Author: Topchian Jane

THE KURDISH-ARMENIAN ISSUE IN THE LIGHT OF CONVERGENCE OF TURKEY AND ARMENIA
Ajdar Kurtov

en.fondsk.ru
15.05.2009

In late April Armenia and Turkey signed a "roadmap" aimed at
normalizing bilateral relations. This makes us reconsider some of
our perceptions regarding the geopolitical situation at the South
Caucasus and in Asia Minor. The usual colors of the political map
are changing and for Russia it is not for the better.

For quite a long time since the break-up of the USSR many politicians
in Armenia saw the Kurdish national movement, represented mainly by the
Kurdistan Labor party (PKK), as an ally of Armenia. Both Armenia and
Kurds had territorial claims to Turkey and that was the uniting factor.

When it came to geopolitical issues the Kurdish issue was very popular
among political analysts. "The Kurdish issue" – is a geopolitical
doctrine, which implies the creation of national administrative entity
(state) called Kurdistan on the territory of four Asian countries
(Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria) which have Kurds among their population.

Kurds are one of the ancient ethnicities on our planet and they have
never had their own state. Historically, Kurdistan had always been a
zone of permanent conflicts. For thousands of years Kurdistan was at
the interface of emerging and disbanding states, which were always
conflicting with each other. Nevertheless the Kurdish people managed
to20 keep their national identity, language and culture.

Mountain relief made Kurdistan a hard-to-reach place for any
interventions and an advantageous region in terms of military strategy,
the region many countries were fighting for. Kurds did not assimilate
unlike other folks who lived in the region. In numerous wars between
Persia and the Turkish Empire Kurds often served as cannon fodder.

In the second half of 19th century after being attacked by the
Russian army and its allies (Southern Slavs) in the Balkan region
Turkey decided to recruit Kurdish Muslims. At that time about 3.5
million of Kurds (nomadic and settled) lived quite independently in
the Eastern Anatolia region. But the Turkish authorities did not pay
salary to Kurds who fought in the Turkish army forcing them to make a
living by robbing Armenians. The Ottoman Port was very cynical in using
Kurds. The Turkish government set Kurds at Armenian Christians but at
the same time levied big tributes from Kurds for their "bad behavior".

Turkey secretly supported Kurdish sheikh Obeidula, leader of the
anti-Iran rebellion. The Turkish government used Kurds to make
problems for Iran and for Russia as well and also incited Kurds to
kill Armenians.

The expansion of the Russian Empire to the borders of Kurdistan and
especially the victory of the Bolsheviks’ revolution which gave rise
to national liberation movement in the East provided a powerful i
mpetus to the Kurdish movement. At the same time Kurdistan entered
the sphere of interests of other great powers.

The national liberation movement of Kurdistan had a lop-sided
development.

The rebellions started in different parts of Kurdistan but they
never covered the whole country. Those rebellions were repressed
by the forces of the regular army and also, which is quite typical,
by Kurds who belonged to other tribes.

Late 1970s early 1980s saw the signs of integration of separate Kurdish
organizations, which made their struggle more successful. However
it did not lead to the creation of the common organization akin to
national fronts, which emerged in many other countries. At that period
the Kurdish Diaspora in many countries became more active especially
in Europe.

Political and tribal disintegration is one of the reasons why
Kurds missed their chance (at least twice) to establish their own
state. The first chance was when after the end of the First World War
many nations formed their own states on the remains of the Turkish
Empire (Ottoman Empire). In March, 1919, in Paris, Kurdish leader
Sherif Pasha addressed the countries of the Atlanta alliance with a
proposal to form the Kurdish state but his request was ignored unlike
the similar requests of Arabs.

The second chance was missed, in our opinion, in early 1990-s when the
US and their Western allies decided "to give a good lesson" to20Saddam
Hussein for his aggression against Kuwait. With the assistance of
the Western countries and first of all from the US Kurds could have
received an independent state. The war in Iraq resulted only with the
forming of the Kurdish autonomy. It was in many ways declarative had
limited rights but it was recognized by the UN resolutions.

Soon after that the center of the Kurdish national movement moved
to the Western (Turkish) Kurdistan, where an armored struggle had
already begun under the leadership of the Kurdistan Labor party (PKK),
which was the most significant and recognized organization of the
national movement.

The Kurdistan Labor party (PKK) was formed in Turkey on September 27,
1979 as a moderate clandestine organization. But when the Kurdish
language was prohibited in Turkey the party switched to more radical
methods of political fight. In August 1984, it formed People’s
Liberation Army of Kurdistan (Arteshen Rizgariya Gelli Kurdistan
(ARGK)), which operated in the bordering regions between Turkey,
Iraq and Syria. In ten years the Army numbered up to 40 000 fighters
(so-called "peshmerga’s" which means "those who face death").

In 1985, the National Liberation Front of Kurdistan (Eniya Rizgariya
Netewa Kurdistan (ERNK)) was formed in Europe under the guidance
of PKK.

