Turkish Forum

Author: Aylin D. Miller

  • Cyprus – Progress by Andrew Dismore MP

    Cyprus – Progress by Andrew Dismore MP

    Cyprus – Progress so far report to ACGTA by Andrew Dismore MP – 6 Feb 2009

    https://archive.org/details/AndrewDismoreMPCyprus-ProgresssofarreporttoACGTAbyAndrewDismoreMP-6Feb2009



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    The Association for Cypriot, Greek & Turkish Affairs

    The Association for Cypriot, Greek & Turkish Affairs

    Friday 6 February 2009 at 6.30 p.m.

    London School of Economics
    European Institute
    Canada Blanch Room, Cowdray House, 1st floor,
    Portugal Street, London WC2A 2AE

    CYPRUS: PROGRESS SO FAR
    Andrew Dismore, MP

    Kyriacos Tsioupras in the Chair,
    for
    Dr Zenon Stavrinides
    General Secretary, Association for Cypriot, Greek and Turkish Affairs

    Visit the ACGTA websites at

    and

    THE SPEAKER: Andrew Dismore studied law in the University of Warwick and the London School of Economics, and worked as solicitor, specialising in helping victims of accidents and crime. He entered Parliament as Labour MP for Hendon in 1997. He has served in a number of parliamentary committees, including the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which he chairs; and the Standards and Privileges Committee. He is also involved in various political organisations, including Friends of Cyprus. His long-standing interest in the situation in Cyprus and his other interests are expressed in a number of speeches and articles which can be found in his website http://andrewdismoremp.com

    As Vice Chair of Friends of Cyprus, has paid repeated visits to the island, where he met with Greek and Turkish Cypriot politicians, academics, business people and civil society personalities. Following his last visit from 26 November to 2 December 2008, he put down many parliamentary questions which when answered were fed into an adjournment debate on Cyprus on 15 January 2009, in which the Minister for Europe, Caroline Flint, MP responded on behalf of the British government.

    This movie is part of the collection: Ourmedia

    Producer: Andrew Dismore MP
    Keywords: Association for Cypriot Greek and Turkish Affairs; ACGTA; Dr Zenon Stavrinides; Andrew Dismore MP; Vice Chair of Friends of Cyprus; Cyprus; Greece; Turkey

    Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

  • Starting at Home, Iran’s Women Fight for Rights

    Starting at Home, Iran’s Women Fight for Rights

    NYTIMES

    Sima Sayyah

    Protesters last month outside the Palestinian Embassy in Tehran denounced the killing of women and children in Gaza.

    By NAZILA FATHI
    Published: February 12, 2009

    TEHRAN — In a year of marriage, Razieh Qassemi, 19, says she was beaten repeatedly by her husband and his father. Her husband, she says, is addicted to methamphetamine and has threatened to marry another woman to “torture” her.

    Rather than endure the abuse, Ms. Qassemi took a step that might never have occurred to an earlier generation of Iranian women: she filed for divorce.

    Women’s rights advocates say Iranian women are displaying a growing determination to achieve equal status in this conservative Muslim theocracy, where male supremacy is still enscribed in the legal code. One in five marriages now end in divorce, according to government data, a fourfold increase in the past 15 years.

    And it is not just women from the wealthy, Westernized elites. The family court building in Vanak Square here is filled with women, like Ms. Qassemi, who are not privileged. Women from lower classes and even the religious are among those marching up and down the stairs to fight for divorces and custody of their children.

    Increasing educational levels and the information revolution have contributed to creating a generation of women determined to gain more control over their lives, rights advocates say.

    Confronted with new cultural and legal restrictions after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, some young women turned to higher education as a way to get away from home, postpone marriage and earn social respect, advocates say. Religious women, who had refused to sit in classes with men, returned to universities after they were resegregated.

    Today, more than 60 percent of university students are women, compared with just over 30 percent in 1982, even though classes are no longer segregated.

    Even for those women for whom college is not an option, the Internet and satellite television have opened windows into the lives of women in the West. “Satellite has shown an alternative way of being,” said Syma Sayah, a feminist involved in social work in Tehran. “Women see that it is possible to be treated equally with men.”

    Another sign of changing attitudes is the increasing popularity of books, movies and documentaries that explore sex discrimination, rights advocates say.

    “Women do not have a proper status in society,” said Mahnaz Mohammadi, a filmmaker. “Films are supposed to be a mirror of reality, and we make films to change the status quo.”

    In a recent movie, “All Women Are Angels,” a comedy that was at the top of the box office for weeks, a judge rejects the divorce plea of a woman who walked out on her husband when she found him with another woman.

