Author: Boshkezenian Garik

WILL THE VECTOR OF RUSSIAN-GEORGIAN RELATIONS CHANGE?

Eurasian Home Analytical Resource
Jan 24 2008
Russia

Sergei Markedonov, Head of the International Relations Department of
the Institute for Policy and Military Analysis, Moscow

It is unlikely that after the election President Mikheil Saakashvili
has changed his position on Georgian-Russian relations. For the time
being, the statements about his wish to normalize those relations
cannot be taken seriously. Rhetoric and emotions cannot lay the
groundwork for relations, so far we lack the groundwork.

Should I remind you how President Saakashvili behaved after the
elections in 2004? The situation was the same. Saakashvili proposed
that Georgia and Russian should be on friendly terms with each
other, thanked Russia for its sound and sober position on the "Rose
Revolution" and the situation in Adjara. Some Russian mass media held
Saakashvili up as an example of the fighter against corruption. One
could say that there was a kind of "honeymoon" in the relations
between the two countries.

But as we know, the "honeymoon" didn’t last long. The crisis in South
Ossetia occurred and tough statements about Abkhazia and South Ossetia
were made. So, all the statements about friendship should be backed by
actions. How can the Russian-Georgian relations improve in addressing
the issue of South Ossetia and Abkhazia? NATO question is also left
open, in particular, as the Georgian population, one can say, voted
for NATO membership at the referendum on January 5.

It should be understood that Saakashvili is a pragmatic policy-maker.

True, the Russians’ opinion about him is totally different, and they
are wrong. Should Russia make substantial concessions to Georgia
on the South Ossetian and Abkhazian issues, Saakashvili could even
become a pro-Russian politician. In the 1990s some Russian generals
took a more pro-Georgian stand that the local military did.

It is another matter that the Abkhazian and South Ossetian issues
will have repercussions for the whole Caucasus. Therefore Russia
cannot afford to make serious concessions. Russia may moderate its
position partially and act as an arbiter in the conflict settlements.

But it cannot change its position drastically.

So, in the sphere of frozen conflicts there is no ground for relations
improvement. But there is such a ground in other fields – economy,
transport, education, etc.

As regards the mitigation of Saakashvili’s rhetoric with respect to
the opposition, it comes quite logical. The presidential election
showed that the opposition is strong, that it is not a cluster
of fringe politicians. According to the official election returns,
Saakashvili took slightly more than 50 percent of the vote. He cannot
ignore such a strong opposition.

I would like to note the behavior of Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov who, after the election, met not only with the elected
President, but also with the opposition. Such political move is a
rare occurrence and a good example. I believe that we must behave
like this in all the new independent states, for example, in Armenia
where the presidential election will take place in February. Many
Russian policy-makers do not consider it necessary to get in touch
with the Armenian opposition. This is wrong because no matter whether
the leader of one or another state supports Russia or not, first and
foremost he takes his own interests into account. That is typical of
all the leaders of the post-Soviet states.

‘STATE AGAINST DEEP STATE’
By Lale Sariibrahimoglu

Today’s Zaman
Jan 24 2008
Turkey

This was the front-page headline of mainstream daily Sabah’s Jan. 23
issue, covering a recent roundup of 33 people from retired generals to
lawyers and journalists under an operation launched by the Ýstanbul
police against a far-right nationalist group accused of setting up
a gang to commit mainly political crimes.

This gang, allegedly calling itself "Ergenekon," was first discovered
several months ago when police raided a house filled with explosives
in Ýstanbul’s Umraniye district. At the time, several individuals
were taken to jail, including a retired captain, Muzaffer Tekin,
who allegedly has links to the murder of a Council of State judge in
Ankara in 2006.

The latest operation, the result of eight months of work, included the
detention of a retired general, a retired colonel and a journalist
as well as a lawyer who brought charges of "insulting Turkishness"
against novelist Orhan Pamuk, the 2007 winner of the Nobel Prize in
Literature in Ýstanbul and other regions following raids carried out
at the break of dawn. Some of those taken into custody are suspected
of involvement in the murder of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink and other violent attacks.

The suspects are accused of many individual crimes, but what they have
in common seems to be the links they have to clandestine gangs that
function similarly to Operation Gladio — a post-World War II NATO
operation structured as "stay-behind" paramilitary organizations,
with the official aim of countering a possible Soviet invasion
through sabotage and clandestine operations. In fact many analysts
believe such networks of groups in Turkey today, sometimes referred
to as the "deep state," are remnants of the Turkish leg of the actual
Gladio. (Today’s Zaman, Jan. 23, 2008).

