cease-fire violations by azeris

[Yervant1]

Public Radio of Armenia

Oct 31 2020

Armenian hackers leak a large number of Azerbaijani government documents

Armenian hacking team leaked about a gigabyte of governmental emails from Azerbaijan including the presidential office.

“We successfully logged in to Azerbaijani governmental emails system and managed to receive access to a large amount of governmental documents. Here is a part of it,” the Monte Melkonian Cyber Army said on Twitter.

The data can be downloaded here.

We successfully logged in to

#Azerbaijan

'i governmental emails system and managed to receive access to a large amount of governmental documents. Here is a part of it.

For Download:

https://t.co/vDm4JtZD57

#StopAzerbaijaniAggression

#AzeriWarCrimes

#LongLiveArmenia

pic.twitter.com/aMVjgdvhB1

— Monte Melkonian Cyber Army (@MMCA_official)

October 31, 2020

https://en.armradio.am/2020/10/31/armenian-hackers-leak-a-large-number-of-azerbaijani-government-documents/

[Yervant1]

Armenpress.am

50 Turkish “radical Islamists” attack Catholic church in Vienna

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10:40, 31 October, 2020

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 31, ARMENPRESS. A group of 50 Turkish men broke into the Catholic Church of St. Anthony of Padua in Vienna, Austria shouting “Allahu Akbar” and staged a riot there on October 29, Kurier newspaper reported.

The assailants managed to escape before law enforcement arrived. The incident was caught on camera.

Police believe the assailants were radical Islamists who have come under the spotlight of law enforcement agencies in the past months. 10 suspects are already identified. These suspects have prior records of public disturbances.

The attack comes amid the knife attack at a church in Nice, in what French President Emmanuel Macron said was an "Islamist terrorist attack". Two other attacks took place on Thursday, one in France and one in Saudi Arabia.

A man was shot dead in Montfavet near the southern French city of Avignon after threatening police with a handgun.

A guard was attacked outside the French consulate in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. A suspect was arrested and the guard taken to hospital.

Editing by Stepan Kocharyan

 

 

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1033408.html?fbclid=IwAR1RNIh4eMlJKAMteIXMJOp_GR-CneyZfkE-aiwdolqmvHid2ebKFL69vdE

[Yervant1]

The rest of the world is willfully blind to the atrocities of turkey and azerbaijan. Today's media is completely agenda driven, not a word about the chemical weapons used against Armenians on tv, online or print. Where as when it happened in other places such as Syria (personally don't know who used it) it was coverage wall to wall, even local news channels were on the act. Who is behind this intentional silence?

 

Armenpress.am

I am blind, but I act, while intl. community sees but doesn’t act – Artsakh’s Human rights Defender

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20:40, 31 October, 2020

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 31, ARMENPRESS. Human Rights Defender of Artsakh Artak Beglaryan, who lost sight while a child as a result of the explosion of an Azerbaijani bomb, calls on the international community to act seeing what Azerbaijan is doing with the civilian population, ARMENPRESS reports Beglaryan said in a video message from Stepanakert’s central market, targeted by Azerbaijan on October 31.

‘’Ironically, this shelling happened just after the agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs mediation, saying that the parties will not deliberately target civilian objects, but you see that they targeted a civilian object, very far from any military objects, in downtown of Stepanakert. And because of this shelling many shops have been destroyed or damaged seriously and there are lots material losses. Besides, Azerbaijan shelled residential areas of Stepanakert, Shushi, Martuni, Martakert and some other towns and villages’’, Beglaryan said, adding that a civilian has died as a result of the Azerbaijani shelling.

 

[see video]

‘’This means that Azerbaijan is continuing war crimes against the civilian population of Artsakh. Azerbaijan is deliberately targeting civilian objects and vital infrastructures in order to deepen the humanitarian catastrophe in Artsakh. And in this situation, I see that there are many destructions, though I am blind, I see with touching, I am blind, but I act, but the international community is not blind, but does not act. The international community sees everything without touching, with eyes, but it does not act properly. That’s why this

kind of crimes are continuous by Azerbaijan, by Turkey and by terrorists. My call to the international community as a blind and as a Human Rights Ombudsman of the Republic of Artsakh is that they should start acting, stop talking and should not be blind’’, Artak Beglaryan said.

 

 

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1033462.html?fbclid=IwAR1Pta5J8nYSOy5UTZhVNN8a_wNZz2dhlERuIauBvfiLOqbtMHUjo7lDs0c

 

 

 

[Yervant1]

Nothing will come out of this, just a slap on the wrist! I even doubt that.

 

Armenpress.am

Armenia to sends facts of use of phosphorus amunition by Azerbaijan to international organizations

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21:52, 31 October, 2020

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 31, ARMENPRESS. The Human Rights Defenders of Armenia and Artsakh are currently conducting joint analyses, the results of which will be published and sent to relevant international bodies, ARMENPRESS reports Human Rights Defender of Armenia Arman Tatoyan wrote on his Facebook page.

''Objective evidence was published on the Azerbaijani Armed Forces to use ammunition of mass destruction containing chemical elements in Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh) yesterday and today.

According to the information the ammunition contained phosphorus. A number of reports have been released since then certifying that the ammunitions contain other chemicals of mass destruction.

Nonetheless, at least the following facts should be highlighted:

1) mass destruction ammunitions are used;

2) ammunitions contain chemical elements;

3) are used towards forests, causing mass fires and destruction;

4) according to expert assessments, the fire, caused by this type of weapon is not stopped even with the extinguishing materials or water;

5) the forests where these ammunitions were used, are located near the civilian communities (according to the current data these are regions of Shushi, Martakert, Askeran);

6) according to the fact-finding activities, civilians are hiding from attacks of Azerbaijani military forces in those forests.

The usage of thess ammunitions especially through these methods, are prohibited by international law.

The Human Rights Defenders of Armenia and Artsakh are currently conducting joint analyses, the results of which will be published and sent to relevant international bodies'', Tatoyan wrote.

[see video]

 

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1033470.html?fbclid=IwAR2LjzCpqTldmA93wxuGCfXpQoOPzehckj30-snjysCqbiNRmq9EM2tPE8c

 

 

[Yervant1]

Armenpress.am

Armenian FM says use of phosphorus munitions by Azerbaijan aimed at devastation of civil population

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18:05, 31 October, 2020

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 31, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of Armenia Zohrab Mnatsakanyan referred to the use of phosphorus munitions by Azerbaijan in Artsakh. ARMENPRESS reports FM Mnatsakanyan wrote in his Twitter micro blog,

‘’This time Azerbaijan used phosphorus munitions in Artsakh over forests close to residential areas with many civilians. What Azerbaijan is doing: total disrespect of its commitments, continued aggression, devastation of civilian population & use of banned weapons''.

This time https://twitter.com/hashtag/Artsakh?src="hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Artsakh over forests close to residential areas with many civilians.

 

What Azerbaijan is doing: total disrespect of its commitments, continued aggression, devastation of civilian population & use of banned weapons. pic.twitter.com/YyEjZ0ldUY

— Zohrab Mnatsakanyan (@ZMnatsakanyan)

Azerbaijan has also used cluster munitions against the cities of Artsakh

 

 

https://armenpress.am/eng/news/1033450.html?fbclid=IwAR2Raw0xzZbAP8Aa_EBQgibQNnuMKFxYnEJQZ1USfF7xQLDCzxr4zEj8VVA

[Yervant1]

 

Asbarez.com

 

International Scholars Warns of Imminent Genocide in Artsakh

October 31, 2020

http://asbarez.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/iags-logo11.jpg

International Association of Genocide Scholars

The International Association of Genocide Scholars on Saturday issued a statement warning of an imminent genocide in Artsakh committed by Azerbaijan and Turkey. Below is the text of the announcement.

Since September 27, 2020, Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, initiated a large-scale, unprovoked war against the Republic of Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia. Over the last days Azerbaijani forces have intentionally been attacking civilians and civilian infrastructures, and they have heavily shelled Stepanakert, Shushi, Mardakert, Hadrut, and other settlements with cluster munitions and other weapons prohibited by international humanitarian laws.

The Shushi Holy Savior (Ghazanchetsots) Cathedral, was severely damaged after two deliberate air raids conducted by the Azerbaijani military on October 8 and 9. This is not only a violation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two (1954 and 1999) Protocols, but also a part of policy of the cultural genocide that the Azerbaijani government has been implementing over the past 30 years by systematically destroying the Armenian historical heritage, including thousands of ancient Khachkars (carved cross stones) in the city of Djulfa (Nakhichevan). It is well established that cultural genocide is clear evidence of the existence of a special intent to commit genocide.

Furthermore, it is documented that Turkish armed forces and air forces directly participate in hostilities. Moreover, there are many impartial international media reports showing that during the current large-scale Azeri aggression against Artsakh, a substantial number of mercenaries identifying as jihadists from Syria and Libya, and likely also from Afghanistan and Pakistan, are hired and sent by Turkey to Azerbaijan to fight against Armenians . This also constitutes a violation of international law.

Direct Turkish involvement in the decades-long conflict is thus no longer a threat that Armenians in Artsakh, Armenia, and Turkey have had to fear, but a fact that threatens to annihilate Armenians in Artsakh and beyond. A recent statement issued by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, read that they, Turkey, were going “to continue to fulfill the mission of their grandfathers, which was carried out a century ago in the Caucasus”. This constitutes a direct threat of continuing the Armenian genocide that began in 1915.

The statement does not stand alone. Turkey officially and continuously denies the Armenian genocide, but various officials, including the president, have repeatedly hinted that Turkey is ready to once more “give a lesson” to Armenians, and that the “deportation” of Armenians in 1915 was the most appropriate decision at the time . “Armenian” is a commonly-used curse word in Turkey, and “leftovers of the sword” is another derogatory term used in Turkish to refer to the survivors of the genocide, which Erdogan publicly used during a briefing in May 2020. These and many other examples all amount to tacit recognition and approval of the genocide; it is, in other words, hate speech that threatens a new genocide. The attacks against Armenian churches and other properties all around the world by the Turkish nationalists are on the rise. Lately, Armenians and other Christians in Istanbul were targeted and blamed for supposedly spreading coronavirus, and Armenians have also been harassed by pro-Azeri Turks since the beginning of the latest outbreak of war. The most high-profiled victim has been the Turkish-Armenian politician Garo Paylan from the pro-Kurdish HDP-party. And Erdogan’s government does not spare its Turkish or Kurdish intellectuals and ordinary citizens, prosecuting them for even the slightest imagined transgression.

The position of the Azerbaijani leadership and society is even more aggressive. For years, anti-Armenian discourse and propaganda have been part of official state policy. Every day, indoctrination is carried out from schools to state media that demonizes Armenians, presenting them as an absolute evil that should be deprived of the right to live in Artsakh and Armenia, including the capital Yerevan. In one of his many public speeches, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev himself spoke about a “hypocritical, global Armenian conspiracy with Western politicians, who are embroiled in corruption and bribery,” reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s “global Jewish conspiracy” thesis, reiterated many times in Nazi speeches as a pretext and justification for the Holocaust.

