Author: Karakhanian Suren

Anadolu Agency, Turkey
Dec 29 2009

Turkey’s deputy PM says country pursues "multidimensional" foreign policy

Ankara: Turkish State Minister & Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan
said on Tuesday that Turkey carried out a multi-dimensional foreign
policy.

In an exclusive interview with TV channel Kanal 24, Babacan gave
information about the recent developments in Turkish economy as well
as expectations for 2010.

Commenting on the allegations that there was change in Turkey’s
foreign policy recently, Babacan said more than half of Turkey’s
exports was with the EU member countries and some other part was with
neighbouring and surrounding countries.

Babacan said Turkish exporters started to seek for new alternative
markets after shrinkage of market in the EU, "Turkish exporters
boosted trade volume with the neighbouring and surrounding countries,"
he added.

Referring to the new model partnership with the United States, Babacan
said Turkey and the United States drew strategic framework of economic
and commercial relations within the framework of this new model
strategic partnership.

Babacan said Turkey was a European, Asian, Black Sea, Caspian,
Mediterranean and Middle East country, indicating that Turkey should
definitely be interested in the problems pertaining to its geography
and history.

"Turkish government improved relations with Iran and Syria and
normalised relations with Armenia," Babacan said, noting that, "We
have enlivened relations with countries like India and Mexico which it
neglected for long years".

Babacan said Turkey’s finance sector was not affected by the crisis as
reforms had been fulfilled in Turkey beforehand in finance sector.

"Global crisis could not be overcome fully. The fog has not dispersed
but lessened. Next year will be more clear," he noted.

Babacan said Turkey’s Central Bank made correct and well-timed
measures against crisis, adding that one of the principle targets of
Central Bank was price stability.

Commenting on unemployment in Turkey, Babacan said unemployment rate
would drop to some extend next year and would further decrease in the
coming years.

"Every country suffers from unemployment, which is related to economic
growth. Developed countries also experience unemployment problem," he
said.

Asked if he would attend Davos Summit in 2010, Babacan said he was
still assessing the issue.

Babacan said nuclear power plant was absolutely necessary to reduce
Turkey’s dependence to foreign countries in energy.

ANY KARABAKH SETTLEMENT NOT AN END IN ITSELF: SHARMAZANOV

news.am
Dec 28 2009
Armenia

Armenia strengthened its position in 2009 at foreign political stage
and increased political weigh signing Armenia-Turkey Protocols,
Republican Party press secretary Eduard Sharmazanov stated at the
meeting with journalists summarizing 2009 results. The official also
touched upon Karabakh conflict settlement:

"Any settlement of Karabakh conflict is not an end in itself for us.

In fact for us the conflict is resolved. We need to have the
independent status stipulated by legal independent status," Sharmazanov
said, adding that warlike statements voiced by Azerbaijani side are
for internal use.

Speaking of the opposition, press secretary hailed significant its role
in ruling of the country, however called on opposition to participate
in the consultations organized by President along with criticizing
government at the press conferences. As to March 1 events, Sharmazanov
said that his position remained unchanged, "I consider that March 1
was an attempt of coup d’etat and partially a color revolution."

BAKO SAHAKYAN MEETS WITH BEST SPORTSMEN AND TRAINERS

Panorama.am
25/12/2009

On 25 December President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Bako Sahakyan
met sportsmen and trainers who showed the best results in the year
of 2009.

The Head of the State expressed satisfaction over the success
of Artsakh sportsmen in different Armenian, European and world
championships. At the same time the President noted that it was
possible to reach higher results and stressed the appropriate
potential for it, Central Information Department of the Office of
the NKR President reported.

Bako Sahakyan underlined that sports and physical culture are of
strategic importance for the state and the state would assist the
development of these spheres in every way possible.

At the end of the meeting the President handed over awards to the
sportsmen and trainers.

Head of the standing commission on social affairs of the NKR National
Assembly Arpat Avanesyan and chairman of the State Committee for
Sports under the NKR Cabinet of Ministers Razmik Hovsepyan partook
at the meeting.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION PROVIDES 2 MILLION FOR DISASTER RISK REDUCTION IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

armradio.am
25.12.2009 13:10

The European Commission has allocated 2 million for disaster
preparedness in Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. These countries
regularly and increasingly experience natural phenomena such
as landslides, mudslides, floods and earthquakes. This aid will
strengthen the capacities of local and national authorities to better
prepare and to cope with such disasters. The funds will be channelled
through the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid department under
the responsibility of Karel De Gucht.

The funding aims at increasing resilience and reducing the
vulnerability of local communities and institutions by supporting
strategies which enable them to better prepare for, mitigate and
respond to natural disasters. The projects will facilitate the
coordination and exchange of knowledge among national and regional
authorities.