    Even men are taking up women’s issues and are critical of traditional marriage arrangements. Mehrdad Oskouei, another filmmaker, has won more than a dozen international awards for “The Other Side of Burka,” a documentary about women on the impoverished and traditional southern island of Qeshm who are committing suicide in increasing numbers because they have no other way out of their marriages.

    “How can divorce help a woman in southern parts of the country when she has to return after divorce to her father’s home who will make her even more miserable than her husband?” said Fatimeh Sadeghi, a former political science professor fired for her writing on women’s rights.

    Janet Afary, a professor of Middle East and women’s studies at Purdue University and the author of “Sexual Politics in Modern Iran,” says the country is moving inexorably toward a “sexual revolution.”

    “The laws have denied women many basic rights in marriage and divorce,” she wrote in the book. “But they have also contributed to numerous state initiatives promoting literacy, health and infrastructural improvements that benefited the urban and rural poor.”

    To separate the sexes, the state built schools and universities expressly for women, and improved basic transportation, enabling poor women to travel more easily to big cities, where they were exposed to more modern ideas.

    Ms. Afary says that mandatory premarital programs to teach about sex and birth control, instituted in 1993 to control population growth, helped women delay pregnancy and changed their views toward marriage. By the late 1990s, she says, young people were looking for psychological and social compatibility and mutual intimacy in marriage.

    Despite the gains they have made, women still face extraordinary obstacles. Girls can legally be forced into marriage at the age of 13. Men have the right to divorce their wives whenever they wish, and are granted custody of any children over the age of 7. Men can ban their wives from working outside the home, and can engage in polygamy.

    By law, women may inherit from their parents only half the shares of their brothers. Their court testimony is worth half that of a man. Although the state has taken steps to discourage stoning, it remains in the penal code as the punishment for women who commit adultery. A woman who refuses to cover her hair faces jail and up to 80 lashes.

    Women also face fierce resistance when they organize to change the law. The Campaign for One Million Signatures was founded in 2005, inspired by a movement in Morocco that led to a loosening of misogynist laws. The idea was to collect one million signatures for a petition calling on authorities to give women more equal footing in the laws on marriage, divorce, adultery and polygamy.

    But Iran’s government has come down hard on the group, charging many of its founders with trying to overthrow it; 47 members have been jailed so far, including 3 who were arrested late last month. Many still face charges, and six members are forbidden to leave the country. One member, Alieh Eghdamdoust, began a three-year jail sentence last month for participating in a women’s demonstration in 2006. The group’s Web site, www.we-change.org, has been blocked by the authorities 18 times.

    “We feel we achieved a great deal even though we are faced with security charges,” said Sussan Tahmasebi, one of the founding members of the campaign, who is now forbidden to leave Iran. “No one is accusing us of talking against Islam. No one is afraid to talk about more rights for women anymore. This is a big achievement.”

    Women’s advocates say that the differences between religious and secular women have narrowed and that both now chafe at the legal discrimination against women. Zahra Eshraghi, for example, the granddaughter of the revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, signed the One Million Signatures petition.

    “Many of these religious women changed throughout the years,” said Ms. Sayah, the feminist in Tehran. “They became educated, they traveled abroad and attended conferences on women’s rights, and they learned.”

    Because of the government’s campaign of suppression, the process of collecting signatures has slowed recently, and many women do not want to be seen in the presence of a campaigner, let alone sign a petition. Most feminist groups limit their canvassing now to the Internet.

    But while the million signatures campaign may have stalled, women have scored some notable successes. A group that calls itself Meydaan has earned international recognition for pressing the government to stop stonings.

    The group’s reporting on executions by stoning in 2002 on its Web site, www.meydaan.net — including a video of the execution of a prostitute — embarrassed the government and led the head of the judiciary to issue a motion urging judges to refrain from ordering stonings. (The stonings have continued anyway, but at a lower rate, because only Parliament has the power to ban them.)

  • A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Marching on the Pentagon

    A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Marching on the Pentagon


    Want information on the March 21st March on the Pentagon?
    Go to

    Why We’re Marching on the Pentagon
    Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine … Occupation is A Crime

    Please post this event on your Facebook and MySpace pages, and forward it widely to your friends and family.


    Download the 2-sided color ANSWER flyer, which has this statement on the back

    Why are we still marching even after the war criminal George W. Bush has left office? Because the people must speak out for what is right. More than 1 million Iraqis have died and tens of thousands of U.S. troops have been wounded or killed.

