Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 6 2014

Attack on Syrian town of Kessab might cause headache for Turkey

6 April 2014, Sunday /LAMÄ°YA ADÄ°LGIZI, Ä°STANBUL

The attack by Syrian opposition forces on the ethnic Armenian town of
Kessab in northern Syria could pose new problems for Ankara, amid the
upcoming anniversary of the 1915 mass killings — which Armenians
describe as a genocide — marked on April 24.

Kessab is located on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria, close
to the border with Turkey. Having been populated by Armenians for
centuries, Kessab is a town with a Christian population in a country
with a majority Islamic population. As the Syrian civil war continues,
some areas of the country have been taken over by extremist and
Islamist militants.

Fighters from Syrian opposition groups — including the
al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, designated as a terrorist group by the
US — seized control of Kessab on March 16. Most of the Armenian
residents of the town, administratively a part of Syria’s province of
Latakia, had fled before the attack began. Kessab, previously home to
over 2,000 ethnic Armenians, was reportedly left almost empty as
locals moved either to the nearby city of Latakia or fled Syria
entirely.

The forced flight from Kessab has special significance for Armenians
because the town has long been an important regional Armenian hub to
which many ethnic Armenians in the wider region fled following ethnic
upheavals. Many Armenians have also drawn parallels with the forced
expulsions which took place in 1915.

The attack on Kessab — which was known as a bastion of support for
the Assad regime — and the flight of its residents has caused
international outrage. Armenia has accused Turkey of providing support
to the extremists. In response, the Turkish government has reiterated
that it only gives humanitarian aid, rather than military support,
which some sources claim.

Organizations representing the Armenian diaspora in the US have
claimed that Ankara is providing support to the Syrian extremists who
perpetrated that attack on Kessab. The Armenian National Committee of
America (ANCA) issued a statement on March 28 urging the US government
to take immediate action to end the `vicious onslaught on the
historically Armenian town of Kessab, Syria, which was overrun by
al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists in an attack launched from Turkey on
March 21.’ The Syrian government, as well as several Armenian
websites, has claimed that the rebels entered Syria from Turkey.

The Armenian government called on the UN to protect Kessab and accused
Turkey of allowing extremists to use its soil to assault the town. The
Russian government has also called on the UN Security Council to
discuss the Kessab incident. Commenting on the attack, Taraf columnist
and Armenian activist Hayko BaÄ?dat said in an interview with Sunday’s
Zaman that what is happening to Armenians in Syria should not be
surprising. He also claimed that long before the Kessab incident,
Turkey’s Armenian community had asked the Turkish government to
protect Syrian Armenians, who are mostly survivors of the Anatolian
residents who were forced from the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

Syria has for decades been home to ethnic Armenians who were forced to
flee Turkey during the tragic events in 1915. Armenians consider the
events to constitute a genocide, while Turkey maintains that there was
no systematic campaign to kill Armenians and that many Turks also died
during the chaotic disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.

According to BaÄ?dat, the request by Turkey’s Armenian community was at
first warmly accepted by Ankara, which thought it would be good
publicity, advertising positive treatment to ethnic Armenians, in the
run-up to next year’s centennial of the 1915 events. However, BaÄ?dat
claims that the Turkish government then ignored the community’s
request, passing it to the office of President Abdullah Gül, which
suggested that help be sent via the Red Cross and the Ä°stanbul-based
Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople.

`The Turkish government brushed off the issue. This was a chance to
welcome Syrian Armenians to Turkey and to help them find shelter and
receive an education with the logistical help of Turkish Armenians,’
BaÄ?dat said. `There is no need to send them to Turkish refugee camps,’
he added.

Since the beginning of the clashes around Kessab, Ankara has issued
official statements welcoming Armenians from Kessab. During a visit to
Brussels, Foreign Minister Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu reiterated on Monday that
Turkey’s doors are `wide open’ to Syrian Armenians and dismissed
accusations that Turkey is deliberately helping an al-Qaeda-linked
group that is killing Armenians.