Since 1988 and for quite a long time the headquarters of PKK
was located in Syria. Unlike traditional politi cal parties of
the European type PKK had a strict discipline and "articles of
war" regulations. Any disobedience was punished under this strict
"revolutionary" law. The method of "armed propaganda" is one of the
main methods of revolutionary struggle of PKK.

According to security services of Turkey, the US and most of the
Western countries, PKK is "the most dangerous among ethnic splinter
organizations, which uses international terrorism as the main weapon to
fight for Kurdistan’s independence". The party is officially prohibited
in Turkey and most of the European countries but the actions of legal
political organizations of Kurds in many aspects are defined by the
supporters of PKK.

Until the beginning of the 21 century the ideological base of PKK
could be described as Marxism-Leninism. In his works PKK’s founder
Abdullah Ocalan promoted simplified ideas of Marxism-Leninism which
in some aspects were similar to the ideas of Ernesto "Che" Guevara
in Latin America.

The ruling regimes in Iran, Iraq (under Saddam Hussein) and especially
in Turkey had reasons to regard the Kurdish movement as a splinter
movement.

All Western scientists note very negative attitude of Turkish people
even to ethnic self-definition of Kurds. The Turkish government
repressed all Kurdish movements even violating the regulations of
the international law.

Only under pressure from the=2 0EU Ankara softened this line of its
domestic policy hoping to become a member of the EU.

Until quite recently the Turkish press periodically wrote about
the links between PKK and Armenia. It was claimed that at least six
camps of Kurdish separatists were located in Armenia (in Zengezur
and Markara districts).

Official representatives of the Turkish government claimed
that Armenians were supplying weapons and ammunition to Kurdish
separatists. But Ankara lacked evidence to officially accuse Armenia of
supporting PKK. According to Turkey’s security service, Kurdish gunmen
freely crossed Armenian border. That is why the Turkish authorities
worked so hard to organize a blockade on the Turkish-Armenian
border. In April 1996, the Turkish General Staff decided to declare
a number of districts of Kars province as a blockaded zone for six
months. In an official statement the authorities said that it was
necessary to conduct military training in Kars. Turkish armed forces
continually and unsuccessfully conducted operations on liquidation
of Kurdish rebels in the district of the Ararat Mountain.

Earlier there were many statements in Turkish and Azeri mass media
claiming that PKK (according to the authors of those statements)
was collaborating with such Armenian organizations as Dashnaktsutiun
and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) in
order to block the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
(BTC). In order to prove those statements it was also claimed that
PKK’s gunmen had conducted a number of operations in the area of
BTC construction. The theory that Kurds were able to disrupt plans
of oil transit via the territory of historical Kurdistan is proved
by the fact that in January 1997 there was an explosion on one of
the stretches of the Kirkuk-Yumurtalyk pipeline in the province of
Mardin in the South-East of Turkey. The leakage of crude oil was
30000 barrels and rescue works and fire fighting took two days. For
Turkey’s security service the explosion was definitely caused by PKK.

Later on, however not all these versions proved to be true. Turkey’s
security forces arrested Ocalan, he was trialed and sent to a
special jail. PKK lost its leader, who remained a symbol of the
rebellion but was not a working manager anymore. BTC was built
against everything. After the overthrow of Hussein in Iraq the US
authorities approached the Iranian Kurds strengthening the idea to
establish an independent state of Kurdistan. The Kurds of Iraq even
allowed the Turkish army to conduct operations on their territory to
hound PKK supporters.

In our opinion all these events do not mean that one can talk
definitely about the existence of an efficient Armenian Kurdish
alliance against Turkey. There are significant changes in the Kurdish
movement. For PKK the creation of the independent Kurdish state is
only a minim um program. The main thing is socialistic and later
communist Kurdistan, but this is a strategic extreme (in other words:
it is a myth) of the Kurdish national movement. In reality the Kurdish
movement has to adjust to the recent global changes.

With the break-up of the Soviet Union PKK had to change its basic
statements. The ethnic leaders began to realize that the dream of
the independent Kurdistan may never come true, at least in the near
future. The efforts of the Kurdish movement to lobby its interests
in 1980-1990s (the time of break-ups of the USSR and Yugoslavia, the
unification of Germany) were in vain. At the same time the decisive
actions of the Turkish army made the Kurdish leaders doubt in the
efficiency of combat struggle.

The most realistic, according to the leaders of PKK, is the project
of Kurdistan as a subject of federation within Turkey. Different
types of autonomy (linguistic and cultural autonomy and economic and
cultural autonomy) are not excluded. In May 1997, speaking at a video
conference with the deputies of the UK’s ruling Labor party Ocalan
said that the Kurdish problem should be solved on the analogy of the
Northern Ireland. It means that the Kurdish activists started to choose
for non-radical variants which were more acceptable for the European
democracies. "We are fighting not for the creation of an independent
state in the territory of Kurdistan but for respect o f Kurds’ rights",
Abdurahman Dere, one of the leaders of ERNK in Europe, said.

