The truth about Syria

[Yervant1]

CHECHEN PRESIDENT: KASSAB ATTACKERS ARE FOLLOWING THE WEST'S ORDERS

Syrian Arab News Agency SANA, Syria
April 1 2014

Apr 01, 2014

Moscow, (SANA) Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov expressed strong
denunciation of the terrorist groups' attack on Kassab city on Syria's
northern border with Turkey, saying those who attacked the city are
following orders to demolish the Syrian state and weaken the Islamic
countries.

Writing on his Instagram page, Kadyrov said "those who committed this
crime have been raised, fed and armed by the West and are carrying
out the orders to destroy Syria and debilitate the Islamic countries".

He added that the "jihadists" who attacked Kassab "have nothing to
do with Islam".

Armed terrorist groups launched last week an assault against Kassab
city in the coastal province of Lattakia under the cover and support
of Erdogan's government which has facilitated the entry of the gunmen
into Lattakia northern countryside.

H. Said

http://sana.sy/eng/21/2014/04/01/536566.htm

[Arpa]

Pastor SULEIMAN?**

This is too serious, otherwise it would fit under Comedistan. Is this one of those silly tricks that Spell-Check plays?

**It fits, since his church is in the Aleppo district, Armenian enclave Suleimanieh.

Btw. His name is Rev. Harutiun SELIMIAN, the pastor of my one time church-school Bethel. During those days, when among others, Rev. Tigran Andreaasian, **the Hero of Musa Ler was the pastor.

Also note how they spell kasab

**To not forget the father and the grandfather of the present president of Haigazian University Rev. Dr. Paul Haidostian.

http://sana.sy/eng/21/2014/03/31/536411.htm

Pastor Suleiman Visits Displaced Citizens Of Kasab

March 31 2014 Lattakia, (SANA) Head of the Armenian Evangelical Church Pastor

Hartyon Suleiman stressed that Syria's victory will be achieved soon

thanks to its citizens and army which is bravely confronting the

armed terrorist groups.

Visiting a number of Kasab citizens temporarily residing at the Syriac

Orthodox Church in Lattakia to inspect their situation after being

displaced by the armed terrorist groups, Suleiman affirmed the need for

confronting terrorism for displaced citizens to return to their houses.

For his part, Governor of Lattakia Ahmad Sheikh Abdul Kader said that

the governorate is keen to meet the basic needs of the citizens who

were displaced due the acts of the armed terrorist groups.

B. Mousa/ M. Ismael

http://sana.sy/eng/21/2014/03/31/536411.htm

Iknow you cannot understand it, neither can I, but notice how many times he recites the word armaniya

No. This is not his picture.

https://www.google.com/search?q=suleiman+the+magnificent+pictures&biw=1049&bih=437&tbm=isch&imgil=UIvd_ER2i5xDnM%3A%3Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fencrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com%2Fimages%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AANd9GcR7XYAe6wBcfMQalCzeqyY1NCRQl-KjE_mTjl3YLRJEGpaFRl0bCA%3B857%3B1000%3Bl7hY0-v93Xn47M%3Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSuleiman_the_Magnificent&source=iu&usg=__us0DXene9YN9su7vqyKg_DFKFG8%3D&sa=X&ei=Lo88U7DQIaimsASx0ICgBg&ved=0CCgQ9QEwAA#facrc=_&imgrc=UIvd_ER2i5xDnM%3A%3BVshb6DNghT66fM%3Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fe%2Fe9%2FEmperorSuleiman.jpg%3Bhttp%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F16th_century%3B857%3B1000

[MosJan]

href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203698075952865 Hartounian

[MosJan]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203698075952865

[MosJan]

[MosJan]

http://youtu.be/4NFe3tswJ34

[MosJan]

 

 

ushadir lseq verjin 10 barer@ vor asum e ...

[Yervant1]

One time I had respect to Miss. Power but now she is nothing but a knifing, lying piece of garbage. Read the bolded part of this article.

18:25 03/04/2014 » IN THE WORLD

Amb. Power: Most UN Security Council members concerned about Kessab



Most United Nations Security Council members have “raised the issue” of the recent takeover of the historically Armenian town of Kessab, Syria, and urged the world body “to do more to meet the needs of these people,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and members of a key House Appropriations panel during a Congressional hearing, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).
“We join with Armenians across California and around America in thanking Congressman Schiff for raising the plight of the Armenians driven out of Kessab with Ambassador Power,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “We appreciate Ambassador Power’s statement that Kessab is ‘an issue of huge concern,’ and value her explanation to Congress about the UN Security Council’s efforts to help the Armenian civilians driven from their homes by extremist militants. We will continue to work, in partnership with our friends in Congress, to encourage our government to speak directly to the cause of Kessab’s suffering – namely the clear complicity of Turkey in the al-Qaeda linked attack that drove more than 2,000 Armenians from their ancestral homes.”
The ANCA has called on the Senate and House Intelligence committees to investigate Turkey’s role in the recent attacks against the Kessab civilian population. A new action alert has been posted at: http://www.anca.org/savekessab and has received broad support following social media posts by citizens and celebrities alike.
During a question and answer session at the House Appropriations Committee State-Foreign Operations Subcommittee hearing with Ambassador Power, Rep. Schiff asked “About a week ago, the town of Kessab, which is predominantly Armenian Christian, was attacked by Al-Qaeda-linked fighters who had crossed over from Turkey and the town was emptied in a bloody assault. Many of the residents are descendants of the Armenian Genocide and there is particular poignancy in them being targeted in this manner.” Rep. Schiff went on to ask what efforts the United Nations and its agencies are making to address the crisis.
Ambassador Power, noting that the recent attacks on Kessab are a “huge concern,” went on to note that: “Most of the [uN Security] Council members raised the issue of Kessab, calling on the UN to do more, to try to meet the needs of these people. [...] I would note that, unfortunately, the extremist group that appears to have taken hold of that town is not one that the United States and the United Nations overall has a great deal of leverage over. And so, our emphasis now, is on supporting the moderate opposition in Syria that is taking on those extremist groups and making sure that the UN has the funding it needs, and the resources of all kinds that it needs to accommodate [...] in this case, the Syrian Armenian community, as you said, an internally displaced population flow. So, it’s resources, it’s strengthening the moderate opposition which is taking on ISIL – the very group that appears to have taken over that town – making sure that none of the neighbors are giving support to terrorist groups or extremist groups which would aid their efforts in seizures like that, and going on a funding drive internationally because only a very small percentage of the UN funding appeal for Syria generally has been filled at this point.”

Source: Panorama.am

 

[Yervant1]

11:51 03/04/2014 » SOCIETY

Serj Tankian urges to join Call for Congressional Intelligence Inquiry into Kessab Attack

System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian issued an appeal to join him in asking the Senate and House intelligence committees to investigate Turkey’s role in attacks on Kessab‬.
“Please join me in asking our members of congress to demand that the Senate and House intelligence committees investigate Turkey's role in the Al Qaeda linked attacks on the city of Kessab in Syria, where more than 2000 Armenians were driven from their homes. These people were all survivors of the Armenian Genocide who had settled there after the First World War,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Take action here.