`This is not the case,’ said DavutoÄ?lu, adding that Turkey would help
anyone fleeing the Syrian war and will welcome the Armenians without
any discrimination, just as it has been helping hundreds of thousands
of other Syrians fleeing Syria.

`If, as Turkey claims, it does not have a sectarian policy but is
dealing with the Syria issue from a humanitarian perspective, then it
should do something to save Syrian Armenians who were victims of the
genocide,’ BaÄ?dat said. He also mentioned that Armenians are deeply
concerned that the acceptance of Armenian refugees might be used by
the Turkish government to propagandize claims that the Turkish
government has accommodated Armenians from Syria — proving that they
have never had problems with Armenians in their history.

World Magazine
April 6 2014

No more Turkish delight

Turkey | The hope for Turkey as an anti-Sharia beacon for the Muslim
world is fading quickly

By Marvin Olasky

For most of the 20th century Turkey was the great hope for yanking the
Muslim world out of Sharia law. Mustafa Kemal, Turkey’s 1920s-1930s
autocrat, took as a new last name Ataturk, which means “father of
Turkey”–and he truly was the progenitor of a country that kept
Islamists at bay. His secularist vision, with the assistance of
Turkey’s army, stayed dominant until 2002.

Just before April Fools’ Day, though, two developments–one political,
one military–dashed the slight hope that remains. The political story
began 12 years ago when Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development
Party (AKP) took power not on an overt Islamist program but an
anti-corruption one. Prime Minister Erdogan since then has used salami
tactics–one slice at a time–to cut out the Ataturk legacy and edge
back toward traditional Islam’s union of mosque and state.

Erdogan’s administration has also displayed the cronyism that he
deplored when in opposition, and some secularists predicted that
elections on March 30 would curtail the prime minister’s power.
Exactly the opposite happened: The AKP won big, and Erdogan is now
likely to become Turkey’s first directly elected president this
summer, a triumph that would allow him to rule for another decade and
stomp on the little bit of religious liberty that remains.

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The military development also reflects Turkey’s growing Islamism, and
it has international implications. Syrians in the northwestern part of
their country reported at the end of March that jihadist rebels
fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are
receiving help from Turkish tanks and anti-aircraft fire. The
jihadists attacked villages inhabited by Alawites, the Muslim sect of
the Assad family, and others that are home to Armenian Christians.

Thousands of Christians had to flee, seeking refuge in nearby hills or
the coastal city of Latakia. One pastor told World Watch Monitor about
desecrated churches and pillaged houses. Churches were sheltering 600
families, with local charity groups providing food, mattresses,
blankets, and clothing. “Turkey is hosting jihadis,” said a Syrian
Muslim humanitarian worker (name withheld to protect his life). Those
fighters reportedly include Chechens, Tunisians, Turks, and Arabs.

Turkey is a member of NATO, and the United States has a massive air
base at Incirlik, just 130 miles away from the area of border
fighting. Armed military conflict between Turkey and Syria could
severely escalate the Syrian war, forcing a NATO intervention. But
Erdogan seems intent not only on re-Islamizing his own country but
supporting neighboring jihadis.

Time magazine put Mustafa Kemal on its March 24, 1923, cover: He was
the great Muslim hope. In 1924 Kemal said, “The religion of Islam will
be elevated if it will cease to be a political instrument, as had been
the case in the past.” In 1925 he declared, “The Turkish republic
cannot be a country of sheiks, dervishes, and disciples.” The
following year he closed Islamic courts and created a European-style
penal code.

At the rate Turkey is marching back to its future, the 100th
anniversary of Kemal’s directives may bring their complete unwinding.
What’s happening in Turkey is part of a long-term trend that might
better be termed an ooze. A decade ago many Americans hoped that a
democratic Iraq would join Turkey in providing liberty and justice for
all. The “Arab Spring” brought similar hopes regarding Egypt. But
ancient traditions backed up by dictatorial religion are hard to
topple, and those forecasting the growth of freedom in Muslim
countries may have to follow those words by saying “April Fools.”

–with reporting by Mindy Belz in Beirut; for more on Turkey, see
“Turkey’s U-turn” in this issue.

