Author: Maghakian Mike

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 30 2007

Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt: The unlikely agent of change

by LALE SARIIBRAHIMOGLU

Turkey’s outspoken and hawkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar
Büyükanıt has long been uneasy over what he sees as indifference
by foreign diplomats to Turkish military deaths from the outlawed
Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization. The
assassination of Turkey’s leading Turkish-Armenian journalist, Hrant
Dink, early this month in Istanbul has reportedly prompted
Büyükanıt to lodge similar complaints to a group of ambassadors
from several countries who visited him recently.
It has become a customary practice for Gen. Büyükanıt to invite
people who seek individual appointments from him all at the same time
when his schedule is busy. In one of those meetings full of
ambassadors, Büyükanıt was again critical of some foreign
diplomats’ decision to attend Dink’s funeral but not that of the
soldiers.
It is worth mentioning here that Gen. Büyükanıt strongly
condemned Dink’s slaying and one of his top generals in İstanbul
was at the funeral, while a wreath was sent on behalf of the Turkish
Armed Forces. I mention this to the readers to prevent a possible
misunderstanding that the Turkish military was indifferent to Dink’s
slaying.
But whether we agree or not, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) have long
been uneasy over the absence of foreign diplomats at soldiers’
funerals and apparently seek from diplomats the same sensitivity that
they show to the slaying of the country’s intellectuals and
journalists.
Büyükanıt is keen on meeting with foreign diplomats to express
the military’s views on various foreign policy issues, unlike some of
his predecessors such as retired Gen. Hüseyin
Kıvrıkoğlu , who imposed a ban during his tenure on
such meetings. But during his time no major military reforms were
attempted to reduce the still-existing political power of the
military.
Nevertheless, while meeting with the foreign diplomats, Gen.
Büyükanıt, outspoken by nature, used this opportunity to express
military views on several foreign policy issues.
Here are some excerpts from comments made by Büyükanıt during
his meeting with the diplomats:
`I want the TSK to become smaller in size, but for this to happen we
need modern equipment. Our size is big and people find it difficult
to understand’*
`We won’t send more soldiers to Afghanistan. Turkey has done its bit
in Afghanistan, such as assuming ISAF command twice.’
`NATO needs to do more in Pakistan to solve the situation in
Afghanistan.’
`The damage has already been done in Iraq’s oil-rich Kirkuk, when
records and deeds were destroyed [by the Kurds] soon after the US
invasion of Iraq.’ Büyükanıt implies, for example, that Turkmens
cannot prove that they are from Kirkuk since property records were
destroyed.
`If the US leaves Iraq, the country will disintegrate. As part of
the disintegration, Sunnis and Shiites may decide to attack the
Kurds, who may end up massing on the Turkish border as they did
following the 1991 invasion of Iraq. If the US and other coalition
troops withdraw from Iraq, it would cause instability in the entire
Middle East.’
`The US should increase focus on other parts of Iraq for the
possible stability of the country.’
`Iraqi Kurds [the Kurdish regional government under the Iraqi
Constitution] should be more cooperative with Turkey, and that will
make Ankara more cooperative with them.’
If we put aside the fact that Turkish generals’ keenness to speak
about internal and external politics causes discontent among
foreigners and Turks alike, we have to accept that, paradoxically, it
should be someone like Büyükanıt, supported by both junior and
senior officers, who can teach the powerful military that they must
accept that political authority is higher than military authority if
democracy is to mature in Turkey. But for this to happen, we need
strong a political leadership with the courage to further democratic
reforms.

*I, as a journalist, have heard this argument of the military for
many years, but the main reason behind the military’s difficulty in
downsizing personnel of around 700,000 — most of whom are conscripts
— is political. Through a big army the military maintains its
political power. We all know that ending conscription is the way to
reduce its size.