Source: Panorama.am

[Yervant1]

Armenian expert in Turkish affairs accuses West of inaction over
Kessab Armenians


YEREVAN, April 3. / ARKA /. An Armenian expert in Turkish affairs has
condemned today Western powers for their failure to respond adequately
to massive violation of rights of ethnic Armenian population of
Kessab, a small town in northwestern Syria bordering Turkey, saying
their passive stance is reminiscent of the 1915 genocide of Armenians
committed by the government of the Ottoman Turkey.

Speaking at a news conference, Ruben Melkonyan, deputy dean of
Oriental Studies department at Yerevan State University, said it is
obvious that the Armenian community of Kessab is set to disappear.

"The fact is that the homes of Armenians were looted, the population
was made to flee. These are the crimes that make a genocide," said
Mekonyan.

Kessab, which is home to over 2,000 ethnic Armenians is located in
Syria's Latakia province, just miles away from Turkey. On March 21,
extremist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda crossed into Syria from
Turkey with the blessing of its authorities and seized the town after
clashes with Syrian government troops.

According to Melkonyan , the Armenian community of Kessab will hardly revive.

"Armenia is deeply concerned over the recent events in ancient town of
Kessab and 12 villages with prevailing Armenian population. All
evidence available and location of the town lead to a conclusion the
recent attacks were made by terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda that
crossed the border from the territory of Turkey," Armenian foreign
minister Edward Nalbandian says in a letter sent to UN secretary
general Ban Ki-Moon.

'The extremist groups desecrated Armenian churches of Kessab and
caused damage to property of local population having left a dismal
picture of egregious human rights violations. Only a couple of aged
people remained being unable to leave the town. These tragic events
jeopardize implementation of UN Security Council resolutions 2139 and
2118 aimed at settlement of the Syrian crisis," says the letter. -0-

- See more at: http://arka.am/en/news/politics/armenian_expert_in_turkish_affairs_accuses_west_of_inaction_over_kessab_armenians_/#sthash.NQc6Ghct.dpuf

[Yervant1]

Voltaire.net
April 5 2014


UN Security Council refuses to condemn Turkey-backed attack on Kassab


The Russian delegation to the United Nations said the Security Council
refused to take a stand on the attack perpetrated against Kassab,
thereby unveiling the support of several of its members for the
actions of Al-Qaeda.

On 21 March, the Turkish army penetrated Syrian territory to introduce
several hundred jihadists, affilitated to the Al-Nusra Front
(Al-Qaeda) and the Army of Islam (pro-Saudi). They seized the town of
Kassab, mainly populated by the Syro- Armenian descendents of the
Turkish massacre survivors 1915. When the Syrian Arab army intervened
to defend the city, the Turkish army downed one of its support
aircraft. The people of Kassab fled under the protection of the Syrian
government in Latakia .

Moreover, the Russian Foreign Ministry called on the representatives
of the externally-based Syrian opposition who participated in the
Geneva 2 Conference to refrain from any contact with terrorist groups.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article183163.html

[Yervant1]

Al-Monitor
April 5 2014

Turkey admits Reyhanli was attacked by al-Qaeda

Author: Tulin Daloglu
Posted April 4, 2014


On May 11, 2013, Reyhanli, a Turkish town on the border with Syria,
was attacked with twin car bombs, leaving behind an official toll of
52 deaths and 146 injuries.


But the mystery of who attacked Reyhanli, marking the worst terrorist
attack this country has ever seen, remained controversial. Here is
why:

On May 25, 2013, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused
the Syrian regime of being behind this attack. Also, referring to a
visit by a group of main opposition Republican People's Party deputies
to a Damascus meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan
said in an accusatory tone, "We have documents in our hands that
clearly prove that those who took the CHP members to Assad are those
who were directly involved in the Reyhanli attack."

The indictment about this attack also pinpointed that THKP/C Acilciler
(Urgency Group, a splinter faction of the Turkish People's Liberation
Party/Front which has had no known activity for the past two decades
at least], which supposedly has direct connection to the Syrian
intelligence service Al-Mukhabarat, carried out this attack. The
Reyhanli indictment contends Mihrac Ural, the leader of the Acilciler,
organized the attack with Syrian intelligence. They were initially
planning to carry out this attack in the capital, Ankara, roughly 700
kilometers [434 miles] from this border area. The trial is still
pending.

Erdogan also talked about the late May-early June Gezi Park protests
as a "continuation of Reyhanli." The prime minister so far has not
publicly blamed anyone other than the Syrian regime to be behind this
attack.

With the Armenian Bar Association's letter to US President Barack
Obama on March 25, the Armenian community is directly accusing Turkey
of being responsible for the radical Islamists' attack in the village
of Kassab in Syria, where there is a significant Armenian population.
On top of that, Armenians are preparing to mark the 99th anniversary
of the Armenian genocide on April 24 and Turkey seems to be changing
its official story about who is responsible for the Reyhanli attack.

Speaking at the 992nd meeting of the Permanent Council of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on March
27, Turkey's Ambassador Tacan Ildem was the first Turkish official to
state that the Reyhanli attack was carried out by al-Qaeda: "More
recently a massive bomb attack in the Reyhanli town center, carried
out by al-Qaeda elements operating out of Syria, caused 52 deaths and
146 injuries," he said. Ildem was responding to the commentary made by
the Armenian Ambassador Arman Kirakossian at the OSCE meeting.

"The Armenian delegation expresses its grave concern over the last
escalation of the situation in north-western Syria, around the ancient
Armenian-populated town of Kassab. In the last few days, Kassab was
attacked from the territory of Turkey by al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist
groups. The brutal cross-border attacks, which also targeted the
civilian population, resulted in evacuation of the local Armenian
population to safer areas," Kirakossian said. "The extremist groups
occupied the town and desecrated Kassab's Armenian Apostolic and three
Armenian Catholic churches. We call on Turkey to take immediate and
effective measures to prevent use of its territory by the terrorist
groups to conduct attacks on Kassab."

Ildem responded by arguing that Turkey is also coming under al-Qaeda
attacks. "I can certainly agree on the degree of concern expressed by
my distinguished Armenian colleague. Nonetheless, to allege before the
Permanent Council that Kassab is under attack from al-Qaeda elements
operating out of Turkey is nonsense. As stated in a press release
issued yesterday by my ministry, we reject it utterly. Turkey has been
a target of al-Qaeda, not a base of operations for it," Ildem said.
"Let us not forget for even a moment that one of the four major
al-Qaeda attacks took place in Istanbul [in November 2003]."

He continued, "Merely days ago, al-Qaeda operatives having infiltrated
Turkey from Syria opened fire on security officials at a roadblock in
the province of Nigde, close to Ankara. They killed one gendarme, one
police officer and one civilian passerby. The culprits are now under
arrest, awaiting trial. Their interrogation led to an operation in
Istanbul where, again, gunfire was opened on law enforcement officers,
wounding three."

Ildem added, "Yet another truth on this matter is that Turkish
authorities, in view of the gravity of the situation on the ground,
have formally approached the relevant UN organizations to inform them
of our preparedness to provide a shelter facility in the Mardin
province, ready in case an urgent evacuation of the civilian
population in Kassab takes place. In other words, diametrically
opposed to what has just been claimed, Turkey has offered a helping
hand to the population of Kassab, indiscriminate of their ethnic or
religious origin, including the Syrian Armenians."

