Author: Kalantarian Kevo

ERDOGAN REAFFIRMS TURKEY’S PEACE EFFORTS WITH ARMENIA OVER 1915 EVENTS

Anadolu Agency, Turkey
Feb 11 2015

by Hatice Kesgin and Izabela Kuczynska

BOGOTA, Colombia (AA) -Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called
on Armenia to examine the 1915 events through the lens of science
and not politics.

“Let us remove the 1915 events from the area of politics and refer to
science and scientists,” Erdogan said during a symposium on the topic,
co-organized by the Bogota Externado University and Ankara University.

Erdogan attended the event as part of his official visit to Colombia
Tuesday and said that what the Armenians did against the Turks
and what the Turks did against the Armenians 100 years ago was not
properly discussed.

“We have made an effort to fix relations with Armenia and to open
a new page,” the Turkish president said. “Unfortunately, our peace
hand has always been rejected by the influence of Armenian diaspora.”

“This year is the 100th anniversary. We are still reiterating our
sincere call,” Erdogan added.

In January, the Turkish president sent invitation letters to more
than 100 leaders, including Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan,
to participate in the commemoration of the Battle of Canakkale on
April 24.

Sargsyan reportedly denounced Erdogan’s invitation as a “short-sighted”
attempt to overshadow the 100th anniversary of the 1915 events,
according to ArmeniaNow.com.

The 1915 events took place during World War I when a portion of the
Armenian population living in the Ottoman Empire sided with the
invading Russians and revolted against the empire. The uprisings
came about after a decision by the empire to relocate Armenians in
eastern Anatolia.

Armenia and Armenian diaspora term the events as “genocide” and ask
for compensation, whereas Turkey officially refutes this description,
saying that although Armenians died during relocations, many Turks also
lost their lives in attacks carried out by Armenian gangs in Anatolia.

“We will not give up in our efforts for peace and dialogue with
respect to the 1915 events,” Erdogan said.

At the end of his speech, Erdogan said he is thankful to the Ankara
University Research and Application Centre for Latin American Studies
(LAMER), an academic centre that was established in 2009.

-Turkey’s “very clear” stance on Israel

Erdogan said that Turkey’s stance on Israel was very clear.

“Israel should draw back to its 1967 borders, while a Palestinian
state with East Jerusalem as its capital should be established and
sovereign rights of the Palestinians should be respected,” he said.

Turkey’s president added that Turkey has objected many times to
Israel’s expansion policy and severe massacres.

“Turkey has paid a heavy price for terrorism in the country and
is certainly and clearly against all forms of terror and terrorist
organizations,” Erdogan said, adding that Turkey had no intention of
interfering in a country’s borders, territory or home affairs.

COUNTERING PUTIN’S GRAND STRATEGY

Wall Street Journal, NY
Feb 12 2015

With Europe weak and distracted, only the U.S. can thwart the Kremlin’s
growing ambitions.

By Robert D. Kaplan Feb. 11, 2015 7:20 p.m. ET

The heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine this week isn’t the only reason
to be skeptical about the prospects for the peace summit that began
Wednesday in Minsk, Belarus. Even if the meeting among Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Puti n, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande
produces a cease-fire agreement that holds up–unlike the one signed
last fall–the conflict’s underlying reality will remain unchanged:
The Russian-backed separatist revolt in eastern Ukraine is part of
Moscow’s larger grand strategy.

President Putin, who is consumed by historical humiliations, knows that
Russia was invaded not only by Napoleon and Hitler, but before that
also by the Swedes, Poles and Lithuanians. And so the Russian president
seeks a post-Warsaw Pact buffer zone in Central and Eastern Europe. The
Kremlin play book: imperialism by way of forcing energy dependence,
intelligence operations, criminal rackets, buying infrastructure and
media through third parties, the bribing of local politicians and
playing off the insecurities of ethnic minorities.

Mr. Putin may be an autocrat, but he finds weak democracies convenient
to his purpose. Their frail institutional and rule-of-law regimes make
his favored forms of subversion easier. Thus, Moldova, Bulgaria and
Serbia are particularly at risk while Romania, a member of the European
Union since 2007 and far more stable than Bulgaria, is less so.

Advertisement

Mr. Putin has a North European Plain strategy in the Baltic states and
Poland, which emphasizes dependence on natural gas and the manipulation
of Russian minorities in the Baltic states. He also has a Black Sea
strategy, as seen in his annexation of Crimea last year, his desire
for a land bridge between Crimea and separatist eastern Ukraine,
his military pressure on Georgia, and his friendship with Turkey’s
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan–it all advances Russian influence in
the adjacent Balkans, thus inside Europe.

Western sanctions against Russia and the weakening of the Russian
currency (because of the fall in oil prices) may constrain Mr. Putin
a bit, but Russian history reveals a strong tendency for hardship
at home and adventurism abroad. Dialing up nationalism amid economic
turmoil is the default option for autocrats.