It is therefore not merely rhetorical when on October 3, in the early phase of the current conflict, Armenia’s Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, in his address to the nation stated the following: “The objective of the Azerbaijani-Turkish bandits is not about claiming territory. Their objective is the Armenian people. Their objective is to continue their genocidal policy.” In fact, history, from the Armenian genocide to the last three decades of conflict, as well as current political statements, economic policies, sentiments of the societies and military actions by the Azerbaijani and Turkish leadership should warn us that genocide of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and perhaps even Armenia, is a very real possibility. All of this proves that Armenians can face slaughter if any Armenian territory is occupied, consequently recognizing of the independence of the Republic of Artsakh is the way to save Armenians of Artsakh from extermination now or in the near future.

And already a case can be made that there is conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and attempt to commit genocide, all of which are acts that, according to article 3 of 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, all states of the world are obliged to prevent and punish.

We, as members of the academic community, demand that the international community takes direct and serious action so that the Azerbaijani aggression immediately ceases, and that anti-Armenian state propaganda and hatred in Azerbaijan and Turkey ends. We appeal to the international community to raise their voices against xenophobia, aggression, and war, and for the prevention of new genocide.

– Kirk C Allison, MS, Health Humanities, Saint Scholastica College, USA

– Ruth Amir, Yezreel Valley College, Israel

– Eugene N. Anderson, Professor Emeritus, Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, USA

– Juan Pablo Artinian, Torcuato Di Tella University, Argentina

– Maral N. Attallah, Distinguished Lecturer, Dept. of Critical Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Humboldt State University, USA

– Yair Auron, Open University of Israel (Emeritus), Israel

– Vahagn Avedian, independent researcher, genocide, peace and conflict studies, Sweden

– Aris Babikian, former Citizenship Judge, Canada

– Peter Balakian, Rebar Professor of the Humanities, Colgate University, USA

– Jean-Philippe Belleau, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

– Eldad Ben Aharon, Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, Netherlands

– Caroline Bennett, Member of the IAGS Advisory Board, Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

– Sara Birjandian, Vancouver, BC, Canada

– Martin Bitschnau, “Society for the Documentation of Genocides [ger] (Völkermord.at – Gesellschaft für die Dokumentation von Völkermorden)”, Austria

– Matthias Bjørnlund, Danish Institute for Study Abroad, Denmark

– Nélida Elena Boulgourdjian, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina

– James Burnham Sedgwick, Associate Professor, Department of History and Classics, Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada

– Sara E. Brown, Member of the IAGS Advisory Board, Executive Director of the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education, New Jersey, USA

– Israel W. Charny, Past President, International Association Genocide Scholars (IAGS), Executive Director, Institute on the Holocaust & Genocide, Jerusalem.

– Kasturi Chatterjee, Assistant Professor, FLAME University, India

– John Cox, UNC Charlotte, Associate Professor, Department of Global Studies, Director, Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies, USA

– Don Cummings, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Professional Educator, Worcester (MA) Public Schools, USA

– Asya Darbinyan, Visiting Research Scholar, Clark University, USA

– Hilary Earl, Department of History, Nipissing University, Canada

– Joanne D. Eisen, Independence Institute, USA

– Kate W. English, Executive Director, EIHR: The Educators’ Institute for Human Rights, Washington, DC, USA

– Jenna Fagan, Lehigh University, USA

– Amy Fagin, Member IAGS Executive Board; Director: Beyond Genocide Centre for Prevention, New Salem, Massachusetts, USA

– Hervé Georgelin, Lecturer of History, University of Athens, Department of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, Greece

– Grace V. Giammona, ALM candidate in International Relations at Harvard University, USA

– Todd Gitlin, Columbia University, USA

– Patrick Hein, Lecturer of Politics, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan

– Tessa Hofmann, author and independent scholar of genocide studies, Berlin, Germany

– Raymond Kévorkian, president of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institut Foundation

– Suzanne Khardalian Holmquist, film director, Stockholm, Sweden

– Anahit Khosroeva, Institute of History, NAS, Armenia

– Péter Pál Kránitz, independent scholar, Hungary

– Theodosios Kyriakidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

– Samantha Lakin, Advanced Doctoral Candidate, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University; Fulbright Scholar (Rwanda 2017-2018; Switzerland 2011-2012), USA

– Bård Larsen, Civita, Oslo, Norway

– John Liffiton, Director, Genocide Conference, Scottsdale Community College

– Robert Jay Lifton, Columbia University, USA

– Dominika Maria Macios, Polish Institute of World Art Studies, Poland

– Charikleia Magdalini Kefalidou, University of Caen, France

– Joseph Mai, Clemson University, USA

– Suren Manukyan, Member of the IAGS Advisory Board, Head, UNESCO Chair on Education and Prevention of Genocide and Other Atrocity Crimes at Yerevan State University; Armenian Genocide Museum & Institute, Armenia

– Armen T. Marsoobian, Philosophy Professor, First Vice President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA

– Harutyun Marutyan, Director, Armenian genocide Museum & Institute, Armenia

– Alyssa Mathias, PhD Candidate, Department of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

– Ibrahim Malazada, Visiting Research fellow at CRPSR, Coventry University, UK, Lecturer at Soran University, Kurdistan Region

– Arda Melkonian, Fuller Theological Seminary, USA

– Doris Melkonian, Fuller Theological Seminary, USA

– Éva Merenics, Independent Researcher, Hungary

– Michaela Moura-Koçoglu, Assistant Teaching Professor, Center for Women and Gender Studies, Florida International University, Miami, USA

– Stacey M. Mitchell, Georgia State University’s Perimeter College, USA

– Alexandra Morehead, Brown University, USA

– Luisa Morettin, NCI University London, UK

– Shepherd Mpofu, University of Limpopo, South Africa

– Adam Muller, Member of the IAGS Advisory Board, Professor and Director, Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Manitoba, Canada

– Jeanine Ntihirageza, Professor and Director of the Center for Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora, Northeastern Illinois University , Chicago, USA

– Darren O’Brien, University of Queensland, Australia

– Regina Paulose, International Criminal Law Attorney, USA

– Rubina Peroomian, UCLA, Genocide Studies, USA

– Jack Nusan Porter, Past Vice-President, International Association Genocide Scholars (IAGS), The Davis Center, Harvard University, USA

– Nancy L. Rosenblum, Department of Government, Harvard University, USA

– Kaziwa Salih, Queens’ University, Canada

– Jakob Seerup, Bornholms Museum, Denmark

– Marc I. Sherman, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem, Israel

– Greg Stanton, Founding President, Genocide Watch, USA

– Pamela Steiner, Harvard School of Public Health, USA

– Charles B. Strozier, The City University of New York Professor

– Paul Slovic, University of Oregon, USA

– Henry C. Theriault, President, International Association of Genocide Scholars, USA

– Steven A Usitalo, Professor of History, Chair of the Department of History and Social Sciences, Northern State University, USA

– Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, Past Vice-President, International Association Genocide Scholars (IAGS), Endowed Chair, Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Keene State College, USA

– Jenna Walmer, M.A. Candidate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, USA

– Kerry Whigham, Assistant Professor of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Binghamton University; Director of Research and Online Education, Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, USA

– Stephanie Wolfe, Weber State University, USA

– Hrag Yacoubian, University of British Columbia, Canada

– Eve Zucker, Research Affiliate, Council of Southeast Asian Studies, Yale University, USA

http://asbarez.com/198160/international-scholars-warns-of-imminent-genocide-in-artsakh/?fbclid=IwAR1R4nAeBauCOlbPgYpO4fc-uPbOcXm9-BJ872NstPyeLHkBX1eqJ3QYVDY

[Yervant1]

In order to overthrow a tyrant, sacrify Armenians what a noble idea!

VoltaireNet.org

Oct 15 2020

Karabagh: NATO supports Turkey while seeking to eliminate President Erdoğan

by Thierry Meyssan

In the Karabakh War, contemporary law is contradictory depending on whether it is interpreted in terms of ownership of the territory or the self-determination of the people. Taking advantage of this equivocation, the Turkish people (i.e., both Turkey and Azerbaijan) have just attacked this territory, self-proclaimed independent (Artsakh) although de facto linked to Armenia. Russia has already made it known that, according to the treaties, it will defend Armenia if it is attacked, but that its national security is not concerned by what is happening in Karabagh. Therefore, the only question is to establish whether Turkey has acted on the orders of the West, or whether it has taken an initiative that its own allies are likely to turn against it.

Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 15 October 2020

This article is a follow-up to :
"Will the Artsakh (Karabagh) be the tomb of Erdoğan ?",by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, October 6, 2020.

The war has been going on in Nagorno-Karabakh since September 27, 2020. The superiority of the Azerbaijani forces is obvious, both in number and in the quality of their weaponry. The first line of defense of the Artsakhae forces has been pulverized, but the other two still hold. The destruction is very significant, including on the Azerbaijani side. It is difficult to establish a human toll, but the deaths are already very numerous.

President Ilham Aliyev has announced his intention to continue his offensive until victory, that is to say the "recovery" of his territory. He is supported by his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Pakistan also sided with him, while denying having sent soldiers to the scene. All the Turkish-speaking countries of the Turkish Council gave their unfailing support to the ’Two-State People’ (Azerbaijan and Turkey).

On the Armenian side, the equally unfailing support of the diaspora disseminated in the West has created a consensus condemning the Azeri attack (even though Baku claims not to have attacked Karabagh). In addition to the problem of Artsakh, there is the problem of Armenia. It is clear and claimed that soldiers from this country are fighting in Artsakh, but it does not seem that the fighting has spread to the territory of Armenia.

From a diplomatic point of view, the OSCE Minsk Group, chaired by the United States, France and Russia, is multiplying calls for a ceasefire, without any effect. It had done nothing since its creation and continues publicly to blindfold itself. In reality, it is active in the shadows and has just organized a mediation in Geneva, without Armenia.

A word on the French position: although co-president of the Minsk Group, Paris does not cease to confront Ankara on all sorts of subjects: from the delimitation of exclusive zones in the Mediterranean to the situation in Libya, not to mention secularism. However, President Emmanuel Macron avoids as much as possible discussing the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, Iraq and Syria, which are much more important issues. France has asked Turkey for explanations on the transfer of jihadists from the Free Syrian Army, which it once helped create, supported and managed against Syria.

The middle powers avoid taking a stand, since almost all of them hesitate to take sides with a powerful oil state for the sake of the Armenians’ beautiful eyes. However, given the genocidal past of the Turkish people, which they persist in denying, it will be morally impossible not to take a stand for a very long time. Before Qatar (which is home to a Turkish military base) took a stand, the Secretary General of the Arab League condemned Turkey. He was immediately followed by Syria. President Bashar al-Assad took the opportunity to recapitulate Ankara’s crimes against its people.