In sum, Turkey needs to clarify its story about who attacked Reyhanli.
The truth surely comes in time, but which one of these stories is
Turkey's truth? Ildem could have easily made his argument without
citing anything about the Reyhanli attack. Why did he make such a
controversial statement, challenging not only the indictment of the
Reyhanli attack but also the country's strong prime minister? These
are questions that deserve answers, because the Turkish people have a
right to know who killed 52 of them in this country's worst terror
attack.

Addressing the Turkish news media on April 4 for the first time after
the AKP's triumphal Sunday local election, however, Erdogan claimed
that he owed the success at the polls to his government's foreign
policy. "We surely got many messages from the poll results, but the
most important is the support extended to our foreign policy," Erdogan
said. "Turkey's peaceful, negotiation-oriented foreign policy in
defense of the rights and the rule of law has once again received full
credit from our nation."

Erdogan also declared on March 31 in his victory speech after the
election, "Syria is now in a war against us." Yet, it is worth noting
that a March 25 audio leak of Turkey's top officials' conversations
suggested that they were arguing about staging an attack from Syria,
making war inevitable.

All that being said, there certainly is serious tension at the Syrian
border, but Turkey is in no war with Syria. When speaking about
anything related to war, it is crucial to get the facts right. Let's
start, therefore, by asking Turkey's prime minister who carried out
the Reyhanli attack, and if it really was al-Qaeda, why he chose to
frame the country's main opposition as the enemy.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/reyhanli-qaeda-bombing-attack-admits.html

[Yervant1]

Dissecting Kessab: What is (and Isn't) Happening in the Historical Armenian Town

By MassisPost
Updated: April 5, 2014

Originally published at www.ianyanmag.com.


The heartbreaking news came quickly ` the ethnic Armenian town of
Kessab in Syria, one of immense historic significance to Armenians had
been taken over by hardline Islamists as residents were forced to
flee. Rebels advanced to Bashar Al Assad's hometown province, but
there was more disturbing news ` the Turkish air force shot down a
regime war plane trying to bombard the rebel advancement by al Nusra
Front, al Qaeda's offshoot in Syria, reported theWall Street Journal.

The civil war that had plagued the Middle Eastern country for three
years had finally caught up to the border. Since it began, over
140,000 civilians have lost their lives, an estimated 9 million
refugees have left the country now enveloped by rubble and death.

The mayors of various villages in the area told CivilNet that the town
had been destroyed and was now `gone.'

But the tragedy of Kessab has also fallen to another tragedy of sorts
` one of the digital world, where misinformation, unverified sources
and fake photos have been used to create hysteria and have
unfortunately gone viral, under the hashtag `SaveKessab.'

Eager to participate and help spread the word, the worldwide Armenian
Diaspora has employed the hashtag, furiously tweeting, changing their
FB profile photos and urging others to sign petitions to help stop
`history repeating itself,' referencing the 1.5 million Armenians who
perished in the Ottoman-era slaughter known as the Armenian Genocide.
Kim Kardashian, Cher and even random celebrities like Blink 182²s
Travis Barker got involved in the `SaveKessab' movement, too, which
elevated the hashtag to their large worldwide audiences.

But in the process, the hashtag became a tool for spreading
misinformation, as Armenia-based journalist Gegham Vardanyan
summarized in his post on the topic, both in English andArmenian:

Those disseminating this type of false information are often ordinary
users who simply want to use social media to show their patriotism or
to help resolve the Kessab Armenians' problem however way they can.
The problem is that information from Kessab, as such, is very scarce.
There is practically no first-hand information. And when there's no
information, it's quite easy to replace it with misinformation.



Here is a primer on what is happening in Kessab, why it's so important
and how to separate fact from fiction.

An important note: Clarifying these facts does not undermine the
story: The Syrian Civil War has reached an important, historical
Armenian populated town. Kessab has been left in ruins. The entire
population has had to flee as refugees in their own country. But along
the way, issues have arisen that need to be addressed. Journalism is
based in facts and verified information from first-hand sources. There
is a reason why news stations independently verify reports, and
fact-checkers are employed at magazines. Things need to check out, and
check out again before being disseminated to the public. Not doing so
is irresponsible, harmful and frankly, not journalism.

Clarification makes stories stronger. Here is an attempt to do just that:



What is Kessab?

Kessab is an Armenian populated town that sits near the border of
Turkey, in the province of Latakia. There are several Armenian
churches in the town, and according to various reports about 2,000
residents live in the town. In the 19th century, Kessab's population
numbered around 6,000 with more than 20 schools.

A report on meeting Millennium Development goals sponsored by the
Canadian International Development Agency mentions an innovative soap
factory in Kessab, with products made using local laurel oil. The
factory provided income for 20 families, `with a further 150
benefiting from the market for the berries they collect and process.'

Diasporan descendants often visit the town, many of whom had relatives
still living there. One diasporan writes eloquently about going to
Kessab to celebrate her grandmother's 100thbirthday.



Why is it so important?

Kessab is only one of two last surviving towns in the historical
Armenian kingdom of Cilicia (the other being Vakifli in Turkey) which
was formed during the Middle Ages by Armenian refugees who were
fleeing the Seljuk invasion of Armenia. It extended from what is now
southeastern modern day Turkey to Cyprus and Syria. According to
Kessabtsiner.com, `The region of Antioch was emptied of its Armenian,
Greek and Syriac inhabitants, due to intense persecution. In an
attempt to avoid persecution, the Armenians of the flat lands of
Antioch took refuge in more mountainous regions, such as Kessab and
Mousa Dag.'

In `The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and
Commissars,' Razmik Panossian highlights the importance of Kessab:

Even the Armenian born generation felt very strongly about Kessab-
without ever seeing it. There was much pride in the (most uneventful)
history of the village. It was a strange type of longing for a
diasporan community ` albeit a very old one ` as a `homeland,' while
living in the real `fatherland.' The important dimensions of this
regional identity is how it is connected to nationalism.

The ancient Armenian town of Kessab in Syria/ Creative Commons



What is happening in Kessab?

On Saturday, March 22, the Syrian war advanced to Kessab, and the town
was thrown under siege. One of the village mayors of Kessab told
CivilNet in a telephone conversation that `rockets from the Turkish
border were launched at the village and that the leaders made a
decision to evacuate the Armenian population to avoid human losses.'

The residents were evacuated to Latakia, with no time to take anything
with them. They are being sheltered and fed as Kessab has been overrun
by rebels and they cannot return. They also cite the town being
destroyed. They report no casualties, although Armenian member of
parliament Tevan Poghosyan, who visited the residents on a personal
trip reports that there were initially 20 people who remained
unaccounted for, seven of which returned back to to the refugee camp
in Latakia.

The U.S. State Department announced that it was `deeply troubled' by
the violence in Kessab, but as the Armenian National Committee of
America points out, `stopped short of criticizing Turkey's role.'

The Wall Street Journal reported that Armenian-Syrians are blaming
Turkey for the advances in Kessab as `Ankara has long turned a blind
eye to rebels crossing their borers and weapons flow.'



Why are Armenians so upset about it?

In the last 100 years, this is the third time that the Armenian
community has been forced to flee their homes in Kessab. In 1909,
Turkish armed forces entered and pillaged the town. Almost 200 deaths
were reported. In 1915, during the Ottoman-era slaughter of 1.5
million Armenians known as the Armenian Genocide, the entire
population of Kessab was deported, thousands were killed and only a
fraction survived to make their way back to the historical town again.