Robert Fisk: Sinister efforts to minimise Japanese war crimes and
portray the empire as a victim must be exposed

The man known as Abe’s ‘brain’ says Japan has become ‘a hopelessly
pacifist nation’

ROBERT FISK
Sunday 6 April 2014

I had to go to California to learn that Michiko Shiota Gingery, who
lives in the Central Park area of Glendale City, suffers “feelings of
exclusion, discomfort and anger” because her local authority unveiled
a memorial to the innocent Asian women turned into sex slaves by the
Japanese Imperial Army.

These “comfort women”, the Japanese military’s repulsive euphemism for
the victims they turned upon with such sexual sadism, were gang-raped,
used as prostitutes and often butchered by Japanese soldiers during
their occupation of Korea and China in the late 1930s, in the early
years of what was for them – but not for us – the Second World War.
These women – the few ageing survivors and the many dead – are a
symbol of Japan’s wartime disgrace.

Now you would have thought, wouldn’t you, that these poor women
(forced into mass prostitution by the Japanese army and government
over many years) had themselves suffered “feelings of exclusion,
discomfort and anger”? But no, it’s poor Michiko Shiota Gingery,
presumably of Japanese origin, who’s all upset at the Glendale
monument to this most appalling of Japanese war crimes. Furthermore (a
gritting of teeth is necessary here), a joint lawsuit claims that
Glendale City – a peaceful and intensely boring suburb of greater Los
Angeles – has exceeded its power by infringing on the US government’s
right to conduct America’s foreign policy; thus “the monument
threatens to negatively affect US relations with Japan, one of this
nation’s most important allies…”

Since we are a family paper, I will merely say that statements of this
kind are identical to the material that comes out of the rear end of a
bull. But it’s all of a kind. Turkish Americans bleat that
Armenian-American monuments to the 1915 Armenian genocide – the
world’s first holocaust – upset good “relations” between the US and
Turkey. Which is why the spineless Obama still, despite his
pre-election promises, will not acknowledge that the Turks
deliberately killed one and a half million Christian citizens of the
Ottoman empire.

If the Germans started to deny the truth of the Jewish Holocaust, I
suppose it would only be a matter of time before the anti-Semites of
Europe lined up to express their “feelings of exclusion” every time
they saw a memorial to Hitler’s war crimes.

But when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shames himself and his
country by wandering through the Tokyo Yasukuni shrine, what else can
we expect? I’ve been to Yasukuni myself, a place of cherry trees and
blossoms and a museum to honour the memory of the 2.5 million Japanese
soldiers, kamikaze pilots, rapists and war criminals who died in the
Second World War. I had a cousin who died building the Burma railway
and so I was greatly interested in the real steam loco shunted into
Yasukuni, the very first engine to use that infamous track. It carried
home the ashes of the first Japanese soldiers to die in Burma. No
doubt Abe enjoyed his little trip to honour the murderers of Imperial
Japan.

Sure, Japan has apologised for the little matter of the “comfort
women”. But why, according to the Chinese, has Yasukuni received 60
visits from Japanese prime ministers between 1945 and 1985, including
six visits made on 15 August, to mark the date of Japan’s surrender?
The 1937 rape of Nanking – in which tens of thousands of Chinese women
were raped and at least 100,000 killed – is being turned into part of
“a self-defensive holy war”; school textbooks now try to depict
Japanese aggression in the 1930s as the “liberation of backward
nations”. The Japanese Education Minister is proposing to reject
textbooks that do not adopt a “patriotic tone”. When the US hears that
Palestinian textbooks include Israel as part of “Palestine”, American
officials roar like bears. But when the Japanese do far worse, the
Americans turn into mice.

Yasukuni’s purpose is to minimise Japanese war crimes and portray the
expansionist Japanese empire as a victim. That’s what Abe wants do to.
He’s spending more on his country’s military. The man referred to as
Abe’s “brain”, the former diplomat Hisahiko Okazaki, says that Japan
has become “a hopelessly pacifist nation”. Now that China is a newly
emergent military power – and challenging Japanese ownership of the
Senkaku Islands – Abe’s rewriting of his country’s outrageous
occupation of China takes on a far more sinister quality.