In conclusion, while the probable defeat of Artsakh and the probable massacre of its inhabitants is approaching, the United States and Russia still claim neutrality, the Westerners and Arabs support Armenia, while only the Turkish-speaking states openly support Azerbaijan and Turkey.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, October 5, 2020 at the White Palace in Ankara. Allies or adversaries? The hypothesis of the trap

The hypothesis of the trap set up by Washington in order to push President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to misstep in order to blame him and to bring him down, like his Iraqi counterpart Saddam Hussein, still holds. In 1990-91, the invasion of Kuwait, encouraged by US Ambassador April Gaspie, was followed five months later by a unanimous condemnation by the Security Council and by Operation Desert Storm. We are only two weeks away from the start of operations in Arstakh.

It was difficult to transform the image of President Saddam Hussein in a few months. He was a CIA agent, recruited during his youth, during his studies. He had helped an attempted coup by the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, at the request of the West. He had led a long war against Iran, always at the request of Westerners. He then imagined himself indispensable to his sponsors. Washington thus published documents attesting that he had assassinated or had had assassinated several people in his entourage, but it was still necessary to transform this Eastern despot into a new mass criminal. In this process, the false testimony of a false Kuwaiti nurse before the US Congress was crucial: on the orders of the tyrant, the Iraqi army stole incubators, causing the death of premature babies.

In the case of Azerbaijan, things will be easier. It will suffice to exhume the evidence of the Armenian genocide that the Turks persist in denying to justify a serious risk of a new massacre. All the more so since the cathedral of Artsakh has already been targeted by two precision missiles. Already, Azerbaijan denies having fired these missiles, which is possible but supposes that a third power is pulling the strings of the conflict. If Baku’s involvement were proven in this violation of international humanitarian law, the genocidal intent would be impossible to ignore, given that the Armenian genocide (1894-95 and 1915-20) targeted this population on the basis of its religion.

Six hours of negotiations in Moscow for only five minutes of ceasefire. The trap is closing

Anxious to prevent things from getting out of hand, Russian President Vladimir Putin organized negotiations between the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers in Moscow on October 9, after he had sent his Prime Minister to Yerevan. After six hours of consultations, they resulted in the signing of a ceasefire by noon on 10 October. In addition to the return of prisoners and the bodies of victims, the agreement provided for the resumption of peace negotiations under the aegis of the OSCE Minsk Group.

The cessation of fighting was preceded by intense shelling of the small town of Hadrout, whose ’resumption’ Baku had a little too quickly proclaimed, and a vast drone attack aimed at aggravating the balance of power in extremis.

The truce lasted only 5 minutes: at 12.05 am, Arbaïdjan resumed fighting in Hadrout.

According to the Armenian side, Azerbaijan then bombed the Republic of Armenia in the border town of Kaplan. If this information were verified, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) would have to provide military assistance to Armenia. It would then be necessary for Russia to demonstrate Turkey’s involvement -which no one doubts- to place the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in a dilemma: either support Turkey and declare World War III, or enjoin it to leave the Alliance.

Since almost all members of the Alliance can no longer support President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he should then become the world’s enemy number one.

However, things are perhaps even more complicated: the international communications of the Azerbaijani side are ensured by a lobby, the Nizami Ganjavi International Center, clearly controlled by NATO. Moreover, Washington has already attempted several times to overthrow, even assassinate, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Thierry Meyssan

https://www.voltairenet.org/article211204.html

 

[Yervant1]

VoltaireNet.org

Oct 6 2020

Will Artsakh (Karabagh) be the tomb of Erdoğan ?

by Thierry Meyssan

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict certainly had its origins in the dissolution of the USSR, but it was revived by the will of the Turkish president. It is unlikely that he took this initiative without first referring it to Washington. This is also what President Saddam Hussein did before invading Kuwait, falling by ambition into the trap set for him and causing his downfall.

On his Twitter account, President Erdoğan wrote on the day of the outbreak of hostilities: " - During the phone calls we had today, a wise and resolute stance, the "one nation, two states" approach, once again testifies, as I mentioned to Ilham Aliyev, the President of Azerbaijan, that Turkey will continue to strengthen its cooperation with its Azerbaijani brothers. - As we call on the Armenian people to defend their future against their domination and those who use them as puppets, we call on the whole world to support Azerbaijan in its struggle against occupation and oppression. - The international community, which was unable to provide a necessary and sufficient response to Armenia’s provocative aggression, is once again showing its double game. The trio from Minsk, which has maintained its negligent attitude for about 30 years, is unfortunately far from being solution-oriented. - By adding a new attack to the previous ones against Azerbaijan, Armenia has once again shown that it is the biggest threat to peace and tranquility in the region. The Turkish Nation supports its Azerbaijani brothers with all its means, as always. » A very ancient conflict, frozen for the past 30 years

The Turkish people define themselves as descended from the "children of the wolf of the steppes", i.e. as descendants of the hordes of Genghis Khan. It is composed of both "one people and two states": Turkey and Azerbaijan. The political rebirth of the former automatically engenders the arrival of the latter on the international scene.

Of course this political renaissance does not mean a resurgence of the violence of the barbarian hordes, but this past has nonetheless forged mentalities, despite the efforts of many politicians who, for a century, have been trying to normalize the Turkish people.

In the last years of the Ottoman era, Sultan Habdulhamid II wanted to unite the country around his conception of the Muslim faith. He therefore ordered the physical elimination of hundreds of thousands of non-Muslims. This was supervised by German officers who acquired during this genocide an experience that they later put at the service of Nazi racial ideology. The Ottoman policy of purification was pursued on a larger scale by the Young Turks at the beginning of the Republic, particularly against the Orthodox Armenians [1].

Murder being an addiction, it reappeared sporadically in the behavior of the Turkish armies. Thus, in March 2014, they escorted hundreds of jihadists from the al-Nosra Front (al-Qaeda) and the Army of Islam (pro-Saudi) to the city of Kessab (Syria) to massacre the Armenian population. The jihadists who participated in this operation were today sent to kill other Armenians in Karabagh.

These massacres ceased in Azerbaijan during the brief Democratic Republic (1918-20) and the Soviet period (1920-90), but resumed in 1988 with the collapse of Moscow’s power.

Precisely during the Soviet period, in accordance with Joseph Stalin’s policy of nationalities, an Armenian region was joined with Azerbaijan to form a Socialist Republic. Thus when the USSR was dissolved, the international community recognized Karabakh not as Armenian but as Azeri. The same mistake was made in the rush in Moldova with Transnistria, in Ukraine with Crimea, in Georgia with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A series of wars immediately followed, including that of Nagorno-Karabakh. These are cases where international law developed from an error of appreciation at the beginning of the conflicts, as in Palestine, which was not rectified in time, leading to inextricable situations.

Westerners intervened to prevent a general conflagration. However, the example of Transnistria attests that it was a step backwards in order to better jump: thus the United States resorted to the Romanian army to try to annihilate the nascent Pridnestrovie [2].

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE, then CSCE) created the "Minsk Group", co-chaired by the United States, France and Russia, to find a solution, which it never did: Russia did not want to choose between its former partners, France wanted to play the important game, and the United States wanted to maintain a conflict zone on the Russian border. The other conflicts, created at the dissolution of the USSR, were deliberately fuelled by Washington and London with Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia in 2008 or the EuroMaydan coup d’état aimed, among other things, at expelling Russians from the Crimea in 2014.

The attack on the Republic of Artsakh (Karabagh) by Azerbaijan and Turkey was justified by the speech of Azeri President Ilham Aliyev at the UN General Assembly on September 24. [3] His main idea was that the Minsk Group had qualified the status quo as unacceptable, but that "statements are not enough. We need action. He could not have been clearer.

In accordance with his family’s ideology, he put his opponents under the greatest burden, for example, attributing the Khojaly massacre (1992, more than 600 victims) to "Armenian terrorists", even though it was a black operation during an attempted coup in his country; in any case, this allowed him to present in a biased manner the actions of ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia) in the 1970s and 1980s. He pointed out that four Security Council resolutions ordered the withdrawal of Armenian troops, playing on the homonymy between the Armenian population of Karabagh and the neighboring state of Armenia; one way of ignoring the fact that the Council also enjoined Azerbaijan to organize a referendum of self-determination in Karabagh. It accused, not without reason, the new Armenian Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, of being one of the men of the speculator Gorge Soros, as if this erased what had gone before.

The conflict can only end after a referendum of self-determination, the outcome of which comes as little surprise. For the time being, it benefits those who, like Israel, sell arms to the aggressor.

The Turkish, Azeri and Pakistani armies display their unity against the Armenians. For Erdoğan, one war too many?

Having said this, let us analyze the current conflict from another angle, that of international balances, keeping in mind that the Turkish army is already illegally present in Cyprus, Iraq and Syria; that it violates the military embargo in Libya and now the cease-fire in Azerbaijan.

Baku is organizing itself to postpone the inevitable deadline even further. Azerbaijan has already obtained the support of Qatar, which also supervises the financing of jihadists in this field of operations. According to our information, at least 580 of them have been sent from Idleb (Syria) via Turkey. This war is expensive and KKR, the powerful company of the US-Israeli Henry Kravis, seems to be involved as it is still involved in Iraq, Syria and Libya. As in the destabilization of communist Afghanistan, Israeli weapons could be routed through Pakistan. In any case, in Turkey, posters flourish placing side by side the flags of the three countries.

Even more astonishing, President Aliyev received the support of his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko. It is likely that he is acting in agreement with the Kremlin, which could herald a more visible Russian support for Orthodox Armenia (Russia, Belarus and Armenia are all members of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization).

Strangely, Shiite Iran has not taken a position. Yet, although ethnically Turkish, Azerbaijan is the only other Shia people in the world because it was part of the Safavid empire. President Hassan Rohani had included it in his plan for a Shia Federation presented during his second election campaign. This withdrawal gives the impression that Tehran does not wish to enter into conflict with Moscow, which is officially neutral. All the more so since Armenia plays a non-negligible role in the circumvention of the US embargo against Iran.

On the Armenian side, the diaspora in the United States is lobbying intensely in Congress in order to make President Erdoğan -whose country is a member of NATO- responsible for the conflict before an international tribunal.

In the case of a tacit agreement between Moscow and Washington, this war could be turned diplomatically against President Erdoğan, now unbearable to the Big Two. Like Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who brutally changed from valet of the Pentagon to public enemy No. 1 when he thought he had the authorization to invade Kuwait, the Turkish president may have been encouraged to take the blame.

