Author: nina hovnanian

TURKISH-GEORGIAN RELATIONS MODEL TO OTHER COUNTRIES, SAYS DEPUTY BOZKIR

Anadolu Agency
Jan 17 2012
Turkey

TBILISI (A.A) -January 17, 2012 -Chairman of the Turkish Parliamentary
Foreign Affairs Committee, Volkan Bozkir, said Tuesday that
Turkish-Georgian relations were a model to other countries.

Speaking to the AA in Georgian capital of Tbilisi, Bozkir said that
Georgia was one of Turkey’s strategic partners.

Our two countries have excellent relations and today, we are here to
handle our relations at the level of parliaments, Bozkir noted.

Turkey and Georgia share important relations both from an economic
and political perspective. We want to see how we can further boost
relations at the level of parliaments, Bozkir emphasized.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum
(BTE) natural gas pipeline have been completed. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars
(BTK) railway is under construction. These projects are important not
just for two-three countries but the whole world, Bozkir underlined.

Turkey and Georgia have lifted visa requirements from the citizens
of respective countries. Turkish and Georgian citizens can visit each
other by merely showing an ID card, Bozkir stressed.

On Turkish-Georgian economic relations, Bozkir said that the trade
volume between Turkey and Georgia has reached 1.2 billion USD.

Turkey supports Georgia’s membership in NATO and the European Union
(EU) so that Georgia strengthens its own security and future,
Bozkir said.

In response to a question on an Armenian resolution to be debated
at the French Senate on January 23, Bozkir said that the adoption of
the resolution by the French Senate would force Turkey to take some
important measures.

On 52 Turkish citizens held in Georgian prisons, Bozkir said that they
would hold talks with the Georgian ministers of justice and interior
so that these Turkish citizens get extradited to Turkey.

In regard to a question on a NATO radar system established in Turkey,
Volkan Bozkir said that the radar was not designed to attack any
single country.

Turkey received the radar system as part of its responsibilities
in NATO. This radar system is merely a defence system. It does not
target any country, Bozkir underlined.

MEETING OF S.LAVROV, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION, WITH E.M.MAMMADYAROV, FM OF AZERBAIJAN

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
!OpenDocument
Jan 19 2012
Russian Federation

S. Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation,
held a working meeting with E. Mammadyarov, Minister of Foreign
Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan, in Moscow on January 19.

During the meeting they discussed a range of bilateral agenda issues as
well as the preparations for the forthcoming meeting of the Presidents
of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
settlement.

S. Lavrov and E. Mammadyarov signed the Agreement between the
Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the Republic
of Azerbaijan on mutual allocation of real estate for the accommodation
of diplomatic missions of the Russian Federation in the Republic of
Azerbaijan and the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Russian Federation.

SARKOZY URGES DIALOGUE OVER ARMENIA GENOCIDE ROW IN LETTER TO TURKEY’S ERDOGAN

RFi

Jan 20 2012
France

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has written to Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a bid to smooth relations as Ankara calls
on French Senators not to approve the bill on denial of the Armenian
genocide.

The French upper house is to vote on Monday on a bill criminalising
the denial of the Armenian genocide.

In a bid to defuse the continuing diplomatic row over the question,
Sarkozy sent a letter to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
which was released by the French embassy in Ankara on Friday.

“I hope we can make reason prevail and maintain our dialogue, as befits
allied and friendly countries,” Sarkozy wrote, adding that the measure
“is in no way aimed at any state or people in particular.”

“Those who exploit history will themselves suffer from this
exploitation,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in
televised remarks.

“If the bill passes, it will remain as a black stain in France’s
intellectual history,” he continued, calling it an “error.”

Turkey denies that the World War I killings of Armenians amounted
to genocide.

If passed, the bill would impose a jail sentence on anyone found guilty
of denying that the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces
amounted to genocide.

Ankara froze political and military ties with France when the bill was
passed by the National Assembly, and has threatened further measures
if it continues through the Senate or is approved by Sarkozy.

Most Senators opposed to the legislation are expected to abstain in
Monday’s vote.

TURKEY: 10,000 MARK JOURNALIST’S DEATH 5 YRS ON
By SELCAN HACAOGLU

Associated Press Online
January 19, 2012 Thursday 2:04 PM GMT

More than 10,000 protesters marked the fifth anniversary of a
Turkish-Armenian journalist’s murder on Thursday as outrage continues
to grow over a trial which failed to shed light on alleged official
negligence or even collusion.