The events that have recently taken place have rattled the Armenian
Diaspora, who has long fought for recognition of a genocide which
Turkey denies. It has opened unhealed wounds and brought memories back
of dark and defining times in Armenian history, which is made all the
more shocking and emotional with reports of Turkish involvement. What
is happening in Syria cannot be categorically referred to as
`genocide,' but because of the emotional toll and trauma, what is
happening now is easily being associated with the events of 1915.

The Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East has
distributed a letter which describes the residents of Kessab as being
`caught between two fighting forces,' though it also stresses that the
land is being held by rebels `backed by Turkey and helped by its
military forces.'

Since the start of the Syrian war, minorities like Armenians have been
caught in the crossfires. Over 6,000 Syrian-Armenian have escaped
along with the millions of ethnic Syrians that have fled out of the
country, many of them forced into an unexpected repatriation back to
Armenia.

The Wall Street Journal reports that many Syrian-Armenians support
President Bashar al Assad's forces ` an alliance which is a `safer bet
to protect their interests' because Assad's Alawite roots also make
him a religious minority.



What kind of misinformation has spread through social media about the
Kessab Crisis?

¢ Reports of Civilian Casualties:

Armenian diaspora newspaper Asbarez was the first to report 80 deaths
in the scramble out of Kessab, but that information has to date, not
been confirmed. CivilNet cites no civilian deaths, although mentions
there are missing persons. TIME quotes a rebel videographer who
narrated a video tour of the town's churches:

`Islam, he declared proudly, teaches respect for all religions,
including Christianity. `The jihadist brothers do not harm anyone.
This is our religion and this is our Islam.'

The BBC has the only first-hand published interview with a
Syrian-Armenian farmer who is actually a resident of Kessab. He
relayed in a radio interview that trucks carrying armed militants
began coming from the Turkish side and attacking Syrian government
police posts. `We heard lots of explosions near the villages close to
the Turkish border.' He mentions no civilian deaths but does say about
50 elderly people stayed behind and when he tried to contact
neighbors, the phones were answered by people who did not speak local
Arabic. Epress has the transcript if you can't listen to the audio.

Tevan Poghosyan, an Armenian Member of Parliament who visited Latakia
last week on a personal trip reports no civilian casualties after
speaking to the mayor and residents.



¢ The Spread of False Photos

This graphic image was widely distributed but is not related to news
events out of Kessab. According to the Daily Mail it is the Islamic
State in Iraq and the Levant shooting members of Ghurabaa al-Sham
brigade, a moderate Islamist group in the head in 2013.

1. A Save Kessab Facebook page disseminated photos of Christian church
in ruins on their page. `Hate Crimes, and the world is silent,' they
wrote, insinuating that the desecration took place in Kessab. The
photos actually turned out to be from St. Mary's Greek Catholic Church
in Yabrud, Syria.

2. This article from a `former Muslim Brotherhood Member Now Peace
Activist' references the `brutal massacre' in Kessab and was using a
gruesome image of armed gunmen standing over the severed heads of
several men in a grassy field. The image was actually from a 2012
video, showing armed Taliban militants standing over the heads of
Pakistani `soldiers.'

3. This layered image was widely spread on Twitter and Instagram. The
graphic photo of the woman with a crucifix down her throat is a still
shot from the horror film `Inner Depravity,' the child behind held up
is an image of Fatima Meghlaj, 2, decapitated when a bomb fell on her
house in Idlib in Sept. 2012. The other image of a decapitated man is
from Syria and completely unrelated to Kessab.



¢ The Misuse of the Word `Genocide' and more.

Here is the textbook definition of what genocide means: the deliberate
and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or
cultural group.

The country of Syria is caught in a bloody, ongoing war that has
unfortunately advanced to an Armenian stronghold. Tragically, Kessab
has been caught in the middle of it, too. This is not a systematic
attempt to wipe out Armenians. This is the byproduct of a war that has
killed over 140,000 victims.

Furthermore, as Sako Arian on Hetq, Armenia's investigative journalism
outlet, points out, Turkey's involvement in aiding rebels is not new:

The fact that Turkey is assisting the rebels in Syria isn't a recent
development. The Turkish Air Force has not only shot down Syrian
planes but has installed Patriot type missile systems on its southern
border.

These are the facts.

What is sad is that we Armenians have again fallen in the old trap of
enemy hating creating by Turkey itself. Statements and posts of pain,
sorrow and lament appear everywhere. In the midst of all these
emotional outbursts, no one is thinking of real exit strategies.



So what do we take away from all of this? The facts are that something
very terrible happened in Kessab ` but something very terrible has
been happening in Syria for years, and everyone ` regardless of ethnic
background or religion- is a victim. For an Armenian diaspora spread
across the world partly due to the first what is widely acknowledged
as the first modern genocide, this stirs deep, painful memories. This
is especially compounded by Turkey's continuous, almost 100 year
denial of this pain and the historical significance Kessab holds for
Armenians. However, pointing out facts and separating them from
fiction is not just important, it is crucial. It is also very
difficult during a time when getting information out of a particular
country is near impossible. But highly emotionally charged hysteria
prompted by incorrect news and photos is harmful. Before you post
something, double check to make sure where it's coming from. Before
you share a photo, ask yourself what the origin of it might be. It's
pretty simple: Google Images allows you to backtrack the source of a
photo by uploading it using the little camera icon. Use it. Think like
a journalist, not a bystander, and question everything.



Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the following:
Kessab is not related toy Franz Werfel's novel, `The Forty Days of
Musa Dagh,' as previously stated. Kessab is one of two remaining towns
of the ancient Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, Vakifli in Turkey is the
other.

http://massispost.com/2014/04/dissecting-kessab-what-is-and-isnt-happening-in-the-historical-armenian-town/

[Yervant1]

US, Turkey reject Hersh article on sarin gas attack in Syria
7 April 2014, Monday
TODAY'S ZAMAN, ANKARA


The White House and the Turkish government have both dismissed a
report suggesting that the Turkish government was behind a sarin gas
attack in Syria last summer in cooperation with the
al-Qaeda-affiliated organization al-Nusra Front.

American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, a regular contributor
to The New Yorker magazine on military and intelligence issues,
reported the controversial story on Sunday. The story appeared in the
British literary publication `The London Review of Books' with the
title of `The red line and the rat line.'

`We have seen Mr. Hersh's latest story, which is based solely on
information from unnamed sources and which reaches conclusions about
the August 21 chemical weapons attack in Syria that are completely
off-base,' said the White House press office in an e-mail statement on
Sunday sent in response to questions about the accuracy of Hersh's
story.

Turkish diplomatic sources speaking to Today's Zaman on the condition
of anonymity said: `These claims are baseless. We do not take it
seriously.' The same sources pointed out that the American
administration had refuted the claims in the article.

Hersh suggested in the story that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan government was responsible for the sarin gas attack on Ghouta,
near Damascus, in August of last year in hopes that it would force the
US administration to honor its `red line' threat regarding the use of
chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Hersh wrote that Obama was ready to launch an allied air strike on
Syria after the chemical attack on Ghouta to punish Assad for
allegedly crossing the `red line' he had set in 2012. But with less
than two days to go before the planned strike, Obama cancelled the
attack based on information obtained by British intelligence
suggesting that the sarin used in the August attack didn't match the
Syrian army's chemical arsenal.