The switch from revolutionary methods to moderate political projects
gave Kurds an opportunity to find support on the international
arena. Speaking about the introduction of democratic freedoms in
Turkey Kurds were trying to find potential allies in Europe. Though
semi-military structure of PKK was far from the structure of
any democratic party and Ocalan did not look like a liberal the
requirements of Kurds regarding the democratization of Turkey were
quite relevant and matched the claims of the EU to Turkey.

All these changes mean that the Kurdish problem is unlikely to be
resolved in a short-term or a medium term period. Even if we assume
that Kurdistan becomes an independent state it is unlikely that
it will avoid domestic tribal contradictions (on the analogy with
Afghanistan). Kurds who live in their historical region lack common
ideology, national myth. Unlike other Kurdish parties, which are based
on tribal principle, PKK is based on ideological principle. This
makes PKK popular among the European Kurds but at the same time it
leads to inevitable clashes with other political parties of Kurds
and first of all with political organization of the Iraqi Kurds.

It should be noted that Kurds are relatively indifferent both to
Islam and to democratic values. Though some scientists note that
the influence of Barzan sheikhs an d Sunni Islam is still strong,
the Muslim solidarity is subordinate to the national solidarity.

Back to the topic of the Armenian-Kurdish alliance on "Turkish front"
it should be noted that except for the common enemy this alliance
did not have any solid base. Though Kurds are ready for political
compromise the settlement of the Armenian problem (if we speak
about its Karabakh variant) excluded such flexibility until very
recently. If Kurdistan as an independent state is in many aspects a
never-never-land, Karabakh, on the contrary, is a real state entity
with strong army and numerous international contacts.

Historically, Kurds did not differ much from Turks in the period of the
Armenians’ massacre. It was evidenced that Kurds were robbing Armenian
villages after the deportation of Armenians. The Kurdish gunmen
were especially cruel keeping down the revolt in Sasun in 1894. It
was not advantageous for the Turkish government to spoil relations
with Kurds and it abetted any acts of violence by Kurds towards the
Armenian folk. In accordance with "divide and rule" principle the
Turkish government used differentiated approach: in case with Kurds
and other Muslim folks they conducted assimilation policy while when
it came to Christian folks they continued the policy of Adbul-Hamid,
which was physical liquidation.

In mass media the Kurdish political leaders used to declare their
claims on so-called 8 0Red Kurdistan" – an autonomous region,
which existed since 1923 till 1930 on the territory of the current
Lachinsky district now controlled by Stepanakert (Azerbaijan). Many
scientists regard this fact as a trigger for a potential conflict
between Armenians and Kurds.

Old Kurdish proverb said "Kurds have no friends". The ethnic structure
of the population which is neither Turkish nor Arabic, weak Islamic
traditions and lack of democratic traditions, language-specific –
all these things lead us to the conclusion that Kurds will not have
allies in this region.

This becomes even more obvious in the light of the convergence of
Turkey and Armenia.

Turks were always concerned with the crossing the Turkish-Armenian
border by Kurds and that was one of the reasons why the border was
strongly protected.

The recent removal of strong border control shows that Armenia has
made a commitment to Turkey to follow a special policy regarding
Turkish Kurds.

In this respect we face the following question:

Do the recent agreements between Armenia and Turkey imply any
commitments of the Armenian authorities regarding Nagorny Karakakh?

If Armenians gave up the idea of their geopolitical union with the
Turkish Kurds why not to assume that the idea of the independent
state of Nagorny Karabakh (which was used as a theoretical base to
unite Armenians and Kurds) was also eroded.

TURKEY IN THE MIRROR
by Barbara Lerner

National Review
May 14, 2009 Thursday

In January, Turkey’s current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
created an international sensation at the World Economic Forum in
Davos when he stormed out of the meeting after accusing Israeli
soldiers of deliberately killing innocent Palestinians in Gaza,
calling it "a crime against humanity." When Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi,
the commander of those soldiers, heard that, he reportedly replied:
"Erdogan should first look in the mirror." General Mizrahi is right,
and all Turks should take his advice, but not for the reason most
Turks think.

Most Turks assumed General Mizrahi was referring to the increasingly
loud international chorus insisting that Turks, too, are guilty
of crimes against humanity because they committed genocide against
innocent Armenians in World War I. They think he was saying, in effect,
"We may be wanton killers, but you have no standing to criticize us,
because you are too." I don’t assume that’s what the general meant
— because the truth, and the point, is the opposite. Persistent and
hugely successful propaganda campaigns to the contrary notwithstanding,
Jews are no more guilty of wanton murder today than Turks were of
deliberate genocide in World War I (as I’ve argued here and here).

