Ankara not going to recall its Ambassador from Paris
ArmRadio.am
21.10.2006 13:22
"Official Ankara does not intend to recall its Ambassador from Paris,"
Speaker of the Turkish MFA Namik Tan said in a press conference
in Ankara.
According to the Turkish AT agency, Tan said that existence of
diplomatic mission in Paris is necessary to bring Turkey’s position
to France. "We stand for cool-headed and reasonable behavior and
we’ll continue our activity this way," Tan said.
BAD WEATHER WAS CAUSE OF A-320 PLANE’S CRASH, NAU CHAIRMAN SAYS
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 20, NOYAN TAPAN. The bad weather was the cause of
the crash of A-320 plane during a Yerevan-Sochi flight in May of
this year. Dmitry Adbashian, Chairman of the National Aviation Union
(NAU), expressed this opinion during the October 20 meeting with
reporters. According to him, the weather deteriorated near Sochi
Airport and the plane was caught in a "rising air flow" which caused
the crash. D. Adbashian reminded that Sochi Airport had no right to
receive planes of this type – due to the absence of the appropriate
devices, particularly the devices regsitering meteorological conditions
beforehand. He did not subscribe to the opinion that pilot Vladimir
Poghosian expressed during the October 19 press conference that an
explosion in A-320 plane was the cause of the crash. In D. Adbashin’s
words, if there had been a quarrel among plane passengers, the pilot
would have done everything possible to land the plane as quickly as
possible. Whereas, after an instruction of the Sochi ground controller,
the pilot "very quietly" attempted to make a second circle.
PERMISSION OF TURKISH SECRET SERVICES NEEDED FOR ASCENDING MOUNT ARARAT
Noyan Tapan News Agency, Armenia
Oct 18 2006
ISTANBUL, OCTOBER 18, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. Henceforth special
permission of Turkish Secret Services is needed for ascending Mount
Ararat. The Turkish authorities put forward this demand after American
Armenian students hoisted the Armenian flag on the Ararat peak.
According to Marmara’s report, a protocol on Ararat was signed
among Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, General Headquarters
leadership, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Turkish Secret Services.
According to this protocol, those wishing to ascend Mount Ararat
should present the respective application at least two months ago and
in the circumstance of persons of foreign nationalities they should
get a permission from Turkish Secret Services.
Those ascending Mount Ararat will be prohibited to implement a
scientific study on the mountain. They should say that they ascend
the mountain just for the purpose of mountaineering and tourism and
after getting a permission they should buy the necessary instruments
that should be checked during the descent.
NKR MOD REFUTES THE INFORMATION ABOUT FIRING AZERI POSITIONS
Public Radio, Armenia
Oct 18 2006
Head of the Press Service of NKR MOD Senor Asratyan refuted the
report of the Azeri Ministry of Defense that Karabakh forces have
fired Azeri positions in the direcion of Aghdam and Fizuli.
In an interview with Mediamax agency Senor Asratyan called this
information ~Drecurrent misinformation aimed at defame Nagorno
Karabakh."
He did not rule out that such propagandistic steps are associated
with Azerbaijan’s failure to convince the international community
that Nagorno Karabakh was responsible for the fires on territories
under its control.
TURKISH-FRENCH TIES FACE ‘IRREPARABLE DAMAGE’ OVER GENOCIDE BILL: FM
Agence France Presse — English
October 17, 2006 Tuesday
A French bill making it a crime to deny Ottoman Turks committed
genocide against Armenians will inflict "irreparable damage" to
bilateral ties if adopted, the Turkish foreign minister warned Tuesday.
Speaking during a parliamentary debate on the future of Turkish-French
ties, Abdullah Gul said Ankara was considering international legal
means to combat the bill.
"The bill has caused great wounds in Turkish-French ties," Gul told
parliament.
If it is adopted, "the wounds it has opened will be irreparable. Our
ties will receive irreparable wounds in politics, economics and
security," he said.
The bill, which was voted by the lower house of the French parliament
Thursday, foresees one year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros (57,000
dollars) for anyone who denies that World War I massacres of Armenians
were genocide.
It needs the approval of the Senate and the president to become law.
Gul said Ankara was studying a detailed plan of retaliatory measures
against the bill, which he said violated freedom of expression,
a basic tenet of the European Union.
