANCE PLAYS AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN TURKEY’S ECONOMY

Trend
Jan 27 2012
Azerbaijan

Jan. 27–France plays an important role in the Turkish economy,
the minister of economy Zafer Caglayan told reporters, television
channel TRT Haber transmits on Friday.

“French companies employ a large number of Turkish citizens. These
companies make an important contribution to the economy,” Mr Caglayan
said.

The minister said that all the investments of French entrepreneurs
will be under the tutelage of Turkey. French entrepreneurs also oppose
the law on “Armenian genocide,” Mr Caglayan added.

He said: “As for the Turkish companies, they will choose themselves
whether or not to work with French companies.”

Turkish authorities have declared that they would take additional
sanctions against France after the adoption the law criminalising
the denial of “Armenian genocide” by the Senate of France.

After eight hours of discussion, the Senate (upper chamber of the
French parliament) voted for adoption of the law criminalising denial
of the so called “Armenian genocide”. Some 127 senators voted for,
while 86 against.

The Lower House of the French Parliament adopted a bill criminalising
the denial of the so-called “Armenian genocide” on Dec.22, 2011

The bill demands about a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 45,000
euros for denial of the so-called “Armenian genocide”.

MPs from the French President’s Union for Popular Movement (UMP)
party which has the parliamentary majority, proposed the bill which
aims at criminalising denial of the so-called “Armenian genocide” to
the legislative committee of the National Assembly in early December.

Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that the predecessor of the
Turkey — Ottoman Empire had committed the 1915 genocide against
the Armenians living in Anadolu, and achieved recognition of the
“Armenian Genocide” by the parliaments of several countries.

AZERBAIJAN EVICTIONS TARNISH EUROVISION GLITZ

Emirates 24/7

Feb 1 2012
UAE

In the shadow of an enormous Azerbaijani flag, a landmark concert hall
is rising from the Caspian Sea shoreline as the oil-rich ex-Soviet
state prepares to host the Eurovision song contest in May.

But a human rights dispute has marred Azerbaijan’s preparations for
the pop extravaganza as homes are demolished as part of an urban
regeneration project which includes the ultramodern ‘Crystal Hall’
where Eurovision will be staged.

Pensioner Minara Iskenderova lives with her daughter and son in the
last apartment block to remain standing near the construction site
in Baku’s National Flag Square.

Many of her neighbours have already moved out, leaving the block with
its impressive sea views looking half-abandoned and on the verge of
dereliction, with many doors and windows ripped out.

“I’m taking what is happening very painfully. Since this process
started, my blood pressure has risen and I’ve started to get ill,”
Iskenderova said.

“I cannot get used to the thought that we will have to move away
from here.”

Natalia Alibekova, another pensioner still holding out against eviction
from the condemned block, said she expected to be thrown out any day
now when the demolition crew moves in.

“I will have memories of my home whenever Eurovision takes place,”
she said.

Rights activists allege that several hundred families have been evicted
from the area so far under pressure from the Baku city authorities
to accept what they claim is inadequate compensation that will not
buy similar apartments in the centre of the capital.

“The pressure comes from various sides,” said Zohrab Ismailov of the
Public Association for Assistance to Free Economy campaign group,
claiming that the authorities sometimes cut off gas, electricity and
water to intimidate people into leaving.

The Baku mayor’s press office said it could not comment on the issue,
but officials have said that the compensation offered is fair.

Baku erupted into an all-night street party after singers Ell and
Nikki won Eurovision in Duesseldorf in May 2011, giving Azerbaijan
the right to host the contest this year.

Oil money has fueled construction boom

Often cringe-worthy but always watchable, Eurovision is a cherished
institution, with 43 nations — including some from outside Europe —
competing, then whittled down to 20 for the grand televised final.

The administration led by strongman President Ilham Aliyev sees
Eurovision 2012 as a chance to boost the international profile of a
country until now mainly known as an energy exporter on the fringe
of Europe that went through war and political turmoil after the
Soviet collapse.

“This event will positively affect Azerbaijan’s overall image,”
Culture and Tourism Minister Abulfas Garayev told local media.