PanARMENIAN.Net

Armenia won’t enrich uranium
29.01.2007 15:05 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian and Russian Presidents
referred to the issue of the Armenian Nuclear Power
Plant during their meeting in Sochi, RA leader’s
Spokesman Victor Soghomonian told reporters in
Yerevan. Expedience of opening up uranium mines in
Armenia was also discussed, he said. `As you know,
Armenia possesses uranium resources and the expediency
of its extraction should be decided by specialists.
However, Armenia won’t enrich uranium,’ Soghomonian
underscored.

It’s worth mentioning that during the soviet period
uranium mines were run in Kapan but they were closed
over commercial impracticability and disutility.

Anatolia News Agency, Turkey
Jan 27 2007

Turkish Nationalist claims Turkish nation insulted in journalist’s
funeral

Tokat, 27 Jan (AA) – MHP [Nationalist Action Party] Deputy Chairman
Mehmet Sandir has claimed that the Turkish nation has been insulted
and the Turkish state has been challenged during the funeral of
journalist Hrant Dink that was held in Istanbul.

Participating in his party’s Province Council meeting in Tokat,
Sandir claimed that Turkey is undergoing a process of disintegration
due to the policies that have been pursued during the term of the AKP
[Justice and Development Party] government.

Asserting that the AKP government is a national security risk for
Turkey, Sandir said: "What has changed in our lives during the term
of the AKP government? Do we have more food on our table or do we
have more employment? Is our country at a more honourable place? We
believe that our country is being dragged to an environment of chaos
during the term of the AKP government."

Sandir continued as follows:

"On the one hand Kurdish conferences are being held, while on the
other, support is being extended to the Armenian genocide claims.
Furthermore in international politics support is being extended to
the pressure imposed by the EU on the one hand, and on the other,
maps that aim to establish a Kurdistan on our territory by destroying
our country are being published within the framework of the Greater
Middle East Project, of which the prime minister has proudly
announced that he is the co-chairman. In short, during the term of
the AKP government efforts are being made to rapidly disintegrate our
country with its society and its territory. The AKP government is a
national security risk for Turkey."

Hrant Dink’s Funeral Ceremony

Also referring to Agos editor Hrant Dink’s funeral ceremony in
Istanbul, Sandir said the following:

"From Tokat we strongly condemn the developments that occurred during
the funeral of one of our citizens of Armenian origin in Istanbul
this week. We condemn the slogans that were chanted during the
funeral ceremony. We condemn those who cried out slogans such as
‘Murderer state,’ ‘We are all Armenians,’ and ‘We are all Hrant
Dink.’ We are all Turkish and this is Turkey. I will lodge a
complaint with my nation against the prime minister primarily and
every person and every institution that caused this and supported
this. The Turkish nation has been insulted in Istanbul. The Turkish
state has been challenged."

Claiming that these insults are an expression of the determination
for dividing and destroying Turkey, Sandir said: "If you intend to
ensure that the masses adopt a new identity as the expression of the
emotional and humanistic reaction to the hateful murder, this is the
expression of the determination to destroy and divide Turkey."

In conclusion Sandir said the following:

"Why did these masses not carry even a single Turkish flag? Given
that you gathered in order to protest against a murder and given that
you wanted to express the fact that an ethnic identity has been
wronged, why did anyone not carry a Turkish flag as the symbol of
unity? Why did you obstruct those who wanted to carry a Turkish
flag?"

ARF Bureau statement in connection with Hrant Dink’s assassination

Yerkir.am
January 26, 2007

Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau made a statement condemning
Hrant Dink’s assassination.

The statement reads: "This brutal crime is a new threat against the
rights and existence of Armenians in Turkey. Turkey’s government bears
the entire responsibility for this killing.

Dink was killed because of his political views. Views that were one of
its kind on the rights of Turkey’s remaining Armenian remnants as well
as other minorities, the Armenia-Turkey relations and the issue of the
Armenian Genocide recognition by Turkey, always taking into account the
interests of "civilized" Turkey.

