Author: Toganian Liana

Hürriyet, Turkey
Feb 4 2006

FM Gül’s critical visit to US

Hürriyet Ýnternet

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül’s upcoming visit to the US comes at a
time when Turkey’s expectations about US movement on sensitive issues
are increasing. A laundry list of topics could be up for discussion,
including the so-called Armenian Genocide, PKK terror, Iraq as a
whole and the Kirkuk question, Iraq’s relations with neighbouring
countries and Cyprus.

During his visit, which includes stops in Washington and New York,
Gül will get together with US Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley,
many members of the Congress and Senate, and the Jewish lobby. It is
yet unclear whether Gül will meet Nancy Pelosi, chairwoman of the
House of Representatives, where it is expected that the Armenian
Genocide issue will be raised.

Iranian nuclear scientist `assassinated by Mossad’

The Sunday TimesUK
February 04, 2007

Sarah Baxter, Washington

A PRIZE-WINNING Iranian nuclear scientist has died in mysterious
circumstances, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US
State Department and broadcasts to Iran.
An intelligence source suggested that Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a
nuclear physicist, had been assassinated by Mossad, the Israeli
security service.

Hassanpour worked at a plant in Isfahan where uranium hexafluoride gas
is produced. The gas is needed to enrich uranium in another plant at
Natanz which has become the focus of concerns that Iran may be
developing nuclear weapons.

According to Radio Farda, Iranian reports of Hassanpour’s death emerged
on January 21 after a delay of six days, giving the cause as `gas
poisoning’. The Iranian reports did not say how or where Hassanpour was
poisoned but his death was said to have been announced at a conference
on nuclear safety.

Rheva Bhalla of Stratfor, the US intelligence company, claimed on
Friday that Hassanpour had been targeted by Mossad and that there was
`very strong intelligence’ to suggest that he had been assassinated by
the Israelis, who have repeatedly threatened to prevent Iran acquiring
the bomb.

Hassanpour won Iran’s leading military research prize in 2004 and was
awarded top prize at the Kharazmi international science festival in
Iran last year.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to announce next Sunday ‘ the
28th anniversary of the Islamic revolution ‘ that 3,000 centrifuges
have been installed at Natanz, enabling Iran to move closer to
industrial scale uranium enrichment.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency say that
hundreds of technicians and labourers have been `working feverishly’ to
assemble equipment at the plant.

The Brunei Times, Brunei Darussalam
Jan 3 2007

It’s a war of the words

George P Fletcher
03-Feb-07

NOWADAYS, words are often seen as a source of instability.

The violent reactions last year to the caricatures of the Prophet
Muhammad (PBUH) published in a Danish newspaper saw a confused
Western response, with governments tripping over their tongues trying
to explain what the media should and should not be allowed to do in
the name of political satire.

Then Iran trumped the West by sponsoring a conference of Holocaust
deniers, a form of speech punished as criminal almost everywhere in
Europe.

As Turks well know, it is dangerous to take a position on the
Armenian genocide of 1915. The most recent Nobel laureate in
literature, Orhan Pamuk, was prosecuted in Istanbul for denying
Turkey’s official history by saying that the Armenian genocide
actually occurred.

Other Turks have faced prosecution in Western Europe for saying that
it did not.

So words are now clearly a battlefield in the cultural conflict
between Islam and the West.

The West has learned that, simply as a matter of self-censorship, not
legal fiat, newspapers and other media outlets will not disseminate
critical pictures of the prophet, and the Pope will no longer make
critical comments about Islam. But these gestures of cooperation with
Muslim sensibilities have not been met by reciprocal gestures.

Instead, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Irans president, has threatened to wipe
Israel off the map. The Israeli Foreign Ministry now seeks
prosecution of Ahmedinejad for incitement to commit genocide a
violation of international law.

But the Israeli press is also bellicose. Israeli newspapers regularly
carry stories about why Israel may need to attack Iran to prevent it
from acquiring an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

United States President George W Bush has made similarly ominous, if
more vague, statements about Iran.

In Germany, preparing and calling for preemptive military strikes
from within the government are subject to criminal sanctions.

The worlds different legal systems have never been in much agreement
about the boundaries of free speech.

Even between good neighbours like Canada and the US, there is little
agreement about punishing hate speech.