General Mizrahi’s legitimate point is that people who have felt
the lash of unjust accusations by corrupt foreign leaders, and the
dangerous mobs they incite, should refuse to join in when mobs unjustly
target another state, demonizing it and whitewashing its enemies.

That’s doubly true when the targeted state is a loyal, longtime ally
like Israel. And what is true for Israel is true as well for Turkey’s
other small, beleaguered ally, Azerbaijan, a Turkic sister state that
was finally freed from Russian occupation only to suffer again, now,
under partial Armenian occupation. Practical benefits reinforce the
moral claims that both these struggling democracies have on Turkey:
e.g., access to Israel’s technological and defense wizardry, to
Azerbaijani oil, and to the great promise of the Nabucco project to
make the abundant oil and gas of the Caspian Sea region available
to Turkey and the West in a way that will prevent Russia, Iran,
or the Arabs from having a stranglehold on vital resources we all
need. This latter project could make Azerbaijan a model for Kazakhstan
and Turkmenistan, two other newly freed Turkic states struggling for
a viable way forward, a way to exploit their gas and oil resources
without falling back under Russian domination. It would also give hope
to the other newly freed and struggling Muslim "Stans" in the region,
and to Georgia’s beleaguered Christians.

TURKEY IN THE TRANSNATIONAL MIRROR

Prime Minister Erdogan prioritizes none of that. His focus is on the
global stage, where Israel is hated, Azerbaijan is ignored to the point
of invisibility, and the "Stans" are not a big enough voting bloc to
matter. There, abandoning old allies and embracing Palestinians and
Armenians instead is a winning move. Let’s count the ways: It puts
Turkey in sync with both the Islamists and the blindly self-righteous
Socialists, the two big multinational blocs that dominate the U.N. It
pleases European Union transnationals who appease both blocs and call
it statesmanship. It gives the 57-member Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) the Muslim unanimity against Israel that Turkey
denied it in the past (along with Iran, before the Islamists seized
power there in 1979). It wins Turkey special points with its new best
friends: an increasingly expansionist Russia; a rapidly nuclearizing
Iran, along with its satellite, Syria, and its terrorist surrogates,
Hezbollah and Hamas; and Sudan, a current practitioner of actual
genocide against its own desperate and friendless people.

Last but not least in this media-driven world of ours, condemning
Israel makes Erdogan an international celebrity, winning him flattering
attention not just in the Turkish press — increasingly owned and
dominated by his AKP (Justice and Development) party through relatives
and friends — and in Arab-government-controlled outlets like Qatar’s
ubiquitous al-Jazeera television network, but in the increasingly
anti-Western Western media too. And it evokes cheers from mobs in
streets, squares, and campuses from Cairo to London to Los Angeles. At
Ataturk Airport, on his return from Davos, Erdogan was greeted by a
cheering mob, shouting "Bravo Erdogan" and "Death to Israel."

Prime Minister Erdogan is an ambitious man. At Davos, he didn’t just
add Turkey’s voice to the growing multinational chorus demonizing
Israel and taking a see-no-evil stance toward the Palestinians. He
went beyond simple acquiescence, making a bid to put Turkey at the
head of the latest wave of Israel-bashing by saying what all the other
Jew-bashers were saying, but saying it louder and more dramatically,
from an unexpected platform.

TURKEY IN THE MIRROR OF THE PAST

Many explanations have been offered for why Erdogan and his "moderate
Islamist" party are behaving this way, but the idea that the AKP is
reverting to the ways of its Ottoman ancestors is ahistorical and
demeaning to the Ottomans. It is true, as Muslim-bashers in the
West persistently point out, that Ottoman sultans were a far cry
from politically correct 21st-century liberals. But it is also true
that for 500 years, the Ottomans were light years ahead of their
contemporaries when it came to dealing with religious minorities,
particularly the Mizrahi — the Jews of the East. Those centuries saw
recurrent waves of anti-Jewish incitement, many culminating in terrible
peaks of slaughter. Demonization of Jews was rampant in the Muslim
world, and widespread in Christian Europe too. But not in Turkey.

Turkey was different. It always stood largely apart from the great
waves of Jew-hatred that periodically darken the world, and was never
fully engulfed by them. Until the birth of America, it was virtually
unique in this respect. Turkish sultans didn’t demonize Jews, or join
forces with those who did. They didn’t echo or broadcast ugly Arab
or Christian blood libels. Instead, they did their best to impose
their own more rational and tolerant attitudes toward Jews and other
peaceful minorities on all the peoples they ruled, and to recognize
and utilize the skills of all their subjects. Of course Christians and
Jews were dhimmis in the Ottoman empire, and that is always a painful
burden. But Turkish sultans were also Caliphs — supreme interpreters
of Islam for all Muslims — and their Islam was not the Islam of
today’s Saudis or al-Qaeda. Under Ottoman rule, Jews and Christians
— Armenian Christians especially — could generally practice their
religions freely within their own self-governing millets.