Matching Russia’s multifaceted imperialism requires a multifaceted
U.S. counterstrategy: the coordinated use of sufficient military aid,
intelligence operations, electronic surveillance, economic sanctions,
information and cyberwarfare, and legal steps. The Obama administration
is already pursuing in part such a strategy, but without the intensity
and commitment necessary for success. This isn’t about going to war,
but about making Russia respect limits.

The Obama administration should intensify economic sanctions that
further squeeze Russia’s ability to do business with U.S. banks; help
allies build liquefied natural-gas terminals to reduce dependence
on Russian energy; offer more tools to allies to help them defend
against Russian cyberattacks; and launch a full-bore effort to get
Ukraine to strengthen its military and other institutions–call it
nation-building lite.

Other measures might include inviting recently elected Romanian
President Klaus Iohannis and other deserving Central and Eastern
European leaders on state visits to Washington, an increased tempo of
bilateral military exercises with allies bordering Russia, and offering
our friends more intelligence against Russian criminal organizations.

Above all, U.S. policy makers should understand that NATO’s Article
5–specifying that an armed attack against one member state will be
considered an attack on all members–doesn’t protect members against
Russian subversion from within. Thus supporting Ukraine militarily
means first getting the Kiev government and its fighting forces to
modernize by, among other things, embedding experts from NATO and
other organizations inside Ukrainian ministries and army units. Only
then will the Ukrainian military be able to absorb the extra arms
its allies should want to give it. This is the narrative Washington
needs to create. Ukraine’s best defense against Russia is to become
more of a viable Westernized state itself.

But there is another problem: Europe. The EU bureaucracy doesn’t want
to absorb the troubles of Ukraine’s 45 million people with their
corrupt institutions, and neither do most NATO member states. The
European appetite for helping Ukraine has not measured up to Russia’s
appetite for destabilizing it. The problem cannot be decoupled from
Europe’s own inability, despite its recently launched version of
quantitative easing, to deal decisively with the EU’s flatlining
economy. The bitter European truth is that not enough individual
countries will sacrifice for each other. So why should they sacrifice
for Ukraine?

Thus the U.S., in addition to dealing with an assertive yet
economically crumbling Russia, must also cope with a spineless Europe.

To defeat Russia’s geopolitical ambitions, U.S. strategy should
concentrate on protecting and fortifying what the Polish general and
patriot of the interwar era, Jozef Pilsudsk i, called the Intermarium
(Latin for “between the seas,” between the Baltic and Black seas,
that is). Pilsudski envisioned a belt of independent states stretching
from Estonia south to Bulgaria that could withstand Russian aggression
from the east and German aggression from the west.

But because Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Germany is such a benign and
conflicted power, even as Mr. Putin seeks to expand influence into
the old Soviet Union, the Intermarium must now extend from the Baltics
to the Caucasus, where the Russian strongman, in addition to putting
military pressure on Georgia, has made Armenia a virtual satellite
hosting thousands of Russian troops.

This means oil-rich Azerbaijan, its sorry human-rights record
notwithstanding, is a pivot state, along with Poland in northeastern
Europe and Romania in southeastern Europe. The recent flare-up in
fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory
of Nagorno-Karabakh provides Russia even greater opportunities for
exerting influence, given that Moscow has armed both sides.

Meanwhile, Mr. Putin’s vision of an ever-enlarging separatist Ukraine
corresponds with what he has already achieved in Russian-occupied
Transnistria, a sliver of land virtually annexed from Moldova in the
early 1990s, where he has fashioned a murky smugglers’ paradise; 2,500
Russian troops are stationed there. Transnistria could be the future
of Ukraine if Mr. Obama doesn’t act. With Europe weak and distracted,
and Mr. Putin stoking nationalism in the midst of an economic crisis at
home, only the U.S. can be the organizing principle for strengthening
the Intermarium.

Mr. Kaplan, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security,
is the author of, among other books, “The Revenge of Geography: What
the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate”
(Random House, 2012).

TRAPPED IN BAKU

Foreign Policy
Feb 11 2015

A press freedom advocate — and husband of an American servicewoman —
went to the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan, fearing for his life. But he
was turned away.

by Michael Weiss

An Azerbaijani dissident married to a U.S. servicewoman has spent the
last half-year living in the Swiss embassy in Baku, denied protection
by the American embassy there. The 35-year-old human rights defender
Emin Huseynov has long been persecuted by the authoritarian government
of Ilham Aliyev and since August 2014 has been hosted by the Swiss
embassy for humanitarian reasons after he went into hiding last summer,
fearing his arrest was imminent.

The Swiss television show “Rundschau” broke the news today, and the
Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed Huseynov’s residence in
its embassy. The story of how he got there six-and-a-half months
ago resembles an international thriller redolent of Argo, though
conspicuously absent of U.S. involvement. It was relayed exclusively
to Foreign Policy by sources close to Huseynov in advance of today’s
announcement.

