Author: Hunanian Jack

U.S. SEEKS TO DEFUSE ROW ON ARMENIA GENOCIDE BILL

Montreal Gazette
March 4 2010

ReutersMarch 4, 2010 1:03 PM WASHINGTON – The United States has moved
to defuse a dispute with Turkey by telling a top U.S. lawmaker that
congressional action to label a 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman
forces as genocide could harm efforts to normalize Turkish-Armenian
relations, a U.S. official said Thursday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton made the point in a call to House Foreign
Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman on Wednesday. He also said
U.S. President Barack Obama called Turkish President Abdullah Gul to
urge quick ratification of a protocol to normalize relations between
Turkey and Armenia.

TURKISH PRESIDENT EXPRESSES REGRET OVER APPROVAL OF ARMENIAN RESOLUTION

Turkish Press
March 4 2010

ANKARA – Turkish President Abdullah Gul expressed his regret after the
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs approved
the resolution on Armenian allegations.

The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs approved
the resolution on incidents of 1915 –which took place shortly before
the fall of the Ottoman Empire– with 23 votes against 22.

Regarding approval of the resolution, Gul said, "this decision is
not reasonable. I strongly condemn it. It does not mean anything for
Turkish people. Turkey will not be responsible for negative outcomes
of this voting."

The resolution was proposed by Democrats Adam Schiff and Frank Pallone
and Republicans George Radanovich and Mark Kirk, all important figures
for the Armenian lobby in the U.S.

Turkey strongly rejects the genocide allegations and regards the
events as civil strife in wartime which claimed lives of many Turks
and Armenians.

Every year between March 4 and April 24 alarm bells ring for relations
between Turkey and U.S., two close allies for decades.

The Armenian lobbies in the U.S. pressure the U.S. legislators to pass
a resolution urging the President to recognise the events as genocide.

Turkish legislators and officials pay visits to U.S. House and hold
meetings with senior U.S. officials and businessmen to prevent the
resolution from being adopted.

A similar resolution was adopted with 27 seven votes against 21 in
2007 but as a result of former President George W. Bush’s intervention,
the resolution was not brought to the House floor.

CNNTURK: US HOUSE MUCH LIKELY TO PASS ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION

Panorama.am
13:47 04/03/2010

Politics

Washington-Ankara tension gets even more acute, CnnTurk says stating
that the US House 46 members are not clear yet over supporting or
rejecting the Armenian Genocide Resolution (H. Res. 252), nevertheless,
the approval of the resolution is much likely.

The source says the Turkish party carries out intensive lobby in
Washington. Particularly, in an attempt to prevent the adoption of the
abovementioned Resolution, the Chairman of the Turkish Parliament’s
Foreign Affairs Commission Murat Mercan is having meetings with the
White House representatives and Congressmen. Turkish organizations
and unions in the US also act vigorously.

Let’s mention a statement of the Turkish party issued in the
Washington Post, calling on Obama Administration to stop the resolution
process. However, CnnTurk also highlights that the Armenian lobby in
the US also continues its efforts for the adoption of the Genocide
Resolution.

The source notes that Jewish powers are not supporting the Turkish
party this year.

"Most Jewish organizations prefer keeping silent. Silent is President
Obama. The first impulses coming from the White House are not good.

The US National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer declared
Wednesday that President Obama’s view on history has not changed. This
should be interpreted as follows: Obama will not take any steps to
prevent the adoption of the Resolution," CnnTurk says.

Read also: Turks expect Obama’s phone call to fail Armenian Genocide
Resolution adoption

US HOUSE PANEL TO VOTE ON ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’ RESOLUTION

Hurriyet
March 3 2010
Turkey

The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee is
scheduled to vote Thursday on a resolution calling for formal U.S.

recognition of World War I-era killings of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire as "genocide." The move could lead to Turkey’s ties worsening
with the United States and Armenia.

The non-binding resolution would call on President Barack Obama to
ensure U.S. policy formally refers to the killings as "genocide" and
to use the term when he delivers his annual message on the issue in
April – something he avoided doing last year.

Howard Berman, the Democratic chairman of the House’s Foreign Affairs
Committee, announced in early February his panel would vote on the
resolution March 4. If the resolution passes the committee, Democratic
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will decide if or when to bring it to a
House floor vote. She is likely to hold a floor vote if she sees a
majority of the 435 House members backing the resolution.

Turkey has warned that any House or Senate floor adoption of an
Armenian "genocide" resolution will lead to a major and lasting
deterioration of relations with the United States and sabotage a
planned reconciliation process with Yerevan.