    The Iraq and Afghanistan war will drag on for years unless we act now. The cost in lives and resources is criminal regardless of whether the Democrats or Republicans are in charge of the government.

    We must also act to end U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing war against the Palestinian people. The Bush Administration gave the green light and provided the weapons and the money for Israel’s recent war against the Palestinian people in Gaza. More than 5,000 Palestinians were killed or wounded; the majority of casualties were civilians, including hundreds of children, in this high-tech massacre. “We the People” pay the bill as the U.S. provides $2.5 billion a year for Israel’s massive military machine.

    Why We Say “Bring All the Troops Home Now Not Later!”

    If Bush’s war and occupation of Iraq was an illegal action of aggression—and it was—how can the new government say that it can only gradually end the war over a number of years? The Iraqis don’t want foreign military forces running their country. No one would!

    The Pentagon has employed 200,000 foreign contractors (mercenaries) and 150,000 U.S. troops to maintain the occupation of Iraq. They have no right to be there. A few thousand are being brought out of Iraq only to be redeployed to occupy Afghanistan, and the fools in the media proclaim “the war is winding down.” That is not true.

    President Obama decided to keep the Pentagon just as it was under Bush. He even selected Bush appointee Robert Gates to keep his position as chief of the Pentagon. Gates announced that the new administration would double the number of troops sent to Afghanistan. That is certainly not the “change” most people thought was coming following the end of Bush’s tenure.

    These are wars for domination in the Middle East and Central Asia.

    The people of the United States want change. We are sick and tired of wars of aggression waged abroad under false slogans of “national security.” These are wars that reap massive profits for corporate weapons-makers with the promise of winning control over the vast oil and natural gas reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia.

    Working people may have another definition for “national security.” What really makes the people “insecure?” Ask the 2.3 million families who are losing their homes because they are being foreclosed when they can’t pay their steep debts to the banks. Ironically, when these same parasitic bankers couldn’t pay their debts, the federal government rushed in with a $2.5 trillion bailout using our tax dollars.

    Or ask working-class students who are being laid off from their jobs just as tuition costs soar out of reach. What defines “security” for millions of young people whose future is at stake? Do they want tax dollars spent to kill poor people abroad or to finance education?

    We will march on Saturday, March 21, the sixth anniversary of the start of the Iraq invasion, to demand that taxpayer dollars be used to meet people’s needs—here and everywhere. This year’s real Pentagon war budget will top $1 trillion.

    This amount could create 10 million jobs, provide healthcare and education for all, rebuild New Orleans, and repair much of the damage done in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. We need money for jobs, housing, health care and education, not for wars of aggression.

    The occupation of Iraq alone costs $12 billion each month. This amounts to $400 million each day, $16.7 million per hour and $278,000 per minute.

    The Pentagon war machine does not act in our interests. Its wars benefit the biggest corporations and banks that seek to control the markets and riches of the Middle East. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are not our enemies. They want to live free from colonial-type domination. Only a people’s movement demanding an end to U.S. wars and militarism can win justice for people here and abroad.

    Get Involved

  • Armenian Religious Minorities Complain of Discrimination

    Armenian Religious Minorities Complain of Discrimination

    They fear that proposed amendments to religious legislation could makes things worse.

    By Gita Elibekian and Seda Muradian in Yerevan (CRS No. 480, 13-Feb-09)

    Armenian Jehovah’s Witness Margarita Hovhannisian said she has not seen her son since he was taken away from her by her husband a year ago.

    Two legal appeals have failed, and she is beginning to suspect the legal system is biased against her because of her faith.

    “My husband kidnapped our child, justifying this by saying he did not want to leave him with a mother who was a Jehovah’s Witness,” she said.

    While Armenia technically guarantees freedom of worship to all faiths, Hovhannisian says that this is not her experience.

    She cited a court document issued to her, which she claims effectively states that it would not be in the child’s interests to be returned to his mother.

    Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are a tiny minority in Armenia, say they are facing increasing prejudice as a result of their beliefs.

    The group, which emerged from a 19th century American Bible study group and now claims seven million members worldwide, is controversial for its members’ refusal to serve in armies or to undergo blood transfusions.

    “In Armenia, the negative approach towards the Jehovah’s Witnesses is becoming ever more intolerable, especially since 2004, when the organisation granted us permission to operate here,” said Tigran Harutiunian, spokesperson for the faith.

    But things may about to become harder for his co-religionists in Armenia, where most people belong to the Armenian Apostolic Church – an ancient form of Christianity that dates back to 301 AD.

    Amendments to the country’s laws on religious freedom currently before parliament would restrict faiths’ rights to evangelise – or to “hunt for souls” as the officials behind the proposals put it.