As chairman of the Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS),
a local NGO, Huseynov is one of many victims of an intense government
crackdown on free speech and civil society that has taken place
in Azerbaijan over the past year — a crackdown that has surprised
even hardened human rights monitors. In May 2014, Anar Mammadli, the
chairman of the highly regarded Election Monitoring and Democracy
Studies Center (EMDS), was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in
prison for spurious charges which included tax evasion and illegal
entrepreneurship; his real crime, according to human rights monitors,
was reporting on the Aliyev government’s election-rigging. Meanwhile,
the executive director of EMDS, Bashir Suleymanli, got three-and-a-half
years in jail. Then in July, Leyla Yunus, a noted democracy and peace
activist working on the reconciliation of the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis,
was arrested on a suite of similarly concocted charges that include
high treason and spying on behalf of Armenia; her husband, Arif Yunis,
was also taken into custody on treason and fraud allegations. Finally
in August, two Azerbaijani legal activists — Rasul Jafarov and
Intigam Aliyev — were rounded up.

That same month, fearing for his life, Huseynov went into hiding.

According to sources, his bank accounts were first frozen in June,
and yet Huseynov was still able to leave the country, which he did
to attend a session at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg where he and Jafarov put on an event
exposing Aliyev’s suffocation of civil society in Azerbaijan. After
Jafarov was detained, Huseynov sensed the net closing on him. In
early August, Huseynov attended an event at the U.S. embassy in Baku
where he eventually found himself alone with the Charge d’Affaires
Dereck Hogan. The American ambassador, Richard Morningstar, had
left Azerbaijan only a week earlier, leaving the embassy without a
diplomatic head. According to sources, Huseynov scribbled a note on a
piece of paper which he passed to Hogan: “What kind of assistance can
you provide me? I am in danger of arrest.” Hogan said he couldn’t help.

“[Huseynov] never had a bad relationship with Dereck,” said one source
who requested anonymity. “He never criticized the embassy and tried
to be diplomatic even when he criticized U.S. policy in Azerbaijan.”

Foreign Policy tried to contact Hogan at the embassy and was referred
instead to the State Department in Washington. No one responded to
inquiries by press time.

On August 6, Huseynov tried to leave the country to receive medical
treatment in Turkey, but was stopped by border control and turned
back. The day after that, August 8, colleagues from his office called
to inform him that the headquarters of IRFS was being surveilled by
state security, and warned Huseynov not to come to work. The office
was then raided, prompting rumors in the Azerbaijani press that
Huseynov had been arrested. He hadn’t. Instead, he went into hiding,
which only amplified speculation as to his whereabouts. Press reports
said he had fled to the U.S. embassy, which on August 12 put out
a statement denying that it was harboring him — a two-line denial
that many familiar with the case said read uncomfortably like a total
repudiation of an embattled dissident. But Washington wasn’t totally
unsympathetic to his predicament: the U.S. mission to the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued a blanket statement
on August 14 calling on Baku to “halt the continuing arrests of
peaceful activists, to stop freezing organizations’ and individuals’
bank accounts, and to release those who have been incarcerated
in connection with the exercise of their fundamental freedoms,”
mentioning the Yunuses, Jafarov, and Huseynov by name.

But the fact that Huseynov, while not a U.S. citizen himself, has
an American wife ought to have made his case more of a priority to
the State Department, according to human rights monitors and one
ex-diplomat.

A few European countries allegedly offered to take Huseynov in; he
opted for Switzerland, owing to its embassy’s proximity to his hideout.

“He totally changed his physical appearance, he dyed his hair, wore
a disguise,” one source relayed.

“He totally changed his physical appearance, he dyed his hair, wore
a disguise,” one source relayed. “Emin even did test runs: he’d go
out in disguise to see if people recognized him.”

On August 18, he made a play for the embassy grounds. A car driven
by an Azeri confidante, who evidently had to flee the country after
his identity was uncovered, dropped him off a few blocks away. The
authorities were aware that Huseynov was attempting refuge in a
foreign country and had begun staking out embassy entrances in Baku.

“Emin was walking to the embassy and realized there’s tons of
plainclothes cops,” said a source familiar with Huseynov’s story.

“They tried to talk to him. He spoke to them in broken English to
try and throw them off. They asked to see his passport. ‘No, no,’
he said, ‘the Swiss have my passport.’ They didn’t recognize him at
first. He rang the doorbell to the embassy, as the cops were still
interrogating him. Someone opened the door and pulled him inside. A
five-second hesitation and Emin swears he’d have been nabbed.”

Huseynov would spend the next several months living on Swiss soil in
his native country, flanked by a 24-hour police cordon of the embassy.

The Aliyev government has not publicly acknowledged his presence in
the Swiss embassy and, until today, the Swiss hadn’t either, although
they’ve been negotiating with the Aliyev government for Huseynov’s
safe passage out of Azerbaijan.