A recent Hurriyet Daily News & Economic Review analysis based on the
positions and voting trends of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s
46 members suggested the resolution would likely pass the panel’s
vote Thursday.

Obama’s position

Similar "genocide" resolutions passed the same committee in 2000,
2005 and 2007, but none of them could reach a House floor vote because
of extensive pressure from former presidents Bill Clinton and George W.

Bush.

The Clinton and Bush administrations strongly opposed the previous
Armenian "genocide" resolutions because they believed the congressional
passage would deeply hurt U.S. national security interests.

But the Obama administration has so far declined to play the U.S.

national security card on this matter. For example, during a speech
at a House subcommittee last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
used only weak diplomatic language to oppose the "genocide" measure.

"We are working very hard to assist Armenia and Turkey in their
(reconciliation) efforts and, you know, we would like to continue to
support that effort and not be diverted in any way at all," Clinton
said last Thursday.

By saying "not be diverted in any way," Clinton was apparently
referring to Turkey’s position that any U.S. congressional
endorsement of the "genocide" resolution would effectively kill the
Washington-backed normalization process with Armenia.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley indirectly iterated this
view Tuesday when he said, "The advancement of normalized relations
between Armenia and Turkey is in the interest of both countries."

"We understand how difficult this is, how emotional this is," Crowley
said. "There’s not a common understanding of what happened 90 years
ago, but we value the courageous steps both (Armenian and Turkish)
leaders have taken, and we just continue to encourage both countries
to move forward, not look backward."

In a related development, the Turkish Jewish community opposed the
Armenian "genocide" resolution. "We believe in the event that the
bill in question is adopted by the committee, both Turkish-American
relations will be harmed and such an action will in no way benefit the
Turkish-Armenian relations," a statement from community representatives
said.

Karabakh problem

U.S. diplomats in recent weeks have been urging the Turkish government
to implement the reconciliation process without any preconditions,
saying in the absence of this action, "genocide" resolutions in
Congress may be unstoppable.

The Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers signed in October a
set of agreements under which Ankara and Yerevan would set up
normal diplomatic relations and reopen their land border. But the
normalization process is now faltering.

The Turkey-Armenia accord needs to be ratified by the parliaments of
the two neighbors before implementation, but there is no indication
of when either nation might bring the deal to a parliament vote.

The problem lying at the root of the issue is the unresolved
Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s
close friend and ally. Turkey first wants to see progress toward a
resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict before opening its border
with Armenia, but there are no hints about this from the Armenians.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mostly Armenian-populated enclave inside
Azerbaijan, and parts of Azerbaijan proper have been under Armenian
occupation since a war in the early 1990s. As a result of this war,
Turkey has refused to set up normal diplomatic relations with Yerevan
and has kept the land border with Armenia closed since 1993.

YEGHIAZAR PHARASHYAN TO REPRESENT BELARUS IN EUROVISION SONG CONTEST 2010

/lang/en
2010-03-02

YEREVAN, MARCH 2, ARMENPRESS: Yeghiazar Pharashyan, soloist of the
"3+2" group of the presidential orchestra, who is of Armenian decent,
will represent Belarus in Eurovision Song Contest (Oslo 2010).

‘Yerkramas’ daily reports that one of the participants of ‘New voices
of Belarus’ project won the competition for representing Belarus in
Eurovision. The winner will sing Leonid Shirin’s and Yuri Vashuka’s
creation called "Angels" on the stage of Eurovision. The "3+2" group,
which is consisted of 5 members, has already shot video for the song
in Kiev.

DINK FAMILY WINS REPARATIONS FROM TRT FOR INSULTING DINK

Hurriyet
March 2 2010
Turkey

Turkey’s state broadcaster has been ordered to pay reparations to slain
journalist Hrant Dink’s family for a documentary it broadcast that
implied he was a perpetrator in a 1978 massacre in southern Turkey.

"Å~^ahların Labirenti" (The Labyrinth of the Shahs) was a Turkish
Radio and Television Corporation, or TRT, documentary that originally
aired in December 2008 and investigated the KahramanmaraÅ~_ massacre
of 1978, in which more than 100 people died in clashes between local
Alevis and Sunnis.

Turkey’s infamous "deep state" was later alleged to have played a
role in organizing the clashes.

OkkeÅ~_ Å~^endiller, who was one of the suspects in the massacre before
becoming a KahramanmaraÅ~_ deputy, alleged in the documentary that Dink
was one of the perpetrators of the killings. The film showed Dink’s
photograph while Å~^endiller said Dink and the leftist organizations
he founded with his friends initiated the incident.