Thierry Meyssan

Political consultant, President-founder of the Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network). Latest work in English – Before Our Very Eyes, Fake Wars and Big Lies: From 9/11 to Donald Trump, Progressive Press, 2019.

https://www.voltairenet.org/article211009.html

[Yervant1]

$100 dollars for each beheaded infidel: Shocking testimony of detained Syrian mercenary in Artsakh

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 14:21, 1 November, 2020

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. The second Syrian militant who was captured by the Artsakh Defense Army most recently is identified as Yusuf Alaabet al Haj, born 1988, in the village of Ziyadiya of Syria's Idlib. He was fighting as a mercenary for Azerbaijan.

Defense Ministry spokesperson Shushan Stepanyan released a video from the questioning.

 

“According to the militant, he was promised a monthly 2000 dollar payment for fighting against “kafirs” in Artsakh, and an extra 100 dollar for each beheaded “kafir”, Stepanyan said.

Kafir is an Arabic term meaning infidel.

Video Player

 

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan

[Yervant1]

Syrian militant detained in Armenia says Suleyman-Shah chief Abu Hamsha brought them via Turkey

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 13:04, 1 November, 2020

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Committee of Investigations released the video from the questioning of Mihirab Muhammad Al Shayir, the Syrian militant who was recruited as a mercenary and sent to Azerbaijan to fight against Artsakh.

“A man named Abu Hussein 23 told me that we must go to an area near the town of Kilis, where the command of various rebel groups is located. Two days later we were taken to another location, where the chief commander of the Suleyman Shah Brigade, a man with the nom de guerre Abu Hamsha was located,” Al Shayir said.

 

He said that 250 rebels were chosen and divided into groups.

He said they reached Kilis, a town on the border between Syria and Turkey, on October 17, 2020. They were then ordered to cross into Turkey on foot.

“At the Turkish border checkpoint the border guards didn’t say anything, they didn’t ask us anything. They definitely knew that they had to let us through. The commander by the name of Abu Hamsha led us through the border. Then we came across a Turkish police patrol cruisers, and again they didn’t say anything. We were taken to a civilian airport on buses. Around an hour later the plane landed in another Turkish airport,” he said.

There, they were met by more than 50 Turkish soldiers, who gave them Azeri military fatigues. On October 18, their airplane bearing the Azeri flag landed in Azerbaijan and the fighters were taken to a military facility where again Turkish military officers, mostly gunners, were stationed.

“We were told that we would fight against Armenians. In the morning, with around 200 others we were driven for nearly 100 kilometers. We were divided into groups and a commander was appointed. We were ordered to capture the nearby Armenian village and kill everywhere there. I was wounded during the attack, I asked for help but my troops abandoned me,” he said, adding that commander Abu Hamsha had told them to take drugs if they were afraid. The fighters were promised a 2000-dollar monthly payment.

On October 31, the Armenian authorities placed Al Shayir under arrest on charges of international terrorism, gross violations of international humanitarian law norm during armed conflicts (murder, attacking civilians, indiscriminate attacks), and his participation in a military conflict as a mercenary.

Video Player

 

 

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan

Edited November 1, 2020 by Yervant1

[Yervant1]

Azerbaijani advancement attempts in Avetaranots-Sghnakh direction repelled by Artsakh Defense Army

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10:33, 1 November, 2020

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. The battles in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone continued at night in the south-western, south-eastern and northern directions, the Defense Army of Artsakh reports.

In addition to the military operations, the Azerbaijani forces continued targeting the peaceful settlements, in particular launching missile, artillery strikes at Martuni town, the city of Shushi and Karin Tak village.

The Defense Army units carried out targeted strikes on the firing positions of the adversary working on the aforementioned directions.

The Azerbaijani forces attempted to move to the Avetaranots-Sghnakh direction with nearly 10 vehicles, but were destroyed and repelled by the Defense Army forces, suffering huge losses.

“In the morning the Azerbaijani side resumed the offensive, at the same time continuing to shell the peaceful settlements with missile. The Defense Army keeps full control along the entire frontline, keeping under control all movements of the adversary and launching counterstrikes if necessary”, the statement says.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan

[Yervant1]

Azerbaijan bombards Iranian mosque in Artsakh

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 15:20, 1 November, 2020

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. The Gohar Agha Iranian mosque in the town of Shushi in Artsakh has been damaged from the Azeri heavy rocket bombardments, the State Service of Emergency Situations of Artsakh told ARMENPRESS.

The Azeri attack was carried out by Grad and Smerch multiple rocket launchers.

 

The Artsakh State Service of Emergency Situations said that the mosque was deliberately targeted, but the rocket hit the mosque’s side wall, damaging only one part of the wall.

Video Player

 

Shushi came under heavy strikes on November 1.

Other towns and cities of Artsakh were also shelled.

The town of Martuni, Martakert and several villages were bombed with Azeri air strikes.

Stepanakert City, the capital of Artsakh, was also hit, with air raid sirens going on and off seven times throughout the day.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan

[Yervant1]

Artsakh releases details from another failed Azerbaijani offensive

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14:42, 1 November, 2020

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. The Defense Army of Artsakh predicted the possible actions of the Azerbaijani side, destroyed their columns and manpower at the same place, spokesperson of the defense ministry of Artsakh Suren Sarumyan said in a statement.

“Last night the enemy tried to attack along the entire frontline. The attempts were especially intense in the directions of Martuni and Shushi. In the direction of Martuni, the units of the Defense Army made tactical maneuvers to create more advantageous conditions for fighting on the frontline, which is a part of the strategy.

In the second direction, the Defense Army predicted the possible actions of the enemy and destroyed their columns and manpower at the same place. From now on, the Azeris can call this place "Hell's Gorge" because they had a lot of losses and their plans completely failed.

Right now, the units of the Defense Army confidently stand on their positions, controlling the operative-tactical situation and ready to stop all the attacks of the enemy”, the spokesperson said.

Editing by Aneta Harutyunyan

[Yervant1]

Open secret! Even a Turk exposes the biased media!

‘World needs to understand it’s the Erdoğan regime creating conflict’ – Turkish basketball player

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12:06, 1 November, 2020

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. Enes Kanter, a professional basketball player of Turkish origin, commented on the conflicts provoked by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against different nations, including Armenians.

“Terrorism has a new face. 31 conflicts with 10 countries in 10 years”, the basketball player said, publishing the flags of different countries, including Armenia.

“The world needs to understand it’s NOT Turkey, it’s the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regime creating conflict. Let’s stop this Dictatorship and start building peace”, he said.

Editing by Aneta Harutyunyan

Enes Kanter

21 hrs ·

Terrorism has a new face.

31 conflicts with 10 countries in 10 years.

+ Kurds

The world needs to understand it’s NOT Turkey,
it’s the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regime creating conflict.
Let’s stop this Dictatorship and start building peace.

Edited November 1, 2020 by Yervant1

[Yervant1]

Turkish sources link key Russian company’s withdrawal from Turkey's nuclear project with NK conflict

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11:03, 1 November, 2020

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. A Russian company has withdrawn from plans to build Turkey’s first nuclear power plant following tensions between Moscow and Ankara over issues including the conflicts in Libya, Syria, and Nagorno Karabakh, Ahval news reports citing Dünya newspaper.

Turkey and Russia have stepped up economic cooperation in recent years, including the joint venture to develop Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant in southern Turkey.

The landmark deal to build the 4.800-Megawatt facility was signed by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin 2010, but may now be in doubt as the two leaders find themselves at odds over a series of foreign policy questions.

Inter Rao, one of Russia’s largest public energy companies, withdrew from the project following a board meeting on Oct. 26, Kerim Ülker, a columnist at Dünya, said.

The move comes after Turkey’s military intervention to support Azerbaijan in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

Ülker said the significance of the decision came from the political connections of Inter Rao’s chairman Igor Sechin, who is Putin’s “de-facto assistant”.

“It is remarkable that Inter Rao, which is under the management of Igor Sechin, known as the second most powerful name in Russia, has withdrawn from the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant project. Especially in the immediate aftermath of Turkey's support for Azerbaijan in Nagorno Karabakh,” Ülker wrote.

[Yervant1]

One day these monsters will answer for their crimes, including the two fake sultans!

 

Azeri troops cut off fallen Armenian soldier's ear

November 1, 2020 - 19:25 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijani social media users have been disseminating more footage depicting the torture of Armenian prisoners of war, as well as the desecration of the bodies of dead Nagorno-Karabakh soldiers.

In one of the latest videos, the Azerbaijani soldiers are seen cutting the ear of a murdered Armenian soldier.

They also seen hitting prisoners of war on the head, trampling their heads, piercing the various parts of their body with sharp objects, and making fun of them.

In another video, the one filming the process can be heard telling another soldier to cut off the finger of an Armenian prisoner of war.

The Azerbaijanis earlier filmed their torture and brutal murder of two Armenian prisoners of war, one of them an elderly civilian. In another video published by Twitter users, an Azerbaijani soldier is seen using a handgun to shoot a wounded Armenian serviceman in the head at close range.

A third video spreaded by Azerbaijani social media users shows the bodies of 19 Armenian servicemen. Some of them are naked, at least four of them have their hands tied behind their backs.

Azerbaijan, with help from Turkey and Syrian and Libyan mercenaries deployed by Ankara, started a war against Karabakh (Artsakh) in the morning of September 27. The Armenian side has reported deaths and injuries both among the civilian population and the military. Foreign and local journalists too have been injured in Azeri shelling of towns and villages.

 

 

[Yervant1]

NASA FIRMS map shows areas of fire in the last 24 hours in Karabakh

November 1, 2020 - 15:49 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - The map of NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System) shows areas of fire burning in the last 24 hours in Nagorno-Karabakh, according to photos published by ELINT NEWS on Twitter.

This could outline the approximate frontlines of battles and areas of artillery fire, which means certain border areas in Armenia's south have also come under fire.

The Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army said Sunday, November 1 morning that the Azerbaijani military attempted to advance near the villages of Avetaranots and Sghnakh with the support of close to 10 pieces of combat vehicles overnight but were thrown back by the Armenian troops.

Throughout the night, fighting continued in the southwestern, southeastern, and northern directions of the frontline.

Azerbaijan also continued shelling the civilian settlements of Artsakh (Karabakh), delivering rocket and artillery strikes on the towns of Martuni, Shushi, as well as the village of Karin Tak. Enemy fire positions in those directions have come under the Defense Army units’ pinpoint strikes.

Azerbaijan, with help from Turkey and Syrian and Libyan mercenaries deployed by Ankara, started a war against Karabakh (Artsakh) in the morning of September 27. The Armenian side has reported deaths and injuries both among the civilian population and the military. Foreign and local journalists too have been injured in Azeri shelling of towns and villages.

[Yervant1]

[Yervant1]

RTL, Luxembourg

Nov 1 2020

Armenian memorial centre in France defaced with pro-Turkish slogans

Author: AFP|Update: 01.11.2020 15:44

The National Armenian Memorial Centre was daubed with the giant letters "RTE" in reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and with the words "Grey Wolves", a prominent Turkish nationalist movement, in French / © AFP

An Armenian association in France expressed outrage Sunday after a memorial centre to the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was defaced with pro-Turkish slogans.

