Category: 2022

Ahval
Feb. 3, 2022
A preparatory commission made up of members of the Parliamentary
Justice and Constitutional Commissions issued a report in favour of
the lifting of Kurdish opposition deputy Semra Güzel’s parliamentary
immunity with a majority vote, daily Evrensel reported on Thursday.
The commission comprised of three deputies from the ruling Justice and
Development Party (AKP), one from the main opposition Republican
People’s Party (CHP) and another from Güzel’s own Peoples’ Democartic
Party (HDP).
The report will be presented to the Justice and Constitutional
Commissions on February 8, and the lifting of Güzel’s immunity will be
discussed in a parliamentary session to be determined later on. If the
general assembly votes to strip Güzel of her status, courts will be
able to go forward with charges of terrorism against the deputy.
Güzel may face two counts of membership in a terrorist organisation
over a series of photos that surfaced in early January, showing the
deputy posing with a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in
what appears to be an encampment for the armed group. The PKK is
designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States, and
the European Union.
“This is a political trial and it is not just about Semra Güzel,” HDP
deputy Filiz Kerestecioğlu said during the commission’s previous
meeting on Wednesday, according to Mezopotamya Agency.
“History from Leyla Zana to this day is no different. Secret witnesses
are unlawful and should be banished,” she said.
Kerestecioğlu added that Güzel had met with the PKK member during a
ceasefire and peace talks between Turkey and the PKK, at a time when
many people were doing the same.
The campaign against Güzel is connected to efforts to criminalise the
HDP and shut the party down, Kerestecioğlu said.
In an earlier statement Güzel had said she had known the PKK member
from her university days, and that they had been engaged to be married
before he joined the group. The pair then lost contact.
“Considering the government itself held meetings with the other side
at a time when millions of people, not only myself, held high hopes
for the future and desired peace, these photos cannot be used as
attempts to slander and conspire against me,” Güzel said.
The photos were taken in 2014, she said, four years before Güzel was
elected to parliament.
 

Ahval
Feb 03 2022
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is visiting Kiev on Thursday
for meetings with his Ukrainian counterpart.
The talks are aimed at strengthening a military-industrial partnership
opposed by Russia and back NATO offers to prevent a possible Russian
invasion of the country. But Erdoğan's efforts to exert Turkey's
influence and mediate a solution to the tensions may end in
disappointment with possible repercussions for Turkey's regional
standing, Le Monde’s Marie Jégo reported.
An excerpt of the article follows below:
Supporting Ukraine without irritating Russia is the balancing act that
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to undertake in
Kiev on Thursday. His visit is a strong political signal to his
Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, at a time when tension is
at its highest between Kiev and Moscow, with a large Russian military
presence along the border with Ukraine and in Belarus.
The game is shaping up to be a close one for Erdoğan, who prides
himself on having a privileged relationship with both sides, to the
point of having offered to mediate in the conflict.
"By bringing the two leaders [Ukraine’s Zelensky and Russian Vladimir
Putin] together in our country if they so wish, we can pave the way
for restoring peace," he said on Jan. 26, adding that a Russian
invasion of Ukraine would be an "irrational move on Russia's part".
Erdoğan's offer of mediation was immediately rejected by the Kremlin,
quick to accuse Turkey of feeding "militaristic sentiment" in Ukraine.
At issue is the delivery of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 armed drones to the
Ukrainian army, which used them in October to hit a Russian howitzer
operated by the separatists of the Donbass supported by the Kremlin.
In the eyes of Ukrainian military experts, the possibility of
replicating in Donbass the winning combination of Turkish drones and
Ankara's military expertise, as Azerbaijan did at the time of the
autumn 2020 conflict to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh, is a real
temptation.
The October strike was "a provocation", Putin insisted in a telephone
conversation described as heated with Erdoğan on Dec. 3. Since that
episode, relations between the two presidents have cooled slightly. Mr
Putin has just declined his counterpart's invitation to visit Turkey,
postponing the visit until "when the epidemic situation and agendas
allow".
Despite Russian warnings, Ankara's support for the pro-Western
government in Kiev is not waning, on the contrary. Turkey is not ready
to give up its defence agreements with Kiev and is even more unlikely
to recognise Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula, the
original land of the Turkic-speaking Tatars, once under the protection
of the Ottoman Empire.
The annexation was never recognised by Ankara, despite Russian
insistence. To make matters worse, Turkey continues to support
Ukraine's and Georgia's bid to join NATO.
For the time being, the agreements to be signed on Thursday between
Erdoğan and Zelensky - a free trade treaty and several
military-industrial agreements - can only increase the Kremlin's ire.
Since 2019, Turkey and Ukraine have considerably developed their
security partnership. Between 2019 and 2021, the two presidents met
five times, which shows how well they are getting along.
Not content with buying the Bayraktar TB2s, which tipped the military
balance in favour of Turkey's allies in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh,
Ukraine has also started producing them on its soil.