Ret. Gen. Veli Kucuk, among those detained in the latest operation,
is an alleged founder of a clandestine unit in the Gendarmerie General
Command who is also implicated in the infamous Susurluk gang scandal.

As a matter of fact, the existence of gangs in Turkey, which have
recently mushroomed, has become public knowledge as a result of a
famous car accident that took place on Nov. 3, 1996 in the Susurluk
township of Turkey’s Balýkesir province.

This scandal has since then been known as "Susurluk" and is frequently
referred to indicate the state’s ongoing ineffectiveness in the fight
against gangs.

Susurluk in fact revealed state-mafia ties, and the then government
did admit to illegal ties between the state and the right-wing mafia.

The fatal traffic accident took place in Susurluk when a truck
collided with a Mercedes. The occupants of the Mercedes were found to
be the deputy of a political party and a security chief as well as a
criminal-turned-state employee (Abdullah Catlý) and his alleged lover,
a blonde former beauty queen. The only passenger to survive the crash
was Sedat Bucak, a Kurdish clan leader and a former politician.

According to an Ýstanbul court verdict dated April 11, 2002
concerning Susurluk, former official of Turkey’s National Intelligence
Organization (MÝT) and former officer of the Turkish Armed Forces’
(TSK) Special Operations Korkut Eken and former deputy head of the
Police Special Operations Bureau Ýbrahim Þahin were sentenced to
six years in prison each for leading a criminal gang, and 12 other
suspects to four years each for being members of the gang.

The court verdict on Susurluk held that the government had hired
death squads to kill people seen as threats to national security while
quoting the suspects as saying that they believed they had been acting
in the name of the state. "The suspects’ defense did not bear out the
facts as reflected in their case files. For the Turkish Republic to
entrust domestic and external security to murderers, drug smugglers
and the owners of gambling joints is unforgivable and unacceptable
behavior," stressed the same verdict.

But the court’s verdict did not satisfy the public at the time over
whether the Turkish state was determined to fight against the mafia.

This suspicion has been backed by revelations made at the time by seven
former senior generals including a former chief of general staff in
support of Korkut Eken, who was put in jail before being released.

The common thread in all of these gangs from Susurluk to Atabeyler and
Ergenekon are that they have an ultranationalist agenda, sometimes
forming alliances with extreme leftists called the "Kýzýlelma
Coalition" (Red Apple coalition) and sometimes with extreme
fundamentalists to undermine the state.

The current Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government has
also been criticized for not taking strong action against the acts
of organized crime posing the most serious threat to Turkey’s security.

However, the latest massive operations against the Umraniye group
have given some hope to the Turkish public that the current political
leadership may this time be resolved to dig as deep as possible to
bring to the surface the masterminds of organized crime.

The fact that the majority of Turkish papers carried the latest
operations on their front pages, some of which urged the political
leadership to take swift and determined action against the gangs while
some Sabah daily branded the latest gang a "terror organization" with
the headline "State against deep state," should further encourage
decision makers to dig as deep as possible to bring to the surface
and finally to justice the key players seeking to undermine the
state hierarchy.

–Boundary_(ID_qN1ilsBIqLbbBg4YyIZEpQ) —

GENDARMERIE KNEW ABOUT DINK MURDER PLOT, WITNESS TESTIFIES

Today’s Zaman
Jan 23 2008
Turkey

A witness has testified that at least two members of the gendarmerie
force in Trabzon had been clearly warned beforehand of the killing
of Hrant Dink last year.

The trial of two gendarmerie officers on charges of dereliction
of duty by failing to undertake necessary measures to prevent the
murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Dink started in a Trabzon court
on Monday. Gendarmerie intelligence officers Sgt. Maj. Okan Þ. and Spc.

Sgt. Veysel Þahin are being accused of failing to act within the scope
of their powers to prevent the murder of Dink, even though they had
solid intelligence on the plot to assassinate the journalist months
before the incident.

Dink was shot by an extremist teenager on Jan. 19, 2007, outside the
Agos weekly building, where he was the editor-in-chief, in Ýstanbul’s
Beyoðlu district. The ensuing investigation revealed that some of
the suspects who were later found to be the masterminds of the murder
had links to police officers.

The first witness to testify in yesterday’s trial was Coþkun Ýðci,
the ex-husband of the aunt of Yasin Hayal, a prime suspect in the
Dink murder investigation. Ýðci testified that he had notified the
two gendarmerie officers at least two-and-a-half months ahead of the
murder of his nephew’s plans to shoot Dink.