The incident in the town of Decines-Charpieu outside Lyon comes against a background of intense communal tensions in France between its Armenian minority and the Turkish community over the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey has strongly backed its ally Azerbaijan in the conflict during the last weeks over Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan but controlled by Armenian separatists since a 1990s war as the Soviet Union broke up.

The National Armenian Memorial Centre was daubed with the giant letters "RTE" in yellow paint in reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the words "Grey Wolves", a prominent Turkish nationalist movement, in French.

A nearby memorial to the killings was also smeared with an expletive against Armenia.

"This intolerable desecration.. is one of a series of events aimed at terrorising and intimidating French citizens of Armenian origin," the Committee for the Defence of the Armenian Cause (CDCA) said in a statement.

The Lyon region is home to one of France's largest communities of Armenians, centred around Decines-Charpieu.

Four people had been wounded on Wednesday in clashes between suspected Turkish nationalists and Armenians who had been protesting against Azerbaijan's military offensive.

The CDCA accused the French state of "passivity" in the face of the threat and the mayor of Decines-Charpieu, Laurence Fautra, said its Armenian community needed physical protection.

The region's top local official, prefect Pascal Mailhos, wrote on Twitter that he "strongly condemned" the damage to the memorial centre and vowed everything would be done to find those behind it.

Armenians have long campaigned for the mass killings of their ancestors in the Ottoman Empire during World War I to be recognised as genocide.

France is one of several countries to have recognised it as such.

Modern Turkey strongly rejects the use of the term, saying lives were lost on both sides during a time of war.

https://today.rtl.lu/news/world/a/1605642.html?fbclid=IwAR3hVzQwTGZlbXSFOkoHs9Ve1Og_f6lPNEeaskeJVS6H9IHHYgRIpUjQS2M

[Yervant1]

Reuters

Nov 1 2020

Despite Lebanon's woes, Armenians spring to action for Nagorno-Karabakh

Maria Semerdjian and Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) - When Lebanon's financial crisis pushed Vartkes to leave for Armenia this summer, he never imagined he would volunteer to fight in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The young Lebanese-Armenian didn't think twice, however, when the conflict between Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian forces erupted soon after his move.

"I wanted to go that night," Vartkes, who asked not to be identified by his last name, said by phone. He has yet to be called to back troops in the region, which is recognized as part of Azerbaijan though governed by ethnic Armenians.

"I feel like I have to do something for the country."

An Armenian defence ministry official has said many from the diaspora applied to volunteer without giving a precise number. Hundreds from as far afield as Argentina and the United States have rushed back to Armenia for combat training, a local instructor says.

The fighting, some of the deadliest in the mountain enclave in more than 25 years, has prompted mass mobilisation across Armenia and seen its vast global diaspora spring into action.

In Lebanon, a community of nearly 140,000 of Armenian origin, one of the world's largest, has fundraised and sent aid despite a crippling currency crash. Many have had roots in Lebanon since their ancestors fled mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire a century ago.

Karapet Aghajanyan, the combat instructor in Yerevan, who trains local and foreign volunteers, told Reuters around 10 Lebanese-Armenians have received training in his camp.

He said they arrived from Beirut after the fighting broke out in late September to go to the frontline.

Scores of Lebanese of Armenian descent were already leaving Beirut for Yerevan months before the fighting, members of the community say. Lebanon's economic collapse, and then the huge Beirut port explosion that killed nearly 200 people in August, have fuelled migration.

Lebanese MP Hagop Pakradounian, who heads the Armenian Revolutionary Federation party, said there was no organisation registering or sending any volunteers from Lebanon.

He said no more than 20 people had gone from Beirut to sign up, acting on their own. It was not clear if any were called to battle.

"We cannot prevent them at the end of the day. We try to dissuade them but they have this impulse," he said. "It's an existential war for the Armenian people, that's why some youths are going."

The violence has raised fears of a wider conflict dragging in Turkey, which backs Azerbaijan, and Russia, which has a defence pact with Armenia.

Azerbaijan rejects any solution that would leave Armenians controlling the enclave. Armenians refuse to withdraw from territory they view as part of their historic homeland.

On a main highway out of Beirut, white banners hung from bridges read: "Stop Azeri aggression."

In Lebanon's largely Armenian town of Anjar, the head of the municipality, Vartkes Khoshian, said even families worried about paying bills had donated.

"The people gave more than they had," he said. "We all follow news minute by minute."

This month, Anjar commemorated one of their own who was killed in battle, Kevork Hadjian, an opera singer born in the Lebanese town who lived in Armenia.

Many residents saw him as a hero.

The singer's 74-year-old mother, Sosse Hadjian, said she had spent days watching TV, weeping over slain fighters. But she didn't know her son was at the front until her brother delivered the news of his death.

"I'm a mother who lost a son after all. It's really hard," she said. "But I'm also proud he joined for Armenians, for the homeland."

(Reporting by Maria Semerdjian, Ellen Francis and Alaa Kanaan; Additional reporting by Issam Abdallah in Beirut, Nvard Hovhannisyan and Maria Tsvetkova in Yerevan; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN27H157?fbclid=IwAR2o5fOCePs4sAtv9Blnjg4hh8bknKD_YQxIeSp87tJ6gbWAy7YSyoIZDEA

[Yervant1]

The Real News

Oct 28 2020

HOW THE US, TURKEY, AND ISRAEL ARE FUELING A FORGOTTEN WAR BETWEEN ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN

Since Sept. 27, fighting in the disputed south Caucasus Mountain region of Nagorno-Karabakh has killed over 1,000 people, both civilians and combatants, while uprooting the lives of thousands.

This includes new 11 casualties on Sunday, Oct. 25, noted in a Deutsche Welle report citing numbers released by the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Ministry.

Leading up to the 2020 election, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, its disputed history between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and its geopolitical implications, along with many other critical foreign policy issues, have been largely ignored by the American media, which has focused almost exclusively on the US economy and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The conflict was not even addressed during the second and final US presidential debate on Oct. 22.

Instead, the debate mentioned foreign policy only when discussing the impact of supposed “election meddling” by Russia, Iran, and China, and how to “make China pay” for failing to warn the world adequately about the COVID-19 pandemic.

The only glimpses the public has into Joe Biden’s or Donald Trump’s position on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan are from short press releases or tweets that have not drawn many headlines.

However, journalists on the ground for The New York Times, along with other international media outlets, have reported on how they found “civilians huddling in basements” amid shelling and attacks from “Azerbaijani drones that hover overhead and kill at will.”

In response to Azeri attacks, Armenia has been accused of launching missiles into residential areas of Azerbaijan’s second-largest city, Ganja. Azerbaijani officials quoted by NPR said “one civilian was killed in the attack, and 32 more were injured” on Sunday, Oct. 4.

The complicated history of Nagorno-Karabakh is a large part of the reason why a true peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan has remained so elusive to this day.

Map illustration of the Nagorno-Karabakh region between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan under international law. But its history has been fraught for over two hundred years, going back to 1805 when Tsarist Russia conquered the region, including all of what is now Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In the 1920s, commissar of nationality affairs for the newly formed USSR Joseph Stalin made the area of Nagorno-Karabakh part of Azerbaijan, despite the fact it was inhabited by a majority of ethnic Armenians.

A report in the online magazine Lawfare notes: “Censuses taken by the USSR reported that, in 1926, 89.1% of NKAO residents were Armenian and 10% were Azerbaijani. By 1989, according to the census, the population was 76.9% Armenian and 21.5% Azerbaijani.”

In addition to fostering population changes, the Red Army kept a lid on this conflict between the Armenian and Azeri people by threatening to crack down militarily whenever hostilities flared up.

This policy lasted until Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership, when many Soviet Socialist Republics (SSR) were given more autonomy and political reforms under what was known as glasnost, or ‘opening.’ Due to financial difficulties, the Soviet Union could not devote as many resources to conflicts such as this, either militiarally or diplomatically.

In February of 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh’s national assembly voted and demanded to dissolve its autonomous status, at the time controlled by the Azerbaijani SSR, and instead join the Armenian SSR. Subsequently a war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the territory, killing 30,000, and displacing about a million people. Armenia, for all intents and purposes, won that war, and took control of Nagorno-Karabakh, while also occupying seven smaller districts of Azerbaijan, forcing Azeris to leave the area.

Nagorno-Karabakh. Hadrut. In the combat operational zone. Photo ITAR-TASS / Khamelyanin Gennady; Solovyev Andrei (Photo by TASS via Getty Images)

A tense ceasefire brokered by Russia in 1994 ended that period of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Until present day, outside of a brief burst in 2016, fighting was mostly held at bay.

While Armenia and Azerbaijan trade blame for recent attacks, the manufacturing and distribution of military drones, along with other weaponry, illustrate the heavy-handed role of the US, Turkish, and Israeli governments in this conflict, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. Armenia has reportedly downed both Turkish and Israeli drones in recent days.

According to a number of reports in Israeli media, Elbit Systems, an Israeli private arms contractor, sold weapons to Azerbaijan, including armed drones. This weaponry has since helped shift the military balance of power in this conflict toward Azerbaijan, allowing them to act more forcefully, and at times with impunity.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev back in 2016 also said that his country had bought $4.85 billion in defense equipment from Israel.

Even more recently, Amnesty International has claimed that an Israeli-made cluster bomb, banned under international law, was fired by the Azerbaijan military.

US ally Turkey, according to a report by Reuters, has seen “military exports to its ally Azerbaijan rise six-fold this year, with sales of drones and other military equipment rising to $77 million last month alone before fighting broke.”

The US has also provided direct support. A report in Defense News highlights how the Pentagon and State Department have granted a “range of aid to Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

The Defense News article also chronicles three of the most recent and lucrative military contracts between the Department of Defense, US private military contractors, and the government of Azerbaijan.

Screengrab taken from a section of a Defense News Article Published on October 6th, 2020 with the Headline: “Democrats urge halt to security aid to Azerbaijan in Armenia conflict.”

These facts are often not mentioned in the mainstream American media, which instead focuses attention on the Russian arms provided to both the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Additionally, NATO says “it is not part of conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh,” despite the fact that NATO’s second-largest military, Turkey, has so far offered strong military and diplomatic support for Azerbaijan.

According to an AP report, Turkey “has vowed to support longtime ally Azerbaijan ‘on the battlefield or the negotiating table,’ if needed.”

The AP report goes on to say: “Turkey is also Azerbaijan’s third-largest supplier of military equipment after Russia and Israel. It is known to have sold drones and rocket launchers.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has previously reported that upwards of 850 Turkish-backed Syrian fighters have arrived in Azerbaijan to support them in this conflict.

Turkey now may be on the precipice of sending their own military forces to Azerbaijan if requested by their Azeri allies.