The most famous illustration of this persistent Ottoman policy is the
remark of Beyazit II, the Turkish sultan who welcomed a new group of
Jews to Turkey in the 15th century — the ones who were expelled from
Spain during the Inquisition. He said: "How can you call Ferdinand
of Aragon a wise king? He has made his land poor and enriched ours."

This venerable Turkish stance toward the Jewish people didn’t end
with the Ottoman Empire. The secular republic of Turkey that rose from
its ashes in 1923 was neutral in World War II, like Switzerland, but
much more generous to the demonized victims of Europe’s last great
wave of hate. Turkey gave refuge to thousands of Jews fleeing the
Nazi inferno — Turkish Jews who had been living abroad, and many
Ashkenazi (Western) Jews too. Turkish ambassadors in Nazi-occupied
Europe took real risks to make it possible for Jews to escape to
Turkey. Free-thinking Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, was
gone by then (he died in 1938), but his successor, a devout Muslim
named Ismet Inonu, struggled to be faithful to Ataturk’s vision of a
secular state that not only tolerated Jews and other loyal non-Muslims,
but abolished their dhimmi status altogether.

TURKEY IN THE DOMESTIC MIRROR TODAY

Judging by the responses I got when I visited with Istanbul’s Jews in
2001, the policy of Inonu and his successors worked. Like the Muslim
Turks I met on that same trip, the Istanbul Jews were honest about
Turkey’s lapses and flaws, and impatient with the less-than-competent
political leaders in those pre-AKP years, but they were fiercely
proud of their country, and fully at home in it. Today, after six and
a half years of AKP rule, many Jews are profoundly uneasy, painfully
aware that increasing numbers of their fellow Turks now echo the lies
others tell about them and see them as foreigners in the land they
have embraced as Turks for five centuries and more.

Jews aren’t the only people being demonized in Erdogan’s
Turkey. Indeed, their treatment, so far, is mild compared with that
being meted out to Turkey’s Muslim secularists. They are the targets
of a vast, ongoing conspiracy investigation known as Ergenekon. A
hitherto unknown government prosecutor, working with no-holds-barred
police investigators, launched the case in June 2007, weaving an ever
more complex and elaborate tale of a fantastically sinister secularist
plot to massacre large numbers of innocent Turks as a prelude to the
violent overthrow of the AKP government.

Some 200 alleged co-conspirators have been arrested so far, and
this year there are new arrests every month — some weeks, almost
every day. Many of the accused are prominent men and women who
fall into one of four categories: (1) Turkish journalists who have
criticized Erdogan and/or reported on AKP corruption, and owners of
the remaining independent media outlets that employ those journalists;
(2) Turkish military officers — at first mostly retired army men,
some quite high-ranking, and more recently, active army and navy
officers as well; (3) Turkish intellectuals — university rectors,
professors, scholars, and scientists — with records of outspoken
support for Ataturk’s bedrock commitment to the separation of mosque
and state as the defining principle of the Turkish republic; and (4)
Turkish business and professional men and women known to share those
views. A number of the arrestees are old and ill. Prison has been
hard on them. Some have died there, or soon after their release.

TURKEY, THE FUTURE, AND MAY 17, 2009

Turkey’s unique Ottoman Empire lasted for five centuries. The
question today is whether Turkey’s unique secular republic will
make it to its first centennial in 2023. The answer, sadly, will
be no, if the Turks continue to look to the European Union for
salvation. The transnationals who run the EU have many reservations
about admitting a Muslim-majority state like Turkey to their
national-sovereignty-superseding, Islamist-appeasing club, but a
principled objection to the idea of a "moderate Islamist" government
is not among them. They quite like that idea, seeing it, as President
George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once did,
as a model for other Muslim-majority states to emulate.

But the sad truth is that under the AKP, emulation is proceeding in
the opposite direction: Turkey is becoming more like the oppressive,
corrupt, and propaganda-dominated Arab states from which Ataturk
deliberately distanced Turkey. Today, it’s fashionable in some
Turkish circles to disparage Ataturk for his "isolationism," but a
more accurate summary would describe him as a leader who was highly
selective about the close ties he established with foreign nations —
the tie with Australia, for example, which remains strong to this day.

Another, even sadder truth, for me as an American, is that support
from the U.S. for Turkey’s proud, secular tradition is even less
likely under our current president. Barack Obama shares the EU’s
enthusiasm for "moderate Islamist" states. Unlike ex-president Bush,
he also shares the EU’s uncritical embrace of the view that the
massacre of Armenians in World War I was full-scale genocide on the
part of Turkey, and why not? Our popular new president embraces all
the currently popular transnational prejudices, including those that
unfairly target America — exaggerating our sins and ignoring the
role we have played in making the world a safer, freer, more civilized
place, and the enormous price we have paid to do that. Instead, Obama
joins Erdogan in courting U.N. and OIC favor by giving short shrift to
embattled friends (e.g., Georgia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Colombia,
and Mexico, as well as Israel), while simultaneously reaching far
out to countries with dangerously hostile and aggressive leaders —
countries like Iran, Syria, Russia, Venezuela, and Cuba.