His case was known to a number of human rights monitors that Foreign
Policy contacted for comment, such as Giorgi Gogia, the South Caucasus
specialist at Human Rights Watch. “I know that the Swiss government
has been negotiating at the highest level possible with Azerbaijan,”
Gogia said. “And I know the Azerbaijan government has been against
letting Emin leave. It’s crazy that this is ongoing.”

Huseynov’s safe conduct out of the country is particularly critical
because the last time he was arrested — for attending a party
celebrating the birthday of Che Guevara — he was beaten by police so
badly he wound up in intensive care and had to be treated for head and
brain trauma. That was in 2008. Huseynov’s younger brother, Mehman,
a video blogger and photojournalist who also works for IRFS, was also
targeted by the police in 2012 for drawing attention to human rights
violations during the Eurovision Song Contest held in Baku that year.

In October 2014, Mehman was again arrested and brought to the
Investigation Department of the Prosecutor General for Serious Crimes.

He, too, has also been barred from leaving Azerbaijan.

According to Gogia, while Azerbaijan’s record on human rights has
always been dismal, conditions have grown infinitely worse recently.

“Three major things have happened that have never happened before.

First, the government arrested the towering figures of the NGO
movements. Second, since last January, it hasn’t registered a single
foreign grant. In the past, you had to register a grant at the
Ministry of Justice, but it was a pro forma procedure and no one was
refused. Third, the government went after and froze the bank accounts
of over 50 NGOs and their leaders, including [Huseynov]. Very suddenly,
from a very bad human rights record, it turned into a closed-country
human rights record. It was really hard and shocking to see how fast
the country was closing down. And the perverse irony is that all this
is taking place as Azerbaijan chairs the Council of Ministers at PACE.”

One former American diplomat questions the U.S. embassy’s hands-off
approach. “If the embassy knew that person was married to an American
citizen, that would require more than if this were just a normal
Azerbaijani citizen facing harassment or arrest by the police,”
said Richard Kauzlarich, who served as ambassador to Azerbaijan in
1994-1997. “There’s not much you can do for your average everyday
citizen of the country you’re embassy is in, but if it’s the spouse
of one our own, that changes things.”

Curiously, while Huseynov was running for his life, another urgent
human rights episode occurred, again ensnaring the U.S. embassy in
Baku — this one seemingly less complicated, however, as it concerned
someone with dual Azerbaijani-American citizenship.

Said Nuri, who became a U.S. citizen in 2012 after six years of
political asylum, was used to traveling back to Azerbaijan without
incident, albeit with a tail of police surveillance. “The government
followed me everywhere, took my pictures. Sitting in cafe or restaurant
— they put a camera on the next table taping us. Even my friends
published articles about that,” Nuri said. But then, last August, he
applied for a visa to visit his father, whom he had just discovered
had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. “I was in Ukraine at the
time, so I went to the Azerbaijani embassy in Kiev. It took three
weeks to get the visa. I went to Baku. I stayed seven days with my
family. Then, when I was trying to fly back to Kiev, the authorities
told me I couldn’t leave. ‘There’s a travel ban on you,’ the minister
of national security and general prosecutor office’s said.”

So Nuri went to the U.S. embassy. “They were confused. It took them
two hours to get back to me to confirm the travel ban. But they
didn’t give me much information. ‘It’s a domestic issue,’ I was
told. The next day, the general prosecutor released statement that
I need to be questioned regarding some criminal charges. I hired a
lawyer, went to the prosecutor’s office and was interrogated for six
hours. They asked me about affiliation with the U.S. government, if
I was CIA. They asked about my relationship to NGOs, journalists. How
did I get asylum and then citizenship? Why did I travel to Ukraine so
often? Why did I have pictures from the Maidan [the central square in
Kiev then roiled in revolution]? They were accusing me of espionage
and all these questions related to U.S. government and U.S.-funded
programs, the National Endowment for Democracy, and so on.”

Nuri’s lawyer informed him that the authorities planned to charge
him with spying on behalf of the United States. But the U.S. embassy,
Nuri insists, was useless.

Nuri’s lawyer informed him that the authorities planned to charge him
with spying on behalf of the United States. But the U.S. embassy,
Nuri insists, was useless. He obtained letters from then-Freedom
House President David Kramer and Sen. John McCain arguing his brief,
but the diplomatic response from an embassy official Nuri declined
to name was, roughly: “We understand you’re our citizen, but the
problem is you’re on foreign soil and this country is claiming you’re
also their citizen. It’s a sovereign country, so we can’t intervene
in their domestic policies.” The Aliyev government, meanwhile, was
trying to co-opt him, promising him a better life if he remained in
Azerbaijan and publicly repudiated his American citizenship. Where
gentle persuasion failed, the government resorted to other means:
“They taped me having sex with my girlfriend and tried to blackmail
me,” says Nuri. The whole ordeal then ended almost as spontaneously as
it had begun. After eight days of intense grilling and intimidation,
Nuri was deported and his Azerbaijani citizenship revoked. He now
lives in Chicago.