"The government will use all means provided by international law,
including resorting to judiciary means," Gul said.
Analysts have said Turkey could challenge the French bill at the
European Court of Human Rights after it has been adopted.
The bill is widely seen here as a punch below the belt by opponents
of Turkey’s European Union membership that will fan anti-Western
sentiment among Turks and make it harder for the government to push
ahead with painful EU-demanded reforms.
"France has made a definite decision to block Turkey’s full membershup
in the Europeaun Union," said Sukru Elekdag, a senior MP from the
main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). "France’s aim is to
frustrate Turkey, to force it to throw in the towel."
Ankara, facing mounting EU warnings to respect freedom of speech,
charges that the French move is an example of double standards,
arguing that the bill eventually could block free debate on a
historical subject.
Opposition lawmakers called also for reprisals against neighboring
Armenia which is waging an international campaign to have the killings
recognised as genocide.
"If they hurt us, then we should hurt them too," Onur Oymen, also
from the CHP, said, suggesting that about 70,000 illegal Armenian
workers in Turkey, who have so far been tolerated, be sent back.
Critics of the French bill say it will deal a blow to tentative
efforts for reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia.
Ankara has declined to establish diplomatic ties with Yerevan. In
1993, it sealed its border with its eastern neighbor, a move which
was also a gesture of solidarity with close ally Azerbaijan, which
was then at war with Armenia.
Ankara had warned ahead of the vote that French companies would be
barred from major economic projects in Turkey, including a nuclear
power plant whose tender process is expected to soon begin, if the
bill was adopted.
Officials, however, have sought to calm widespread calls for a boycott
of French goods on the grounds that French companies based in Turkey
and employing Turks could be harmed.
The killings are one of the most controversial episodes in Turkish
history.
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.
Turkey categorically rejects the genocide label, arguing that
300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife
when Armenians rose for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided
with invading Russian troops as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.
KEEPING TURKEY OUT
By Gwynne Dyer
Cyprus Mail, Cyprus
Oct 18 2006
WORDS matter. The Holocaust of the European Jews during the Second
World War was a genocide. The mass deportation of Chechens from their
Caucasian homeland during the same war was a crime but not a genocide,
even though half of them died, because Moscow’s aim was to keep them
from collaborating with German troops who were nearing Chechnya, not
to exterminate them. Which brings us to the far more controversial
case of the Armenians and the Turks.
On October 12, the French parliament passed a law declaring that
anyone who denies that the mass murder of Armenians in eastern
Turkey in 1915-17 was a genocide will face a year in prison. But the
French foreign ministry called the law "unnecessary and untimely",
and President Jacques Chirac telephoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Tayyib Erdogan to apologise.
"Chirac called me and told me he was sorry. He said that he is
listening to our statements and he thinks we are right and he will do
what he can in the upcoming process [of ratifying the legislation[,"
said Erdogan on Saturday. Since Chirac can veto the law, that should be
the end of that, but the point of passing the law was never really to
get it on the books. It was to alienate Turkish public opinion and to
curry favour with the half-million French citizens of Armenian descent.
Why would the conservative majority in the French parliament
deliberately set out to annoy the Turks, knowing that the law would
eventually be vetoed by the president? Because they hope to provoke a
nationalist backlash in Turkey that would further damage that country’s
already difficult relationship with the European Union.
French public opinion is already in a xenophobic mood over the last
expansion of the EU, with folk-tales of "Polish plumbers" working for
peanuts and stealing the jobs of honest French workers causing outrage,
especially among right-wing voters who never much liked foreigners
anyway. The prospect of eighty million Turks – Muslim Turks – joining
the European Union, even if it is at least ten years away, is enough
to make their blood boil.
So a big row with Turkey should attract lots of votes to the right’s
presidential candidate in next May’s election, who is likely to be
none other than current prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy – who announced
last month that Turkey should never be allowed to join the EU: "We
have to say who is European and who isn’t. It’s no longer possible to
leave this question open." The new law is not really about Armenians
or Turks. It’s about the French election.
Meanwhile, in Turkey, anti-EU nationalists have their own game
under way. While Turkey was busy amending its penal code to make it
conform to EU standards over the past few years, hard-line lawyers and
bureaucrats smuggled in a new law, Article 301, that provides severe
penalties for "insulting Turkishness". In practice, that mainly means
trying to ban public discussion of the Armenian massacres, and some 70
prosecutions have already been brought by the ultra-right-wing Union of
Lawyers against Turkish authors, journalists and other public figures.