In the article, Hersh claimed that Erdogan was known to be supporting
the al-Nusra Front in Syria. A former intelligence official apparently
told Hersh, `We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdogan's
people to push Obama over the red line,' according to the article. The
same source suggested that sarin was supplied through Turkey and that
it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also
allegedly provided training in producing and handling the sarin.

Much of the support for that assessment came from the Turks
themselves, via intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath
of the attack, said the article. It was stated that the principal
evidence came from the Turkish `post-attack joy and back-slapping in
numerous intercepts.'

Critics argue that Hersh ignored evidence indicating that the Syrian
regime is responsible for the horrendous attack and criticize the
veteran journalist for relying on just one unnamed source for his most
serious claims in the article.

According to the White House statement, in response to a question
about weapons moving from Libya and the suggestion that others could
have been responsible for the August 21 chemical weapon attack,
spokesman for Director of National Intelligence Shawn Turner said:

`We're not going to comment on every inaccurate aspect of this
narrative, but to be clear: the Assad regime, and only the Assad
regime, could have been responsible for the chemical weapons attack
that took place on August 21. We have made that judgment based upon
intelligence collected by the United States and by our partners and
allies. It is a view that is shared overwhelmingly by the
international community and has led to unprecedented cooperation in
the dismantling of Assad's CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles. The
suggestion that there was an effort to suppress or alter intelligence
is simply false. Likewise, the idea that the United States was
providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.'

In his report, Hersh suggested that US President Barack Obama's
administration had a role in creating what the CIA calls a `rat line,'
a back channel highway into Syria. Authorized in early 2012, it was
used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey
and across the Syrian border to the opposition, Hersh said.

According to article, in January, the Senate Intelligence Committee
released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012
on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in
Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the death of US Ambassador
Christopher Stevens and three others.

`A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a
secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdogan
administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the
agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and
Qatar,' suggested the article.

Hersh wrote that by the end of 2012, American intelligence believed
that the Syrian rebels were losing against Assad and Erdogan was
`pissed' and felt betrayed by the Obama administration.

In response to questions about a classified paper on the Syrian
rebels' chemical-weapons capabilities, Turner said, `No such paper was
ever requested or produced by intelligence community analysts.'

According to the White House statement, National Security Council
spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said in answer to questions about military
planning:

`We have long said that all options were on the table in Syria and
that our military was doing the appropriate contingency planning, as
you'd expect them to do. The President said publicly on August 31,
2013 that he had determined that it was in the national security
interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime's use of
chemical weapons through a targeted military strike. He said that the
purpose of this strike would be to deter Assad from using chemical
weapons, to degrade his regime's ability to use them, and to make
clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use.'

She continued: `But the notion that the President ordered our military
to undertake action in Syria by a fixed deadline of September 2, 2013
is completely fabricated. As the President said when he addressed the
nation on August 31, even though he possessed the authority to order
military strikes, he believed it was right, in the absence of a direct
or imminent threat to our security, to take the debate to Congress.
That's what he did, and on September 10 asked the leaders of Congress
to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force so we could pursue
the diplomatic path we are now on and that is resulting in the removal
of Syria's chemical weapons.'

The article also mentioned Erdogan's meeting with Obama in the White
House on May 16, 2013, saying that Erdogan sought the meeting to
demonstrate that Obama's red line has been crossed by Syria and that
the Turkish prime minister gave National Intelligence Chief Hakan
Fidan the opportunity to speak on the matter in the meeting. According
to article, Obama cut off Fidan's explanations two times, at which
point Erdogan waved his finger angrily at the president and said, `But
your red line has been crossed.' Hersh said that then Obama pointed at
Fidan and said, `We know what you're doing with the radicals in
Syria.'

[Yervant1]

13:21 09/04/2014 » IN THE WORLD

Kurdish leaders condemn attack on Kessab

The Kurdistan People’s Congress (KONGRA-GEL), in a statement released on Monday, strongly condemned the terror attacks against the Armenian community in Kessab, Syria, and declared full support to the Armenian people, ANP reports, according to Asbarez.
Beginning on March 21, the Armenian and Alawite population in Kessab was attacked by jihadist terror organizations linked to Al-Qaida, who forced the local inhabitants to flee the city.
“We are deeply concerned by the terror attacks against Armenian civilians in Kessab region in Syria. We have always shared their pain, suffering and the sensitive situation they are inside. We declare full solidarity with Armenian people and all the targeted communities, including Alawites,” says the Kurdish organization KONGRA-GEL, which is a congress assembly for nearly all Kurdish organizations from the northern part of Kurdistan Region (Turkey) and in the Kurdish diaspora. KONGRA-GEL and Union of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK) have millions of supporters, several military wings and control 103 municipalities in Kurdistan, including 36 members of parliament in the Turkish parliament. KONGRA-GEL also has sister organizations in other parts of Kurdistan, like PYD in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan), which is today in daily confrontation with jihadist terror organizations.
The Kurdistan People’s Congress (KONGRA-GEL) underlined in its statement that up to the present moment there has not been any violence between the people in the region. “The recent attacks are committed by foreign terrorist elements which benefit from the essential logistic and moral support of the Turkish authorities.”
In this regard, Kessab, which has been populated by Armenians before and after the Armenian genocide of 1915, is seen as a symbol of the tragic Armenian history of deportations and massacres. “It preserves the freshness of still painful memories,” says the statement.
The recent attacks in Kessab are made by the terrorist organizations under the name of “Anfal campaign,” as in cleansing of non-Muslim population. The same term and methods of “Anfal” has been used by Saddam Hussein against the Kurdish population in today’s Federal Kurdistan (Iraq). According to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), 182 thousands civilians lost their lives as victims of that campaign.

Source: Panorama.am

[Yervant1]

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2014/04/turkey-realization-blunder-kassab-syria.html

Turkey realizes its blunder in Kassab operation
By Fehim Tastekin
April 8, 2014

What a harebrained scheme it was. You will provide logistical support
to al-Qaeda and its allies who captured the Syrian Armenian town of
Kassab. When their [Armenian] diaspora rose up, letters were sent to
the US Congress and Kim Kardashian, whose family hails from our
Kars-Karakale, launched a Twitter campaign with hashtag #SaveKessab,
why are we dumbfounded? Then we realized something was not right and
started scheming to find a way out. I had earlier written on Kassab
when it was captured. People fearing massacres fled to Latakia,
leaving behind only the elderly, the infirm and those who say, "If I
am going to die, I will die here.' On the eve of the April 24 genocide
observance, the Armenian diaspora was thus provided with a current
issue to raise. And what did our ambitious official news service
Anatolian Agency [AA] do? It started to run stories on how humane the
Syrian opposition was by protecting Armenian churches and said that
they had actually transported two elderly Armenians to Turkey.

Turkey now seems to realize its mistake in supporting Syrian rebels
in the operation to take control of the Armenian town Kassab in
northern Syria, but it's too late and Ankara will have to pay the
price for this blunder.

First, I want to say, "Wake up." The bill for Kassab was made out to
Turkey long ago. We will find out later how we will have to pay. The
people of Kassab abandoned their homes because of fighters supported
by Turkey. They didn't go to Latakia on vacation. If this temporary
exile becomes permanent and God forbid there are other tragedies, make
no mistake, it will be Turkey that will pay no matter who the
wrongdoer may be.