Views for which he had been harassed by the Turkish government. Dink’s
killing showed once again that pluralism is not tolerated in Turkey. We
are extending our sympathies to Dink’s family.

ARF Bureau, January 19, 2007, Yerevan."

Jan 26, 2007 6:52:00 AM MST

New gas discovery in the Black Sea, Turkey
ry2007/26/c9626.html

Stratic Energy announces sixth gas discovery in Black Sea, offshore Turkey
(Stratic-Energy)

CALGARY (CP) _ Stratic Energy Corp. (TSXV:SE) has announced a sixth
natural gas discovery in the Black Sea off Turkey.

The Akcakoca-4 well, drilled from a semi-submersible rig from the same
surface location as the Akcakoca-3 well, tested a separate structure
on the same geologic trend, Stratic said Friday.

Stratic=80=98s share of the discovery is 12.25 per cent, in
partnershipwith Turkish national oil company TPAO and Toreador
Resources Corp.

The Akcakoca East discovery well encountered 37 metres of gas-bearing
sands in three zones between 1,159 and 1,375 metres in depth. The
deep zone tested at 8.6 million cubic feet of gas per day.

The new well is east of the recently announced Akcakoca find and north
of the Ayazli, Dogu Ayazli and Akkaya discoveries, where the first gas
expected in the current quarter.

The Akcakoca partnership is retaining the rig for the next well in the
exploration sequence, on its Guluc prospect, described as the largest
in the South Akcakoca play.

INDEX: BUSINESS OIL&GAS INTERNATIONAL

Monthly Review, VA
Jan 28 2007

Half-hearted Condolences

by Kenan Erçel

Hard to tell which is more upsetting: Hrant Dink’s "unsurprisingly
shocking" murder, or the hypocrisies uttered by government officials
in his wake.

Once words of condolences and condemnation are quickly dispensed with
— in a monotone reminiscent of a computerized voice telling a caller
that "the number you have dialed is not in service" — the topic
invariably turns toward the pending vote on the Armenian Genocide
resolution in the US Senate. As if the real tragedy is not the
murder of Dink, but its inopportune timing! Evidently, those who
couldn’t bring themselves to celebrate Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel prize
cannot bring themselves, for the very same reasons, to grieve Dink’s
death.

This is much like the evasiveness of the royal family in the days
following Lady Di’s passing. But even in her foot-dragging, Queen
Elizabeth was a good deal more sincere than our Turkish officials;
Her Majesty appeared before the cameras only after the mounting
protests of her "subjects," and even then, patently reluctant,
unwilling. She was more like Putin in that regard. It took Putin
three days and insistent questioning by the foreign press to make a
public statement about Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead on
October 7, 2006 in the elevator of her building, no doubt in
retaliation for her outspokenness on the atrocities committed by the
Kremlin in Chechnya. And yet, even in his chilling blankness toward
the demise of Hrant Dink’s Russian counterpart, Putin was more honest
than his Turkish counterpart.

On the Turkish front, in contrast, words of sympathies and sorrow
galore, but the only genuine sentiment is the deep concern that the
repercussions of the event will jeopardize national interests abroad.
These are crocodile tears — like the ones that welled up in
Türkeş’s eyes back in the day, while reciting Nazım
Hikmet.1

Government officials are not alone in their half-hearted condolences.
The media pundits, who have always echoed their master’s voice, are
whistling the same tune. On a radio broadcast of CNN-Turk, veteran
journalist Oktay Ekşi repeated almost verbatim his Prime
Minister’s comments, making a point of noting, of course, that the
murder of his "peer" might play into the hands of the Armenian lobby.
Beginning his column with the exclamatory outburst "No, this can’t
be happening," the columnist and sports commentator, Hıncal
Uluç, reveals a couple of sentences later what is really rending his
heart: "From those striving to stir trouble in Turkey to those
seeking support for their Armenian thesis, there are so many out
there hoping to benefit from this death."