The authorities have rejected allegations of property rights abuses
and official intimidation, saying that the redevelopment of National
Flag Square is not connected to Eurovision but part of a citywide
urban renewal scheme.

“Reconstruction works in Baku, and particularly in this area, are
related to the upgrade of Baku’s infrastructure, roads and other
transportation projects,” Ali Hasanov, a senior official at the
presidential administration, told journalists.

“Certain groups are intentionally politicising unrelated issues and
trying to link them to the Eurovision song contest,” he said.

Flush with oil money, Baku has undergone a construction boom in recent
years, with hundreds of new buildings transforming the skyline of the
capital, while the once shabby downtown area has been turned into a
upmarket shopping haven.

Campaigners estimate that thousands may have lost homes during the
gentrification drive which also led to the controversial demolition
last year of the offices of local rights advocates who were campaigning
on behalf of those evicted.

“Since 2008, the Azerbaijani government has undertaken a sweeping
campaign of urban renewal which has involved illegally expropriating
apartments, forcibly evicting people — sometimes without any warning
— and demolishing their homes,” said Giorgi Gogia, a researcher for
Human Rights Watch.

Campaigners hope that while Eurovision increases interest in
Azerbaijan, it will also focus attention on alleged violations of
democratic rights and freedom of expression.

“Azerbaijan is determined to boost its international image by holding
mega events like Eurovision, but what it doesn’t understand is that
this will put the government’s human rights record under a glaring
spotlight,” Gogia said.

A bloody local conflict could also be spotlighted because Azerbaijan’s
bitter enemy Armenia has agreed to compete in Baku after the
authorities promised to ensure participants’ safety.

Anger still simmers over the Armenian seizure of the disputed Nagorny
Karabakh region during a war in the 1990s.

FRENCH LAWMAKERS SEEK REJECTION OF GENOCIDE LAW
By John Irish and Pinar Aydinli

Reuters

Jan 31 2012

PARIS/ANKARA (Reuters) – French lawmakers appealed to their country’s
highest court on Tuesday to overturn a law that makes it illegal to
deny that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a
century ago was genocide.

The move raises the possibility that the law, which sparked an angry
reaction in Turkey, will be dismissed as unconstitutional.

The legislation, which received final parliamentary approval on
January 23, prompted Ankara to cancel all economic, political and
military meetings with Paris.

More than 130 French lawmakers from both houses of parliament and
across the political divide, who had originally voted against the bill,
appealed to the Constitutional Council.

The court has one month to make its decision.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who branded the legislation
“discriminatory and racist,” thanked the lawmakers who opposed it.

“On behalf of my country, I am declaring our heartfelt gratitude to
the senators and deputies who gave their signatures,” he said. “I
believe they have done what needed to be done.”

The lawmakers argued in their appeal that the event was still the
subject of historical contention, and therefore the legislation
infringed on the freedoms of historians, analysts and others to debate
it, ultimately violating the right to free speech.

They insisted their move did not aim to deny “the suffering of our
compatriots of Armenian origin and of all Armenians across the world.”

“PATIENCE”

Last week, Erdogan said Turkey was in a “period of patience” as it
considered what measures to take.

As a member of NATO and the World Trade Organisation, Turkey may be
limited in its response by its international obligations. However,
newspapers have listed possible measures that Ankara might take
against France.

These included recalling its ambassador in Paris and expelling the
French ambassador in Ankara, thus reducing diplomatic ties to charge
d’affaires level, and closing Turkish airspace and waters to French
military aircraft and vessels.

President Nicolas Sarkozy must still ratify the law, a move now on
hold pending the court’s decision.

Mostly Muslim Turkey accuses Sarkozy of trying to win the votes of
500,000 ethnic Armenians in France in the two-round presidential vote
on April 22 and May 6. France’s Socialist Party, which has a majority
in the upper house, and Sarkozy’s UMP party, which put forward the
bill, supported the legislation.