They will also provide basic know-how in disaster management;
training, and early warning systems, and will promote awareness
campaigns among the local communities, combined with practical
exercises in evacuation, mock drills and dry-run rehearsals. In some
areas, small-scale infrastructure works and services will also be
financed. Women, children and vulnerable groups such as the disabled
and ethnic minorities will be especially targeted.

Commission-funded humanitarian aid projects are implemented by
non-governmental relief organizations, specialized UN agencies and
the Red Cross societies.

RA MINISTRY OF DIASPORA AND ARMENIAN CHESS ACADEMY SIGN COOPERATION MEMORANDUM

Noyan Tapan
Dec 24, 2009

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 24, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. The RA Ministry
of Diaspora and the Armenian Chess Academy signed a memorandum on
cooperation on December 24. The document was signed by Minister
of Diaspora Ms. Hranush Hakoian and President of the Chess Academy
Smbat Lputian.

The memorandum envisages exchanging experience of the victories of
Armenia’s chess players with the Diaspora. The experience gained
through work done by the Chess Academy in Armenian marzes (provinces)
will be spread in Diaspora communities, organizations and schools. "We
will try to awake the Armenian chess talent in the Diaspora as well,"
the minister stated, adding that in 2010 the sides will organize an
All-Armenian Chess Olympiad. The Chess Academy will deal with the
issue of forming age groups for this tournament. In the words of Ms.

Hakobian, a tournament between Armenia’s national team and a team
composed of chess players who won in Diaspora contests can also
be organized.

She said the Chess Academy will run chess courses for the Diaspora
youth on a visit to Armenia. Besides, the Chess Academy will organize
online courses for Diaspora Armenians by using the opportunities of
the Armenian Virtual College of the Armenian General Benevolent Union
(AGBU). In this way the sides will help involve the Diaspora Armenian
chess potential in the movement "Armenia is a chess superpower".

According to S. Lputian, the Armenian Chess Academy and the Chess
Federation of Armenia responded with pleasure to the ministry’s
proposal to cooperate. He said that the methods of promoting chess
among the younger generation in the Diaspora are already being worked
out. S. Lputian underlined that they have set themselves the task
of organizing tournaments with the participation of Diaspora chess
players, noting that the Diaspora has some first-class players. He
expressed confidence that such initiatives "will be accepted warmly
and ethusiastically, and with each passing year this enthusiasm will
become more useful for carrying out our common aspirations".

TURKISH POLICE CONTINUE ARRESTING KURDS

PanARMENIAN.Net
24.12.2009 21:30 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkish police have arrested dozens of pro-Kurdish
party members in a series of coordinated raids in the south-east of
the country, Euronews reports.

Forty-two members of the Democratic Society Party, the DTP have been
reportedly held in the crackdown aimed at breaking an urban network
of the militant, separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party the PKK.

The DTP was banned by Turkey’s Constitutional Court earlier this month
because of its ties with the PKK – designated a terrorist organisation
by the Turkish government, the European Union and the United States,
says the report.

The ban sparked days of unrest in the mainly Kurdish south-east of
the country. The ruling was also opposed by Turkey’s Prime Minister
Recip Tayyip Erdogan who recently launched an initiative to improve
Kurds’ rights.

DINK MUSTN’T BECOME A ‘MONUMENT’ IN ARMENIA: ISKANDARYAN

Tert.am
17:25 ~U 23.12.09

Because of a lack of a passport, Turkish citizen of Armenian descent,
journalist Hrant Dink was unable to travel outside Turkey’s borders,
said Caucasus Institute Director Alexander Iskandaryan, during the
launch of the Armenian translation of Dink’s book, roughly translated
to Two Close Peoples, Two Distant Neighbours.

Iskandaryan first met Dink 14 years ago in Istanbul; it was then that
he found out about the issue with his passport.

"I asked, has he perhaps been to Armenia?" explained the institute
director. Dink responded that he had been to Western Armenia (currently
within Turkey’s borders) and that that was his country.

"Armenia simply wasn’t a territory for him," said Iskandaryan, who
is concerned that after Dink’s death, the journalist could become a
"monument" in Armenia.

"Dink was never and never will be a monument. It’s necessary not just
to know him, but also to read his works," concluded Iskandaryan.

PRESIDENT: UNPRECEDENTED ECONOMIC DECLINE IN ARMENIA STEPPING BACK SLOWLY, BUT STEADILY

ARKA
Dec 23, 2009

YEREVAN, December 23. /ARKA/. Unprecedented economic decline in
Armenia is stepping back slowly, but steadily, Armenian President
Serzh Sargsyan said Tuesday at his annual meeting with entrepreneurs.

"Armenia has recorded economic decline, and I don’t think it will
considerably slow down in December. But instead the flow of new ideas
and projects has not dwindled," he said.

The president said that macroeconomic developments in recent months
and signs of economic recovery give us ground for optimistic outlooks
for 2010.