Both the US and Russia have recently worked together, as well as independently, to negotiate a political settlement to this dispute. On Oct. 23, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, held separate talks in Washington, DC, with the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Then, on Oct. 25, the State Department announced a fragile ceasefire, an agreement that was very soon broken, with both sides blaming one another, according to a report in the AP.

These peace efforts on the part of the US and Russia have so far proven unsuccessful for any real length of time, with a number of previously negotiated ceasefires broken within hours of signing, further fuelling a humanitarian crisis.

With this brief historical and current political context in mind, we spoke with Danny Sjursen, a US Army officer, graduate of and educator at West Point, and contributing editor at Antiwar.com, among other publications. Danny’s recent series of articles about the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh explain why it’s important for people in the US and around the world to understand the conflict from an anti-war perspective.

Our conversation with Sjursen took place on Oct. 16. The transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

—-

Andrew Corkery: Thank you so much for joining us, Danny. So why is the fighting starting up again, 26 years after the fraught ceasefire negotiations by Russia? Why is this the time for fighting to resume?

Sjursen: I think that there’s really three key factors. The most important one is, first, Azerbaijan is stronger than it used to be. It has always had more people. Now it has a lot more money. Caspian oil reserves, natural gas pipelines that have been built, mostly funded by Western oil companies, and built by Western oil companies, has given them a whole lot of money. So they now spend 3.5 times as much as Armenia on guns on arms. And they’ve imported 20 times as much as Armenia over like the last six years. So the scales have tipped.

Second major change: Turkey is off the rails. Okay. Sultan Erdogan has gone beyond the other Turkish leaders who vaguely supported their Azeri Turkic brother, and this guy’s been flexing his muscles in Syria and Libya And in the eastern Mediterranean, you name it, right.

And so he’s taking a full on position in support of Azerbaijan. I mean, he’s even been saying there shouldn’t be a truce. I mean, the truth is that the truce has broken down with sides attacking one another still.

Two women walk past a large image of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev shaking hands displayed on a huge screen in the Kecioren district of Ankara on October 21, 2020. – The origins of a flareup in fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh that has now killed hundreds and threatens to involve regional powers Turkey and Russia are hotly contested and difficult to independently verify. Both sides accuse the other of striking first on September 27 over the ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan. (Photo by Adem ALTAN / AFP) (Photo by ADEM ALTAN/AFP via Getty Images)

The third one has to do with Russia and the United States. In the United States, Russia now is a straight up bad boy at the moment. Okay, villain, arch nemesis, everything that they’re involved in is bad by virtue of the fact that it’s done by a Russian. If Moscow does it, it’s meddling. If anyone else does it, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. The point here is that it’s a very big change from 1994 when the US was trying to work their way into the Russia society and economy diplomatically with the new President Boris Yeltsin at the time.

American President Bill Clinton laughs at Boris Yeltsin’s jokes during a joint news conference in Hyde Park, New York. | Location: Hyde Park, New York, USA. (Photo by © Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Corkery: Right, so you mentioned Turkey, but could you just describe more about why Americans should care about this conflict, and how that fits into the geopolitics of this situation in how certain countries like the US, Turkey, Israel in particular are currently fueling this conflict? Why is that, how did that come to be, and how is the media miss understanding this issue?

Sjursen: So there has generally been a geoplical tilt of US foreign policy towards favoring Azerbaijan. And I think that’s important and driven by two things. One is the encircling of Russia with NATO and all this anti Moscow talk domestically in the US.

The second point is, especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when oil was king, this desire on the part of the US to tap the Azeri resources. So we’ll look the other way. Even though for example there’s a mini-Stalinist authoritarian cult of personality, family dynasty in charge there, the Aliyevs. So the US will look past that and the human rights and will kind of back them vaguely.

Now, the problem here for Armenia is—they do have a lobbying organization in the United States, just go to Kim Kardashian’s twitter account, and you will see this is a woman who cares about Nagorno-Karabakh.

I’m not even making fun of her. I mean, there’s some people who are interested. There’s been protests in Hollywood about it, and that’s where a main Armenian American population is. But they have no oil. They have no oil, and they have a defense agreement with the Russians. They’re part of their NATO which is way less strong, way less aggressive. It’s called the CSTO, Collective Security Treaty Organization.

But here is really what the mainstream media is missing.The Azeri’s big brother supporters are the Turks. And they’re all in for Azerbaijan at this point. The Armenians’ big brother supporters are the Russians. Now, if you listen to enough Western media, they equate those two. So in other words, both Armenia and Azerbaijan have a patron, and in the view of Western media, Russia’s worse. So hey, it’s a wash. But the reality is Russia is way more circumspect, way more cautious, and way more restrained, in Nagorno-Karabakh at least. The Russians will look for reasons not to support Armenia. They don’t want to intervene with their military.

They could use this treaty, CSTO, with Armenia and other former Soviet countries, their version of NATO. And they could use that to roll in tanks. Now, whether that would be a good move or not is another debate. The point is they don’t think it’s a good move, not just tactically but politically.

One would think that the Iranians would back the Azeris. For example, 20% of Iranian people are Azeri ethnic Iranians. Iran is not an homogenous Persian state. That’s a myth. This means because of the large population, there are considerably more Azeri ethnic people in Iran then there are in Azerbaijan, which is another reason why one might think that Iran might tilt towards Azerbaijan. But they don’t, and they traditionally haven’t.

Iran doesn’t lean directly towards close relations with Azerbaijan because they don’t want a refugee crisis over their borders. So they don’t want Azerbaijan to overreach geopolitically, which they are now with this conflict with Armenia. It’s destabilizing.

Iran is also actually a little afraid of nascent separatism among their own Azeri population in northern Iran. For example, like an international Azeri community coming together. They want to tamp that down and control things from Iran, and it’s a Persian-dominated government.

Then there is the Israeli factor. Not often reported, especially in American media, but lots in the Israeli media, because Azerbaijan is tight with Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, tight, tight, tight. They buy a ton of arms from them. Israeli drones are killing Armenians today, suicide [drones], which is, you know, there’s like kamikazes. Fascinating that the Israelis would be using those. But nevertheless, they have supplied that, and there has even been a lot of talk of the Israeli intelligence Mossad being in Azerbaijan, which to some extent they probably are.

The Iranian position is that Israel is trying to encircle them, and get a base from which to do either regime change or subversive operations, which is not crazy, because if you read Israeli newspapers, I read them every single day on this issue on my news alerts, the Israelis admitted, they’re like, no, yeah, this is great. We like these Azeri people, they’re our friends, they’re Muslim, they’re really close to Iran, what a helpful thing.

And so Israeli planes are flying back and forth with arms and people. So that’s that’s important to understand, because Iran’s role in this conflict, also like the Russians, has been pretty restrained. In fact, if you look at the issue in general, the patrons Turkey and Israel, who are working their proxies that are vaguely connected to the West, are way more aggressive than the supposed Western media bad boys of Iran and Russia.

Corkery: Now, in describing this conflict, the media often refers to it as a “frozen conflict” flaring up again now. But why is it important to understand in particular, in your view, that this is a conflict that the United States need not be involved in militarily?

Sjursen: The US sees this conflict through a Cold War lens. We put on these Cold War-era goggles all the time. I mean, the arrested development of US strategic thinking is as frozen as this frozen conflict. This frozen thinking of believing that every conflict vaguely near Russia or not, that’s in the Caucasus or the Middle East, or Eastern Europe, has to be all about Russia.

Not to say that Russia has no interest in this region, because clearly they do and should if it’s close to them. But thinking they always have malign intentions, that it’s all about some sort of Russian great power politics and a desire to recreate their empire, is wrong. I don’t think Russia thinks it’s a good move strategically to get more involved militarily. It’s not in their interest. It’s only going to inflame the insurgency in the North Caucasus. isolate them further with the West with more sanctions, etc. And, frankly, I don’t think that they think they have as big of a dog in the fight as we think they do.

The more America looks at this as a Cold War conflict, or looks at this as a NATO conflict where they have to back Turkey, which luckily, I think anymore the Trump administration is pulling back from a bit. Trump said nice things about Erdogan and loves dictators like him. But I think that’s partly because ‘Madcap’ Erdogan and Turkey are legitimately all over the place, playing the Russians and Americans off one another at times. For example, Erdogan will buy Russian air defense systems, which means he can’t buy F35 planes from the U.S because they are totally incompatible. He’ll almost shoot French ships in the eastern Mediterranean over oil reserves.

But then he’ll also do something that totally angers Russia, whether it’s in Syria or Libya, where they’re on opposite sides of a civil war, and now where they’re on opposite sides in Nagorno-Karabakh. With that important context in mind, to get back to the larger question, you asked, this conflict is 7,000 miles away from the United States. I can’t see anything for the US to be involved with in this conflict besides diplomacy, where we would honestly come out and say we don’t have a dog in the fight. Attempting to be truly fair arbiters is really the only role we could have.

If anyone’s going to drive this conflict to be worse and even wider than it already is, it will be the Turks. The conflict is already really bad and it’s already big, But if the Turks make it worse, then that means, by extension, it’s also NATO and the US making it worse. And won’t that be fun? When a whole lot of thousands of civilians die because of bad behavior by NATO, not by Moscow, on the CSTO. You know, you say that kind of stuff in American media today, you get yourself in trouble, and you don’t get invited on MSNBC, but I’m sorry, I think we have to be intellectually consistent.

Corkery: One of the things that you alluded to before that I wanted to take head on now is that there are clearly oil and gas resources in this region that the United States and other regional players, such as Russia and Turkey, are really interested and invested in. These resources are related to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in a political and economic sense.

Could you talk more about how key oil and gas resources are at play here, and how American and Western companies are involved in that as well?

Sjursen: Energy resources allow the US to dominate the key areas of the world, including parts of Eurasia and East Asia, for example. But in Azerbaijan, look, it’s an alphabet soup. Following the acronym, BTC, the name of the pipeline, the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. Baku is the capital of Azerbaijan, which is the source of all this Caspian energy.

Workers lay a section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline near the Sangachal terminal near Baku, 11 August 2003. The BTC pipeline which is to pass through Georgia to Turkey’s mediterranean coast will cost some 2.9 Billion dollars (2.53 Billion Euros) and is under attack from campaigners who say it is a threat to the region’s ecology. AFP PHOTO/ANADOLU AJANSI/RIZA OZEL (Photo credit should read RIZA OZEL/AFP via Getty Images)

That BTC pipeline is, in some sense, a multinational conglomerate created and fueled by Western countries and companies that have funded it over the years.

The BTC pipeline and the Western interest invested in it are a path to isolate Russia. It’s about vertical versus horizontal—Which way is the energy going to go? Is it going to go horizontal to Europe? Or is it going to go vertical up to Moscow, and then to Europe?