One of the best British political scientists on Japan, James Stockwin,
has expressed grave concern at Abe’s visit to Yasukuni. A retired
Oxford academic, Stockwin is no Japan-hater; just a decade ago, the
Emperor of Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays
(with neck ribbon), no less. But he speaks frankly of Japan’s
atrocities in the Second World War and finds it “quite extraordinary …
that Abe should use this juncture to visit the Yasukuni shrine, a
gesture he must know would be regarded as highly provocative by
China”.

In an iconoclastic moment, Stockwin suggested that China and Japan
should jointly bulldoze into the sea “these useless pieces of real
estate”.

But there is a far darker side. Last year, the Japanese passed the
Designated Secrets Act, which applies a prison sentence of 10 years to
journalists and whistleblowers who give publicity to “state secrets” –
and five years for those who ask questions about secrets! This
document, as Stockwin says, “runs counter to some of the most basic
principles of democracy”. There have been protests against it. And how
did the secretary general of the governing party characterise the
protesters? They were “terrorists”, of course.

Emperor Hirohito himself – along with Admiral Yamamoto and all the old
war-mongers – would have approved. Long live the Greater South-east
Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Speak not of Nanking. Set course for Pearl
Harbour. That should put paid to all that exclusion, discomfort and
anger in Glendale City.

A reminder that Russia was once the good guy

Staying with World War Two, “Stalingrad the movie” has an American
version (Enemy at the Gates), a German version (Stalingrad) and now
Fyodor Bondarchuk’s Russian version (Stalingrad again).

Jude Law’s portrayal of sniper Zaitsev and his love affair with a
Soviet radio translator got howled down in the Russian Duma. The
German film showed the Nazis at their worst but had the Wehrmacht
leave Italy for Russia on a modern electric train.

Bondarchuk’s fearful 130-minute epic, which I watched in Canada last
week, beats them both. Partly based on the diaries of Vasily Grossman
– by far the finest Soviet writer of the Second World War, way ahead
of anything by Solzhenitsyn – it follows the last days of a platoon
of Red Army soldiers and seamen confronting Friedrich von Paulus’s
Sixth Army in the wrecked home of a lone Russian girl.

Her family have all died but she refuses to leave her bombed house;
Mariya Smolnikova’s portrayal of 19-year-old Katya is breathtaking.

In a war movie of immense violence, she is as close to perfect as a
refugee whose soul is both mutilated by war and ennobled by struggle –
because she underplays every moment.

At a time when we all hate Russians again – Ukraine, the Crimea – it’s
worth being reminded of a time when they were the good guys and when
Hitler thought he represented “Western civilisation”.

Not a bad film then, especially – as someone said – if you want to
know what it’s like to be shot in the throat.

ARMENIE
Roskosmos va étudier la capacité d’exploration spatiale de l’Arménie

Un groupe est mis en place à Roskosmos, Agence spatiale fédérale
russe, pour étudier la capacité de l’Arménie à utiliser l’espace à des
fins pacifiques a annoncé le bureau de presse du Conseil national de
sécurité d’Arménie qui a précisé qu’Arthur Baghdasaryan, le secrétaire
du conseil, a rencontré une délégation de l’agence dirigée par Sergey
Seredin.

Le groupe a été mis en place dans le cadre de l’accord conclu entre
Arthur Baghdasaryan et Oleg Ostapenko, le chef de Roskosmos.

Lors de cette réunion, le secrétaire du Conseil national de sécurité
d’Arménie, a déclaré que la création de ce groupe est en phase avec la
coopération des deux pays dans les domaines scientifiques, techniques
et industriels.

Il a dit que l’Arménie a déjà coopéré avec Roskosmos et a souligné la
modernisation substantielle de l’Observatoire de Byurakan dans le
cadre du programme de coopération entre les conseils de sécurité des
deux pays de 2012 et 2013.

Baghdasaryan a souligné que l’Arménie a une énorme capacité qui peut
être utilisé efficacement dans l’exploration de l’espace.