    Armen Ashotian, chairman of the parliamentary commission on science, education, culture, youth and sport, who presented the draft changes to parliament on February 5, explained the terminology used.

    “We tried to create a definition of the hunt for souls and came up with the following – in means preaching among a religious population or among people who do not belong to any religious confession, when this is conducted with material incentives, or with the use of physical, moral, psychological or material compulsion, and creating distrust or hate of other religious organisations and their followers,” he said.

    The co-authors of the amendments have also suggested changing the minimum number of members that a faith can have before it gains registration from 200 to 1,000 members, which could cause problems for small groups.

    If the proposals are passed into law, faiths would have three months to re-register.

    Proselytising Christian groups of western origin began operating openly in Armenia and other states in the more liberal atmosphere created after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

    Many Armenians dislike having their doorbells rung on a regular basis by small religious groups seeking to convert them.

    “I always slam the door on these sect members,” said Hasmik Qosian, a resident of Yerevan.

    Vardan Asatrian, the head of the office for national minorities and religions in the government office, said this was a commonly-held opinion.

    He said people were tired of being approached in this way, and argued that a law which restricts proselytising was long overdue.

    “That there aren’t specific laws controlling this… is an omission. This situation has been neglected, and it seems we spend more time protecting the rights of religious minorities than those of the majority,” he said.

    “We need to create equality.”

    The Jehovah’s Witnesses say they do not force people to join their organisation or pester them with demands,

    Religious minorities report that discrimination comes from official sources in the country and is a constant blight on their lives.

    Hasmik Mkhitarian, who is trained as an English teacher, said she cannot get a job in her home town of Vanadzor because she is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormons.

    “I studied our faith for a year and a half in London, and noted that in my CV. The problem is that when people read that, they don’t even invite me to an interview,” she said.

    “When I ask what’s wrong, they directly tell me that I belong to a sect, and that people like me should not be teaching in schools.”

    She blamed the Armenian Apostolic Church for discouraging any alternative forms of worship.

    Shmavon Ghevondian, a cleric from the Armenian church, told IWPR that any religious group that did not follow its canons counted as a “sect”.

    “Religion is dividing the nation, and if ethnic differences are added to this, then we have a far from attractive future for our three-million strong nation,” he said.

    He said he thought the Jehovah’s Witnesses were the most dangerous of the religious groups to appear in post-Soviet Armenia. He added that he thought religious freedom in the country was unnecessary and had been introduced solely to obey the rules of European institutions.

    Armenia has had to adopt certain laws to satisfy the Council of Europe, a continent-wide body that insists that its member states respect human rights.

    This legislation included a measure under which conscientious objectors are allowed to avoid military service and undergo alternative forms of service instead.

    The council’s criteria state that genuine alternative civilian service which is not under the control, auspices, or supervision of the military must be provided to conscientious objectors.

    But Jehovah’s Witnesses in Armenia say that even with new legislation in place, they still have to serve in a militarised atmosphere, obey military orders and work under the military police.

    Hayk Khachatrian, in his mid twenties, refused to serve in such a climate and, as a result, received a two-year jail sentence in 2005.

    Eight-seven other Jehovah’s Witnesses are in Armenian prisons for their refusal to do alternative service.

    “How can I follow our precepts if my brothers in faith and I – Jehovah’s Witnesses in Azerbaijan – start to shoot at each other?” asked Hayk.

    Human rights activists say Armenia has not tried hard enough to accommodate the wishes of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, despite pressure from the Council of Europe.

    “They all refuse to do alternative service because of its great similarity to military service,” said Avetiq Ishkhanian, chairman of the Helsinki Committee of Armenia.

    “In its resolution 1532 adopted on January 23, 2007, the Council of Europe called on the Armenian authorities to re-examine the law on alternative service, but this has not happened.”

    Yet even if legal changes are made to accommodate the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses, they are still likely to face widespread prejudice.

    Hovhannisian’s husband Arthur Torosian said he will not allow her access to her child as long as she follows this faith.

    “She went completely mad after she joined this sect. She took him all the time to these meetings; she even held his birthday party there. My son told me these things,” he told IWPR.

    “You cannot bring up a child in endless meetings which will turn him into a Jehovah’s Witness. I will bring him up myself, and when he grows up he can decide for himself.”

    Gita Elibekian is a correspondent for Armenia’s RadioLur social radio. Seda Muradian is IWPR’s Armenia director.