The American position has been to cut out Armenia, and by extension, cut out their big brother, the Russians. To that point, there were two major deals in the late—mid- to late 1990s. The previous president of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, right before he died, came to the White House, and shook then Vice President Al Gore’s hand, and signed an oil and gas energy deal together with Gore and did a press conference.

WASHINGTON, : President of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev (2nd-L) and US Vice President Al Gore ® shake hands during a signing ceremony of multi-billion dollar oil argeements between Azerbaijan and US oil companies 01 August at the White House. Azerbijani Foreign Minister Hassanov (L) and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (2nd-R) watch. Aliyev met earlier with US President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office. AFP PHOTO Joyce NALTCHAYAN (Photo credit should read JOYCE NALTCHAYAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Gore said all these nice things about him, which I made the point in my recent article about that being an inconvenient truth about his career. The great environmentalist who makes the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” was dealing in oil and gas energy, but he was working for Clinton.

Corkery: We are less than two weeks away from the 2020 presidential election, but nothing really regarding this conflict has come up from either the Trump or Biden campaigns, even though this story is a major foreign policy issue for the reasons you have already described.

Why is neither presidential campaign talking about this issue between Azerbaijan and Armenia, given how the US and its supposed allies, such as Israel, Turkey, and the UK, along with their private military contractors, have been or are currently involved in perpetuating this conflict?

Sjursen: I think that’s a really important question as we approach Election Day. The first reason that people aren’t talking about this, and I’m being serious, is not a joke, nobody knows about it. It’s obscure, obscure to obscure. The reason I’m talking to you about this is because I am a hyper geek, I love this stuff. I mean, I hate the fighting, but like, I’m into learning about it.

But If you read most of the explainers by the mainstream media, they’re trying their best, but they fired their foreign bureaus. And these explainers read like Wikipedia entries with a little bit of anti-Russia sprinkled in. Nobody knows about this. There’s a few people, I’m sure, in the basement of the State Department who know all about this ‘frozen conflict’ and predicted the whole thing, and no one listened to them. And they told them to go get their stapler, like it’s office space, and they got moved into the basement.

But the reality is Trump can’t find it on a map. Biden can probably find it on a map, because he’s a little more engaged in foreign policy, but the media doesn’t know what’s going on, either. So there’s a lack of expertise. So no one wants to look stupid. Because next thing you know, you’re Herman Cain, and you’re talking about ‘who’s the president of Becky, Becky, Stan,’ right? No one wants to be in that position.

And the second thing is I don’t think there’s a lot of partisan points to be gained on it.

Both Trump and Biden don’t think this is something that’s going to resonate with the American people, with voters. This is one in particular where I cannot see a major difference between a Biden policy on this and a Trump policy on this.

Corkery: So in terms of peace negotiations, could you close out this interview by talking about any prospects for a resolution to the conflict and how the regional and international actors like Turkey, Russia, and the US are involved in that process?

Sjursen: To be brief and clear: If there’s war, Turkey is going to be responsible in some way, a NATO member state with the second-largest army in NATO. If there’s peace, Putin will be responsible. I mean, think about that for a second. I mean, I abhor the Russian system of government. I don’t like anything that’s vaguely authoritarian. But oh, my goodness, what a situation. If this thing gets solved, or put back in the freezer, which is about the best we can hope for right now, it will be Putin playing King Solomon and cutting the Nagorno-Karabakh baby in half.

https://therealnews.com/how-the-us-turkey-and-israel-are-fueling-a-forgotten-war-between-armenia-and-azerbaijan?fbclid=IwAR2A9SnxivhvukLLVprEnWoDXfKEGKfXUDwBO61zcGFylzcvtKvNe8e32Z8

[Yervant1]

Carlotta Gall's reporting is not only from a distance, it's outright biased diatribe. When I read her article couples of weeks ago, I couldn't continue because I was about to break my keyboard. She is nothing but a pen hired for defamation of Armenians. Shame on you New York Times! I wonder who is behind this? We Armenians know it too well, same culprits.

Business Insider

Nov 1 2020

An Open Letter to the New York Times from the Armenian General Benevolent Union

PRESS RELEASE GlobeNewswire

New York, Nov. 01, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- “Professor Samuel Train Dutton, Secretary of the Committee on Armenian Atrocities, made public yesterday a preliminary statement of the committee outlining the result of its investigation of the terrible conditions existing among the Armenians.”

This is the first sentence in a New York Times article published on September 27, 1915, reflecting a time when journalism and integrity went hand in hand; a time when the Armenians living as a minority in the Ottoman Empire desperately needed allies to amplify their voice and expose to the world the unimaginable horrors of beheadings, killings and ethnic cleansings at the hand of the Ottoman Turks. The New York Times, a revered and trusted source of information, objective analysis and dissemination of truth, was unafraid to tell the world of these heinous acts perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks during the Armenian Genocide.

Where is that same commitment to accurate reporting now, when 105 years from the exact date of this article’s publication, Azerbaijan launched a calculated, strategically engineered attack on Armenians living in the territory of Nagorno Karabakh? With ample proof and peer journalists reporting evidence of coordination and collaboration between Azerbaijan and Turkey, the purchase of weapons from multiple other parties in advance and the hiring of jihadist mercenaries from Syria, the New York Times instead decided to paint a picture almost exclusively from the unsubstantiated lens of the perpetrators, lacking any investigative support or objective analysis.

In multiple reports from New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall, who has been head of your bureau in Istanbul, Turkey for years, the pattern of victim blaming and glazing over important parts of the accurate narrative has not gone unnoticed by your loyal readership. Curiously, not a single letter in response to any of Gall’s articles has been made public.

By stating that the Armenian government “accused” Azerbaijan of mounting a planned offensive, Gall omits a critical fact: it has been categorically verified that Azerbaijan started this war. The coverage states that “both sides were poised and ready for more by September,” failing to mention that Azerbaijan and Turkey stocked up on arms and brought in mercenaries from Syria weeks and months before its attack. This does not square with the assertion that both sides were prepared. Furthermore, stating that this war “threatens to draw in Turkey,” blatantly ignores, again, factual evidence that Turkey is not “drawn in,” but rather is driving this war.

 

The list of other unsubstantiated claims is long and cumulatively crafts a narrative in which an independent republic of 150,000 Armenians backed by a nation of three million would actively choose to ignite a war with a country of 10 million backed by a country of 85 million that also happens to be a NATO member. The logic is simply lacking with this chronicle.

To be sure, war is an ugly affair, with casualties on both sides. The truth, which only has one side, shouldn’t be one of them.

On behalf of the world’s largest Armenian non-profit organization with over a century of experience working to uplift the lives of Armenian people everywhere, we demand better from the New York Times. Equally important, your readers deserve better and many – Armenian or not – have been poorly served by this consistent lack of investigative journalism that is necessary to distinguish fact from strategically designed disinformation.

If the New York Times is committed to reporting the unvarnished reality as it did 105 years ago, we invite you to travel to Armenia for an extended period and embed a journalist in Nagorno Karabakh as you have in Azerbaijan. Report the truth from the front line, not only from the perspective of someone who, despite her impressive career as a war journalist, is only reporting what she sees from a distance.

As Americans, as Armenians, and as readers who value principled reporting, we expect a more thorough and accurate approach to covering this crisis in a very important region of the world. Restore the integrity of the New York Times before your credibility and reputation are tarnished beyond repair.

 

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/an-open-letter-to-the-new-york-times-from-the-armenian-general-benevolent-union-1029750326?fbclid=iwar2j_4ywzinfddx909s9t90txgsakdccareakn7koqq3rwnjvl5qw5aeuiw#

 

[Yervant1]

Public Radio of Armenia

Nov 1 2020

Without Turkey’s provocation this war would not have started, Armenian PM tells Al Jazeera

Without the provocation of Turkey this war would not have started, it would not have happened, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with AL Jazeera.

“Based on the already internationally accepted fact, Turkey has recruited mercenaries, terrorists and transferred them to the conflict zone. High-ranking Turkish military officers are involved in the war against Karabakh,” the Prime Minister said.

He stressed that this is the _expression_ of Turkey’s imperialistic policy. “We see what policy Turkey is pursuing in Syria, Iraq, the Mediterranean Sea and the South Caucasus. Turkey pursues a policy of restoration of the Ottoman Empire.”

The full text of the interview is provided below:

Al Jazeera – Good morning. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is our guest at today’s special edition. Mr. Prime Minister, welcome and thank you for talking to Al Jazeera.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – Thank you.

Al Jazeera – Mr. Prime Minister, could you please brief us on the official relationship between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – First of all, I would like to state that Armenians have lived in Nagorno-Karabakh for several millennia. Armenians constituted over 80% of the population in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region. I would also like to state that there is a huge Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh: churches and other monuments, some dating back to the 5th century. The first Armenian school was established in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In 1988, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh tried to reinstate their rights, as part of a democratization process going on in the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union was being formed, Nagorno-Karabakh, with its 80% of Armenian population, was handed over to Soviet Azerbaijan and not to Soviet Armenia as a result of Stalin’s arbitrary decision.

When democratization began in the Soviet Union, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh tried to restore their rights through political means, to reunite with the Republic of Armenia, to which the Soviet Union and Azerbaijan responded with brutal violence against the peaceful population. I am referring to the following, our relationship is with the people, the people who have lived, are now living and will live in Karabakh.

Al Jazeera – How can we describe Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, where do I go when traveling from Armenia to Karabakh?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence later, we call it the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh, where there is an elected president, there is a parliament, and there are also state agencies. It is not considered the territory of the Republic of Armenia. The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is a proclaimed state, which, unfortunately, has not yet received international recognition.

Al Jazeera: Mr. Prime Minister, you talked about the historical aspect. The Azerbaijanis submitted documented evidence that those lands belong to them. Talking about international law, what could you say about the UN Security Council resolution?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – I would like to draw your attention to the following fact: if we interpret international law the same way as Azerbaijan does, we should be able to say that Azerbaijan is part of the Soviet Union. But there is no such independent state anymore. If you can say that the Soviet Union does not exist, therefore, Azerbaijan cannot be part of the Soviet Union.

Similarly, Soviet Azerbaijan does not exist anymore for the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, which used to be part of the now defunct Soviet Azerbaijan. As for the UN Security Council resolutions, they were adopted in a specific situation; they described a specific situation relating to the conflict between the Armenian self-defense forces of Nagorno-Karabakh, the armed forces of Azerbaijan, and its ensuing outcome. What is described in the Security Council resolution has an important context. I have already said that Azerbaijan responded to the absolutely peaceful political struggle with force, as it does today, by bombing and shelling peaceful settlements.

In order to protect those peaceful settlements from rocket fire, the Nagorno-Karabakh self-defense forces were obliged to establish a security zone.