Canadians punish racial insults, but Americans do not, at least if
the issue is simply one of protecting the dignity of racial
minorities.

But threatening violence is more serious. Many countries are united
in supporting the principle that if, say, Ahmedinejad does meet the
criteria for incitement of genocide, he should be punished in the
International Criminal Court. Indeed, the International Criminal
Tribunal for Rwanda punished radio station operators who made
aggressive public broadcasts urging Hutus to pick up their machetes
and murder Tutsis.

A decade ago there would have been a good argument in international
law that the Hutu-Tutsi example supports prosecution only after the
damage has been done.

All the international precedents from Nuremberg to the present
concern international intervention after mass atrocities.

Domestic police may be able to intervene to prevent crime before it
occurs, but in the international arena there is no police force that
can do that.

It follows, therefore, that the crime of incitement should apply only
to cases like Rwanda, where the radio broadcasts actually contributed
to the occurrence of genocide.

In cases where bellicose leaders make public threats to bury another
country (remember Khrushchev?) or to wipe it off the map, the courts
should wait, it was said, until some harm occurs.

But the international community has become ever more intrusive in
using legal remedies against persons who engage in provocative and
dangerous speech. In September 2005, the United Nations Security
Council passed Resolution 1624 paradoxically, with American approval
calling upon all member states to enact criminal sanctions against
those who incite terrorism.

The model of incitement they had in mind is the same one that British
Prime Minister Blair has publicly invoked: Muslim leaders standing up
in their mosques and urging their congregations to go out and kill
infidels.

Americans have traditionally said that, absent a risk of immediate
unlawful violence, this form of speech should be protected under the
First Amendment.

US courts reasoned that it is better to allow the release of hateful
sentiments than to call attention to them by showcasing them in
court.

But when it comes to terrorism in todays world, most countries,
including the worlds democracies, are not as tolerant as they used to
be.

So the traditional liberal position in support of giving wide scope
to freedom of speech, even for extremists, is losing ground
everywhere.

When it comes to fighting terrorism and the prospect of genocide, the
world is now becoming afraid of dangerous words.

George P Fletcher is Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia
University. His latest book is Romantics at War: Glory and Guilt in
the Age of Terrorism.

Project Syndicate

hp?shape_ID=19492

Hayots Ashkharh, Yerevan,
Feb 2 2007

Opposition is not alternative today
ARMENIAN AIDE SAYS OPPOSITION’S ELECTION CHANCES SLIM

by Harutyun Gevorkyan

An interview with the [Armenian] president’s adviser on security
issues, Garnik

Isagulyan.

[Correspondent] Opposition leaders have been saying that the
forthcoming parliamentary election will be held in a very tense
domestic political situation. Are there grounds for such anxiety?

[Isagulyan] There is nothing unusual in the domestic political
situation in Armenia and all pre-election processes have been
developing in a natural and peaceful way. I am sure that the election
campaigns of political forces that will run in the election will pass
off calmly as well. As for an outcome, it will be more correct to
speak about it in post-election time.

[Correspondent] Mr Isagulyan, what is hidden behind the slogan "the
election will be rigged"?

[Isagulyan] I have got an impression that what the opposition leaders
say today was earlier said by somebody else. Unfortunately, the
entire opposition camp is in agony. They always point at some
mistakes and shortcomings without any grounds. But they do not try to
suggest any way out from the "difficult" situation of the country. If
they say that Armenia has found itself outside international
cooperation programmes, they almost always mean ceding the NKR
[Nagornyy Karabakh republic] and adding Meghri [southern Armenia] to
that [territory] for having good relations with Azerbaijan and
Turkey. This is political will of the opposition.

But it is not a political position when a political force is ready to
cede what it has in order not to be forgotten and for having at least
one pipeline running via our territory. All this is a component of
the slogan "the election will be rigged". The opposition simply
understands that it does not have chances to get sufficient votes
from the people to come to the power. This is a good reason for a
hullabaloo. I think that they should refrain from misinforming
society and foreign forces at least at the pre-election stage.

[Correspondent] A board member of the Armenian Pan-National Movement
[APNM], Aram Manukyan, has said that he is against velvet and
coloured revolutions, but they [presumably the party] will be
involved in the same kind of events which have taken place in Ukraine
and Georgia.