Il a également dit que l’Arménie a des entreprises qui sont en mesure
de fournir aux entreprises russes des dispositifs électroniques de
radio de l’espace.

dimanche 6 avril 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

AUSTRALIE
Plus de 1000 arméniens de Sydney protestent dans le cadre de la
campagne # SaveKessab

Les Arméniens de Sydney se sont rassemblés mercredi dans ce qui était
l’une des plus grandes manifestations de la campagne de # SaveKessab
dans le monde, organisé par la Fédération de la jeunesse arménienne
d’Australie (AYF Australie). Plus de 1000 militants, principalement
des jeunes, ont exigé que la Turquie soit tenu pour responsable
d’avoir permis l’accès aux rebelles syriens, qui ont envahi la ville
peuplée d’Arméniens de Kessab en Syrie le mois dernier.

Les chaînes de télévision australienne ABC et Channel 10 ont couvert
la manifestation sur le réseau de télévision, tandis que SBS Radio, la
radio ABC et 2 GB en ont fait écho sur les ondes de l’Australie. Un
lecteur des médias sociaux de Twitter et Facebook a attiré le soutien
du député fédéral et ancien ministre de la Défense d’Australie, Joel
Fitzgibbon, et du membre du Conseil législatif de la Nouvelle-Galles
du Sud, le Révérend Fred Nile.

Les manifestants étaient en colère contre la Turquie, qui après avoir
commis le génocide arménien encore impuni en 1915, pourrait de nouveau
être responsable de la persécution de civils arméniens, vivant
paisiblement dans Kessab au cours des siècles.

> a déclaré le président de
l’AYF Australie, Aram Tufenkjian. >.

Il a ajouté :

NPR – National Public Radio
April 5 2014

‘Hotel Rwanda’ Manager: We’ve Failed To Learn From History

by NPR Staff

Paul Rusesabagina is a figure from history — a terrible history.

He was the manager of the Diplomat Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda, 20 years
ago, when the genocide of Rwanda’s Tutsi people began. More than
800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus would be killed in just three
months.

While most of the world took no action to stop the killing,
Rusesabagina sheltered more than 1,000 people inside his hotel. He
gave them water from the pool so they wouldn’t die from dehydration,
smuggled in food so they wouldn’t starve, and held off the militia who
came to the hotel by bribing them with alcohol and cigars.

His story was turned into an award-winning movie in 2004, Hotel
Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle as Rusesabagina.

Today, Rusesabagina lives in San Antonio, Texas. He’s the founder of
the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation, which advocates for human
rights internationally.

Rusesabagina tells NPR’s Scott Simon that he no longer lives in Rwanda
because after speaking out against people doing evil, he became a
target of that evil. “Having no other choice, I just fled the
country,” he says.

Interview Highlights

On what drives people to commit genocide

There are many reasons why people kill each other. One of those
reasons is, of course, bad leadership. When leaders teach the people
they lead to kill others, then people go ahead and do what their
leaders tell them. A second reason is because people are poor and are
not educated well enough. They always, as I said, tend to trust their
leaders.

The worst reason, this is impunity. In Rwanda, for instance … since
I was a young kid, late ’50s, early ’60s, we saw people killing their
neighbors and getting their cars, getting their properties — houses,
plantations and so on. Until just recently, in the late ’90s,
immediately after the genocide, those people were still living in
houses they never built, they were still living in plantations which
were never theirs, with the cattle which never belonged to them.

On his anger at the Western world for not doing more to stop the genocide

History always keeps repeating itself. We saw this happening with the
Armenians, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust. I remember in 1994, I
was very angry with … everybody in the international community,
because when people were being butchered, they were there, and they
never did anything.

On recent violence in Syria, Darfur and the Central African Republic

This recalls exactly what we were going through in 1994. This recalls
what also has been going on in the Congo, on our own watch. That
recalls me that history repeats itself, and does not teach human
beings any lessons.