Now let's discuss siblings Sirpuhi, 82, and Satenik Tititzyan, 84,
taken to Vakifli, the only Armenian village in Turkey. A reporter for
Armenian weekly Agos, Lora Baytar, spoke with this duo who, according
to our AA, had asked to be taken to Turkey. According to Sirpuhi
Titizyan, first Turkish-speaking militants came and searched their
home. Next, Arabic-speaking ones came and said, "We will take you to
Latakia.' But the next morning, instead of Latakia, they were brought
to Turkey. They were tricked. Simply put, Turkey needed a story of `We
opened our arms to the Armenians," and the militants need a Kassab
without Armenians. The Titizyan siblings now want to go to Latakia,
where the other people of Kassab are, or to Beirut.

As for protecting Kassab, Titizyan said he gave the key to his house
to militants so that they could enter without breaking the door and
then loot. But they broke the door and his windows anyway and
confiscated his tractor. This was very much in the spirit of
`Operation Anfal,' which means "prize, trophy or booty"!

AA quoted Izzet Zohta, a member of the Syrian Turkmen Assembly, as
saying: `There are three to four churches in the villages of Karaduran
and Samra. The Free Syrian Army is doing its best to protect the
churches.' But Shant Kerbabian, who lives in Beirut, after speaking
with his relatives [in Syria], told Al-Monitor there were no massacres
but many other incidents. He said: `Crosses were taken down. This was
confirmed." Kerbabian also noted that Jabhat al-Nusra was looting the
houses and carrying their belongings to Turkey, and that "Jabhat
al-Nusra fighters were saying that they want to bring their 'brothers'
[residing] in tents and refugee camps and put them in Kassab."

I called Lora Baytar, who lives in the village of Vakifli. She said 19
more people from Kassab were brought over yesterday. "They are all
old. The youngest is over 70 years. They were simply picked up from
their homes and hastily dropped at the border. The militants are
emptying Kassab but they don't want to cause bodily harm to the
Armenians.'

Then there are reports of Turkey's role in the capture of Kassab.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, `The Kassab events did not
occur at our instance.' But Titizyan, asked by Agos if they were
expecting an attack, replied: `No, but they told us Erdogan had opened
the way. If Erdogan had not opened the way, so many nasty men would
have not have come to Kassab. These men came from Turkey."

A lot has been written about militants crossing to Kassab from Turkey.
Suheib Anjarini, a writer from the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, relying
on an opposition source, said that more than 1,000 fighters trained in
Jordan were brought over from Marka airport to Hatay for the Kassab
operation.

And we are constantly told that the FSA was being very careful and
compassionate. Although apart from the Bayirbucak Turkmen Brigade
there was no FSA involvement in Operation Anfal, they are trying to
make Kassab's capture acceptable by nonstop reporting that it was done
by the FSA. Smart!

We should give up trying to write a saga of hospitality from this
Armenian nightmare. Let's first identify our `allies" who had the
Armenians tweet `Turks again.'

There are five major actors active in Anfal:

The al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra; Sham al-Islam, established by
former Guantanamo prisoner and Moroccan citizen Ibrahim bin Shekrun
[Abu Ahmed al Maghribi]; Shukur el Iz, which is close to the Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS); Ahrar al-Sham; and Ansar al-Islam,
part of the overall Salafist organization of the Islamic Front and the
Islamic Army controlled by Saudi intelligence. Jabhat al-Nusra leader
Mohammed al-Golani is a Syrian al-Qaeda militant who's loyal to Ayman
al-Zawahri.

Abu Khalid al-Suri, the founder of Ahrar al-Sham, whose popularity in
certain circles of Turkey is growing, was a close friend of Osama bin
Laden and was Zawahri's Syria representative. When Suri was killed in
an ISIS suicide attack in Aleppo in February, Zawahri issued a
condolence message. Bin Shekrun, who was killed in Kassab last month,
had said when he established his organization in August 2013,
`Democracy is insulting Allah' and declared Alawites and Shiites to be
enemies. The same enmity was expressed by Salafist Sheikh Abdullah el
Muheysini in a victory speech he made after capturing the strategic
Post 45 in the Kassab area, when he said, `We will annihilate Assad
and his cohorts." These groups have similar ideologies. They are more
careful with the Armenians as compared with Alawites because the world
is watching. Also, their supporter Turkey has found that it will be
paying the price.

[MosJan]

href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=290209461146872">Post by href="https://www.facebook.com/ana.news.romania">Ana-News Romania.

[Yervant1]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkeys-actions-in-syria-see-pm-recep-tayyip-erdogan-go-from-model-middle-east-strongman-to-tinpot-dictator-9252366.html

Turkey's actions in Syria see PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan go from model
Middle East 'strongman' to tin-pot dictator
By Roger Fisk
April 10, 2014

Recep Tayyip Erdogan used to be one of Barack Obama's cuddliest
allies. Religious but secular, powerful but democratic, independent
but a reliable Nato chum, he was the kind of guy the White House and
the Pentagon could rely on to provide a guiding hand in the Arab part
of the old Ottoman empire - and a channel for rebels who could bring
down the hated Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

The American think-tank mountebanks - taking their cue as usual from
the US 'official sources' - even proclaimed Turkey as a `role model'
for the post-dictatorship Arab world.

Queue in hollow laughter. Was a nation which still mistreated its
Kurds, acted as a holocaust denier in refusing to acknowledge the 1915
Armenian genocide, and which even trashed the trial of those who
killed the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in an Istanbul street in
2007, really the kind of mirror into which the Muslim world should
stare with approval? Yeah, now the mask has fallen.

Erdogan sent in the police to crush the demonstrators of Gezi Park
last year, went berserk when it was suggested his party and relatives
were involved in corruption scams, and fired or removed hundreds of
police and security officers. Then he promised to wipe out `social
media' - Facebook and YouTube were the new 'terrorists', it seemed -
before the municipal elections which he inevitably won, and uttered
the kind of threats against Turkey's ever more compliant press in
words that might have come from the late Saddam Hussein. It turned out
that the only role model Turkey was a role model for was - well,
Turkey.

So had yet another Middle East 'strongman' turned into a tin-pot (and
dangerous) dictator? Or had a conservative, level headed democrat
suddenly shown his true colours? When the Arab awakening began to
destroy the local dictators in 2011, Erdogan was the first Muslim
leader to grasp its significance and praise its revolutionaries. Who
would have believed that the old Ottoman flag - or the current Turkish
version of it - would be flown once more with pride over Arab homes in
Gaza and Egypt? Even when the latter's elected president Mohamed Morsi
was chucked out by that wonderful democracy-loving Egyptian deputy
prime minister, defence minister and chief of staff - Erdogan could
scarcely bring himself to pronounce General al-Sissi's name - the
Turkish prime minister, like Qatar, insisted that Morsi was still the
leader of Egypt.