[Isagulyan] The opposition realizes very well that our state has been
established and all the power and law-enforcement structures fulfil
their duties in full. There is no a revolutionary situation in our
country. There is need of revolution neither from below nor

from above. If the opposition has in fact expected for 15-20 per cent
support of the people, it would not be in a situation of this kind.
They understand that they have lost the entire resource of confidence
and they have nothing more than pin hopes on coloured revolutions.

I said long ago that the entire opposition camp is led by the APNM as
major intellectual potential of the opposition is accumulated in this
party. As for the APNM itself, the party sees that the election will
not be rigged and so there is no way for them to come to power.

[Correspondent] To what degree are foreign forces concerned about the
possibility of a coloured revolution in Armenia?

[Isagulyan] Foreign forces always prefer to create a situation in
other countries when they can influence authorities. But I think that
they do not make such calculations regarding Armenia. There is a
balance of foreign forces’ influence in our country and any attempt
of interference from their side will not succeed. Foreign forces
establish their relations with any state taking the reality into
account. It is difficult to rely on the opposition’s view that 80 per
cent of the people are displeased with the authorities. It is not
ruled out that many people could be displeased with the authorities
but they do not consider the opposition an alternative.

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 2 2007

Revisiting an old question after murder of Dink: Is there a `deep state’?

Have Turkish institutions been infiltrated by a shadowy deep state»?
The slaying of a prominent ethnic Armenian journalist has renewed
debate about whether a network of renegade agents within the state,
driven by hardline nationalism, is targeting reformists and other
perceived enemies.

Turkish teenager Ogün Samast, suspected of killing journalist Hrant
Dink, center, is escorted by plainclothes policemen as he arrives at
a courthouse in Ýstanbul
Skeptics say the claim fans conspiracy theories and only creates a
bogeyman for Turkey’s ills. Whatever the truth, the investigation
into the murder of Hrant Dink _ who was loathed by nationalists
because he urged Turks to recognize the mass killings of Armenians
during World War I as genocide – is under scrutiny despite its
seeming success. Seven suspects, including the teenager who allegedly
pulled the trigger and the man accused of supplying the gun, have
been arrested since the killing two weeks ago.
Uneasy questions are being raised about who holds the levers of power
in a nation where tensions between secularists and Islamists, and
liberals and rightists, have created deep faultlines in society.
The consensus among many government critics is that the plot to kill
Dink involved more than a few nationalists, and that a professional
group with considerable resources at its disposal may have played a
role. Police say they have uncovered no evidence suggesting a wider
conspiracy, and investigators have promised to follow all tips
despite skepticism about how aggressively they will do so.
The idea of `deep state,’ or `derin devlet’ in Turkish, has been
around for decades. One definition says it is a clandestine group
within the security and intelligence services, as well as the state
bureaucracy, that resists change, sometimes violently.
Another theory says it is not a single group, but a set of beliefs
that espouses the centrality of the state in politics, and whose
protectors include the judiciary and the educational system. The
expression is so common that Turks often joke about it, blaming some
unforeseen development in the workplace or daily life on the `deep
state.’
Little hard evidence has emerged that a `deep state’exists, but even
Turkey’s prime minister has given the idea credence.
`The `deep state’ has become a tradition. It is a term that has been
used since the Ottoman period,’ Erdogan told reporters on Sunday
aboard an airplane bound for an African Union summit in Ethiopia.
`We can describe it as gangs inside a state organization, and this
kind of structure does exist. Our state and our nation have paid a
high price because we have not been able to crack down on such
networks,’ the daily Zaman newspaper quoted the prime minister as
saying. The topic is so murky that Yeni Safak, an Islamist newspaper,
once addressed the cloak-and-dagger concept with a reference to the
signature introduction of fiction’s most famous spy, James Bond. `My
name is State, Deep State,’ read the title of a 2005 column. The
prominence of `deep state’ in the Turkish imagination exposes
concerns about the accountability of the military and other
institutions in a nation that seeks to seal its modern status by
joining the European Union, a bid that is virtually on hold because
of a dispute over divided Cyprus.
The military has staged three coups in modern Turkey, and remained
influential after ceding control to civilian governments. Supporters
view it as a guardian of secular values, a vital tool in the fight
against separatist rebels in Kurdish-dominated areas, and the
champion of Turkish Cypriots whose government is unrecognized by any
other nation. Dink, who was shot outside his Istanbul office on Jan.
19, had been prosecuted under a broadly defined law that bans the
denigration of Turkish identity, and he had suggested that judicial
rulings reflected behind-the-scenes allegiance to the state rather
than the rights of citizens.
`The great force, which was just there to bring me down and which let
its existence be felt at all stages of the case with methods unknown
to me, was again behind the curtain,’ Dink, 52, wrote obliquely in
one of his last columns in Agos, the weekly Turkish-Armenian
newspaper that he founded.
Dink said he received constant threats for his espousal of minority
Armenian rights, and he criticized top authorities for apparent
indifference. `Other opponents of the bureaucracy have suffered a
similar fate,’ said David L. Phillips, a friend of Dink who served as
chairman of the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission and is now
executive director of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, based
in New York City. `The `deep state’ has a history of eliminating its
opponents.’
One case that fueled speculation about the `deep state’ was the 1996
Susurluk scandal, named after the town where a car crash revealed
alliances between state officials and mobsters. Passengers who died
in the wrecked Mercedes included Istanbul’s No. 2 police officer and
a fugitive hit man.
A probe confirmed suspicions that officials were using radical
nationalists and criminals to intimidate or kill perceived enemies. A
1997 government report accused some police and politicians of hiring
hit men to target journalists, Kurdish rebels and Armenian activists
since the 1980s. Erdogan pledged an investigation `at full speed’
into Dink’s killing and his government removed the governor and
police chief of Trabzon, the city on the Black Sea coast that is home
to suspects in the murder.
A year ago, a Turkish teenager shot dead a Roman Catholic priest in
Trabzon; investigators believed that attack was linked to Islamic
anger over the publication in European newspapers of caricatures of
the Prophet Muhammad.
Erdogan, a moderate whose Islamic-rooted Justice and Development
Party is distasteful to some in the secular military, has indicated
that authorities need to tackle more than just youthful triggermen
likely to get relatively lenient sentences if prosecuted as minors.
But Justice Minister Cemil Cicek was ambivalent in an address to the
Ankara Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.