"Condolences," only short of finding Dink himself at fault for
putting the Republic of Turkey on the spot! I wish this were
hyperbole, but it is not. Remember the accusations of "provocation"
levelled at Aziz Nesin in the aftermath of the Madımak inferno,
which he had barely survived.2

So nauseating is the hypocrisy oozing out of these half-hearted
condolences that the frankness of those who openly shout out "good
riddance!" is almost preferable in comparison. Which is worse,
really: the audacity of the gunman shouting out threats in the
courtroom against the human rights activist Akın Birdal, while
being tried for taking multiple rounds of point-blank shots at Birdal
in his office, or the two-facedness of the powers that be who
prosecute the monsters of their own making? Had he also survived the
attempt on his life, wouldn’t Dink have been seeking justice from the
very authorities who had sentenced him to 6 months in prison for
denigrating Turkishness? Such is the sorry state of affairs in
Turkey.

We know from his latest writings and interviews that this last
punishment he was meted out under the infamous article 301 of the
Turkish penal code had devastated Hrant Dink. Even as bottomless an
optimism as his seemed depleted. Dink was taken to court for using
the phrase "venomous Turkish blood," by which he meant, the long
held, almost visceral animosity the Armenians harbor against Turks —
a hatred, he believed, Armenians should get out of their systems for
the sake of dialogue and reconciliation. Dink was calling Turkish
blood venomous only in the same sense that I called his murder "good
riddance" above, i.e., he wasn’t. But the court insisted on taking
the metaphor literally and out of context and found him guilty all
the same, despite the expert opinion of a commission of three
professors to the contrary. And we are supposed to believe that
those who made his life a Kafkaesque nightmare are now grieving Hrant
Dink’s death?

That being said, it wouldn’t be fair to chalk up all the faults to
the government officials and their high-fidelity echoes in the media.
For the onus of the tragic end that Dink met is on all of us who
didn’t help outnumber Kerinçsiz and his gang in front of the court
houses when it really mattered. I wish we could muster our
organizational skills for something other than funeral processions,
our resourcefulnness for something other than commemoration. Had
only one person for every thousand reader of Pamuk in Turkey, had
only a fraction of the masses at Dink’s funeral, showed solidarity
with the prosecuted/persecuted during their trials, maybe today. . .
.

Now the most poetic lines, the most poignant observations are of no
avail. And when he wrote "the pigeon-like timidity of my soul,"
Hrant Dink didn’t leave us much to say. And no, our sorrow, our pain
is not half-hearted, but most of us sound repentant these days.

1 The leader of the far-right, nationalistic party, MHP, and its
militant offshoot, "Grey Wolves," the late Alparslan Türkeş is
known to have quoted at a MHP congress from Nazım Hikmet, a
world-famous Turkish poet, who remained a committed communist all his
life and died in Russia in exile ("Hero or Traitor? Jon Gorvett
Reports from Istanbul on Celebrations to Mark the Birth of Nazim
Hikmet 100 Years Ago," 1 April 2002).

2 On July 2, 1993, a mob of furious fundamentalists laid siege to a
hotel (Madımak) in Sivas where the participants of the Pir
Sultan Abdal Culture Festival were staying, including Aziz Nesin, one
of the most published authors of Turkey. Nesin and his company were
targeted for Nesin’s Turkish translation of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic
Verses. As the security forces watched on, the mob set the hotel on
fire, as a result of which 37 people — mostly Allevite, leftist
poets, singers, performers — died ("Madimak Tragedy Commemorated on
13th Year," 14 September 2006).

Kenan Erçel, a Turkish citizen, is a graduate student in economics at
the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is also a member of the
editorial collective of the journal Rethinking Marxism.