Next on his target list, I suspect, will be the Daily Zaman, one of
the most feisty and provocative of Turkish newspapers which will soon
- its journalists fear - feel Erdogan's lash. The paper this week
trashed the prime minister's attacks on his Islamist antagonist
Fetullah Gulen, currently residing in Pennsylvania, as having no basis
in law, approvingly quoting a retired supreme appeal court prosecutor
as saying that Erdogan was trying to influence the justice system. The
paper, regarded as close to Gulen ideologically, has carried articles
asking if corruption and bribery contributed to Erdorgan's 45 per cent
Justice and Development Party election victory. And in an
unprecedented report, it also wrote that Armenians driven on 16 March
from their homes in the Syrian town of Kassab by Islamist rebels
supported by Turkey, were drawing parallels with the 1915 mass
killings - which the paper was not quite brave enough to call a
genocide.

Turkey denies all this, just as it denies the genocide. Both
statements are nonsense. The Jabhat al-Nusra men who stormed into
Kassab did not come from Iraq or Jordan. The town, in which thousands
of Armenians lived in the very last part of what had been Ottoman
Armenia, is only a few miles from the Syrian border where the Turks
have been furnishing their Syrian rebel allies - both Islamist and
secular - with arms. The Armenian expulsions have provided ample
opportunity once again for the Assad regime to demonstrate the cruelty
of its opponents.

But there is growing evidence that Turkey's - or rather Erdogan's -
involvement with the revolt against Assad is critical to his
relationship with Obama. The Syrian government were, of course, the
first to claim that the sarin gas which killed hundreds of Syrian
civilians in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta last August had come from
Turkey - and had then been used by Islamist groups in the hope that
the West would blame Assad and turn its strategic weapons against the
regime. When The Independent enquired about the attacks in Syria,
Russian sources stated that the chemicals had not been sold to Assad.
They had come from stocks sold by Moscow to the former Gaddafi regime
in Libya.

Syrian army officers and one figure close to Assad complained to me,
too, that when the US and its allies insisted the regime was to blame
for the gas attack - which of course they did at once - no heed was
paid to public evidence that sarin gas was being transported through
part of Turkey for rebels in the north of Syria. They constantly
referred to a 130-page Turkish indictment of ten al-Nusra men accused
of transporting through southern Turkey what local police identified
as chemical precursors for sarin. They were correct. The ringleader of
the group, Haytham Qassab, appeared in court where a Turkish
prosecutor demanded 25 years imprisonment, but he was later released
`pending trial'. They have all since disappeared, while Turkey's
ambassador to Moscow was later to dismiss the arrests, claiming - with
almost Saddam-like conviction - that the 'sarin' was `anti-freeze'.

That most controversial of American investigative journalists, Seymour
Hersh - I confess he is an old mate of mine even though he often uses
my most hated phrase, anonymous `officials' and `experts', as his
sources - has now published his own disturbing and compelling research
on the use of chemicals in Syria and points the finger at Turkey for
allowing rebels to use sarin in an earlier chemical attack against the
Syrian village of Khan al-Assal.

Far more explosively, he claims that the British Porton Down defence
laboratory examined the sarin used in Ghouta (courtesy of a Russian
military intelligence operative) - this was the attack that propelled
Obama and his administration into paroxysms of rage against Assad -
and that British intelligence confirmed to the Americans that the gas
did not come from stocks in the Syrian army's chemical weapons'
arsenal.

This, according to Hersh - who naturally has his own detractors - was
enough to persuade the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to tell President
Obama that he must not use the Ghouta attack as an excuse for a
military strike against Syria. Obama finally agreed - although he used
a sudden (and still unexplained) decision to seek congressional
approval for a bombardment of Syria - permission he knew he was
unlikely to get. The Turks - and here comes the Erdogan connection -
were outraged that the Americans had not fallen into their trap of
destroying Assad.

Erdogan, according to Hersh, had allowed the Americans to ship a 'rat
line' of weapons from Libya via Turkey to the Syrian rebels - hence
the connection to earlier shipments of sarin to Libya from the then
Soviet Union. Hersh says that for months after the Ghouta attack
occurred, this 'rat line' continued. So did permission to the Turks to
trade in gold with Iran - a profitable enterprise which created a
slush fund of billions of dollars, the very same corruption money
which later appeared to fall into the hands of senior figures around
Erdogan.

One Turkish journalist insisted to me in Istanbul this week that
Erdogan's 'madness' - although already evident - reached ferocity
pitch after the Ghouta sarin attack in Damascus which was supposed to
drive Obama to attack the Assad regime, but which ultimately failed to
do so. If the US bombardment had taken place, Turkey would have been
the 'kingmaker' in any new Syria, and that ancient nation might even
have become part of a putative, enlarged, Ottoman-style empire. This
is taking things too far. Erdogan is, like Yossarian in Catch 22, a
very odd person. There are signs of political megalomania.

But Hersh does detail a dinner on 16 May last year between Erdogan and
Obama - and a senior Turkish intelligence official called Hakan Fidan
- at which Obama angrily pointed at Fidan and said: `We know what
you're doing with the (rebel) radicals in Syria.' The dinner took
place. No-one, of course, will reveal on the record what was said.

Turkey's meddling in the Syria war will continue, whatever the
Americans do. Obama believes the rebels are both untrustworthy,
dangerous and are being beaten. But one of the tapes which so enraged
Erdogan when it appeared on YouTube - hence the ban - showed an
apparent conversation between Turkish officials seeking an excuse to
stage their own attack on Syria. `Manipulated,' screamed the Turkish
government. No doubt.

[Yervant1]

FIRE AND SWORD AT KESSAB

April 10, 2014

Thrilling stories of Armenian massacres -

On Friday 30th July 1909, The Evening News Sydney published an
article titled "Fire and Sword at Kessab - Thrilling stories of
Armenian massacres"

Mr. H. Martyn Gooch, the secretary of Evangelical Alliance has just
received a long letter from the Rev. Stephen Van R. Trowbridge,
containing some terrible revelations concerning the sack of Kessab,
and the massacre of numbers of its inhabitants by armed Turks and
Arabs (says the London "Daily Graphic" of June 19). The story is
thrilling in its record of the bravery and endurance of men, women,
and children, and throws, as may be expected, a sinister light on
the action of ceratin officials and the savagery of the Moslums.

Kessab, says Mr. Trowbridge, was a thrifty Armenian town of about 8000
inhabitants, situated on the landward slope of Mount Cassius (Arabic,
Jebel Akra), which stands out prominently upon the Meditteranean Sea
Coast, half-way between Alexandretta and Latakia. It is now a mass
blackened ruins. What must it mean to the 5000 men and women and
little children who have survived a painful flight to the sea coast,
and have now returned to their mountain home, only to find their
houses sacked and burned! There were nine Christian villages which
clustered about Kessab in the valleys below. Several of these have
been completely destroyed by fire. All have been plundered, and the
helpless people driven out or slain.

On Thursday evening, April 22, the Kessab scouts brought word into
the town that great crowds of armed Turks and Arabs had gathered in
the nearest Moslem village. It was an anxious night. Before daylight,
Friday morning, rifle shots told of the evening's advance. By three
separate mountain trails, from the north, north-east, and east
thousands upon thousands of armed Moslems came pouring up the valley.

Their Martini rifles sent the bullets whisking into Kessab houses,
while the shotguns of the 300 Christians, who were posted on the
defence, could not cover the long range. It was a desperately unfair
struggle, and the Kessab men realised their straits.