Police investigate images of journalist’s alleged killer

Agencies
Friday February 2, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

The publication of grainy "souvenir" images showing the alleged
murderer of an ethnic Armenian journalist posing with police officers
sparked outrage in Turkey today.
The pictures show Ogun Samast, charged with killing the prominent
journalist Hrant Dink, flanked by officers and holding the Turkish
flag.

Another Turkish flag in the background carries a quote by Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, which reads: "The
nation’s land is sacred. It cannot be left to fate."

Dink was shot outside the offices of his newspaper in Istanbul last
month. The ethnic Armenian angered Turkish nationalists with repeated
assertions that the mass killings of Armenians around the time of
World War I had been genocide.

Mr Samast was arrested days later after his father saw CCTV images
issued by police. Prosecutors say the 17-year-old has confessed to the
killing.

The emergence of the images sparked a furious response in the Turkish
media.

"Shoulder to shoulder with the triggerman: suspected killer Samast was
given the hero treatment," the Sabah daily newspaper reported on its
front page.

Ismail Caliskan, a police spokesman, said the officers in the images
were being investigated, as were those who leaked them to the media.

More than 100,000 people marched at Dink’s funeral, many of them
chanting for Turkey to abolish a repressive article in the penal code
used against many intellectuals including Dink, who spoke openly on
controversial topics.

Last year, the journalist was given a suspended six-month sentence for
insulting "Turkishness".

VLADIMIR HAKOBIAN WINS GIBRALTAR INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENT

GIBRALTAR, FEBRUARY 2, NOYAN TAPAN. Great international traditional
chess tournament ended on February 1 in Gibraltar. In the last tour
Vladimir Hakobian defeated Yuri Kuzubov (Ukraine). As a result, the
Armenian chess-player gained 7.5 out of 9 possible points and took
first place.