The witness said Hayal, who is currently in prison pending trial in
the Dink murder, had told him openly about his plans for the murder.

Ýðci stated that he informed the two gendarmerie officers of the
plans to kill Dink about two-and-a-half to three months prior to the
murder. He testified that Hayal and his friends told him about an
earlier visit near Dink’s house and the environs of the Agos weekly
in Ýstanbul, which he relayed to the two gendarmerie officers now
being tried. He said the two officers warned him not to talk to anyone
about what he knew shortly after the assassination.

"When I heard from Yasin Hayal that Hrant Dink was going to be
killed I conveyed the information to friends in the gendarmerie
about two-and-a-half to three months before the murder. I knew that
both of the suspects were with the Trabzon gendarmerie intelligence
unit. I did not see them for a while after tipping them off. The day
after the murder, these two friends came to see me and they said they
would like to talk to me. We met in Deðirmendere. They asked me not
to mention that I knew about the plot and that I had told them of the
murder plans. We met again one day after that. They repeated the same
things from the day before and demanded that I not talk to anyone
about the incident and not share any information," Ýðci testified.

Ýðci said he had known both of the gendarmerie officers being tried
since 2004. He noted that he had known Þahin as "Engin abi" and
did not know the name of Okan Þ., referring to him only as "abi,"
a Turkish word meaning older brother. Investigators of the Dink
murder have also found that the group of ultranationalist youths who
plotted the murder was organized in a similar hierarchy of "abi" and
"buyuk abi," or brothers and big brothers.

‘He spoke to me of the murder plan very clearly’

Ýðci testified about Hayal, stating: "He came to me and said, ‘In
Ýstanbul there is a journalist of Armenian origin. He runs a weekly
newspaper called Agos. He writes articles in this newspaper and on
the Internet that are insulting. We will kill this one.’ And I asked:
‘How are you going to kill him? Do you have money or guns?’ Then he
told me they were going to travel to Ýstanbul and kill him and that
they had made a blueprint of the area of his home and office. He also
said he was not alone in this, but he did not tell me who these other
people were."

The witness said Hayal had YTL 300 and offered him the money to find
him a gun.

"And I told these two friends on trial about this gun issue. The
gendarmerie officers asked me to take Hayal’s YTL 300. The money was
in 50 lira bills. I had written down the serial numbers of the bills.

Later I asked the suspects what I should do with the money. They
asked me to keep the money for a while. Yasin Hayal was calling me
continuously asking me what I did with the money and if I had gotten
him the gun yet. The officers were asking me to engage with him some
more. Finally Yasin said: ‘You took my money and spent it. Give me
my money back or give me the gun.’ So I explained the situation to
the suspects here. They asked me to give the money back and so I did."

In response to a question on whether he had contacted any public
officials other than the two suspects, the witness said he had not.

Lawyers demand merging of case files

Meanwhile, Ergin Cinmen, an attorney for the co-plaintiffs, requested
that the court rule the case outside its jurisdiction under Article
83 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), which defines dereliction of duty
by public officials as failing to take necessary measures despite
having knowledge of what is being planned. He argued this was not a
simple dereliction of duty case but a major offense.

Cinmen said the offense falls under the jurisdiction of a higher
criminal court and that it is outside the jurisdiction of the Trabzon
2nd Peace Criminal Court. He requested that the case be merged with
the murder trial of Dink in Ýstanbul because the Dink murder is an
"equation with too many unknown variables."

–Boundary_(ID_nu80/Lf8pKczW1HZg FNbtw)–

PRESS CONFERENCE AT THE NKR PRESIDENT

Azat Artsakh Tert
Jan 22 2008
Nagorno Karabakh Rep.

On January 21st a press conference took place at the NKR President,
devoted to the situation created in the capital because of the frosts.

During the conference the leaders of interested bodies reported the
President about the process of realizing works. Bako Sahakian assigned
to improve watersupply of Stepanakert in the shortest possible time.

The problems arisen before the system of water economy of the capital
were also discussed, particularly a necessity of building of a new
watersupply net was noted.

The NKR Prime Minister and other officials participated in the
conference. (Central administration of information of the NKR
President’s Stuff reported).

TELEBRIDGE SHUSHI-YEREVAN-MOSCOW-BETHLEHEM: RESULTS ARE TANGIBLE

KarabakhOpen
22-01-2008 15:50:57

The telebridge Shushi-Yerevan-Moscow-Bethlehem organized by Shushi
Rebirth Foundation did not become one of the discredited Armenian
telethons. At least because the aim of donations was Shushi. The
telebridge raised 5 million 800 thousand dollars.