Human rights activists placed red carnations on the spot in Istanbul
where Hrant Dink was gunned down in broad daylight outside of his
minority Agos newspaper office by a teenage gunman.

Many people carried black banners that read: “We are all Hrant,
we are all Armenian.”

Thousands marched for justice, a call shared by Turkish leaders and
leading businessmen who expressed unease over this week’s sentencing of
one man, Yasin Hayal, to life in prison for masterminding the killing,
while another 17 were acquitted of charges of acting under a terrorist
organization’s orders. The court neglected to issue a verdict about
a 19th suspect.

The gunman, Ogun Samast, was sentenced to nearly 23 years in prison
in July by a separate juvenile court.

Umit Boyner, the head of Turkey’s influential industrialists’
association TUSIAD, said the court’s decision had “shocked” the public.

“What we solidly see in this trial process is that the belief in
justice has been shaken and weaknesses in our justice system have
been revealed,” he said.

Turkey’s leaders have vowed a thorough investigation into Dink’s
killing signaling dissatisfaction with Tuesday’s court ruling by a
panel of judges.

Dink’s lawyers have said they will appeal the verdict, saying the
investigation was flawed because the judiciary had not followed up
on evidence alleging officials may have been aware of the plot.

Protesters marching past the site of the Jan. 19, 2007 killing carried
banners that read: “This case cannot finish like this.” A black marble
plaque marking the spot bore the solemn words in Turkish and Armenian:
“Hrant Dink was killed here.”

President Abdullah Gul said the case which highlights Turkey’s uneasy
relationship with its ethnic and religious minorities, including at
least 60,000 Armenian Christians amounted to a stern test for Turkey,
a democracy with a mostly Muslim population that seeks membership in
the European Union.

“The conclusion of this case in a transparent and just manner inline
with our laws is an important test for us,” President Abdullah Gul
Enhanced Coverage LinkingAbdullah Gul -Search using:Biographies Plus
NewsNews, Most Recent 60 Dayssaid on Thursday.

Rustem Eryilmaz who led the panel of judges sparked even more fury
when he told daily Vatan in an interview published Thursday that he
was not satisfied with the decision, acknowledging that the court
had failed to reveal allegations of negligence or collusion between
the state and the suspects.

“We could not shed light on what was going on behind the scenes,
which is what everyone is curious about,” Eryilmaz said. “There must
be instigators … but there is a need for evidence to accept the
existence of such from a legal perspective.”

Eryilmaz said the judges felt pressure to issue a verdict after
the 4-1/2 year trial, and did not have time to examine thousands of
telephone conversations at the scene on the day of the assassination.

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said Eryilmaz’s remarks were
unacceptable and questioned why and how the court had neglected to
issue its verdict on the 19th suspect.

“The assumption that only one person was responsible for this incident
has damaged the public’s conscience,” Arinc said Thursday.

Dink had sought to encourage reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia,
but several years before his death he was prosecuted under Turkish
law for describing the early 20th-century mass killings of Armenians
as genocide.

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that
the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.

Associated Press Writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed.

FRANCE’S ARMENIA GENOCIDE BILL STUMBLES AHEAD OF VOTE

Agence France Presse
January 18, 2012 Wednesday 3:33 PM GMT

A French Senate committee on Wednesday rejected a bill to outlaw
denial of the Armenian genocide, but the move was unlikely to stop
the diplomatically fraught bill passing at a final vote on Monday.

The French lower house approved the bill last month, threatening
with jail anyone who denies that the 1915 massacre of Armenians
by Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide, drawing a threat of
sanctions from Turkey.

Ankara froze political and military ties with France when the bill was
passed by the National Assembly, and has threatened further measures
if it continues through the Senate or is approved by President
Nicolas Sarkozy.Enhanced Coverage LinkingNicolas Sarkozy. -Search
using:Biographies Plus NewsNews, Most Recent 60 Days The Senate’s
Laws Commission approved a motion on Wednesday rejecting the bill as
inadmissible by 23 votes for, nine against and eight abstentions.

A plenary Senate session on Monday will now vote on the committee’s
motion, but most senators opposed to the legislation are expected to
abstain, allowing the Senate to take a final vote on the bill itself.

“Ankara welcomes the decision by the Laws Commission at the Senate
which clearly shows its position by saying that this bill is
unconstitutional,” said Engin Solakoglu, spokesman at the Turkish
embassy in Paris.