ARMAVIA SETS OUT REGULAR FLIGHTS

Yerevan, January 26. ArmInfo. Armavia Air Company starts regular weekly
flights of U8-109 Yerevan-Cologne and U8-110 Cologne-Yerevan on March
29. The flights will be maintained on Thursdays on Airbus. Departure
from Yerevan will take place at 6:50 a.m. Arrival in Cologne is at 8:30
a.m. Departure from Cologne is at 11:00 p.m., arrival in Armenia at
5:55 p.m. (local time). The tickets cost are as follows: business class
Yerevan-Cologne – 600 USD, Yerevan-Cologne-Yerevan – 1000 USD; economic
class Yerevan-Cologne – 390 USD, Yerevan-Cologne-Yerevan – 350 USD.

PanARMENIAN.Net

Armenian army capable to defend fatherland
26.01.2007 16:15 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ With professional officer staff and modern
equipment, the Armenian Army is capable to fulfill all tasks set to
it, said RA First Deputy to Defense Minister, Colonel General Mikael
Haruryunyan who took part in the preparation of the forum dedicated to
the 15th anniversary of the Armenian Armed Forces. According to him,
the Armenian Army is well skilled and special attention is paid to
training of the staff. `God forbid, if hostilities are launched the
Armed Forces will be capable to defend the homeland,’ he said adding
that Army is not a frozen organism and can develop. `Certainly, not
all the problems were settled during 15 years. There are international
standards we should head for and then apply taking into account
national peculiarities. A national doctrine based on the experience of
developed states should be worked out. I am convinced we’ll
succeed. However, we do not want to carry out military reforms at the
expense of the taxpayers. We should do our best to efficiently use the
funds allocated to the army,’ the Col. Gen. said.

In Harutyunyan’s words, presently the people’s trust in the army
reached 80%. He emphasized that the Armenian Army is firm and
equipped. `Any wish to launch aggression against Armenia can be
forgotten. The army is capable to defend the fatherland,’ he resumed,
reports IA Regnum.

PanARMENIAN.Net

Arpi Vartanian: politics should not intrude into history
26.01.2007 18:18 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ `Each presidential contender promises the American
Armenians to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide. It’s natural. They
want to enlist support of various levels of population while the
Armenian community is rather strong and influential,’ Arpi Vartanian,
the Armenian Assembly of America Regional Director for Armenia and
Nagorno Karabakh said in an interview with PanARMENIAN.Net. In her
words, politics should not intrude into history. `Senators Barack
Obama and Hillary Clinton, who enjoy popular support, have already
announced the decision to run for President. It’s too early to say who
can win the race but we can suppose that an African American or a
woman may be elected President for the first ever time in the
U.S. history. A woman has already been elected the Speaker of the
House of Representatives. Thus, everything is possible and we are
hopeful that one of the U.S. Presidents will keep promise and
recognize the Armenian Genocide,’ she said.

Fassier: In order to prepare for peace, it is necessary to speak about peace and not war

PanARMENIAN.Net
25.01.2007 18:06 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ "War will not solve the problem, there can be
only peaceful solution to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. In order
to prepare for peace, it is necessary to speak about peace and not
war," stated OSCE MG Co-Chair Bernard Fassier in Stepanakert after
the meeting with NKR President Arkadi Ghukassian.

Answering the question on EU’s intention to directly work with Nagorno
Karabakh, the French mediator said, "Today via negotiations in the
framework of OSCE Minsk Group the U.S.A., France and Russia are trying
to help the conflicting sides to come to a peaceful solution to the
conflict. On the whole, the European Union has other means to solve
such problems. The Neighborhood Policy is an example. The European
Union can assist the settlement process, but it does not participate
in the talks," IA Regnum reports.

In the framework of the regional visit OSCE MG Co-Chairs on the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict settlement Yuri Merzlyakov (Russia), Matthew Bryza
(U.S.A.) and Bernard Fassier (France) arrived in Stepanakert today.

The mediators have met with NKR President Arkadi Ghukassian and
talked to him several hours. NKR Foreign Minister Georgy Petrossian
also was present at the talks.