For several generations, the Turkish government flatly denied any
guilt for the Armenian massacres, insisting that they didn’t happen
and if they did, it was the Armenians’ own fault for rebelling against
the Turkish state in wartime. Latterly, a new generation of Turkish
intellectuals has been saying that a million or more Armenians did
die in the mass deportations from eastern Anatolia, and that Turkey
needs to admit its guilt and apologise – though most still refuse to
call it a genocide, as that would put it in the same category as the
Jewish Holocaust.
Israel, too, refuses to use the term "genocide" for the Armenian
massacres, on the grounds that there was some provocation (Armenian
revolutionaries conspired with both Britain and Russia in 1914-15
to launch local uprisings in support of their planned invasions
of Turkey), and that the Turkish state’s actions, though brutal,
illegal and immoral, were not premeditated. Most Armenians, of course,
desperately want the label "genocide" to be applied to their ancestors’
suffering, since they feel that any other term demotes it to a lower
rank of tragedy. But there is room for dialogue and even reconciliation
here, if people can get past the issue of nomenclature.
The prosecutions for "insulting Turkishness" – even against Turkey’s
greatest living novelist, Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk – are not
just an attempt to stifle this dialogue among Turks, or between
Turks and Armenians. The ultra-nationalists also want to derail the
negotiations for EU membership by painting Turkey as an authoritarian
and intolerant state that does not belong in Europe. They are, in
effect, Sarkozy’s objective allies.
But Prime Minister Erdogan will probably repeal Article 301 once next
year’s elections are past. France’s law, which requires people to
discuss the Armenian massacres in precisely the terms that 301 bans,
will probably be vetoed by Chirac. And Turkey’s best-known Armenian
journalist, Hrant Dink, who has already been prosecuted several
times under 301, has just announced that he will go to France "to
protest against this madness and violate the [new] law… And I will
commit the crime to be prosecuted there, so that these two irrational
mentalities can race to put me into jail."
CIS LEADERS TO MEET FOR SUMMIT IN LATE NOVEMBER
PanARMENIAN.Net
17.10.2006 13:32 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ CIS leaders will meet for a summit in late November,
Russian FM Sergey Lavrov stated in Minsk after the session of the
Commonwealth Council of FMs. "The time of holding the summit is being
specified," he remarked. "A rich exchange of views was held in Minsk,
which reaffirmed the CIS inclination to enhance effectiveness in
compliance with the commissions of the CIS Presidents," the Russian
FM said. Lavrov also reported that "a report on the course of work of
the high level group on enhancing CIS effectiveness was also heard,"
reports ITAR-TASS.
CUSTOMS HEAD SAYS DEVALUATION OF DOLLAR AFFECTS NEGATIVELY ON EXPORT
Panorama.am
18:06 16/10/06
The chairman of customs service, Armen Avetisyan, said as a citizen he
is happy that dram is strengthened against dollar but as an official
he is not. He said customs revenues partly decrease due to devaluation
of dollar.
He also said export has gone down making up 296 bln drams against 320
bln last year. He said for example the volume of molybdenum export
has increased but the prices of international exchange have gone down.
Export of diamond, cognac, vodka, processed and semi-processed gold
have gone down too. He said, on the other hand, import has increased
making up 573 bln drams against 485 bln January-September, last
year.
ANKARA SIGNALS AMENDING ARTICLE 301 AHEAD RELEASE OF PROGRESS REPORT
By Abdulhamit Bilici, Selcuk Gultasli
Zaman, Turkey
Oct 17 2006
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has signaled that Turkey may amend
article 301, which has been used to prosecute intellectuals and
journalists for "insulting Turkishness."
He said so while attending the EU troika meeting in Luxembourg
yesterday, but made no mention of a specific time frame to do so.
EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said that he was pleased with
Turkey’s willingness to amend article 301.
Diplomatic sources stressed that Turkey made a promise to the European
Union about the amendment of article 301 but particularly refrained
from mentioning a schedule to do so.