“Azerbaijan has shown they’re prepared to do unpleasant things to
American citizens and people associated with American organizations,
such as RFE/RL,” Ambassador Kauzlarich said, referring to the December
2014 imprisonment of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty contributor
Khadija Ismayilova, a pioneering anti-corruption journalist who
previously had her home bugged and, like Nuri, was surreptitiously
recorded having sex, the tape of which was leaked on the Internet.

According to Kauzlarich, the government has now all but declared Cold
War on the United States. “In my time, having an association with an
American didn’t buy you protection but there was a willingness not to
do certain things that would cause problems in the relationship. Now
I just don’t think they care.”

For dissidents, the worry is that the Obama administration doesn’t
seem particularly bothered by what’s happening in the oil-rich
authoritarianism on the Caspian, which, as I previously reported,
has spent the last half-decade expending enormous energy and money
lobbying the United States and Europe for political influence.

“I went to an event the other day here in Washington where State
Department officials announced that they’re going to pursue engagement
policy with the Aliyev government,” Alakbar Raufoglu, an opposition
journalist at the D.C.-based TURAN News Agency, told FP. “They didn’t
mention they’re going to highlight a crackdown on democratic activity.

They said they’ll support RFE/RL as much as they can but engagement
policy is number one right now.” For Raufoglu, the future of this
relationship can be seen in microcosm in a video released just
yesterday by the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan,
Robert Cekuta. “Look at what he said the U.S. priorities are: First is
regional security, second is economic growth, and third is democratic
development. Nothing has changed even as the regime has grown worse,”
said Raufoglu. “This is a chilling message that they’re leaving
us behind.”

As for Huseynov, now that his whereabouts are internationally known,
his fate remains uncertain. Living out of an embassy can be a long-time
affair. Just ask WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who obtained asylum
from Ecuador fearing extradition to Sweden to face questioning over
allegations of sexual assault.* He has not left the Ecuadorian embassy
in London for nearly three years. The Swiss mission in Baku is hardly
a sprawling palatial compound. “It’s a little tiny embassy,” a source
involved in his case said.

RUSSIA IS INCREASINGLY USING AGGRESSION TO GET ITS WAY

The Hill, DC
feb 12 2015

By Giorgi Meladze

When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, it looked for a while as
though Russia might use diplomacy as opposed to military might to
exercise its influence in the region.

First, Russia had its hands full transitioning to a market economy.

The 1990s witnessed the deterioration of the economy, the rise of
oligarchs who seized large chunks of the industrial base and the
rise of a mafia that was grabbing slices of the economy. Second, the
country’s military was left in a shambles after the Soviet fall. Key
problems were inadequate funding and the loss of military equipment
to former-Soviet states that had become independent.

ADVERTISEMENT There were ominous signs, however, that when Russia
thought the time was right, it might use force again to impose its
will on its neighbors. The clearest was perhaps the war in Chechnya,
a bloody battle waged on Russian territory that cost the lives of
tens of thousands of citizens.

Another was that it refused to pull its troops out of Moldova, where
the largely ethnic-Russian Transnistria region sought independence. It
similarly continued to keep troops in Armenia and Georgia, and played
a highly ambiguous role in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia
over Nagorno-Karabakh, which resulted in the rise of a separatist
government on that territory.

The Kremlin also succeeded in creating a frozen conflict in South
Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia — that is, a situation
in which the two areas have de-facto independence from Georgia.

Russia likes having these areas in limbo because it keeps Georgia
off-balance, making it harder for Tbilisi to achieve both domestic
and foreign-policy progress. One goal in particular that Moscow does
not want Georgia to achieve is its longtime dream of becoming part
of the European Union.

Although Russia defeated Georgia in the 2008 war, international
military experts say Russian forces were inept in the conflict,
winning only because they had superior numbers.

The embarrassing showing prompted the Kremlin to launch a major
overhaul of its military, including tens of billions of dollars in
equipment upgrades.

When Ukrainians who wanted their country to join the EU threw out the
pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych for rejecting an EU association
agreement, Russia’s military had rebounded to the point that the
Kremlin felt no compunction about using it to force its will on Kiev.

We all know what happened next.

Russia seized Crimea with special forces wearing no military markings.

Then it backed separatists in eastern Ukraine who wanted their
provinces to become independent. That support has included hundreds
of tons of military equipment and both irregular and regular Russian
forces. NATO has said Russia has 2,000 regular forces in the country
now.

Ukraine puts the figure at 9,000.

Russia has denied its troops are in Ukraine, but the hordes of body
bags returning to Russia for burial and the numerous Russian troops
captured in Ukraine have proved otherwise.