The bottom-line truth is that if Turkey’s unique secular republic is
to be saved, it will be Turks alone who save it. Right now, the odds
against that look intimidatingly high, but they were much higher in
the 1920s, when the Turkish republic was born. Like Turkey’s isolated
and embattled secular loyalists today, Turks then had many foreign
enemies and no foreign friends. Everyone was sure the Turks would
not only lose their remaining imperial possessions; they would lose
sovereignty over their historic homeland too. But they did not.

Ataturk accepted the loss of empire without regret, for the most part,
but he rallied and unified the Turkish people into an indomitable
force that ultimately defeated every attempt to subject Turkey to
foreign control. Today, it’s home-grown Islamists who are trying
to turn Turkey into something foreign: a state as oppressive and
intolerant as the ones that dominate the OIC, intimidate the EU,
and cooperate with self-righteous socialists to turn the U.N. into
a mockery of the principles of its founders.

Can Turkey’s secularists turn back the tide and regain control of their
country? In elections in March of this year, they reduced the AKP vote
for the first time since the party took power in 2002, increasing
their own vote totals even in poor areas where the AKP tried to buy
votes by giving out free washing machines and refrigerators. But
Turkey’s secular politicians, like Israel’s unapologetic Zionists,
have yet to put aside their relatively minor political differences
and unite into a truly formidable electoral force.

Ordinary Turks have had less difficulty making that necessary move. In
April 2007 they came together in mass demonstrations across Turkey to
pledge support for their secular republic and denounce AKP efforts
to Islamicize it. Rallies in Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir drew more
than a million supporters each, and there were sizeable gatherings
in smaller cities too. Speakers at all the rallies were impassioned,
as were the cheering crowds, but, unlike the more frequent but much
smaller demonstrations by Islamists and by Turkey’s hard Left, the
secularist demonstrations were all peaceful.

In 2008, Turkey’s secularists took their protest to the courts. When
the Erdogan government pushed for legislation to lift the ban on
Muslim headscarves for women on university campuses, secularists
petitioned to have the courts declare that this, and a number of
other AKP actions, were clear violations of constitutional provisions
limiting the reach of Islam in Turkish society. These provisions have
been central to the Turkish Republic since Ataturk founded it; they
are a large part of what has made modern Turkey so different from
every other Muslim-majority nation for the past 85 years. They are
not anti-religious provisions — mosques are plentiful in Turkey, and
Turks are free to worship in them as they choose — but they insist on
a sharp separation between mosque and state, forbidding any intrusion
of Islam into government, any government action to promote Islam,
or any imposition of sharia on Turkish citizens by law.

The chief prosecutor of Turkey’s Court of Appeals, Abdurrahman
Yalcinkaya, asked the Constitutional Court to find the AKP guilty
and apply the legally prescribed remedy — removing Erdogan and his
cohorts from office and holding new elections. The high court agreed
that the AKP had violated the constitution, but fell one vote short
of the margin required to oust the party. The judges let AKP off with
a fine and a warning, and the government celebrated its victory by
making more Ergenekon arrests.

Secularist Turks — Ataturk’s Turks — are hoping to mount mass
rallies again on May 17, and the size of the crowds will give us some
indication of the current strength of their movement. If defeatism
prevails and the crowds are smaller than they were in 2007, the
near-term future looks bleak. But if secular-state loyalists turn
out in numbers that exceed the impressive totals of 2007, Turkey may
yet surprise the world again. For the future — not just of the Turks
but of everyone who loves freedom — we should all pray that they do.

AZERI PRESIDENT, OSCE MEDIATOR DISCUSS KARABAKH PEACE PROCESS

ANS TV
May 15 2009
Azerbaijan

Baku, 15 May: [Azerbaijani] President Ilham Aliyev and French
co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group Bernard Fassier discussed the
state of and prospects for talks on the Karabakh settlement at their
meeting in Baku on 15 May, a source at the Azerbaijani presidential
press service has reported.

AMERICAN EXPERTS URGE THE GOVERNMENT TO LIFT SECTION 907 IMPOSED AGAINST AZERBAIJAN

APA
May 15 2009
Azerbaijan

Washington. Zaur Hasanov -APA. US Carnegie Foundation hosted the
conference entitled "Azerbaijan and the West: strategic alliance
in the Eurasian corridors" organized by the Jamestown Foundation,
APA US bureau reports.

Professor of the University of Haifa Brenda Shaffer, Vice President
of the Cohen Group Daniel Fata and senior expert of the Jamestown
Foundation Vladimir Socor addressed the conference and spoke about
the regional and global role of Azerbaijan.