Following the adoption of the Armenian bill in the French National
Assembly on Thursday, the amendment of article 301 seems difficult
to accomplish before Nov. 8. However, it may be dealt with before
the EU Summit on December 14-15.
Monday’s meeting between Turkey and the EU is the last before the
release of the EU Commission’s critical progress report due November 8.
The two sides discussed issues such as article 301, Cyprus, the 9th
reform package, along with regional issues.
Minister Gul directed harsh criticisms toward France in a news
conference where Rehn asked for either the abolishment or amendment
of article 301.
In response to a question, Rehn said that freedom of expression should
be ensured in Turkey as soon as possible; however, it may take a long
time to reach a consensus on amending article 301 he warned.
Gul, in response to Rehn, said that Turkey would not make the same
mistake that France made.
The parties did not discuss EU term president Finland’s Cyprus plan
at the ministerial level, though lower levels did go over the plan.
Rehn reiterated that the Finnish plan might be a "last opportunity"
for a solution on the island.
Progress Report Gains Importance
Diplomatic sources pointed out that yesterday’s EU troika meeting
was a fruitful one as they stressed Rehn’s contentment with the 9th
reform package and his reaction to the Armenian bill.
The progress report due on Nov. 8 has gained more importance because
of the debates on article 301 and Cyprus.
EU leaders will outline decisions about Turkey on December 14-15
according to the upcoming progress report. The EU leaders will
evaluate options like suspending membership negotiations or freezing
the chapters regarding the Customs Union according to this report.
LES ENTREPRISES FRANCAISES RISQUENT D’ETRE EXCLUES DES GRANDS APPELS D’OFFRES EN TURQUIE
Sophie Shihab (avec Cecile Prudhomme a Paris)
Le Monde
14 octobre 2006 samedi
Les interets economiques de la France comme de la Turquie vont-ils
succomber aux passions contraires qui se dechaînent dans ces pays
depuis l’adoption, jeudi 12 octobre a Paris, de la loi punissant la
negation du genocide armenien ?
" La Turquie est un enjeu très important pour la France, avec un
encours de 10 milliards d’euros de contrats et un peu plus de 5
milliards d’exportations chaque annee ", a rappele Christine Lagarde,
ministre deleguee au commerce exterieur, en deplorant que l’on soit
" clairement en train de faire de cet enjeu economique une cause
electoraliste qui ne me paraît pas justifiee ".
Les milieux economiques francais s’inquiètent. La Turquie represente
le 6e marche de la France, son 5e fournisseur de biens – après
l’Allemagne, le Royaume-Uni, l’Italie et les Etats-Unis.
Des 350 societes francaises implantees en Turquie, dont près d’un
tiers de grands groupes, c’est Areva qui risque de pâtir le plus des
tensions actuelles. Le ministre des affaires etrangères, Abdullah Gul,
a en effet cite les projets de construction de centrales nucleaires
en Turquie au nombre de ceux pour lesquels une offre francaise ne
serait pas acceptable.
EVITER LES PERTES
L’exclusion de Paris des appels d’offres a venir est la mesure
envisagee par les autorites turques, qui ont deja annonce qu’elles
" n’organiseront pas " un boycottage commercial. Toutefois, elles ne
s’opposeront pas, non plus, aux initiatives privees et locales en ce
sens, alors que la presse turque detaille deja celles envisagees par
les chambres de commerce regionales.
Lorsque le Parlement francais avait vote, en 2001, une loi
reconnaissant le genocide armenien, plusieurs contrats avaient deja
ete casses – avec Thomson et Alcatel notamment. Des produits francais
avaient ete boycottes.
Cette fois, le gouvernement turc cherche manifestement a eviter les
pertes pour son pays, en faisant savoir qu’il n’est pas question de
penaliser les entreprises francaises. Peugeot ou Renault assurent
du travail a des milliers de Turcs en Turquie et contribuent a ses
recettes d’exportation.
" Apparemment, les Turcs sont très remontes, mais on peut se demander
s’ils ont un interet reel a prendre des sanctions au moment où ils
sont engages dans des negociations difficiles pour l’entree dans
l’Union europeenne et qu’ils doivent defendre leur image auprès
des Europeens ", estime Dorothee Schmid, de l’Institut francais des
relations internationales (IFRI).
–Boundary_(ID_8rBNppXcDscUsN+T8hYWXA)–