The cooperation with the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, which
has kept some nice remnants from the Soviet era, especially in terms
of aircraft engine manufacturing, is a real boon for Ankara, which is
anxious to cushion the sanctions imposed on its defence industry after
the acquisition of the Russian S-400 anti-missile system in 2019 and
the war waged in the autumn of 2020 in Nagorno-Karabakh.
As evidence of this growing cooperation, the Turkish company Baykar,
which produces the TB2 armed drone, has just acquired a plot of land
not far from the Ukrainian air base of Vasylkiv, south-west of Kiev,
where a training centre for the piloting and maintenance of drones is
being built.
Baykar also plans to invest with Ukrainian engine manufacturer Motor
Sich and its design office Ivchenko-Progress. In the autumn of 2021,
Motor Sich has committed to supplying the Turkish defence contractor
with turboprop engines for its new Akinci combat drone, which is more
powerful than the TB2 and which Kiev is considering acquiring. In
addition to the joint production of engines and the An-178 military
transport aircraft, Kiev and Ankara are also planning to produce
corvettes together at the shipyards of Mykolaïv, a Ukrainian port on
the Black Sea.
"For the Ukrainians, it is important to have one more partner on their
side, especially one with such a geographical position," explains
Bayram Balcı, director of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies
(IFEA) in Istanbul. For the Turks, it is urgent to deepen ties with
Ukraine, especially in view of Russian actions in the Black Sea. Since
the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Moscow has become the dominant
power in the Black Sea, taking over a large part of Ukraine's ships
and port infrastructure.
Prior to 2014, this role was played by Turkey, which had 44 surface
ships compared to Russia's 26. Since then, Moscow has reversed the
trend, with 49 surface ships. In addition, the Russian fleet stationed
in Crimea has been reinforced. Warships and submarines operating there
have now been equipped with Kalibr cruise missiles, capable of hitting
targets 2,400 km away, while more Russian spy ships are plying the
waters to gather intelligence.
Despite the cordial understanding with his "friend" Putin, the Turkish
leader increasingly perceives Russia's military expansion in the
region as a threat to his country's geopolitical and energy security,
especially as Russia's posture in the Black Sea appears to be
increasingly aggressive, and not only towards Ukraine.
In June 2021, Russian forces fired warning shots at the British
warship HMS Defender, which was en route from the Ukrainian port of
Odessa to Georgia. And Russia's military elite is upset about the "Sea
Breeze" exercises, organised annually since 2019 by the United States,
which has invited 32 other countries, including Ukraine, to take part
in the summer of 2021.
Despite his anti-Western bias, Mr Erdoğan has constantly pleaded for a
greater NATO presence in the Black Sea. His concern has been
heightened by the discovery of an apparently vast natural gas field
off the Turkish coast in the summer of 2020.
In 2014, Turkey had condemned the annexation of Crimea, while
remaining outside the sanctions imposed by the United States and the
European Union against Russia.
Anxious to accommodate all the players, Erdoğan wants both to
strengthen his commitment to NATO, to restore its image tarnished by
the purchase of S-400, and to protect its cooperation with Russia in
Syria and in the energy field - nearly 40 percent of gas consumed in
Turkey is supplied by the Russian company Gazprom.
"The Turkish position is quite risky. The fact that Russia controls
the situation in Syria is a real sword of Damocles for Turkey," Balcı
said. In this respect, the region of Idlib, the last bastion of the
rebellion against Bashar-Al-Assad, a province adjacent to Turkey where
nearly 3 million displaced people have found refuge, is its Achilles
heel. A large-scale Russian attack on Idlib would surely create a new
wave of refugees.
"This new influx of Syrians to Turkey, which already hosts nearly 4
million, would affect the Turkish authorities and also the countries
of the Mediterranean," says the researcher.
An open conflict between Russia and Ukraine would be a tragedy, both
for Europe and for Ankara, which would be forced to end its balancing
act between NATO and Russia and give up its ambitions as a regional
power.
(This article originally appeared in Le Monde. A link in the French
language is available here.)
*
 

                                        Wednesday, February 2, 2022
Baku Accused Of Trying To Curb Red Cross Presence In Karabakh
        • Sargis Harutyunyan
Nagorno Karabakh - Bertrand Lamon (right), head of the Stepanakert office of the 
International Committee of the Red Cross, meets with Karabakh officials, January 
22, 2021
Armenia criticized Azerbaijan on Wednesday for what it called attempts to 
restrict long-running activities of the International Committee of the Red Cross 
(ICRC) in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“They are forcing even the International Committee of the Red Cross, a purely 
humanitarian organization, to fit into a policy wanted by them,” Foreign 
Minister Ararat Mirzoyan told reporters.
“This is the only [international] organization that has been present in 
Nagorno-Karabakh during all these years, and Azerbaijan is now, in essence, 
restricting even that,” he said without elaborating on those restrictions.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry was quick to dismiss the criticism. It said 
that “any international organization’s activities on our country’s sovereign 
territory is a bilateral issue concerning that international organization and 
Azerbaijan.”