  • DISCOVER THE RAT IN ARARAT

    DISCOVER THE RAT IN ARARAT

    World renown historian Guenter Lewy in his article titled “Revisiting the Armenian Genocide” published in Fall 2005 edition of Middle East Quarterly ( https://www.meforum.org/895/correspondence ) states:

    “…Most of those who maintain that Armenian deaths were premeditated and so constitute genocide base their argument on three pillars: the actions of Turkish military courts of 1919-20,…, the role of the so-called “Special Organization” accused of carrying out the massacres, and the Memoirs of Naim Beywhich contain alleged telegrams of Interior Minister Talât Pasha…. Yet when these events and the sources describing them are subjected to careful examination, they provide at most a shaky foundation from which to claim, let alone conclude, that the deaths of Armenians were premeditated….”

    How can you argue with the truth? Lewy called it as it is.

    Then, Lewy penned the following review of a book by Richard Hovannisian (ed)., The Armenian Genocide: Cultural and Ethical Legacies, , another hole-in-one:

    “ BOOK REVIEW BY GUENTER LEWY

    Readers familiar with Russian and Turkish history will experience the same sense of unreality in reading Hovannisian’s insistence that the Armenian disaster in 1915 was entirely unprovoked and the result of a xenophobic nationalistic mindset and a total war ethic on the part of the Young Turk regime. In this narrative there is no place for the decades-long armed struggle of the Armenian revolutionary movement for independence or for the thousands of Turkish Armenians who fought a guerrilla war behind the Ottoman army in 1915, cut roads and lines of communications, and generally aided the Russian invader. Henry Morgenthau, the American ambassador in (Istanbul), reported to Washington on 25 May 1915 that nobody put the Armenian guerrillas at less than 10,000, and that 25,000 was probably . . closer to the truth.

    All this took place in a situation of extreme danger for the Ottoman regime caused by serious military setbacks. Bragging about the Armenian contribution to the Allied war effort, Boghos Nubar, the head of the Armenian delegation, told those at the Paris Peace Conference on 18 March 1919 that the Turks had devastated the Armenians in retaliation for their unflagging devotion to the Allied cause. None of this can justify the brutality and extreme callousness with which the Young Turks carried out the deportation of the Armenian community from their ancient homeland in Anatolia at a huge cost in innocent lives, but it provides the indispensable historical context for the human catastrophe that ensued.

    According to Hovannisian and other contributors to this volume, the scholarly world has accepted the Armenian genocide, and all those who question the Armenian version of these tragic events are “genocide deniers.” Yet while many historians indeed speak of the first genocide of the twentieth century, other historians, including well-known scholars of Ottoman history such as Roderic Davison, Bernard Lewis, and Andrew Mango, while not questioning the horror that transpired, have raised doubts about the appropriateness of the genocide label for the occurrences of 1915.

    Ignoring this formidable array of learned opinion, Armenians continue to assert with superb arrogance that the Armenian genocide is incontrovertible fact and established history that can be denied only by lackeys of the Turkish government or morally obtuse individuals. Unless there is a change in this attitude and Armenians accept the existence of a genuine historical controversy, I see little hope for ending this almost century-old conflict.

    Guenter Lewy
    University of Massachusetts, Amherst “

    DR. GWYNNE DYER

    Dr. Gwynne Dyer simplified the expression of the above scholarly findings so succinctly and eloquently that I think all honest writers should quote it in their fight against Armenian falsifiers:

    “… The deafening drumbeat of the propaganda, and the sheer lack of sophistication in argument which comes from preaching decade after decade to a convinced and emotionally committed audience, are the major handicaps of Armenian historiography of the diaspora today…”

    The Armenians have defined the Turkish-Armenian conflict one way, their way, for 93 years. Even this could be understood within the context of ethnic and/or religious fanaticism. After all, it is a free country, you can believe whatever you want, even that the world is flat. Problem arises when the Armenians demand their claims be declared as settled history with zero tolerance for the other side of the story, coming from Turks and non-Turks alike. The problem turns into a criminal conduct when these Armenian demands turn to Armenian violence, as in Armenian terrorism that claimed 70+ innocent lives (three right here in Southern California) since 1973, aimed at imposing the Armenian will on others.

    Whether the Armenian claims of genocide are recognized by this country or that, does not change the fact that Armenians engineered, provoked, and waged a civil war within a world war; took up arms against their own government; killed their Muslim/Turkish neighbors; joined the invading enemy armies; demanded territories where they were a minority to create Greater Armenia; and did all that with the help of active allies (Russia, Britain, France), passive allies (U.S. diplomats, Protestant missionaries, the New York Times) and others.