“We expect that this good sense will continue to prevail at the Senate
on Monday,” he told AFP.

But it appeared nevertheless that the bill would garner enough votes,
even though many senators are expected to abstain.

“A very large majority will vote for and a small minority will vote
against or prefer not to take part in the vote,” said the head of
Sarkozy’s 132-strong UMP bloc in the Senate, Jean-Claude Gaudin.

Francois Rebsamen, head of the Socialists’ 130-strong bloc, said
“they will vote for” the bill. “Those who don’t want their name
associated with this text will not take part in the vote,” he added.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in
1915 and 1916 by the forces of Turkey’s former Ottoman Empire.

Turkey disputes the figure, arguing that only 500,000 died, and denies
this was genocide, ascribing the toll to fighting and starvation during
World War I and accusing the Armenians of siding with Russian invaders.

France recognised the killings as a genocide in 2001, but the new
bill would go further, by punishing anyone who denies this with a
year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros ($57,000).

Modern Turkey is still very sensitive about the issue, and has accused
France of attacking freedom of expression and free historical enquiry.

France is home to an estimated 500,000 citizens of Armenian descent,
and Sarkozy’s UMP has been accused of backing the law in order to
pander to a key electoral demographic ahead of presidential and
legislative elections.

It is backed by a cross-party majority of lawmakers but has not
won universal support in the government, where some ministers fear
it will hurt diplomatic and trade ties with a NATO ally and major
economic partner.

TURKISH PRESS DENOUNCES COURT RULING IN DINK CASE

Agence France Presse
January 18, 2012 Wednesday 9:50 AM GMT

Turkish newspapers reacted angrily Wednesday after a court rejected
claims that the 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
had been part of a wider conspiracy.

“They shot Hrant again,” said the leftist daily Birgun, after the
court sentenced 31-year-old Yasin Hayal for incitement to murder
while acquitting several other defendants and dismissing talk of
a conspiracy.

“The plot was a hallucination,” said daily Radikal and daily HaberTurk,
a pun on Hayal, the surname of the instigator of the murder: “hayal”
means dream or hallucination in Turkish.

The liberal Taraf daily blamed what it called the “white-capped state”,
referring to a white cap Dink’s murderer was wearing on the day of
the crime.

Dink was shot dead on a busy street outside his bilingual Agos
newspaper in downtown Istanbul.

His assassination sent shockwaves through Turkey and grew into a wider
scandal after reports that state security forces had known of a plot
to kill him but failed to act.

Dink’s self-confessed murderer, Ogun Samast, a jobless high-school
dropout who was 17 years old at the time, was sentenced to nearly 23
years in prison last July.

But while the court in Istanbul convicted Hayal, sentencing him to
life imprisonment, it acquitted more than a dozen other suspects,
provoking uproar in court and a furious response from the journalist’s
family and lawyers.

Tuesday’s court ruling said the killing of Dink — who had angered
nationalists with his views on Turkish-Armenian history — was not
planned in a wider conspiracy, as his supporters had alleged.

“Have they (prosecutors and judges) really probed conspiracy? I don’t
think so,” wrote Rusen Cakir in his column in daily Vatan.

“This government wants us to believe that Hrant Dink was killed … by
a couple of young people who were bored,” columnist Yasemin Congar
wrote in Taraf.

“And the government does not see that Dink’s trial is a great
opportunity to clear the dark face of the state with the light of
the reality,” she said.

Dink, 52, was a leading member of Turkey’s tiny Armenian community
and had campaigned for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians
over their bloody history.

Nationalists however hated him for calling the massacres of Armenians
under Ottoman rule a genocide, a label that Turkey fiercely rejects.

HRANT DINK’S FRIENDS ORGANIZE “SILENT CRY” MARCH IN ISTANBUL

ARMENPRESS
JANUARY 19, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, JANUARY 19, ARMENPRESS: Friends of Hrant Dink, dissatisfied
with the January 17 shameful decision of the Istanbul court, have
organized a march called “a silent cry”.

Hrant’s Friends called everybody who was against the verdict, to
gather January 19 – the day of Dink’s murder, in Istanbul Central
Taksim Square and to march to Agos, Armenpress reports citing the
Turkish mass media.

Hrant’s Friends have decided not to deliver any speech, to voice
any statement, to present any poster, but to pay tribute of honor to
Dink’s memory in silence with their “Silent Cry” march.