GDP in Armenia reduced 16% in Jan-Nov 2009, compared with the same
period a year earlier, to AMD 2786.7 billion.

November’s GDP is 6.6% smaller than that of the previous month.

BEING CRUCIFIED…
Yusuf Kanli

Hurriyet
Dec 22 2009
Turkey

A Turkish-Armenian citizen proudly declares, "How happy is the one
who calls himself a Turk" and makes headlines in almost every paper. A
teenage Turkish-Greek citizen comes first in a "best national anthem
reading contest" and it is reported in all papers and on all TV
stations’ primetime news programs. In a country where there has not
been one single non-Muslim in the 550-seat unicameral Parliament since
the late 1980s, is there something abnormal for a minority religious
leader with immense international standing and prestige to complain
that his community feels he is treated like a second-class citizen?

Is it only that religious community and its religious leader who
feel like they are being treated as second-class citizens? Don’t the
secular people in this country of rising religious-conservatism, who
see they are denied senior posts in bureaucracy or equal opportunities
in public tenders or even a seat on the prime minister’s official jet
just because their wives don’t cover their heads, feel as though they
are treated as second-class citizens? Or, don’t the people behind bars,
some of them without seeing a judge for the past 30 or more months,
under the Ergenekon probe and the judicial case feel as though they
are treated differently than the Lighthouse sham, where the suspects
are not only still free, but enjoying some lucrative municipal tenders,
like the recently discovered fire brigade tender?

In a country where a non-Muslim community, persistently considered
as a threat to national security, is encouraged to migrate abroad
through various and very effective methods, including the shameful
Sept. 6 and 7 incidents of 1955, and the size of which shrunk to
around 2,000 over the years from several hundred thousand, and if
a seminary, raising clergy for the church that under law must have
priests possessing the nationality of that country, has been closed
for the past 30 years, is it something odd for the religious leader
of that community to start to develop existential fears?

If in that country there is an article in the media or a statement
from some nationalist-conservative political elite accusing that
minority church of aspiring to a second Vatican in that country and
creating some sort of an autonomous, if not independent, theocratic
state more loyal to a neighbor than that country? If the patriarch
heading that church, internationally recognized as ecumenical and
as the first among equals, keeps on calling on the offices of the
political administration of that country with a demand for resolution
of the problems of his church and his community, but his calls fall
on deaf ears, is it abnormal to hear him complaining in an interview
that he sometimes feels himself crucified?

Is that religious leader the only person who sometimes feels as though
he or she is being crucified in this country? Can anyone empathize
with the widow and children of the lieutenant colonel who after being
subjected to a summary execution on the front pages of the allegiant
media, condemned and executed as member of a gang plotting to kill
some leading admirals of the country committed suicide this week?

The attacks on Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew over his remarks
during an interview with the U.S. television network CBS are indeed yet
another attempt to crucify him. One reason for the outburst might be
in the translation of the term "being crucified" in Christian culture
to the Turkish-Muslim culture. Indeed, the term means nothing more
than being compelled to live hell on Earth, or to make someone suffer
under pressure. But, in whatever context the patriarch might have
used the expression, as well as his complaint of being treated like
a second-class citizen, the fact that he used such an expression or
made such a complaint cannot and should not provide the legitimacy to
subject him to treatment as if he was crucified. He has just expressed
his opinion, yes with some strong words that we might not like so much.

People have started drawing comparisons between the treatment of the
Muslim-Turkish minority in Greece and the Greek Orthodox people in
Turkey. That’s a self-defeating approach. Greece is indeed wrong to
refuse Muslim-Turks living there to elect their own religious leaders.

But, can there be the practice of tit-for-tat, or reciprocity in
human rights?

After all, under the principle of constitutional citizenship,
all citizens of a country must have equal rights. Furthermore,
under international minority norms, rather than being considered
a "potential threat" and having their rights restricted on the
understanding obsessed by certain phobias, the minorities of this
country must be accorded with some "additional" rights to preserve
and promote their ethnic, religious, cultural or whatever differences.

HASTERT FUNDED BY TAXPAYERS AS HE LOBBIES FOR TURKEY

Asbarez
Dec 22nd, 2009

WASHINGTON-Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who after
leaving Congress has been lobbying for the government of Turkey,
is using taxpayer money to fund his office in Illinois. In a
posting on Monday, Beltway insider site Politico exposed Hastert’s
double-dipping. We republish the piece for our readers.

Former Speaker Gets Pricey Perks

By: Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan

U.S. taxpayers are spending more than $40,000 per month on office
space, staff, cell phones and a leased SUV for former House Speaker
Dennis Hastert, even as he works as a lobbyist for private corporations
and foreign governments.

The payments are perfectly legal under a federal law that provides
five years of benefits for former speakers – but only if Hastert never
makes use of his government-funded perks in the course of his lobbying
work. Ethics experts say that sort of separation is hard to maintain.