Vladimir Socor said the United States should be involved in
more directions of activity in Azerbaijan, from the treatment of
soldiers wounded in Afghanistan to deeper military cooperation. In
his opinion, US military and other forces in the territory will
restrict the opportunities of third forces to interfere in the policy
of Azerbaijan. Socor urged the US government to lift Section 907 to
Freedom Support Act and said the opening of Turkey-Armenia borders
would not contribute to the interests of both Baku and Washington. The
expert said Armenia occupied the territories of Azerbaijan and executed
large-scale ethnic cleansing operations there, but the Congress took
injustice position against Azerbaijan. The expert said US high-ranking
officials didn’t visit Azerbaijan and US Secretary of State visited
Baku last time in 1992. At the end of his speech Socor called on the
leading countries to support the Southern Energy Corridor.

Professor of the University of Haifa, Ms. Brenda Shaffer drew
attention to the occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territories,
displacement of one million people and added that despite this,
terror was not spread in Azerbaijan.

"But we witness such a reality in Iraq and Afghanistan," she said.

Ms. Shaffer said official Baku might give valuable recommendations
to the White House in a number of issues, including cooperation with
Iran. Professor of the University of Haifa said Section 907 of the
Freedom Support Act should be cancelled, improvement of Turkey-Armenia
relations should not damage the interests of Azerbaijan. According
to her, the region will be much closer to war, in case the borders
are opened.

Daniel Fata, vice-president of the Cohen Group, who had been
responsible for the relations with Azerbaijan in Pentagon for a long
time, said Azerbaijan was an important energy provider, contributed
much to the struggle against terror. Daniel Fata said Section 907
of the Freedom Support Act was injustice in exchange for official
Baku’s support for coalition forces. Mr. Fata underlined that the
Strategic Alliance agreement signed between the US and Georgia should
also be signed with Azerbaijan. He wanted NATO-Azerbaijan Council to
be established.

President of Jamestown Foundation Glen Howard chaired the
conference. Rector of Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy Hafiz Pashayev,
Azerbaijani ambassador to the US Yashar Aliyev and officers of the
embassy attended the conference.

LETTER OF THANKS TO ISRAEL FROM IGDIR

Hurriyet
May 15 2009
Turkey

Igdir Association of Struggling against Groundless Armenian Claims
sent a letter of thanks to the Israel embassy in Ankara as the Israeli
parliament refused to discuss a resolution about the 1915 events.

They became happy about the parliament’s decision, said Göksel Gulbey,
the head of the association, which is at the eastern border. "We sent
the letter because of the honorable stand of Israeli parliament,"
he said.

12 BRANCHES OF ARMECONOMBANK CLOSE DOWN

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
14.05.2009 23:55 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ By the decision of the Chairman of Armenia’s Central
Bank Artur Javadyan Armeconombank’s Ararat, Zwartnots, Noragavit,
Shirak, Barva, Agarak, Bagratashen, Ayrum, Sisian, Gugark, Gogovan,
Khorenatsi branches were closed.

As the press office of the Armeconombank reported, activities of
bank’s branches are terminated due to the Armeconombank’s statement.

OSCE HOPES PARTIES TO THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT WOULD MAKE FURTHER PROGRESS TOWARDS A PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT

State Telegraph Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan
May 12, 2009 Tuesday

OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis
expressed hope that the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict would
make further progress towards a peaceful settlement, and urged them
to implement fully the provisions of the ceasefire, including pulling
back snipers from the front lines.

Speaking ahead of the 15th anniversary of the ceasefire agreement that
ended one of the most violent conflicts in the area of the former
Soviet Union, Bakoyannis said that she welcomed the constructive
discussions between President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and President
Serzh Sarksyan of Armenia in Prague on 7 May facilitated by the Minsk
Group Co-Chairs.

I fully support the efforts of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs, as well as of
my Personal Representative, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, to encourage
a peaceful and negotiated resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,
on the basis of the Madrid Document. Such a settlement is the only
way for the peoples of the region to enjoy the fruits of peace and
cooperation and we must keep up the momentum that all sides have
worked so hard to achieve, she said.

We must also keep in mind that despite the important ceasefire
that was signed 15 years ago, the situation on the ground remains
extremely volatile, and tragically, lives continue to be lost. Further
confidence-building measures are necessary, and I urge the parties
to respect all provisions of the ceasefire, as well as the proposals
of the Co-Chairs at the 2008 Helsinki OSCE Ministerial Conference to
withdraw snipers from the front lines.

SEYRAN OHANYAN: REGIONAL SECURITY AND STABILITY IMPORTANT TO ARMENIA
Karen Ghazaryan

"Radiolur"
14.05.2009 15:12

"Reassessing Security in the South Caucasus: Regional Conflicts,
Stability and Transformation" international conference kicked off in
Yerevan today. It has been organized by the Institute for Strategic
Studies of the Ministry of Defense of Armenia and the Lyon Center
for International Security and Defense Studies.