    Furthermore, the ubiquitous Armenian propaganda cannot change the

    “6 T’S OF THE TURKISH-ARMENIAN CONFLICT : ”

    1- Tumult (Armenians taking up arms against their own government,)

    2- Terrorism (by Dashnaks, Hunchaks, and other Armenian terrorist organizations,)

    3- Treason (Armenians joining the invading enemy armies)

    4- Territorial demands (where Armenians were a minority)

    5- Turkish suffering (at the hands of Armenian revolutionaries and terrorists; number exceeds half a million Muslims, mostly Turks)

    6-Tereset (temporary resettlement triggered by the above 5 T’s and misrepresented by Armenians as genocide.)

    SWEDISH EYEWITNESS BELIES ARMENIAN CLAIMS OF “RED RIVER”

    Here, for instance, is the eyewitness report refuting and devastating the Armenian claims and deception once and for all:

    “…For fourteen days, I followed the Euphrates; it is completely out of the question that I during this time would not have seen at least some of the Armenian corpses, that according to Mrs. Stjernstedt’s statements, should have drifted along the river en masse at that time. A travel companion of mine, Dr. Schacht, was also travelling along the river. He also had nothing to tell when we later met in Baghdad… …In summary, I think that Mrs. Stjernstedt, somewhat uncritically, has accepted the hair-raising stories from more or less biased sources, which formed the basis for her lecture…”

    Source: H.J. Pravitz, A Swedish officer, Nya Dagligt Allehanda, 23 April, 1917 issue (A Swedish Newspaper published from 1859 to 1944)… This is the right side of history… This is where Armenian deception is exposed…

    BOGUS ARMENIAN PRESS REPORTS

    Here are the bogus Armenian press reports from WWI that were refuted by a rare missionary whose heart was in the right place:

    “…In some towns containing ten Armenian houses and thirty Turkish houses, it was reported that 40,000 people were killed, about 10,000 women were taken to the harem, and thousands of children left destitute; and the city university destroyed, and the bishop killed. It is a well- known fact that even in the last war the native Christians, despite the Turkish cautions, armed themselves and fought on the side of the Allies. In these conflicts, they were not idle, but they were well supplied with artillery, machine guns and inflicted heavy losses on their enemies….”

    Source: Lamsa, George M., a missionary well known for his research on Christianity, The Secret of the Near East, The Ideal Press, Philadelphia 1923, p 133… This is the right side of history… This is where Armenian deception is exposed…

    “…Few Americans who mourn, and justly, the miseries of the Armenians, are aware that till the rise of nationalistic ambitions, beginning with the ‘seventies, the Armenians were the favored portion of the population of Turkey, or that in the Great War, they traitorously turned Turkish cities over to the Russian invader; that they boasted of having raised an Army of one hundred and fifty thousand men to fight a civil war, and that they burned at least a hundred Turkish villages and exterminated their population…” Source: John Dewey, The New Republic, 12 November 1928. This is the right side of history. This is where Armenian deception is exposed…

    “…In all the countries, under all the regimes, the staff of the armies in the field evacuate towards the back, the populations which live in the zone of fights and can bother the movement of the troops, especially if these populations are hostile. Public opinion does not find anything to criticize to these measures, obviously painful, but necessary. During the winter of 1939-1940, the radical – socialist French government evacuated and transported in the Southwest of France, notably in the Dordogne, the entire population of the Alsatian villages situated in the valley of the Rhine, to the east of the Maginot line. This German-speaking population, and even sometimes germanophil, bothered the French army. It stayed in the South, far from the evacuated homes and sometimes destroyed until 1945….And nobody, in France, cried out for inhumanity…”

    Source: Georges de Maleville, lawyer and a specialist on the Armenian question, La Tragédie Arménienne de 1915, (The Armenian tragedy of 1915), Editions F. Sorlot-F. Lanore, Paris, 1988, p 61-63. This is the right side of history… This is where Armenian deception is exposed…

    Armed with the rock solid truth, fortified with honesty and fairness, let’s expose the Armenian propaganda for what it is: ethocide, mass-deception for political/personal gain…

  • Exclusives in Week

    Exclusives in Week

    Summary of DEBKAfile Exclusives in the Week Ending Feb. 12, 2009
    Hamas claims 181 Fatah operatives were war spies for Israel, US intelligence
    DEBKAfile Exclusive     6 Feb.: Hamas’ internal publications report that an alleged spy ring of 181 Fatah members passed intelligence to the Israeli enemy during last month’s hostilities.