Armenia, backed by many historians and parliaments, says about 1.5
million Christian Armenians were killed in what is now eastern Turkey
during World War One in a deliberate policy of genocide ordered by
the Ottoman government.

The Ottoman empire was dissolved after the end of the war, but
successive Turkish governments and the vast majority of Turks feel the
charge of genocide is a direct insult to their nation. Ankara argues
there was heavy loss of life on both sides during fighting in the area.

“French companies in Turkey … wanted the Constitutional Council to
be involved because it’s the best solution to calm the Turks,” said
Dorothee Schmid, head of the Turkish program at the French Foreign
Relations Institute in Paris.

“The Turkish government accused the French government of being racist
and discriminatory, yet this matter stems from the inability of the
Turks to handle the genocide case. Now there is a discussion on it.”

France is Turkey’s fifth biggest export market and sixth biggest
supplier of imports of goods and services, and bilateral trade was
$13.5 billion in the first 10 months of last year.

(Reporting By John Irish and Pinar Aydinli in Ankara, Writing by John
Irish and Jonathon Burch; Editing by Alessandra Rizzo)

ECONOMY MINISTER MEETS EXECUTIVES OF FRENCH COMPANIES IN TURKEY.

IntelliNews
Jan 30 2012

Economy minister Zafer Caglayan had a meeting with the executives of
more than 30 French companies doing business in Turkey over a recent
French law which makes it a crime to deny the killing of Armenians
under Ottoman rule is genocide. There are around 400 French companies
in Turkey, employing roughly 100,000 people, according to data from
the French embassy in Ankara. Those French companies include Renault,
Peugeot, Lafarge, Carrefour, Danone, Axa, Groupama, BNP Paribas.

General manager of Renault-Mais, Ibrahim Aybar, said that he believed
politics would not affect French companies’ businesses in Turkey.

Turkey’s reaction to the French Senate’s passage of the bill was
harsh. Local media reported that the Turkish government considers
sanctions against France, such as banning French companies from public
tenders. Meanwhile president of Renault Carlos Ghosn said that economic
sanctions would hurt the company if implemented but he did not expect
such measures from the Turkish government.

NEWLY ELECTED PACE PRESIDENT AGAINST ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BILL

Vestnik Kavkaza
Jan 29 2012
Russia

The newly elected president of the CE Parliamentary Assembly,
Jean-Claude Mignon, stated he, as a French lawmaker, objects to the
approval of the Armenian Genocide bill, Tert.am reports.

It is not lawmakers business to write history. It is historians’
business, Mignon said as quoted by the Azerbaijan-based APA news
agency. France has admitted all its past mistakes, he said, wishing
Turkey to do the same.

ANALYSTS SAY TURKEY ON WRONG TRACK OVER ARMENIA GENOCIDE

Agence France Presse
January 27, 2012 Friday 11:50 AM GMT

Turkey’s attempts to intimidate France and other countries over the
question of the Armenian genocide are bound to backfire, analysts
said as the 100th anniversary of the bloodshed approaches.

“This negative and reactive strategy has failed, and no one is ready
to admit it,” said Cengiz Aktar of Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University.

“I hope that the authorities will think about it and come up with a
different tack by the time of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian
genocide that is coming up” in 2015, said Aktar, an international
relations professor, using the term Ankara condemns.

Hugh Pope of the International Crisis Group agreed, saying: “There
are many people in Turkey that are worried about how Turkey is going
to handle the situation in 2015.”

He said Ankara should “get on a path of reconciliation with the
Armenians so that they can be on the side of the people who are
going to be remembering the lost communities of Armenians” in the
anniversary year.

The French Senate on Monday approved legislation under which anyone
in France who denies that the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman
Turk forces amounted to genocide could face imprisonment.

On Tuesday, Paris brushed off angry threats of retaliation by Turkey
and said the bill would become law in two weeks.

Ankara has already halted political amd military cooperation and is
threatening to cut off economic and cultural ties. Bilateral trade
totalled some 11.7 billion euros ($15.4 billion) in 2010.

The French chamber of commerce in Turkey, which has some 400 members,
on Thursday expressed “great disappointment” over the bill, and called
on France’s constitutional council to nix it.

