Author: Ara Felekian

Two prominent Turkish journalists have been charged with espionage after alleging that Turkey’s secret services sent arms to Islamist rebels in Syria, the BBC reports.

Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet daily, and Erdem Gul, the paper’s Ankara bureau chief, face life imprisonment if found guilty.

Their report and video footage attracted a political storm in Turkey and a lawsuit filed by the president.

Turkey faces severe criticism over its press freedom record.

The journalists, who deny the allegations against them, reported that trucks belonging to the Turkish intelligence agency MIT were used to carry weapons to Islamist opposition groups in Syria.

Video footage published alongside their report purported to show Turkish police officers intercepting the trucks and discovering crates containing weapons and ammunition.

Russian lawmaker Sergei Mironov said on Wednesday his party had submitted a bill to parliament on holding to account anyone who denies that the 1915 killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces was a “genocide”.

“We have just submitted a bill on responsibility for failure to acknowledge the fact of a genocide of Armenians by Turkey in 1915,” Mironov, the leader of the opposition Just Russia party, said on his Twitter account.

About 130 cases of ceasefire violation by the Azerbaijani side were registered at the line of contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan over the weekend.

The rival used artillery weapons of different caliber and 60mm mortars as it fired more than 2,000 shots in the direction of the Armenian positions.

The front divisions of the NKR Defense Army keep control of the situation at the line of contact and confidently continue with their military duty, the NKR Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Spokesman for the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tigran Balayan has dismissed reports on the arrest of an Armenian national in Egypt.

Five foreigners and one Egyptian were arrested for joining “Islamic State” Monday, the reported.

The six individuals are accused of volunteering to join IS, conducting acts of sabotage, and harming the country’s economic and social interests.

The defendants were identified as former army officer Ishan Jan from Tajikstan, Ali Akbr Abduallah from Serbia, Akhbar Yan Ali Tan from Belarus, Mohamed Share Ali, 44, a businessman from Armenia, Mohamed Bahaai from Iran, Bashar Ali Abduallah Al-Ansary from Syria, and Mohamed Faaz from Egypt.

The security forces arrested them inside a car while they were monitoring the Giza Pyramids area. The security forces seized six laptop devices with them, with IS and Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis logos, Egyptian police and armed forces uniforms, daggers, rifles, and Egyptian and foreign currency, according to state newspaper Al-Ahram.

The Armenian Embassy in Egypt requested clarifications from authorized bodies, Tigran Balayan said.

“Egypt authorities confirmed to Armenia Embassy in Cairo that there is no citizen of Armenia among the arrested members of the Islamic State,” the Spokesman said in a Twitter post.

Human rights lawyers Geoffrey Robertson QC and Amal Clooney have issued a statement on today’s European Court of Human Rights Decision in the case of Perincek v Switzerland. The statement reads:

We are pleased that the European Court of Human Rights today endorsed our argument on behalf of the Government of Armenia, which intervened in the case between Dogu Perincek and Switzerland. The decision is a victory for Armenia.

Today the European Court ruled that the applicant’s freedom of speech should not have been restrained because it was not likely to incite violence or racial hatred. Thus Perincek  should not have been prosecuted by the Swiss authority because his rant, in the Turkish language, would have had no impact at all on social harmony and race relations in Switzerland.

Armenia intervened in the case for one reason: the lower court had cast doubt on the fact that a genocide against the Armenian people occurred in 1915. As counsel we sought to correct this grave error, and the Grand Chamber has done so. Today’s judgment did not dispute the fact of the Armenian genocide: ten judges said the question should not have been addressed at all whilst seven stated that “the Armenian genocide is a clearly established historic fact”.

The judgment also upholds the Armenians’ right under European law to have their dignity respected and protected, including by recognition of a communal identity forged through suffering from the annihilation of over half their race by the Ottoman Turks (see para 227).