Al Jazeera – When hostilities broke out, you said that Armenia might unilaterally recognize Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence. What can this change now?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – That issue has been and is on our agenda, but the main concern for us is not so much that the Republic of Armenia recognizes the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh, because the Republic of Armenia can always do that. It is very important that other members of the international community recognized it. And today we think that this issue is more urgent, considering the current situation, taking into account the humanitarian catastrophe in which Nagorno-Karabakh finds itself; taking into account the indisputable fact that Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan means Nagorno-Karabakh without Armenians. We believe that in this case, the formula of “remedial secession” should be applied, and the international community should recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Al Jazeera – You talked about ethnic cleansing. Azeris accuse you of changing the identity of Karabakh, destroying cemeteries and mosques, changing its name to Artsakh.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – No graves were destroyed. A mosque in Shushi was recently renovated in Nagorno-Karabakh with modern technologies. Mosques are being paid special attention by the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities. And if you go to Shushi, you will see a magnificent restored mosque, unless the Azerbaijanis shelled it already. Why do I say that? Because the Ghazanchetsots Church in Shushi, the Armenian Church, was precision-striked and is now in a dilapidated condition.

Al Jazeera – I have already visited Shushi and filmed the mosque. Azerbaijan accuses you of rebuilding the mosque and changing its identity, not religiously, but historically. According to Azerbaijan, it had its own historical identity.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – I know that the mosque was restored under the supervision of Shiite clerics and specialists. And it could not be otherwise. In other words, it was restored under the supervision of Muslim clerics, theologians, specialists, following their plans and advice.

Al Jazeera – Were there any Azerbaijanis?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – I repeat, all this happened under the control of specialists. Those specialists were not from Armenia or Karabakh, they were from abroad. I cannot say that there were Azerbaijanis. As far as I know – my knowledge in this area is not very big, unfortunately – it is a Shiite mosque, and Shiite clerics and experts joined our Armenian benefactors in the restoration activities.

Al Jazeera – A ceasefire has already been declared three times in Nagorno-Karabakh. Why does the ceasefire fail every time?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – Because Azerbaijan is violating the ceasefire. Because Azerbaijan and Turkey, in fact, have declared that they are not going to stop hostilities. If we go back to the public statements, we will see why the hostilities do not stop. Because we recorded the facts, and it is now an internationally recognized fact, for example, that Turkey transferred mercenaries from Syria to Azerbaijan to launch an attack on Nagorno-Karabakh.

And these terrorists are not transported to these regions for peace or a ceasefire. Terrorists and mercenaries are being transferred to go wage war.

Al Jazeera – The President of Azerbaijan Aliyev said that you did not present any facts that there are mercenaries in the conflict zone.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – In this day and age, the Internet is filled with such facts and proofs. By the way, you know that videos recorded on smartphones allow their geolocation, you can find out where it happened with certain programs. And we see that terrorists filmed themselves after committing their terrorist acts. The footage appeared on the Internet, and with geo-location we can prove and spot the place where that shooting took place.

And in general, we have presented a lot of evidence. But even before us presenting our facts, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Russian Federation, France, and the United States officially recognized and acknowledged that mercenaries and terrorists are involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone. I think this issue is already an internationally confirmed fact, that says it all.

Al Jazeera: After coming to power, you expressed a strong position, you said that we should work to find a solution acceptable to the people of Armenia, to the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, and to the people of Azerbaijan. Do you think it is possible to reach a solution through negotiations that will be acceptable to the people of Azerbaijan?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – Yes, I have proposed this. I have said that we must find a solution to the conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh that is acceptable to the people of Armenia, to the people of Karabakh and to the people of Azerbaijan. And, yes, I am the first leader involved in the negotiation process, to say that any solution to the conflict must be acceptable to the other side as well. But why didn’t we go further that way? Because the President of Azerbaijan refused to adopt the same approach to the resolution . Because they based their stance on the logic that any solution to the issue should only be acceptable to the people of Azerbaijan. This is the position that has led to such a situation.

Al Jazeera – You said you were ready for painful compromises. What did you mean by that?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – I said two days ago (on October 26) that Armenia, yes, is ready for compromises. Compromises are always painful. But that is the whole issue, what does compromise mean? Compromise means the willingness to step back from a threshold you have set, that is, the willingness to lower the benchmark you have set. However, when Armenia accepts to lower the bar to create a mutually acceptable framework, that becomes unacceptable for Azerbaijan, and the latter demands even more.

Al Jazeera – What threshold are we talking about?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – This is not new, this has been the policy for many years. I can refer to the following instance: what happened in Kazan in 2011 is a good example. I have already mentioned that the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh has declared its independence. And, in fact, it is the benchmark that Nagorno Karabakh, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian people rely on. In 2011, the Armenian government that was in power in that time, was willing to hand over territories to Azerbaijan. And within that context, Nagorno-Karabakh was supposed to receive an “intermediate status” , so that in the future, after the return of the internally displaced people from Nagorno-Karabakh, a referendum would be held to determine the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Al Jazeera – When talking about the return of the internally displaced, do you mean only from Azerbaijan or from Armenia and Azerbaijan?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – We are talking about the return of the internally displaced people from the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh, and from the zone of conflict, in general. And this is a serious benchmark. After the threshold was lowered, a document was drafted, in agreement with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs. But at the last moment, Azerbaijan rejected that document. And this shows why the conflict has not yet been resolved. Every time the Armenian side shows some flexibility, it becomes unacceptable for Azerbaijan.

Al Jazeera – in terms of Russia’s positionning: President Putin has said that he will not stand by either side. What do you have to say to that?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – Russia is a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group and a mediatior, and hence, must maintain a certain neutrality. And this is understandable.

Al Jazeera – There are appraisals in Armenia that after coming to power, your relationship with Russia, a close ally to Armenia, has weakened and that you are more in favor of the West, which has shifted the paradigms. How do you react to that accusation?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – You know, this is an absurd accusation, because Russia has been Armenia’s strategic ally and remains Armenia’s strategic ally. Russia is not neutral in terms of being a strategic ally of Armenia. The Russian authorities and President Putin repeatedly stated that Russia will fulfill its security-related commitments towards the Republic of Armenia, if necessary. As for the Karabakh issue, I have already said that Russia has been a co-chairing, and mediating country since the formation of the Minsk Group, and thus had an obligation to maintain neutrality. And so far his status has not changed.

Al Jazeera – What is your relationship with the West? You have not spoken to the U.S. President since the start of hostilities. Do you think that points to anything?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – I have had phone talks and I keep in close touch with the President of France, with the U.S. Secretary of State, with the U.S. President’s Security Advisor. In general, we are working to present the essence of the issue to the international community. And the essence of what is going on is as follows: we can say with confidence that without the provocation of Turkey this war would not have started, it would not have happened.

And again, I want to state that based on the already internationally accepted fact, Turkey has recruited mercenaries, terrorists and transferred them to the conflict zone. High-ranking Turkish military officers are involved in the war against Karabakh. I want to emphasize that this is not an accident at all. In my opinion, this is the _expression_ of Turkey’s imperialistic policy. We see what policy Turkey is pursuing in Syria, Iraq, the Mediterranean Sea and the South Caucasus. Turkey pursues a policy of restoration of the Ottoman Empire. And I have no doubt that the expansion that is now being attempted to the Mediterranean, the South Caucasus, Syria, Iraq, the whole Arab world is viewed by Turkey as a potential subordinate of the Ottoman Empire.

I have no doubt that if the international community, including Europe and the Arab world, does not properly assess this situation and respond to it, we will see Turkey’s expansionist policy towards the south. I am glad that there are many Arab countries that accurately assess the geopolitical situation, and take the necessary political and strategic preventive measures.

Al Jazeera – Azerbaijan declares that you have lost territories. Can you get back those lands or not?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – Yesterday (October 27) I delivered a message, I said the following. In essence, Nagorno-Karabakh, an unrecognized state, is currently fighting against international terrorists, Azerbaijani and Turkish Air forces and Special Forces.

According to some reports, Special Forces from Pakistan are taking part in the fighting. And it is obvious that the attack sought a swift victory over Nagorno-Karabakh by means of a blitzkrieg. But the small unrecognized republic, which has withstood for a month now, is fighting against huge international powerhouses and is still holding.

And every day of continued war will bring frustration to Azerbaijan, and the Azerbaijani society. Because of what you were mentioning earlier, that the Azerbaijani authorities have fed their society with so much victorious information that they have been waiting, every day, and for a long time now, for the end of the war, and their final victory. And they are just waiting for that news.

I want to say that they will not get that news. And they will be stuck until they recognize the legitimate right of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to self-determination, until we all make sincere efforts to reach a constructive diplomatic solution.

Al Jazeera – Regarding now the transparency of the information related to the hostilities. There are maps that show what Azerbaijan has taken under its control. How transparent are you in this matter?

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – We have published maps, and we give our society the necessary information. Our society is aware of everything. I cannot say the same about the Azerbaijani society.

Al Jazeera – Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for the interview.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – Thank you.

https://en.armradio.am/2020/11/01/without-turkeys-provocation-this-war-would-not-have-started-armenian-pm-tells-al-jazeera/

[Yervant1]

Public Radio of Armenia

Nov 1 2020

Armenians to rally in front of The New York Times building

The Armenian Youth Federation will march to the The New York Times building in New York City to demand an immediate investigation and retraction of articles by the New York Times’ Turkey Bureau Chief, Carlotta Gall, regarding the conflict in Artsakh, reports the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

“We demand that the New York Times investigate the sources for Ms. Gall’s claims, whether there was enough supporting authority to promulgate them, whether the conditions of the reporting allowed unbiased and accurate coverage of the Artsakh conflict, and (if not) why the New York Times failed to disclose such conditions to its readership,” ANCA said.

https://en.armradio.am/2020/11/01/armenians-to-rally-in-front-of-the-new-york-times-building/

[Yervant1]

Public Radio of Armenia

Nov 1 2020

Armenian side possesses information on the use of mercenaries, promises “further surprises” to Azerbaijan and Turkey

Today, the Azerbaijani troops, terrorist groups, mercenaries, and bandits continued their offensive operations in different directions, mainly in small groups, with focal attacks, using artillery, air strikes in some places, and tactical air forces, official representative of Armenia’s Ministry of Defense Artsun Hovhannisyan told a daily briefing today.

He said no serious positional changes were registered in any direction, and added that the battles continue.

The Armenian side today showed a second captured Syrian mercenary, who confessed how he was recruited, paid and used with a group of other fighters.

In this regard, Artsrun Hovhannisyan said: “A number of surprises are awaiting Turkey and Azerbaijan. No matter how hard they try to deny recruiting mercenary terrorists and using them in the military actions, we know very well and we have complete information about where, in which place they are being used and what they are tasked with.”

“The fact that Azerbaijan is trying to solve problems on the first line with the help of mercenaries testifies to the fact that the potential of Azerbaijan’s land forces has been seriously damaged, and the mercenaries are the major hope,” he added.

https://en.armradio.am/2020/11/01/armenia-possesses-information-on-the-use-of-mercenaries-promises-further-surprises-to-azerbaijan-and-turkey/