Dink’s family opened a case against TRT, Å~^endiller and production
company Bey Yapım, alleging Dink had been insulted.

As a result of the case concluded last week, all suspects have been
ordered to pay 20,000 Turkish Liras in reparations.

"Hrant had dedicated his life to brotherhood and the friendship of
people, it was unacceptable that he would be considered responsible
for such a massacre," said Dink family lawyer Fethiye Cetin. "Those
allegations have caused the family so much suffering."

The family was expected to donate the reparations to a foundation,
as they have done in the past for other similar cases in which the
family opened cases for insults against Dink.

Dink was a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist and the editor in
chief of the multi-lingual weekly Agos. In January 2007, he was shot
and killed in front of his newspaper’s office in Istanbul’s central
Å~^iÅ~_li district.

The confessed murder suspect, Ogun Samast, was arrested within a couple
of days. Dink’s family alleges that police intelligence officers failed
to act on many pieces of intelligence that nationalist circles were
planning to kill Dink long before the actual murder.

Although there have been official inspection reports detailing police
and military negligence prior to the murder, the officials allegedly
responsible have not yet been brought to justice.

With the journalist’s murder case ongoing, Cetin said threats against
Agos were continuing but added that authorities were increasingly
taking their complaints into consideration.

EU CALLS ON ARMENIA, TURKEY TO RATIFY PROTOCOLS ON RELATIONS WITHOUT PRECONDITIONS

Yerkir
02.03.2010 12:42

Yerevan (Yerkir) – The European Union on Tuesday called on Armenia and
Turkey to ratify protocols on bilateral relations without preliminary
conditions.

"The European Union supports the process started between Armenia and
Turkey and calls on the countries to stay true to this process. The
EU urges the countries to ratify and implement the protocols without
preliminary conditions," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel
Moratinos, whose country now holds the rotating EU presidency, told
a press conference in Yerevan.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in mid-February accused Turkey of
protracting the ratification of the protocols.

Moratinos, who arrived in Armenia on Tuesday as head of an EU
delegation, also said the EU welcomes Sargsyan’s move to submit the
protocols to parliament, as well as Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s
statement on the intention to continue dialogue with Armenia.

TALKING TURKEY IN DC
Joost Lagendijk

Hurriyet
Feb 28 2010
Turkey

Last week I spent a couple of days in Washington, D.C. talking Turkey.

I was really amazed to see so many other Turks and Turkey specialists
gathered in the United States capital, all in one way or another
involved in debates and research on Turkey, its domestic developments
and its relations with the outside world.

It all started for me with a panel on Capitol Hill, titled "A New
Turkey: What Does It Mean for the Region and U.S.?" Among the other
participants were influential Turkey watchers such as Ian Lesser,
senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and Omer
Taspinar, fellow at the Brookings Institution, one of the leading
American think tanks. Moderator of the panel was Graham Fuller, author
of the book "The New Turkish Republic." With me from Turkey came Orhan
Kemal Cengiz, human rights lawyer and columnist for Today’s Zaman,
who had the difficult task of explaining the complicated Ergenekon
case for an interested but largely uninformed American audience.

The hall in which the panel took place was impressive. It was the
biggest meeting room on Capitol Hill, and I felt like one of those
people called in for questioning by members of the U.S. Congress.

Unfortunately, few congressmen were present this time despite all the
efforts of the organizers to get a mixed audience of politicians,
staffers and journalists. The whole thing was organized by the
Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians, an initiative of
Kemal Oksuz, a Turkish-American business man from Houston, Texas who
wants to improve the level of information on Turkey among American
lawmakers. Partly as a result of the combination of a huge room filled
with few people, the debate never really took off. The only issue that
created some controversy was my criticism of the Turkish government’s
handling of the protocols with Armenia. Why did Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan again link the ratification of these protocols by
the Turkish Parliament with progress on the frozen Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict? This policy of threatening Armenia into a deal has not worked
for 15 years, so why stick to it, I wondered? An Azeri diplomat could
not resist, stood up and passionately defended his country’s position,
strongly supporting the link between the two conflicts.

Of course, the possibility of the U.S. Congress adopting a resolution
recognizing claims that the massacres of hundred of thousands of
Armenians in 1915 should be labeled as "genocide" was raised as well.

Interestingly, several speakers made another link and stated, apart
from ratification of the protocols, the upcoming Turkish vote in the
Security Council on sanctions on Iran, would strongly influence the
debate on the genocide resolution and the wording of President Barack
Obama’s speech on April 24.