The court’s decision upholding the importance of freedom of expression has important consequences for Turkey, which has the worst record of any state before the European Court on free speech. Turkey can no longer justify prosecuting those like Hrant Dink who are accused of “insulting Turkishness” contrary to article 301 of the Penal Code by writing about the reality of the Armenian genocide. These prosecutions are plainly contrary to the free speech guarantee under article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights as interpreted in the Perincek case. We call on Turkey to abolish article 301 and cease malicious prosecutions pursued on its terms.

Perincek is a provocateur who should not have been made the martyr that he was so keen to become. We note that the Court rejected his demand for 120,000 euro compensation, and awarded him nothing – not even his own legal fees.

This case has already been misrepresented in the British press. For example The Telegraph characterizes the judgment in its headline as being “… a blow to Amal Clooney…”. Ms Clooney and Mr Robertson appeared for Armenia as a third party, which was concerned to ensure that the Armenian genocide was not put in doubt by Europe’s human rights court. They took no position on Perincek’s guilt or innocence. The only ‘blow’ was to the defendant state – i.e. Switzerland, the prosecuting state which they did not represent, and to Turkey which cannot now quote the European Court when it seeks to cast doubt on the Armenian genocide.

Kaspar Karampetian, President of the European Federation for Justice and Democracy, has addressed a letter to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs regarding the recent escalation of tension on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan and around Nagorno Karabakh. The letter reads:

Honourable Co-chairs,

The Armenian communities in Europe are deeply concerned about the recent escalation of tension on the contact line between Armenia and Azerbaijan and around Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, perpetrated by the government of Azerbaijan. As you know, the ceasefire violations initiated by Azerbaijan became particularly intense on the eve and during your meetings with the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in New York on 24 – 25 September of the current year. The goal of the Azerbaijani government was clear – to put pressure on the Armenian side and harm the negotiation process.

Using the unresolved conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh as an excuse, the Azerbaijani army shelled borderline villages in Tavush region, in north-east of Armenia, killing 3 civilian women, two of who elderly. The goal behind this vicious strategy is to terrorize the civilian population in borderline villages and make them leave their homes. Azerbaijan also fired in the direction of the town of Noyemberyan in Tavush region in Armenia for the first time in ten years. Besides other heavy weaponry, the Azerbaijani side used howitzer D-30 for the first time after signing the cease-fire agreement. Further shelling resulting from the escalation of the tension took the lives of several servicemen.

The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy (EAFJD) regrets the fact that on September 27 official Azerbaijan dismissed the proposal made by the OSCE Minsk Group to accept an OSCE mechanism to investigate ceasefire violations. Armenia agreed to discuss the details of the mechanism which would enable to identify the initiator of the cease-fire violation and make it difficult for the sides to blame each other for initiating deadly attacks.

The logical answer to the question why official Azerbaijan which continuously blames the Armenian side for violating the cease-fire is not interested in such a mechanism, is evident.

This is not the first time Baku has rejected similar proposals suggested by the OSCE Minsk Group. Official Azerbaijan has repeatedly rejected confidence-building measures proposed by the OSCE Minsk Group, including a system for investigating individual shooting incidents. It also blocked the suggestion of pulling snipers back from front-line positions.

Moreover, the current Government of Azerbaijan actively hinders grass-root peace process. It curbs people-to-people contacts such as those between the civil society, youth activists and intellectuals from Armenia and Azerbaijan. This type of exchange would be of major importance for bridging the two societies and for the peace process. Prominent civil society members who are genuinely interested in promoting a dialogue between the societies are intimidated or sentenced to several years of prison based on fabricated charges and falsified trials. One can recall the imprisonment of Leila Yunus and Arif Yunus as just one example.

The clear goal of the current Government of Azerbaijan is to insulate its own society and have a complete control over the public opinion. It is not a secret that hatred towards Armenians all over the world is being encouraged and nurtured from the highest level in Azerbaijan. This is dangerously irresponsible and short-sighted, considering the fact that Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples will continue living side by side for the centuries to come.

It is evident that the current Government of Azerbaijan with is maximalist and zero-sum-game approach towards the conflict is not interested in a genuine peace process. How can one otherwise explain the constant hate-filled war-rhetoric and bragging of the regime of Ilham Aliyev over the country’s rocketing military budget?