Thousands of people are expected to join to the march dedicated to
Hrant Dink’s memory.

JUDGE ENGAGED IN DINK’S CASE DOES NOT EXCLUDE INVOLVEMENT OF AN ORGANIZATION IN MURDER

ARMENPRESS
January 19, 2012
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, JANUARY 19, ARMENPRESS: High Criminal Court Judge Rustem
Eryılmaz does not rule out that a concrete organization stands behind
Hrant Dink’s murder, Armenpress reports. On January 19 Istanbul
Judge Rustem Eryılmaz gave an interview to Turkish daily Vatan,
particularly noting: “According to testimonies there is not any
organization involved in the murder. But we cannot also say that no
organization is involved.”

The High Criminal Court Judge stressed that according to all the
judges engaged in the case, this crime was not an ordinary one, as it
is obvious that the case has been guided from some center, but there
are no proofs to understand from where. “This is my personal opinion,”
the judge added.

He continues insisting that despite the verdict brought the other day,
the investigation is underway.

“Though all the expectations from the lawsuit were great, it did not
manage to satisfy any of the parties,” “Vatan” adds in its turn.

GEORGIAN OFFICIAL DENIED: IS AZERBAIJANI MEDIA CHEATING?

19.01.12

According Georgian “Priveli” news agency deputy speaker of Georgian
Parliament Fridon Todua has completely denied the information spread
by Azerbaijani media about his speech in Baku.

Remind, that two days ago Azerbaijani media spread information
according which Georgian official F. Todua announced in Baku that
“Azerbaijan and Georgia will return the occupied lands as they belong
to them”.

Yesterday deputy speaker of Armenian NA Eduard Sharmazanov criticized
this announcement.

“Georgian official made a baseless announcement, it is just a
nonsense”, E. Sharmazanov said. “I would like Todua to learn that
no one Armenian official makes any not correct announcement about
the issues of third countries. I would like to advice the official
to get acquainted with the historical legend of his nation, “Qartlis
Tskhovreba”. It is noted clearly who are the native nations of this
territory. Armenians and Georgians are noted here but there is no
word about Azerbaijanis. May be after learning some truths from the
text-book, Todua will apologize”.

“This is not the first case when Georgian officials make such
announcements while they are in Azerbaijan”, politician Hrant
Melik-Shahnazaryan told Times.am.

“Unfortunately, Georgian authorities considers all the same all
conflicts on the post-soviet territory. Perspective of little political
dividends makes them forget historical past and also the perspectives
of the country’s development. Georgian authorities just do not want
to see that “brother” Azerbaijan conquers Georgia joint with Turkey”,
Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan is sure.

KOSACHEV: ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN AND THOSE WHO CURRENTLY LIVE IN NAGORNO KARABAKH SHOULD COORDINATE ARRANGEMENTS ON RESOLUTION OF KARABAKH CONFLICT

arminfo
Thursday, January 19, 13:14

There are no specific arrangements on resolution of the Karabakh
conflict so far. They should be developed, coordinated and adopted
by Armenia, Azerbaijan and those who currently live in Nagorno
Karabakh Republic. First Vice Chairman of the State Duma Committee
for International Affairs Kostantin Kosachev made such statement on
Wednesday when commenting on the upcoming trilateral meeting of the
Russian-Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents in Sochi.

“Resolution of the Karabakh conflict is possible through a compromise
and not ultimatums. This conflict is one of the most complicated ones
in the post-Soviet area. Each country has strong arguments in favor
of its position,” the parliamentarian said.

Kosachev said Russia is among the few countries to enjoy trust
and support of all the conflicting parties. There are pro-Azeri
and pro-Armenian countries, while Russia has always been committed
to achievement of compromise acceptable to all the parties to the
conflict. “The efforts of the Russian leadership and diplomacy are
focused on this very goal,” Kosachev said.

To recall, on January 17 the trigger-happy ruler of dynastic Azerbaijan
Ilham Aliyev made another statement saying that Azerbaijan is and
will be increasing its defense potential. “Our military expenditures
were USD 3 413 million in 2010, but it was USD 3 474 million in 2011,”
he said at the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers.

“Our army has great opportunities today. We have strongest army in the
region”, said the Head of State and noted that the defense potential
of Azerbaijan alarms Armenia. “We are ready to get more result with
less losses,” the trigger-happy president declared.