The New Anatolian, Turkey
Feb 1 2007

Interior Ministry anticipates further turmoil in wake of Dink killing

House receives Armenian ‘genocide’ resolution

The New Anatolian with AP / Washington
01 February 2007

Democratic and Republican lawmakers introduced a resolution on
Tuesday urging the U.S. government to recognize so-called Armenian
genocide.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, a co-sponsor, acknowledged that the
resolution might harm U.S.-Turkish relations in the short term.
Nevertheless, he said, "I’m optimistic that the relationship will go
on. We will move beyond this."

Schiff and other lead sponsors who introduced the resolution in the
House of Representatives say they have commitments from more than 150
other members who want to add their names as co-sponsors after the
legislation’s introduction. That would be a strong show of support in
the 435-member body.

The sponsors, who held a press conference Tuesday attended by two
Armenian survivors of the events, say that the move to Democratic
control in Congress increases the chances that the bill will reach
the House floor for a vote. Similar resolutions have been introduced
in the past but were kept from a vote by congressional leaders.

"We feel very strongly that this year is the year we’re going to get
this passed," said another co-sponsor, Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone
Jr., whose state, New Jersey, has a large Armenian-American
community.

The bill, which claims that 1.5 million Armenians were killed almost
a century ago in what it describes as genocide, is likely to draw
reactions from Turkey. The Bush administration has warned that even
congressional debate on the genocide question could damage relations
with a vital Muslim ally and member of NATO.

The resolution’s supporters say that the leader of the House, Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, who has expressed support for the
resolution, is likely to come under pressure from the Bush
administration to keep the House from voting on the bill.

"Make no mistake, the speaker will get a call from the president
asking for no vote on the grounds of national security," said
Republican Rep. George Radanovich, a co-sponsor.

Turkey strongly opposes the claims that its predecessor state, the
Ottoman Empire, caused the Armenian deaths in a planned genocide. The
Turkish government has said the toll is wildly inflated and that
Armenians were killed or displaced in civil unrest during the
empire’s collapse and the World War I conditions. Ankara’s proposal
to Yerevan to set up a joint commission of historians to study events
of 1915 is still awaiting a positive response from the Armenian side.

After French lawmakers voted in October to make it a crime to deny
that the claims were a genocide, Turkey said it would suspend
military relations with France.

Turkey provides vital support for U.S. military operations in Iraq
and Afghanistan.

From: Sebouh Z Tashjian <[email protected]>
Subject: Turkish Preconditions

A1+

TURKISH PRECONDITIONS
[02:05 pm] 29 January, 2007

«We do not want the border with Armenia to be opened»,
announced head of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry
of Igdir Kemal Arslan. According to him, the
businessmen of Igdir are against the opening of the
border as «Armenia has occupied 20% of the territory
of Azerbaijan».

According to the Turkish official, as a precondition
for the opening of the border «Armenia must give back
the occupied territories to Azerbaijan, recognize the
borders of Turkey and refrain from the recognition of
the Armenian Genocide», Azeri agency «Trend» reports.

PanARMENIAN.Net

Robert Kocharian: 15th anniversary of Armenian Army is national celebration
27.01.2007 14:26 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On the occasion of 15th anniversary of the Armenian
Army President Robert Kocharian awarded a number of Armenian
servicemen with military ranks, as well as governmental medals and
orders. Speaking on the awarding ceremony, the head of the state
underlined that the 15th anniversary of the Armenian Army is a
national celebration. `It is a personal celebration for me, as well as
for everyone of you. We have met with many of you in a quite another
status, another environment and situations.

Those were cruel years, but alongside they were heroic days for our
nation and history of our country. We recall those years and victory
with pride, which was reached by joint efforts,’ stated the president,
adding that such an army is a pride for every Armenian. Kocharian
stressed that the establishing process of the Armenian statehood has
begun with formation of the Armenian Army. `These were the conditions
of establishing the Independent Armenia.

Those conditions were imposed on us, but it is the fate of our nation
and we are responsible for it,’ stated the president. In his words,
today the stable development of the country directly depends on the
situation in the army, its efficiency, and first of all, it proceeds
from the physical and spiritual readiness of soldiers and modern
armament. And all these directly must be provided by generals and
officers of the Army, as well as it is a moral responsibility of every
Armenian. `I’d like to congratulate on the occasion of the 15th
anniversary of the Armenian Army and wish all of us peace, which is a
precondition for stable development and progress,’ concluded the
president, IA Regnum reports.