    Hamas fighters are said to have executed some of the alleged spies during the fighting and shot and injured others. Our sources report that as soon as the fighting wound down on Jan. 20, Hamas security officers did indeed round up scores of Fatah members.

    Hamas names Muhammad Habash, brother of the social affairs minister in the Salam Fayad government in Ramallah, as ringleader of the spy network. He is charged with passing secrets which ended up in Israeli hands to the Ramallah-based Palestinian General Intelligence Service, according to the evidence of documents, correspondence and signals.
    Hamas specifically names the Palestinian General Intelligence Service to imply US complicity, since US advisers have been training its members and supervising its operations.

    Hamas further charges that the Palestinian and Israeli security services have been collaborating for the past year against Hamas. They moved their center of operations to the Gaza Strip just before the flare-up as part of what Hamas calls the “Abu Mazen conspiracy” to take advantage of the fighting to reinstate his Palestinian Authority in Gaza City. The PA was overthrown there by Hamas in 2007.

    Security Briefs Feb. 6– Two Palestinians missiles explode Friday south of Ashkelon and outside a Shaar Hanegev kibbutz.
    No one was hurt,

    – Israel forces killed Palestinian terrorist who pulled a grenade on the Gaza border fence Thursday —

    – Israel expels 18 activists and crew aboard a captured Lebanese aid ship for Gaza —

    – Olmert’s decision to transfer NIS175 ($44m) to Gaza banks was approved by Israeli High Court Friday —
    Hillary Clinton thanked Israeli PM for the transfer “in support of moderates” —

    Cyprus will not release banned Iranian arms shipment destined for Hamas7 Feb.: Cypriot divers armed with sensors and infrared gear began exploring the Cypriot-flagged Iranian arms ship docked at Limassol on orders from the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee, DEBKAfile’s military sources report.The Cypriot official said sending the shipment back is not an “available option.” This would be the first time an Iranian arms ship has been detained and its freight confiscated.

    US and British marine experts have joined the search of the vessel.

    Friday night, the UN sanctions committee concluded in a special session in New York that the consignment violated UN Security Council Resolution 1747 banning Iranian exports. It acted on a report from Cyprus that initial searches of the concealed parts of the ship had turned up different types of rockets believed destined for Hamas. Half the 60 containers have been examined.

    Security briefs Feb. 7– Likud’s Netanyahu in a last-minute switch taps ex-C-of-S Moshe Ayalon for defense, instead of Ehud Barak.

    – Cairo: The cash which a Hamas negotiator tried to smuggle into Gaza through Fatah is fraction of the funds Iran is pumping into Gaza.

    The $9m plus 2m euros the Egyptians caught Friday were not confiscated by deposited in an in El Arish bank in his name.

    – The UN Gaza spokesman demands that Hamas stop looting aid for population and give back huge quantities plundered food and blankets.

    Suicide bomb car kills 4 US soldiers and interpreter in Mosul Monday8 Feb.: A suicide bomber detonated a vehicle laden with explosives near a U.S. patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Monday, killing four U.S. soldiers and their interpreter.

    The attack was the deadliest against U.S. forces in Iraq this year.

    Outgoing Israeli government bargains away military success in Gaza
    DEBKAfile Special Analysis     8 Feb.: All too quickly Israel’s three war leaders – prime minister Ehud Olmert, defense minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Livni – forgot the goals they set for the three-week military offensive launched against Hamas on Dec. 27, 2008: That Operation Cast Lead would not halt until security prevailed in southern Israel, that the eight-year Palestinian missile offensive be brought to an end and that Hamas never be allowed to rearm for a fresh assault of terror.

    Six weeks later, the Islamists terrorists are reaping the spoils of a war they lost.

    Jerusalem is feeding Egyptian mediators with concession after concession to keep Hamas at the negotiating table in Cairo and talking about a long-term truce. Frustrated Israeli commanders warn their victory is being traded to buy undreamed-of gains for Hamas, such as the creeping recognition of the Palestinian Islamist group as the Gaza Strip’s legitimate ruling power and acceptance of the enclave’s status as a forward Iranian base on Israel’s southern border. The deal on the table in Cairo would moreover lead to perpetuating the separation between the pro-Western West Bank and the pro-Iranian Gaza Strip, generating a fixed impediment to any discussion of a potential Palestinian state.

    Saturday, Feb. 7, defense minister Barak Hamas granted safe passage to Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahar who flew from Gaza to Cairo and on to Damascus, thereby giving Tehran, from which Hamas-Damascus takes direct orders, the last word on all these transactions.