The biggest surprise came when, after the panel, it turned out
Washington last week was full of Turks and foreign Turkey specialists.

Soli Ozel (Bilgi University, Haberturk) was there, strongly opinionated
as ever. Ahmet Evin (Sabanci University) and Kemal Kirisci (Bosphorus
University) are spending a whole year in Washington with the German
Marshall Fund, preparing a book together with Italian Turkey specialist
Nathali Tocsi. Others were around as well to write a paper or cooperate
on a common project.

In contacts with their American hosts and colleagues, all were
confronted with the same questions. What to think of the Ergenekon
investigations? What was the role of the Gulen movement in all of
this? And the one million dollar question: in which direction was the
AKP taking Turkey? You won’t be surprised if I tell you the answers to
all these questions differed substantially, reflecting the differences
of opinion among the Turks in town and fuelling the curiosity of the
locals. Talking Turkey in D.C., it made sense and it was fun.

ARMENIA’S DIAMOND EXPORTS BADLY HURT IN 2009, SHOWS SIGNS OF IMPROVEMENT
Edahn Golan

IDEX
ews.asp?id=33730
March 1 2010

Armenia exported 70,600 carats of cut diamonds in 2009, a 70 percent
drop compared to 2008, Interfax reported. Armenia’s imports of rough
diamonds fell 30 percent to 102,000 carats.

The country’s diamond industry was hurt by the decline in global demand
for diamond jewelry, an outcome of the economic crisis, according to
Gagik Kocharian, a senior trade official at the Armenian Economics
Ministry.

Armenia sources its rough diamonds from Belgium, Russia and Israel,
according to the report.

Signaling a turnaround in the global economic situation, Armenia
imported 20,000 carats of rough diamonds in January. By comparison, the
country imported some 17,000 carats a month in the January-September
period of 2009.

FORMER US AMBASSADOR TO NATO KURT VOLKER: I DON’T SEE ANY REASON FOR AZERBAIJAN NOT TO BECOME A NATO MEMBER

APA
March 1 2010
Azerbaijan

Washington. Isabel Levine – APA. APA’s Washington correspondent’s
interview with Kurt Volker, former US ambassador to NATO (2008-2009).

Mr. Volker is currently serving as a senior fellow and managing
director of Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins
University in Washington DC.

– The conflicts in the South Caucasus are still being "frozen" despite
that the great powers including US are working on them. What do you
think could help to catalyze them?

– There are a number of conflicts in the region and there are
differences between those. Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is more an
Armenia-Azerbaijan issue. And the other conflicts are in Georgia.

All the conflicts have their own dynamics. But I think to some
degree it is important that the parts of the conflicts are directly
interested and are able to actually make their own decisions and
find solutions. In some cases I think Russia’s influence pulls back
of some of things. Unfortunate, but I think that really is the case.

In Nagorno-Karabakh we have Minks process and I think the elements have
been on the table for a long time. I would hope the Armenian-Turkey
opening of relations will help Armenia be open to Europe and not
the Russian’s influence and that would give some confident in
Nagorno-Karabakh negotiations.

– Speaking about Russia’s influence in the region, taking into
consideration Russia’s policy in the region, what is the possibility
of the regional countries to integrate into NATO?

– NATO has always said that first of all, it is the country’s choice.

NATO is not seeking to extend. Now, it is the country’s choice
whether is wishes to join NATO or not. NATO membership is available
to any country which is developed and is willing to contribute to
the common security.

NATO membership on the whole is about building a secure willing a
better with the common security states. As for as Georgia goes there
are doing well in terms of developing their institutes and economy.

They have to stabilize and built their relationship with Russia.

And Azerbaijan, as well. I don’t see any reason why not becoming
a NATO member. It has a huge economy, and in the prospects it can
become a NATO member.

– How would you characterize on the whole US-Russia relations in
terms of their policy towards South Caucasus?

-I think the Obama administration thinks that it would help if they
have a better relationship with Russia. I think working together on
different things is good. But I don’t think that Russia thinks the
same. I think they are putting pressure on the neighbors. And that
is the difference in the Administrations approach.

Now, I think when you specifically talk about Georgia, this country
should have a very long term strategy. The Russians have broken the
integrity on the territory, recognized those territories as independent
states and put their military bases.

This very much reminds me of the situation with the Baltic countries.

Georgia now has to take the same steps those countries did years ago
– work on the development on the country, development of democracy,
economic situation, fight the corruption, and integrate into the
global economy. And when the country is developed, it will become
more attractive for the people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.