The ICRC has had offices in Stepanakert as well as Baku and Yerevan since the 
early 1990s. They have dealt with humanitarian issues such as repatriation of 
prisoners and bodies of victims of the Karabakh conflict.
Baku is also understood to be blocking international mediators’ renewed visits 
to Karabakh.
The U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group had for decades 
travelled to the disputed territory and met with its ethnic Armenian leadership 
during regular tours of the conflict zone. The visits practically stopped with 
the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent outbreak of the 
Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
The mediators planned to resume their shuttle diplomacy after organizing talks 
between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in New York in September. 
The trip has still not taken place, however.
Russian Officials Hold Fresh Talks On Armenian-Azeri Transport Links
Armenia - Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian meets with his Russian 
counterpart Alexei Overchuk and the head of Russian Railways network, Oleg 
Belozerov, Yerevan, February 2, 2022.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk visited Yerevan on Wednesday for 
further talks with Armenian officials on ongoing efforts to restore transport 
links between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Overchuk arrived in the Armenian capital with Oleg Belozerov, the chief 
executive of the Russian Railways (RZD) state monopoly managing Armenia’s 
railway network. They met with Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian.
An Armenian government statement on the meeting said they discussed, among other 
things, issues on the agenda of a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani working group 
dealing with practical modalities of opening the Armenian-Azerbaijani border to 
passenger and cargo traffic. The statement gave no details.
The working group co-headed by Overchuk and his Armenian and Azerbaijani 
opposite numbers last met in Moscow on December 1. It had been expected to 
formalize relevant understandings reached by the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan 
and Russia in Sochi on November 26.
The trilateral body announced no deals on the transport links, however. It 
emerged afterwards that Baku and Yerevan disagree on the status of a highway 
that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through Armenia’s 
Syunik province.
The two sides appear to be much closer to establishing a rail link between 
Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan, which would also pass through Syunik. 
The Armenian government set up last month a task force that will coordinate work 
on the 45-kilometer railway
Grigorian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service in December that its planned 
construction will likely cost $200 million and take about three years. Russian 
officials have not said publicly whether RZD is ready to invest or participate 
otherwise in the project.
Armenia -- A commuter train at Yerevan railway station, February 27, 2018
RZD runs the Armenian railway network, called South Caucasus Railway (SCR), in 
line with a 30-year management contract signed with the former Armenian 
government in 2008.
The statement on Grigorian’s talks with Overchuk and Belozerov said the two 
sides “emphasized the SRC’s important role in the Armenian economy” and 
discussed “further development” of the company’s cooperation with the current 
government.
Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko said in early January that 
Moscow is aiming for a quick “completion of the elaboration of the parameters of 
joint infrastructure initiatives” agreed with Yerevan and Baku.
Armenian FM Cautiously Upbeat On Talks With Turkey
        • Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia – Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan (right) and his Austrian 
counterpart Alexander Schallenberg hold a joint news conference in Yerevan, 
February 2, 2022.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on Wednesday voiced cautious optimism over the 
success of negotiations on normalizing Armenia’s relations with Turkey.
Turkish and Armenian officials held the first round of the negotiations in 
Moscow on January 14. The foreign ministries of the two neighboring nations 
described the talks as “positive and constructive.”
They said special envoys representing the two sides agreed to continue the 
dialogue “without preconditions.” It is still not clear when they will meet 
again.
“I must say that the first meeting didn’t address many substantive issues, but 
there are some positive signs that the process will unfold successfully,” 
Mirzoyan said after holding talks in Yerevan with Austrian Foreign Minister 
Alexander Schallenberg.
“But again, these are issues which don’t depend only on the position of one 
side,” he told a joint news conference.
The minister insisted that just like its predecessors, the current Armenian 
government stands for normalizing bilateral ties “without preconditions.” “It is 
with these expectations that we embarked on this dialogue,” he stressed.
Mirzoyan complained as recently as in November that the Turks are setting “new 
preconditions” for establishing diplomatic relations and opening their border 
with Armenia. He alluded to their statements making the normalization of 
Turkish-Armenian relations conditional on Armenia agreeing to open a land 
corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave.
Turkish leaders have also cited Baku’s demands for a formal Armenian recognition 
of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenian opposition leaders have accused Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian of being 
ready to accept these demands. Pashinian’s political allies have denied that.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has repeatedly made clear that Ankara 
will continue to coordinate its Armenian policy with Baku.
Cavusoglu announced two weeks ago that he has invited Mirzoyan to an 
international conference that will be held in Turkey in March. Pashinian 
signaled last week that Yerevan will likely accept the invitation.
Mirzoyan likewise said that he has “no problem” with attending the Antalya 
Diplomacy Forum organized by the Turkish government. But he also cautioned: “The 
Armenian Foreign Ministry has made no decision on this yet. The issue is being 
discussed.”
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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