Hastert "has to be meticulous in his schedule to make sure there
is no bleed from his publicly subsidized office into his private
practice," said Kenneth Gross, a former Federal Election Commission
general counsel and congressional ethics authority. Steve Ellis,
vice president of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense,
called the arrangement "really concerning."

"It is specifically prohibited – federal dollars can’t be spent on
lobbying operations," Ellis said. "We are paying for his staff [and]
for a car, and we need to be very sure that he isn’t spending a dime of
that money on lobbying operations. "That all needs to be above board,
in the clear and transparent. And it’s not."

Hastert declined to discuss the situation with POLITICO.

But his spokesman, Brad Hahn, said the former 11-term congressman
is in full compliance with rules covering how the federal funds are
spent. Hahn said Hastert’s lobbying work "is completely separate
[from the office of the former speaker], and he keeps them completely
separate."

The federal government pays $6,300 per month to rent an office for
Hastert and his staff in Yorkville, Ill. Hahn conceded that Hastert
has no other office set aside for lobbying work in Illinois but said
that the former speaker travels to Washington frequently for work.

In addition to the office, the government pays the salaries of three
of Hastert’s assistants in his Illinois office – each more than
$100,000 in 2008. Bryan Hardin, Hastert’s administrative assistant
(the title often used by a chief of staff in a congressional office)
earned $138,000.

"The office of the former speaker has specific functions that are
tied to Denny being the former speaker, but he does not receive any
compensation and is not an employee," Hahn said. "There are three
staffers that carry out the functions – archiving, correspondence,
speaking engagements – and working with the Hastert Center" at
Wheaton College.

House disbursement records show that the office is spending an
additional $2,000 per month in taxpayer money on a consulting firm,
Burnham Strategies, that is run by several of Hastert’s former
staffers, including Hahn. Altogether, the firm was paid $30,000
through Sept. 30 of this year, records show.

Taxpayers also make the lease payments on a 2008 GMC Yukon and pay for
a satellite TV subscription, cell phones, laptops and other expenses.

Since Hastert opened the Illinois office in early 2008, records show,
the government has paid for five computer monitors at a total cost of
$1,125, spent almost $1,300 for desks and shelled out an additional
$4,460 for Hewlett-Packard laptops. Other expenditures include $745
for a printer and about $620 to transport a clock.

Hastert, who served in the House for almost 21 years, signed on with
Dickstein Shapiro in 2008. He is now a registered foreign agent,
representing in Washington the interests of the governments of Turkey
and Luxembourg. He also lobbies on behalf of three U.S. corporations.

Democrats enacted new lobbying restrictions in 2007 in a bid to curb
the influence of registered lobbyists after Hastert’s Republican
colleagues were entangled in a slew of ethical and legal scandals.

These restrictions curbed gifts from lobbyists to lawmakers and
lawmaker travel paid for by federally registered lobbyists, and
they instituted a period during which former members could not lobby
Congress. But those measures do not prohibit what Hastert is doing now.

Under a federal statute enacted in 1974, former House speakers are
entitled to an allowance to set up and run an office, a payment that
includes salaries for several aides. In 1995, then newly empowered
Republicans – who had seized control of the House for the first
time in four decades – put a five-year deadline on this allowance,
a move aimed at former Speaker Tom Foley (D-Wash.), who had lost his
reelection bid the previous November.

The formula for calculating the allowance given to former speakers
is based on that used by current lawmakers. Former speakers are
prohibited from taking the funds only if they take some other
"appointive or elected office or position" in the federal or D.C.

government, according to a 2007 Congressional Research Service report.

Hahn said Hastert is authorized to spend as much as $840,000 annually
to run his office but has not used all the money made available to
him by Congress. "He’s worked on a nonpaid basis, but as a former
speaker, [Hastert] helped out with the Chicago Olympic bid, Advance
Illinois [an education program] and Illinois Works," a jobs program,
Hahn added. "These are nonlobbying and nonpaid. These are duties he
was asked to help [on as] official causes – because he was a former
speaker and to add his expertise."

Hastert is not the first former speaker to become a lobbyist. Foley
worked as a lobbyist for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld after
serving as U.S. ambassador to Japan, representing clients such as
AT&T, Walt Disney Co., CSX Corp. and the State University of New
York. Jim Wright, a Texas Democrat who was speaker from 1987 to 1989,
was a consultant for Arch Petroleum Co., although it is unclear if he
was ever a registered lobbyist, said the Office of the Historian of
the House. Other former speakers, including Georgia Republican Newt
Gingrich, never registered as lobbyists.

When he retired from Congress two years ago, Hastert told an Illinois
newspaper he would go back home and unwind from nearly three decades
in public office. Hastert predicted, "I don’t really see myself as
a lobbyist and would probably not do that at all."