15 years ago Shushi was liberated but everything in the town still
reminds of the military actions and pogroms. The new governor of the
region Vardan Gabrielyan confessed in an interview with the Azat
Artsakh that in the past 15 years there was more destruction than
construction in Shushi.

The governor of the region said if a military unit were stationed
in Shushi, it would foster the development of infrastructures in the
town. This year the NKR Defense Army is going to build two blocks of
60 apartments in Shushi. Vardan Gabrielyan said in 2008 the government
will allocate 450 million drams (1.5 million dollars) for construction.

The aim of this telebridge was to raise money for the reconstruction
of the water supply system in Shushi. In winter water freezes in pipes,
and in summer there is very little water.

TURKISH MINISTER URGES PROBE INTO POLICE ROLE IN DINK’S MURDER

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Jan 21 2008

Turkey’s justice minister has called for a "serious" probe into claims
that security forces were involved in the murder last year of ethnic
Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

"Certain members of the security forces are said to be linked to
this murder," Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said in an interview
published Monday in the daily Sabah. "Every allegation must be
considered a tip-off and seriously investigated," he said.

Thousands marked the first anniversary of Dink’s assassination on
Saturday with protestors accusing the authorities of ignoring the
alleged protection the suspected gunman and his associates received
from the police.

"If what they (the police) did was a crime, they must be definitely
punished," the minister said.

Dink’s murder prompted fresh calls for the elimination of the "deep
state" — a term used to describe security forces acting outside the
law to preserve what they consider Turkey’s best interests. Lawyers
for Dink’s family say the police withheld and destroyed evidence to
cover up the murder, including footage from a bank security camera in
downtown Istanbul near where Dink was gunned down on January 19, 2007.

The charge sheet says police received intelligence as early as 2006
of a plot to kill Dink organized in the northern city of Trabzon,
home of self-confessed gunman Ogun Samast, 17, and most of his 18
alleged accomplices currently on trial. A taped telephone conversation
between a policeman and a suspect shortly after the killing suggests
the officer knew of the plot in advance. The tape, leaked to the
media last year, includes degrading comments about Dink.

Dink, 52, campaigned for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians,
but nationalists hated him for insisting the World War I massacres
of Armenians under Ottoman rule was an act of genocide — a label
Ankara fiercely rejects. Only four members of the security forces
have been indicted in connection with the murder, but face minor
charges unrelated to the killing itself.

Sahin also said a draft proposal to amend the controversial
Article 301 of the Turkish penal code under which Dink was given
a suspended six-month jail sentence for "denigrating Turkishness"
would be submitted to parliament in the coming days. The law has
been criticized as a threat to freedom of speech in Turkey, which is
engaged in membership talks with the European Union.

Police said that around 8,000 people had gathered Saturday outside
the central Istanbul offices of the bilingual Turkish Armenian weekly
set up by Dink in 1996. With black and red banners carrying messages
such as "We are all Armenians", those present included members of
his family, personal friends, journalists, human rights campaigners
and also ordinary members of the public.

"I am here because we have lost one of Turkey’s most beautiful souls,"
said 47-year-old shopkeeper Mehmet Calik. "He was killed because he
was Armenian but also because he spoke the language of truth. We are
here to carry on his struggle."

Turkish newspapers on Saturday were unanimous in calling for the
authorities to "shed all possible light" on the assassination. "A year
after his death, scandals and dozens of questions remain unanswered,"
the daily Milliyet said on its front page, noting that "justice hasn’t
moved forward an inch" in shedding light on the affair.

Agence France Presse
Jan 19 2008

Mia Farrow arrives in Cambodia for banned Darfur protest

PHNOM PENH (AFP) – Actress Mia Farrow has arrived in Cambodia and
plans to defy a ban on holding a ceremony at a former Khmer Rouge
prison, as part of her campaign on Darfur, activists said Saturday.

She arrived in Cambodia with other members of her group on Friday,
said Theary Seng, head of the Centre for Social Development, a
Cambodian advocacy agency helping to organise the ceremony.

Farrow and her group, Dream for Darfur, plan to hold the ceremony on
Sunday outside the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, which is now a
genocide museum, despite the government ban, she said.

"Mia Farrow is now in Cambodia and the rally at Tuol Sleng still
stands," said Theary Seng.

"We strongly urge all political parties to join the ceremony," she
added.

The campaign aims to push China to pressure Sudan into ending the
violence in Darfur, where the United Nations estimates that at least
200,000 people have died in five years of war, famine and disease.

