Author: Emil Lazarian

Turkey is ready to host the meeting of the Russian Federation and Ukraine in the Minsk format, Ankara is ready to provide support, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

“As for the negotiations in the Minsk format, we said that if we receive a request about whether we can host, we will gladly accept. Due to the fact that some parties have problems with Belarus. All sides of the format, when they decide, are ready to accept and provide any support. There will be no problems,” Cavusoglu said at a press conference.

Earlier, a source in the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that the Turkish side plans to organize negotiations on the Minsk agreements in Istanbul with the participation of “the same players as before: Russia, Ukraine, representatives from Donbass and the OSCE,” RIA Novosti reports.

 In marshy fields and mountain slopes, in hard-to-reach areas, in overgrown with bushes, littered with mines and unexploded ordnance, dozens of men and women have been searching for and raising the remains of fallen soldiers for more than a year, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) writes about the consequences of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

About 300 people are still missing as a result of the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2020. Since the ceasefire agreement was signed in November 2020, the remains of more than 1,700 people have been found and the process of identifying them and returning them to their families has begun.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, together with Russian peacekeepers, has conducted about 360 searches for human remains, supporting local rescue teams in their work.

“Nothing can bring their loved ones back but giving these hundreds of families a chance to know what happened is incredibly important. Conditions are always extremely dangerous because the terrain is littered with mines and unexploded ordnances, and on top of that, in winter visibility drops to almost zero,” said Christopher Poole, who leads ICRC’s regional specialists in landmines, explosive remnants of war, stockpiles and small arms.

“In order to retrieve these remains, recovery teams must face mortal danger. It is not just about treating the dead with dignity, but also doing it safely. Our teams support local specialists as they do this,” Poole said.

Restoration work is often put on hold for a variety of reasons, including winter conditions. These operations are part of the ICRC’s longstanding work as a neutral intermediary in the region since 1992.

The ICRC’s forensic experts also assist mortuaries in the region by providing cold storage, equipment and advice to groups undertaking the difficult task of identification.

“Retrieving human remains, identifying the victims and returning them to their families is complex and takes time. There is always a lot of pressure on forensic practitioners from authorities and families to work as quickly as possible, but there is no margin for error,” said Jane Taylor, ICRC’s regional forensics manager for Europe and Central Asia.

In addition to the hundreds of people missing in the November 2020 escalation, more than 4,500 people went missing as a result of the 1990s conflict.

“People going missing and families not knowing what happened to them is one of the most agonizing and often overlooked scars left by conflict. Thousands of families across Europe today are living with this pain. Besides those affected by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, there are hundreds of people missing in Ukraine after almost eight years of conflict, for example, and more than 10,000 people missing in the Balkans,” said Martin Schüepp, ICRC’s regional director for Europe and Central Asia.

Minorities and refugees in Turkey continued to suffer from rights violations, hate speech, and attacks throughout last year, according to the 2021 report of the Stockholm Center for Freedom—which is an advocacy organization.

As per this report, Armenian cultural heritage in Turkey faced destruction in the year past.

Accordingly, an “Armenian church dating to 1603 in the western province of Kütahya that was on the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s preservation list was demolished in January after it was acquired by a private party.” 

As per this report, in March “an old Armenian cemetery was destroyed during construction in Ankara’s Ulus district as part of gentrification project, and human remains were found at the site.”

Also, an “old Armenian cemetery in Turkey’s eastern province of Van was destroyed by bulldozers in August and bones were scattered across the field, sparking outrage among the Armenian community and opposition politicians.”

In addition, an “Armenian Protestant church in Diyarbakır province was leased to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for a period of 10 years to serve as a public library.”

Furthermore, the “Surp Yerrortutyun (Holy Trinity) Armenian church in central Turkey’s Akşehir district will serve as the ‘World’s Masters of Humor Art House’ as part of a project to found a ‘humor village’ in the hometown of famous 13th century Turkish satirist Nasreddin Hoca.”

And, separately, a “far-right independent member of the Turkish Parliament threatened Turkish-Armenian lawmaker Garo Paylan with facing the same fate as his ancestors amid debates over the recognition of the mass killings of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire as genocide by the US administration.”