"Ever since gaining independence, Armenia has assumed the
implementation of reforms in all spheres of life with the aim to shape
a state with a political system fully integrated into the globalizing
world and a competitive economy," Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan
said in his opening speech. He stressed that like any other country,
regional security and cooperation is one of the priorities for Armenia.

"There have been many initiatives recently that are targeted at
ensuring security in the South Caucasus," the Armenian Defense
minister said. He emphasized that the high-level talks between
Armenia and Turkey that started last year at the initiative of the
Armenian President, Serzh Sargsyan, are of great importance from the
perspective of establishment of peace and stability in the region
and creation of an atmosphere of trust.

"Armenia has always stood for the establishment of diplomatic relations
with Turkey without preconditions and remains committed to this20
position," Seyran Ohanyan said.

The Defense Minister stated that the trilateral Maindorf Declaration
signed in 12008 at the initiative of the President of the Russian
Federation proved once again that there was no alternative to the
peaceful settlement of the Karabakh issue. Mr Ohanyan pointed to a
number of other initiatives targeted at the reinforcement of regional
stability, to which Armenia is a participant. One of them was launched
in Prague last week. It is EU’s Eastern Partnership Initiative,
which includes the three countries of the South Caucasus. Among
other initiatives, the Defense Minister noted the creation of CSTO
rapid-reaction forces in 2009.

Committed to its position of contributing to the establishment of
security and cooperation in the region and creation of an atmosphere
of trust, Armenia also reacted to Turkey’s initiative of establishing
a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform.

According to the Defense Minister, Armenia is ready to discuss any
initiative aimed at the reinforcement of security and stability in
the region both in bilateral and multilateral formats.

Speaking about the mission of the OSCE Minsk Group, the Defense
Minister stressed: "Armenia attaches importance to the mediating
mission of the OSCE Minsk Group and sees no reason for changing the
current format of the process."

However, the Defense Minister of Armenia stated that the region
faces a n umber of challenges and threats. Seyran Ohanyan pointed
to three main threats to Armenia. "The first is the existence of the
Karabakh conflict and the absence of agreed political-legal bases of
settlement between the parties. Secondly, it is the militarized policy
of Azerbaijan, the saspiration to solve the Karabakh conflict with
application of force. The third threat is the blockade of the Republic
of Armenia and the policy of its isolation," Minister Ohanyan stated.

The Defense minister reminded the experts participating in
the conference that although a cease fire agreement was signed
between the Armed Forces of Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh Republic and
Azerbaijan 15 years ago, the Azeri Armed Forces continue violating the
provisions of the cease fire and try to destabilize the situation in
the region. The Defense minister noted also that Armenia has always
stood for resolution of the conflict through mutual concessions, while
the same cannot be said about Azerbaijan. The later periodically makes
militant statements on the highest level, increases the military budget
and conducts a policy of rearmament, exceeding the limits set by the
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. "All this constitutes
a serious threat to the fragile stability established in the region,"
Minister Ohanyan said.

EDWARD NALBANDYAN TO TAKE PART IN 119TH SESSION OF CoE MINISTRIES’ COMMITTEE SESSION

ARMENPRESS
May 11, 2009

YEREVAN, MAY 11, ARMENPRESS: Armenian Foreign Minister Edward
Nalbandyan will visit Madrid May 12-13 to participate in the 119th
session of the Council of Europe Ministries’ Committee, Foreign
Ministry press service told Armenpress.

OSCE MF CO-CHAIRS CALL ON BAKU AND YEREVAN TO FINALIZE BASIC PRINCIPLES FOR A PEACEFUL SETTLEMENT

PanARMENIAN.Net
11.05.2009 14:51 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group – Ambassador
Yury Merzlyakov of Russia, Ambassador Bernard Fassier of France,
and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza of the United
States – today issued the following statement:

"Fifteen years ago large-scale hostilities ceased in Nagorno-Karabakh,
in what had become the most violent conflict on the territory of the
former Soviet Union. The leaders at the time made a courageous and
farsighted decision to instruct their military commanders to sign an
agreement on an immediate ceasefire with no fixed term.

Unfortunately, this ceasefire has been imperfect and tragically
every year lives are lost along the front lines. We sincerely hope
that a peace settlement, towards which the parties are now working,
will allow new generations to grow up in Armenia, Azerbaijan and
Nagorno-Karabakh without experiencing the horrors of war.

Until then, we call on the parties to implement the provisions of
the ceasefire, the "Proposals on strengthening the ceasefire in the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict" agreed in 1995, as well as the Co-Chairs’
proposals at the 2008 Helsinki Ministerial Conference to pull back
snipers from the front lines.

We express our hope that the present leaders will be able to overcome
the complex causes and difficult consequences of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict and create an atmosphere of security, trust, cooperation and
fruitful communication between peoples in the region, allowing them
to live in peace as good neighbors. We further hope the leaders will
succeed, in cooperation with the Minsk Group Co-Chairs, in finalizing
their Basic Principles for a peaceful settlement."