But the government’s chief spokesman, Khieu Kanharith, on Friday
threatened to expel the activists and condemned the event as
"insulting" to victims of the Khmer Rouge regime which devastated
Cambodia during the late 1970s.

"We will not allow this. If this foreign group still insists on doing
this ceremony, we will cancel their visas and expel them from
Cambodia," he said.

Farrow’s group has organised an Olympic-style torch relay through
countries that have suffered genocide to draw attention to China’s
close ties with Sudan, as Beijing prepares to host the Games in
August.

China was also the closest ally of the communist Khmer Rouge, under
whose rule up to two million Cambodians died of starvation, disease
or execution.

Cambodia would be the sixth stop for the group’s relay, which began
in Chad near the Sudanese border and continued to Rwanda, Armenia,
Germany and Bosnia.

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 18 2008

Turkey finds most coverage in Greek Cypriot media in 2007

Greek Cyprus ranked first among countries that published or broadcast
the largest number of news items, commentaries and television
programs about Turkey over the past year, a report released by the
Turkish Directorate General of Press and Information showed on
Thursday.

Reviewing a total of 772,843 news pieces, commentaries and television
programs through press consultancies abroad, foreign news agencies
and foreign radio and television programs as well as Web sites, the
directorate discovered that 27,662 of them were news items directly
related to Turkey. In the distribution of these news items among
world countries, Greek Cyprus represented a 22 percent share, ranking
first. According to the report, the Greek Cypriot media mostly
covered debates about the divided island and Ankara’s evaluations of
Cyprus. Ankara does not officially recognize Greek Cyprus over a
conflict on the status of northern Cyprus.
Greek Cyprus was followed by a group of three with 14 percent that
included the Turkic republics, Gulf countries and Armenia, which were
followed by Germany with 12 percent. Iran ranked fourth, the US
ranked fifth, Greece ranked sixth, the UK ranked seventh and France
ranked eighth among the list of counties that covered the most news
items connected to Turkey.

According to the report the controversial presidential election
process, general elections and then Abdullah Gül’s election as
president, the Turkish political situation in general and relations
with the Iraqi and northern Iraqi administrations in the wake of
stepped-up outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) violence were the
main issues that drew intense interest from foreign media. In
addition, issues such as relations with the EU, the passage by a US
House committee of an Armenian resolution that recognizes the killing
of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 as
"genocide," and developments relating to Cyprus were also among the
subjects that found extensive coverage in foreign media.

18.01.2008

SERVET YANATMA ANKARA

EXIT POLL WON’T BE CONDUCED DURING ARMENIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

PanARMENIAN.Net
18.01.2008 18:53 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ After intensive and detailed discussions with
interested parties regarding a proposal to conduc exit polling in
Armenia during the 2008 presidential elections, the International
Republican Institute (IRI) and Baltic Surveys Ltd/Gallup Organization
were unable to resolve all of the detailed procedural questions in
a way that was fully satisfactory to all sides. Consequently, the
U.S. Embassy and USAID have decided to cancel the project.

Armenia will hold the presidential election on February 19. The CEC
has registered 9 contenders.

PERSONALITY PROTECTED BY LAW TO BE IN FOCUS OF ATTENTION OF VAZGEN MANUKIAN’S PREELECTION CAMPAIGN

Noyan Tapan
Jan 16 2007

YEREVAN, JANUARY 16, NOYAN TAPAN. The main slogan of the preelection
campaign of Vazgen Manukian, the Chairman of the National Democratic
Union, will be a slogan regarding not so much state and political
problems, but rather ensuring freedom of personality protected by the
law. Vazgen Manukian said this to NT correspondent mentioning that the
subject of a person confidently looking at the future will be voiced
in the slogan of his preelection campaign. "Today a person in Armenia
experiences something like he experienced in the years of the USSR,
when roads were built, various objects were launched, but a person
felt himself only some small screw of all that. I think construction
of a strong state is conected with the circumstance of who solves
these problems, as they are solved if a person feels himself a free
citizen," V. Manukian said.

As regards the issue of what subjects will be the central ones in his
forthcoming preelection campaign, V. Manukian said that the subject
of Nagorno Karabakh settlement, development of regional cooperation,
including normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations, and other
issues will be primary. In V. Manukian’s words, issues concerning
socio-economic bloc will be very important. As he classed, a feudal
system works in the country today and in spite of the development
of some branches, the most part of the income goes to feudals or
oligarches, which are under authorities’ control.

It should be mentioned that Vazgen Manukian’s candidature was nominated
for the presidential elections at a regular congress of the National
Democratic Union in late November 2007.