    		 The attack on Caracas synagogue led by rabbi’s police guard 9 Feb.: Seven Venezuelan police agents and four civilians have been arrested in connection with an attack on a synagogue that sparked international condemnation, investigators said on Sunday.

    President Hugo Chavez, whom Jewish groups accuse of encouraging anti-Semitism, referred to the arrests and said the attack was led by a police officer who had worked closely with the rabbi at the synagogue.

    Armed men broke into Venezuela’s Tiferet synagogue last month, daubed the walls with slogans like “Jews get out” and destroyed religious objects.

    Washington, Moscow at Cross-purposes on Nuclear Iran
    DEBKAfile Special Report    10 Feb.: While US president Barack Obama told the media early Tuesday, Feb. 10, that the US would pursue direct talks with Iran, an official Russian spokesman said his government would complete Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr within three months.

    DEBKAfile’s sources report that Obama is planning on the dialogue with Tehran beginning in late June. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replied by welcoming talks based on mutual respect provided the changes in Washington were “fundamental and not just tactical.”

    The three statements hung over Israel’s general election Tuesday, as 5.2 million eligible voters turned out to choose a prime minister capable of military action to halt Iran race toward a nuclear bomb.

    Despite the talk in Washington and Moscow of eased strains in their relations, the Kremlin has clearly come down on the side of giving the Iranian leaders a strong hand in their coming dialogue with the Obama administration.”

    DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that Russia delivered 82 metric tons of nuclear fuel to power the plant in the second half of January. This is enough both to fuel the manufacture of electricity and plutonium.

    Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said earlier that the Bushehr plant was 94.8% complete. Foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said it was due to be operational in the first half of 2009.

    Israel elects its 18th Knesset10 Feb.: Thirty-three party lists fought up until the last minute to win 5,278,985 eligible votes on February 10, 2009, although no more than 12 will pass the 2 percent threshold. Blustery weath hit the 9,263 balloting stations up and down the country after weeks of drought.

    Four figures dominated the campaign: Binyamin Netanyahu and his opposition Likud, foreign minister Tzipi Livni at the head of Kadima; defense minister Ehud Barak and his Labor part and Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Israel Beitenu.

    The West Bank was sealed to passage until Tuesday midnight in case of Palestinian terrorist attacks. The police and security services were on high alert. As candidate for prime minister, the president will choose the leader of the party that proves best able to form a government coalition. The candidate is given 42 days to put together an administration.

    Netanyahu offers Livni 10 portfolios, may form government without Lieberman

    12 Feb.: DEBKAfile’s political sources report that in preliminary talks Wednesday, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu offered Kadima’s Tzipi Livni the pick of 10 top portfolios for joining a government led by him. He has refused to consider rotating the premiership between them.

    Although final results of the Feb. 10 general election gave the centrist Kadima a slender lead of one seat (28 in the 120-member Knesset) over Likud’s 27, Livni cannot muster a majority because both her potential left-wing allies, Labor and Meretz, took a severe beating in the elections. The country shifted to right awarding Netanyahu the support of a bloc of at least 64. President Shimon Peres must therefore assign him the task of forming a new government some time next week.

    Rather than leaning on right-wing support, Netanyahu hopes to coax both Livni and Labor leader Ehud Barak to join his administration although both may opt for crossing over to the opposition. He has the ultra-religious Shas’ 11 mandates in his pocket as well as the five seats of Torah Judaism.

    If Netanyahu can line up all his ducks, he could hypothetically end up with a comfortable majority and a fairly broad-based administration even without Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Israeli Beitenu and the two smaller nationalist parties. For now, the negotiations are still in their early stages. Ten years ago, Netanyahu’s first stint as prime minister was cut short by an early election which he lost to Labor’s Barak.

    US-Syrian talks may set the scene for Obama’s dialogue with Iran
    DEBKAfile Exclusive Report    12 Feb.: US Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, visits Damascus next week. Like his predecessors, the senator will ask Assad if he is prepared to sever his strategic ties with Tehran, withdraw backing for terrorist organizations and halt the passage of terrorists, arms and cash from Syria to Iraq and Lebanon. He will also question the Syrian ruler on his intentions with regard to peace talks with Israel. Senator Kerry will also visit Jerusalem.

    Assad is keen on good relations with the Obama administration but not enough to meet those demands.

    The US is not giving Assad an easy ride. Washington has expedited steps for convening the special international tribunal appointed for bringing the assassins of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005 to trial. Monday, Feb. 9, six steel boxes packed with documents amassed by UN prosecutors investigating the case, were secretly flown to The Hague by a French military plane. This step aims at defeating Assad’s long, all-out efforts to obstruct the trial lest it implicates his regime.