Russia’s objective in backing the separatists is to keep Ukraine so
unstable that Kiev surrenders its stated goals of joining the EU and
NATO, Russia experts say.

Meanwhile, other countries in the former Soviet Union with sizable
ethnic-Russian minorities or with regions that have been making noise
about independence are becoming increasingly nervous about Russia’s
inclination to use military force in the region.

Among them are the Baltic states — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia —
which have hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians. Their nervousness
comes despite the fact that they are NATO members. They fear the
kind of stealth tactics Russia used to seize Crimea and destabilize
eastern Ukraine.

Another country with reason to worry about Russian aggression is
Azerbaijan. It is afraid that Russia could capitalize on a separatist
movement in the Talysh region to send troops in, with the goal of
creating a frozen conflict there.

Those living in the Talysh region are not ethnic Russians. But given
Moscow’s proclivity to create conflicts to control its neighbors,
Azerbaijan is worried that Russia might support a Talysh separatist
movement. Some experts point to an article penned by Talysh leader
Fakhruddin Aboszoda, which was recently published by the Russian
news agency IAREX and claims that the region will soon become an
independent state, as evidence in this regard.

Many countries in the former Soviet region and in the West would
undoubtedly oppose such a development. A primary reason is that
Azerbaijan is a stable country in a strategically critical area
— at the crossroads of the Caucasus, Europe, the Middle East and
Central Asia. Another is that the oil- and gas-rich country has been
a staunchly reliable energy partner for Europe.

Russia has now used force — or the threat of force — to achieve
frozen conflicts in Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova and to impose its
will on Armenia, which recently dropped plans to join the EU in favor
of becoming a member of the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union.

Moscow may be attaining short-term foreign-policy gains by using
force. But this throwback to Soviet times will cost it in the long
run. Most of its neighbors want as little to do with it as possible.

And most of the West — and many other countries — are actively
opposing its aggression and trying to isolate the Kremlin.

It is going to take time for Moscow to admit that it is on the
wrong track.

The sooner it does, and stops using military aggression as an
instrument of foreign policy, the better off it — and the world —
will be.

Meladze is the director of the Ilia State University Center for
Constitutional Studies and the executive director of the Liberty
Institute, a libertarian think-tank in the nation of Georgia. He is
also the founder and editor of LobbyingAlert.com, a blog analyzing
lobbying issues.

SEVAN NISANYAN IS FACING IMPRISONMENT FOR ‘DENIGRATING RELIGIOUS VALUES’

5 February 2015

Sevan NiÃ…~_anyan is a controversial figure in Turkey for his harsh
critiques of Kemalism, Islam as well as his outspoken opposition to
the Turkish authorities’ refusal to acknowledge that there had been
an Armenian genocide.

Sevan NiÃ…~_anyan is a writer, linguist, hotelier and public
intellectual from Turkey’s Armenian minority, whose etymological
dictionaries, travel books and treatises on Turkish, Islamic and
Anatolian culture have been widely hailed for their importance to
contemporary Turkish cultural discourse. He is a controversial figure
in Turkey for his harsh critiques of Kemalism (the ideology of the
founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) and Islam as well
as his outspoken opposition to the Turkish authorities’ refusal to
acknowledge that there had been an Armenian genocide.

One of the biggest controversies in which NiÃ…~_anyan has been
involved relates to a blog post he made in September 2012. Writing
in his personal blog, NiÃ…~_anyan criticised the government’s call
to introduce a new ‘hate speech’ bill in response to the release
of the film The Innocence of Muslims. The film led to widespread
protests around the world as a result of its unflattering depiction
of the prophet Muhammad. Writing in defence of the right to freedom
of expression, NiÃ…~_anyan criticised the government’s attempts to
prohibit criticism of the historical Muhammad.

NiÃ…~_anyan’s blog post was deemed by the public prosecutor’s office
to constitute religious defamation and he was charged under Article
216/3 of the Turkish Penal Code. On 22 May 2013, an Istanbul court
found him guilty and he was sentenced to 15.5 months in prison. This
conviction and prison sentence remains under appeal.

PEN International notes that NiÃ…~_anyan faces further possible
imprisonment as punishment for offending Turkey’s conservative
elite and is gravely concerned that his conviction and sentence are
motivated by animosity for his legitimate expression as a public
intellectual. The organisation believes that NiÃ…~_anyan’s comments
fall well within the realm of legitimate historical and religious
criticism and that his conviction for religious defamation is a
violation of his right to freedom of expression as well as his right
to freedom of thought, conscience and religion/belief. Both these
rights are protected under Articles 18 and 19 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Articles 9 and 10
of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), to which Turkey
is a state party.