ARMENIE
Aram Gharibyan va présider le conseil d’administration du programme de
développement de la pisciculture

Le gouvernement arménien a nommé Aram Gharibyan, conseiller en chef du
président arménien, en tant que président du Conseil d’administration
du programme visant à développer l’élevage de poissons en Arménie et
la constitution de réserves de truites dans le lac Sevan.

Le programme de développement de la pisciculture a été approuvé par le
gouvernement le 19 Décembre 2013 et est estimé à 66 milliards de
drams. Le gouvernement investira 24,9 milliards de drams dans le
programme et les investisseurs privés le reste.

Environ 75% de la production sera exportée. Le programme implique que
la production de truites de Sevan sera de 50 000 tonnes par an pendant
une décennie.

samedi 5 avril 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

LUTTE LIBRE
Gaguik Barseghian (57 kg, lutte libre) offre la première médaille à
l’Arménie aux championnats d’Europe de lutte libre

Lors des championnats d’Europe de lutte libre qui se déroulent du 1er
au 6 avril à Vantaa (Finlande), l’Arménie a remporté une médaille de
bronze. Gaguik Barseghian (57 kg) a ainsi offert la première médaille
à l’Arménie. Il avait perdu 14-13 face à Genady Toulbea (Monténégro),
mais ce dernier arrivant en finale Gaguik Barseghian fut repêché pour
une médaille de bronze. L’Arménien s’est alors imposé face à l’Azéri
Calig Aliev et au Roumain Andreï Toukov.

Krikor Amirzayan

samedi 5 avril 2014,
Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com

ARMENIA AIMS TO TARNISH TURKEY’S IMAGE: TURKISH EXPERT

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
April 4 2014

4 April 2014, 15:10 (GMT+05:00)
By Jamila Babayeva

The Armenian authorities have again failed in their efforts to tarnish
Turkey’s image by selling the second so-called “Armenian genocide”
to the world community.

The Armenian authorities continue to blame Turkey for “Armenian
massacre” in Syria’s Kesab town. This comes as the town’s Mayor
Vazgen Chaparyan has rejected as baseless any reports on “massacre”
in the region.

“Armenia’s groundless claims cannot be accepted as they are absolutely
false,” Head of the Center for International Strategy and Security
Studies, Turkish expert Dr. Mehmet Seyfettin Erol told AzerNews.

“Armenia’s aim is just to present Turkey – a country which
has repeatedly suffered from terror attacks – as a supporter
of terrorists,” he said. “Armenia intends to tarnish Turkey’s
international image,” he added.

The Armenian authorities claim that Armenians in Kesab were allegedly
forced to migrate a century after the so- called “Armenian genocide”,
a claim which has not been historically proved.

Armenia and the Armenian lobby groups claim that the predecessor of
modern Turkey, the Ottoman Empire allegedly carried out “genocide”
against the Armenians living in Anadolu in 1915.

Erol believes that Armenian authorities’ efforts are part of the
psychological war against Turkey.

“Yerevan intends to strengthen its positions on the eve of
100th anniversary of so-called “Armenian genocide” and to garner
international community’s support,” he said.

He added that Armenia also aims to depict Turkey as a supporter of
war in Syria and to limit Ankara’s initiation in the war-torn country.

ARMENIAN PM STEPS DOWN, GOV’T MINISTERS TO FOLLOW SUIT

World Bulletin, Turkey
April 4 2014

Although it is not yet entirely clear why he resigned, many speculate
it is related to a controversial pension plan that saw masses of
people protest in the streets of the capital Yerevan.

World Bulletin / News Desk

Armenia’s ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) has announced that
Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian has stepped down unexpectedly after
6 years in office for undisclosed reasons.

HHK spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov told a press conference that the
prime minister said that it is his “personal decision” and had asked
for his request to be granted.

Sarkisian also confirmed his resignation on his Facebook page where
he wrote “I wish the new government productive work for the good of
the country”.

Although it is not yet entirely clear why he resigned, many speculate
it is related to a controversial pension plan that saw masses of
people protest in the streets of the capital Yerevan.

His resignation also obliges all government ministers to resign as
well in accordance with the Armenian constitution.