EAFJD is convinced that making generic announcements or putting a sign of equation between Armenia and Azerbaijan when addressing the two sides and calling them to stop violating the cease-fire, distorts the reality, creates false public opinion and in fact encourages the Aliyev regime in the dangerous game it is playing also at the expense of the lives of its own citizens. It is evident that if a new war unleashes under the current circumstances it will be the responsibility of the current Azerbaijani Government.

EAFJD considers that with its hard work towards the settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict OSCE Minsk Group has played an indispensable and highly valuable role in maintaining the relative peace. EAFJD therefore calls on the Co-chairs to objectively point at the side that violates the cease-fire or blocks a constructive peace process as well as confidence-building measures. Anything other than this would mean bearing a co-responsibility if a new war unleashes in Nagorno-Karabakh with its unpredictable and highly dangerous consequences for the whole region, including Azerbaijan.’

Islamic State militants in northern Syria have blown up another monument in the ancient city of Palmyra, officials and local sources say, the BBC reports.

The Arch of Triumph was “pulverised” by the militants who control the city, a Palmyra activist told AFP news agency.

It is thought to have been built about 2,000 years ago.

IS fighters have already destroyed two ancient temples at the site, described by Unesco as one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world.

“The Arch of Triumph was pulverised. IS has destroyed it,” Mohammad Hassan al-Homsi, an activist from Palmyra told AFP on Monday.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group monitoring the conflict, said sources on the ground had confirmed the destruction.

Dark narrow streaks, called “recurring slope lineae,” emanate from the walls of Garni Crater on Mars, in this view constructed from observations by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.  originating from a village in Armenia was  approved on April 24, 2015.

New findings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars, according to NASA’s official website.

Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.

These downhill flows, known as recurring slope lineae (RSL), often have been described as possibly related to liquid water. The new findings of hydrated salts on the slopes point to what that relationship may be to these dark features. The hydrated salts would lower the freezing point of a liquid brine, just as salt on roads here on Earth causes ice and snow to melt more rapidly. Scientists say it’s likely a shallow subsurface flow, with enough water wicking to the surface to explain the darkening.

The spectrometer observations show signatures of hydrated salts at multiple RSL locations, but only when the dark features were relatively wide. When the researchers looked at the same locations and RSL weren’t as extensive, they detected no hydrated salt.

Perchlorates have previously been seen on Mars. NASA’s Phoenix lander and Curiosity rover both found them in the planet’s soil, and some scientists believe that the Viking missions in the 1970s measured signatures of these salts. However, this study of RSL detected perchlorates, now in hydrated form, in different areas than those explored by the landers. This also is the first time perchlorates have been identified from orbit.

MRO has been examining Mars since 2006 with its six science instruments.

“The ability of MRO to observe for multiple Mars years with a payload able to see the fine detail of these features has enabled findings such as these: first identifying the puzzling seasonal streaks and now making a big step towards explaining what they are,” said Rich Zurek, MRO project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

For Ojha, the new findings are more proof that the mysterious lines he first saw darkening Martian slopes five years ago are, indeed, present-day water.

“When most people talk about water on Mars, they’re usually talking about ancient water or frozen water,” he said. “Now we know there’s more to the story. This is the first spectral detection that unambiguously supports our liquid water-formation hypotheses for RSL.”

The discovery is the latest of many breakthroughs by NASA’s Mars missions.

The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) has kept its key refinancing rate at 10.25 percent.

Annual inflation in Armenia was at 3.6 percent in August, down from 4.2 percent in July, according to CBA data.

The government forecasts annual inflation in a range of 2.5-5.5 percent in 2015, the same as last year’s target.

David De Gea’s  move from Manchester United to Real Madrid has collapsed because the necessary paperwork was not submitted in time, the BBC reports.

No official announcement has yet been made by either club.

As part of the deal to sell De Gea to Real, United were planning to bring Keylor Navas in the opposite direction.

There is no precedent for Spanish clubs being given additional time to conclude transfers as there is in England.

Blame for the failure to complete the deal is already being apportioned.