Article 216/3 functions as a blasphemy law by criminalising the public
‘denigration’ of religious values. This article has been criticised
for affording different levels of protection to different religions or
beliefs and for being applied in a discriminatory manner, particularly
towards unorthodox, non-religious or anti-religious beliefs. These
concerns have been highlighted in the cases of renowned concert
pianist and composer Fazil Say, and journalists Ceyda Karan and Hikmet
Cetinkaya. PEN reiterates the comment made in the Rabat Plan of Action
on the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious
hatred regarding blasphemy laws: ‘The right to freedom of religion
or belief, as enshrined in relevant international legal standards,
does not include the right to have a religion or a belief that is
free from criticism or ridicule’. PEN believes that the fundamental
human right to freedom of expression guarantees the right to express
critical views, even those that offend, shock or disturb. PEN calls
on the Turkish authorities to repeal Article 216/3 and drop all cases
against writers under this law for their legitimate expression.

The interview below was conducted with the help of Sait Cetinoglu,
who very kindly relayed PEN’s questions to NiÃ…~_anyan in Yenipazar
prison, where the Armenian-Turkish writer is currently serving a
two-year sentence as a result of a separate construction dispute with
the Turkish authorities.

A case was brought against you for a piece you wrote on your personal
blog. What does the bringing of this case and the fact that you were
convicted at its conclusion tell us about the state of freedom of
expression in Turkey?

The blog piece for which I was prosecuted and convicted argued simply
that disrespectful speech about an ancient Arab leader – implying the
prophet of Islam – was a matter of free speech that should be under
the protection of law. It employed mildly disrespectful language
about the prophet to illustrate the point.

As a result I was attacked in vile language by a government minister,
a top aide to the then prime minister, and the top religious official
of the country; several newspapers launched a lynching campaign;
I received hundreds of death threats; I was prosecuted in about a
dozen courts around the country; and I was sentenced to 15.5 months
in jail for blasphemy.

I believe the case illustrates how gravely free speech is imperilled
in this country; at least as far as Islamic prejudices are concerned.

What did the court point to as its reasoning behind this decision?

The court made a rather tendentious attempt to base its decision on
some precedents from the European Court of Human Rights. It also
asserted, without evidence, that my blog piece “threatened public
order”. It was necessary to add that bit to have a case under article
216 of the Penal Code, which criminalizes religious blasphemy where
it threatens public order.

What was it about these arguments that you found objectionable and
do you think they represent an undue restriction on your right to
freedom of expression?

I believe this country, as well as the world at large, urgently needs
a serious debate about the role of Islam in modern society. But that
debate is impossible if every phrase that is contrary to the beliefs,
prejudices, habits or sensitivities of the self-appointed spokesmen
of Islam is going to be banned or prosecuted or greeted with paroxysms
of rage.

What kind of impact do cases like these have on outspoken critics
such as yourself as well as ordinary members of the public?

The ordinary public is cowed. The outspoken critics are likely to
hold out longer, but the spiralling pace of repression will eventually
make many of them think again.

What kind of impact do such court cases have on your writing?

I have been in jail for a year now. That obviously has a dampening
effect on one’s writing. I use the time to concentrate on my academic
research, which is in historical linguistics.

Why is it important that forms of expression that offend, shock,
disturb are worthy of protection?

Anything that is genuinely new for a society will by definition offend,
shock or disturb. You cannot swim against the current of received
opinion without touching the nerves of the owners of received opinion.

You could either let things run in their established rut, or else
you must encourage and protect those who risk offense and shock by
seeking new paths of thought. Some of offenders may be purveyors
of junk. But you cannot expect to hear anything new unless you are
prepared to tolerate a certain amount of junk.

In recent years, cases brought under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal
Code have been increasingly coming to prominence; indeed some have
described Article 216 as Turkey’s new Article 301. What does this
tell us about the way taboos have changed in Turkey in recent years?

Article 216 is actually a reasonably phrased piece of legislation. In
a sane environment it could be used to penalize vilification campaigns
against, for example, the Jews or other religious minorities. The
problem is that most Turkish courts take it as their duty to
uphold government authority at all costs against the claims of any
individual or minority interest. Nationalism was the sacred cow of
Turkish governments until 2002; so free thinkers and dissidents were
prosecuted for touching that particular bovine. Now Islam is the
sacred cow, and one must be careful not be irritate this one.

Opinions expressed by NiÃ…~_anyan in this interview do not necessarily
reflect or represent the views of PEN International.

YEREVAN PROTEST DEMANDS TO HAND OVER GYUMRI MASSACRE CULPRIT TO ARMENIAN LAW ENFORCERS

19:14 12/02/2015 >> SOCIETY

A protest was staged outside the Armenian Prosecutor General’s Office
in Yerevan on Thursday.

The protesters demanded guarantees that Russian soldier Valery
Permyakov charged with murdering the Avetisyan family in Armenia’s
Gyumri will be handed over to Armenian law enforcers. They demanded
that the Prosecutor’s Office act transparently and make public the
response to the letter sent to the Russian side.

They handed over a letter to Prosecutor General’s Office stating
their demands.