“Turkey is making more and more threats against France,” wrote
editorialist Semih Idiz in the Milliyet daily. “But in a few weeks the
issue will rear its head again in the US Congress. There are other
countries waiting in the wings. Will Turkey recall its ambassador
each time?” he asked. “It’s an absurd situation.”

Armenia and its diaspora in countries around the world have long
campaigned for international recognition of the killings as genocide,
despite strong denials from Turkey.

Armenians says that planned massacres and deportations left more than
1.5 million people dead, but Turkey puts the number at up to 500,000,
describing the bloodshed as civil strife stemming from the conflict
with Russia in World War I.

Around 20 countries have officially recognised the killings as
genocide.

The dispute is in addition to the conflict between Armenia and
Azerbaijan, an ally of Turkey, over the Nagorny-Karabakh enclave.

Ankara and Yerevan signed a historic protocol in 2009 to normalise
relations, but it was never ratified as Turkey demanded a resolution
to the Nagorny-Karabakh dispute .

Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized Nagorny-Karabakh from
Azerbaijan in a war in the 1990s that left some 30,000 people dead,
and the two sides have not signed a final peace deal since a 1994
ceasefire.

Turkey can no longer escape its duty of contrition for the genocide,
said Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University

“First and foremost it must express chagrin, and the Turkish state
has never done that,” the international relations professor wrote in
the daily HaberTurk.

EASIER TO PUNISH MUGGERS THAN MONSTERS

Winnipeg Free Press

Jan 28 2012
Canada

CLOSE to one million people died in the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s,
and this week, after a 17-year legal battle in Canada, Leon Mugesera,
who is accused of inciting that slaughter, was finally handed over to
Rwandan authorities for trial. Canadian authorities apparently believed
this alleged author of that tribal massacre might be mistreated in
Rwandan jail and so he lived comfortably in Montreal while his appeal
ran its seemingly endless course.

Had he been accused of robbing a convenience store in Kigali, Mr.
Mugesera might have been sent back years ago, but somehow the enormity
of the crime of genocide seems to be beyond our grasp unless it is
useful for political reasons. There are, for example, about 500,000
Armenians in France, many of them eligible to vote in next year’s
presidential election.

It may be then, as some French commentators are suggesting, that is
not just coincidence or a pure act of historical humanitarianism on
the part of President Nicholas Sarkozy’s government that France this
week made it a criminal act to publicly deny the killing of as many
as 1.5 million Armenians was an act of genocide.

The Armenian genocide, as Armenians, at least, refer to it, took
place in 1915, one of the last ugly death rattles of an Ottoman
Empire that would soon be transformed into the modern, secularist,
democratic Turkey that we know today, a staunch Western ally and a
prominent member of NATO.

Armenians say the killings were deliberate and systematic. The Turks
say otherwise. The Turkish government, in condemning France’s decision,
argues the killings were the result of the chaos that accompanies
the collapse of empire, that the deaths of hundreds of thousands
of Armenian Christians and Turkish Muslims were caused by communal
violence and disease.

In a sense, it hardly seems to matter anymore. The Armenian genocide
— Canada risked the wrath of Turkey by officially recognizing it as
such in 2004 — is just one of many in 100 years of slaughter that
marked the 20th century as the Age of Genocide.

What happened in Armenia, however, did set the pattern for what would
follow in Germany, in Ukraine, in Cambodia, in Rwanda and so many
other places. And just as most of the world refuses to acknowledge
the Armenian genocide — only about 20 nations recognize it for what
it was — the Canadian immigration system refused to acknowledge the
gravity of the crimes committed in Rwanda for 17 years as Mr. Musegera
enjoyed life in this country.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney now promises to reform the
immigration appeal system for people charged with serious crimes. Most
Canadians say it’s about time, although, curiously, Musegera still
has some supporters in this country, which perhaps goes to prove the
more monstrous the crime, the more difficult it is to comprehend. A
mugging we can understand, a massacre may elude us.

…by Tom Oleson Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print
edition January 28, 2012 J2