Six members of one family, including a two-year-old child, were shot
dead in their house in Gyumri on January 12. A six-month-old baby
was hospitalized with stab wounds. He died in hospital on January 12.

Valery Permyakov, a serviceman of the 102nd Russian military base
stationed in Gyumri, the main suspect in the murder, was detained by
Russian border guards while attempting to cross the Armenian-Turkish
border near Yerazgavors village in Armenia’s Shirak province.

Permyakov is held in custody at the Russian military base. He was
questioned and confessed to the crime. Permyakov is charged under
Article 105.2 and 338.2 of the Russian Criminal Code (murder and
desertion). Also, Armenian Investigative Committee brought a charge
against Permyakov under Article 104 part 2 point 1 (murder of two or
more persons) of the Armenian Criminal Code.

STATE COMMITTEE ON WATER INDUSTRY FORECASTING LACK OF WATER, WHILE METEOROLOGICAL CENTER HEAVY PRECIPITATION

15:54 February 11, 2015

EcoLur

Gagik Khachatryan, acting Chairman of the State Committee on Water
Industry, beat an alarm in his interviews given on TV in February
that the country may experience lack of water. In his opinion, the
reason is the lack of precipitation. He stated that Akhuryan-Araks
reservoirs contain 18.5 million cum water less than that of the last
year. He said, if needed, again Sevan will be resorted to, in case
of water of lack.

On 11 February Deputy Director of MES Meteorological Center Gagik
Surenyan made a statement, where he mentioned about huge amount of
precipitation in Lori, Tavush, Shirak, Aragatsotn and Kotayq Regions
because of recent Mediterranean cyclones. The monthly precipitation
amount in individual places of Shirak region makes up 110-120% of the
standard. “At the end of the month we will have snow cover higher than
the standard. We are anticipating heavy precipitation in March. Large
amounts of snow are expected to be collected in the mountainous areas
of the country.”

ITALY SENATE MOVES TO OUTLAW DENIAL OF HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDES

14:49, 12 Feb 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

Italian senators on Wednesday voted in favour of a bill criminalizing
Holocaust denial, following changes to the proposed law to protect
freedom of speech.

A total of 234 senators voted for the bill, while eight abstained
and three voted against the new law, Il Sole 24 Ore reported.

Under the law people will face a three-year sentence for promoting,
inciting or committing acts of racial discrimination based in part
or entirely on the denial of the Holocaust. Crimes against humanity
and war crimes are also covered in the bill, which now needs to pass
through Italy’s lower house before it can become law.

The Senate vote follows revisions which lawmakers say ensure freedom
of speech and the freedom to study are upheld.

Senator Giuseppe Lumia, part of the justice committee, said the vote
marked a “turning point” in Italy.

“Denying the Holocaust and genocides will be punished as in so many
other countries,” he was quoted in Il Sole as saying.

France and Germany are among the European states which have
criminalized Holocaust denial. A British bishop was in 2013 convicted
of the crime, after giving an interview to Swedish television in which
he questioned the number of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps.

ROMANIAN SENATE DEFENDED SENATOR VARUJAN VOSGANIAN

17:37, 12 February, 2015

BUCHAREST, 12 FEBRUARY, ARMENPRESS. Romania’s Senate has refused to
proceed with the instigation of a criminal case based on allegations
against Varujan Vosganian and is defending the Armenian senator’s
parliamentary immunity. As “Armenpress”‘s correspondent reports from
Bucharest, the Senate took the decision on February 12.

This is the second time that the Romanian Senate is defending President
of the Union of Armenians of Romania, Senator Varujan Vosganian from
the same allegation charged by the Directorate for Investigating
Organized Crime and Terrorism. The DIOCT had charged Varujan Vosganian
with causing serious harm to Romania’s economy by adopting several
decisions while serving as Romania’s Minister of Economy between the
years of 2006 and 2008. In particular, by the mentioned decisions,
natural gas was supplied to Interagro SA via RomGas with discounts,
as a result of which Interagro became the preferential supplier.

As in the past, Varujan Vosganian sharply denied once again the
allegations against him and mentioned that the discount prices for
that company were also approved by the government and that those
prices are for companies across Europe that need additional support
from the government.

GAGIK TSARUKYAN PROMISES 100 THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR VALUABLE INFORMATION: 7OR.AM

18:37 | February 12,2015 | Politics

Today Gagik Tsarukyan has visited the RA Police. He has met with
Police Chief Vladimir Gasparyan. Gagik Tsarukyan has inquired about
the process of investigation of the crime against “Kasetsum” movement
activist, member of Political Council of Prosperous Armenia Party
Artak Khachatryan.

BHK President Gagik Tsarukyan promises 100 thousand US dollars to a
person or people, who will give valuable information and will help to
reveal the criminals and organizers of the crime against “Kasetsum”
movement activist, member of Political Council of Prosperous Armenia
Party Artak Khachatryan.

More here