FLIGHT TO THE CLIFFS

The women and girls gathered up the little children on their backs
and in their arms, headed along the west trail over the ridge towards
Kaladouran, and clambered up into the cliffs and crevices which
overlook the sun at an altitude of 5000 feet. Some in small groups,
others entirely alone, hid themselves under the thorny underbrush or
in the natural caves.

Towards evening the men had been compelled by the overwhelming odds to
give up the defence. They fell back without any panic or noise. And
the Turks and Arabs who rushed into the streets were so seized with
the lust of plunder that they did not pursue the rearguard of the
Christians.

One of the saddest experiences was that of Azniv Khanum, wife of the
preacher in Kaladouran. Ten days before the massacre she had given
birth to twin children, a little boy and girl. When the flight to
the mountains took place, she had not the strength to climb with the
others, so her husband hid her and their four children among the rocks
near the edge of the village. The babies were wrapped in a little
quilt, and the other children clung to their mother, while the father
hid in a cave close by. Before long, Azniv Khanum and the children
were discovered by the Turks. One of the plunderers snatched up the
quilt, despite the mother's entreaties. The two babies rolled out,
one in one direction and one in another, over the rough stones.

Then the Turks rudely laid hold of the mother, and, holding a revolver
against a breast, ordered her to become a Moslem. She bravely refused.

"Then you are my slave," he said and beat her with the flat of his
sword. He commenced to drag her down in order to tie her on his horse.

Her foot tripped, she fell, and rolled over and over for about eight
yards. There she lay on the rocks, bruised and exhausted, in the hot
sun. The Turk, seeing a chance to plunder, abandoned her. Afterwards
other Turks took her money and her dress and shoes, and her little
girl, about 4 years old. It is wonderful that she lived through it
all. One of the little babies lived a week, the other about 10 days
after that. When I was in Kaladouran we buried the little boy. It
was a very touching service out under the trees.

All the tradesmen's shops and merchants' storehouses in Kessab are
burned. In fact, the whole market is in ashes. The Roman Catholic
and Protestant churches are completely burned. The latter was a
spacious building seating a congregation of 1800. The American
mission residence, occupied by Miss E. M. Chambers, was burned;
so also the Girls' High School, the Boys' Grammar School, and the
Protestant parsonage.

Unfortunately our space is too circumscribed to give the whole of this
graphic letter. But it must be stated that the Evangelical Alliance,
as in the past is forwarding financial assistance to the surviving
Armenians, who have in many cases lost everything.

The Evening News

The Evening News was the first evening newspaper published in Sydney,
Australia. It was published from 29 July 1867 to 21 March 1931.

http://www.horizonweekly.ca/news/details/35989

[Yervant1]

13:59 14/04/2014 » SOCIETY

Armenians seek justice once again

By Carnie Armenian
From The Armenian Weekly
The Armenian nation is far too familiar with the struggle of maintaining our identity and the challenge to persevere through the many inhumane cards life has dealt us. Due to the safe haven Armenians found in the Syrian community following the events of the Armenian Genocide, the small northwestern town of Kessab was once densely populated by Armenians. However, we have yet again been confronted with defending our homes as the population was forced to evacuate. Forced to flee to nearby Latakia and Bassit, over 700 Christian families of Kessab have been displaced.
On Friday, April 4th the Armenian community of the Greater Boston area gathered at the entrance of the Tip O’Neill Federal Building in downtown Boston to bring awareness to the current events taking place in Kessab and to condemn Turkey’s role in the destruction. Organized by the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) Boston “Nejdeh” Chapter and the Armenian National Committee of Eastern Massachusetts, over 100 human rights activists gathered to protest the State Department’s failure to condemn the perpetrators of the invasion and occupation. The Massachusetts offices of the Department of State are located in the O’Neill building, making it the ideal spot to stress the hypocrisy evidenced by the Department’s silence regarding the role of its NATO-ally Turkey. According to eyewitness accounts, the Al-Qaeda affiliated extremists openly passed through a Turkish military base to cross the Syrian border and attack the town and villages of Kessab.
The group marched holding signs stating the facts and chanted various slogans, “Obama, Open up your eyes! Don’t support terror! Turkey run, Turkey hide, Turkey’s on Al Qaeda’s side. State Department, can’t you see, Al Qaeda’s ally is Turkey,” as officials and passers-by read through pamphlets, asked questions, and made phone calls spreading the word. The Armenian Youth Federation of the Greater Boston “Nejdeh” Chapter and the Armenian National Committee of Eastern Massachusetts seek justice once again and stand in solidarity with our fellow diasporans who have recently been forced out of their homes in Kessab.

Source: Panorama.am

[Yervant1]

10:02 14/04/2014 » INTERVIEWS

11th-hour plot forged against Syria – editor

Press TV has conducted an interview with Dr. Kevin Barrett, the Editor of Veteran’s Today from Madison, about Syria where each side is blaming the other for chemical weapons attacks in Hama.
Press TV: Again we’re hearing talks about a chemical attack. We saw last year how awful that situation was. At the end of the day though the international community did nothing. So, once again we’re here talking about chemical attacks carried out in Syria.
Do you think it is a sign of, some would say desperation of the insurgents inflicting these chemical attacks inside of the country? Or, how do you evaluate this – If it is allegedly the insurgents or the terrorists who are doing this, why now, what are they trying to accomplish?
Barrett: The backdrop to all chemical attacks in Syria is that over a year ago President Obama drew a red line. He said that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would be a red line and would trigger a large scale intervention in the conflict in Syria.
This gave the insurgents tremendous motivation to conduct false flag gas attacks in order to try to blame the Assad government and bring in the full might of the US military on the side of the insurgents. And that’s what’s been happening.
We knew back in August that the attack in al-Ghuta was almost certainly a false flag attack by the insurgents and that’s been confirmed repeatedly, most recently in the second of a series of articles by Seymour Hirsch – America’s best known mainstream investigative reporter.
So, at this point it’s clear, the world knows that the August attacks were false flag attacks by the rebels designed to cross Obama’s red line, blame the Syrian government falsely for these attacks and bring in the US to bomb Syria. I think the same thing is almost certainly behind these most recent attacks.
Interestingly enough, my colleague at Veteran’s Today, Senior Editor Gordon Duff predicted this a few days ago. He published an op-ed at Press TV and came on my radio show last night and said that there is what he calls an eleventh-hour conspiracy to stage chemical weapons attacks inside Syria and perhaps later on in Lebanon and Israel - more false flag attacks are designed to inflame war in the region. I wasn’t sure whether Gordon was right, but given today’s news I think maybe he is.
Press TV: So now what exactly does it mean, because ... although you’re saying that everyone has realized, of course the UN never really said one way or the other who was responsible because their investigation was to basically see if chemical attacks had taken place.
Now with this situation do you think that it’s possible that the United State would be interested or possibly thinking about directly entering the situation in Syria?
Barrett: I think there are forces in the United States that want the US to enter the situation in Syria and there are other forces that don’t want that to happen. And so what we’re seeing is a typical way that the war party i.e. the forces that want wider war use these kinds of incidences as a pretext to make it politically possible to escalate the wars that they want.
That’s what they did on 9/11; that’s what they’ve done before every major war since the Mexican war in the US.
This story I was referring to by Veteran’s Today’s Gordon Duff, also published in Press TV, says that the chemical weapons are being manufactured in the Republic of Georgia in Tbilisi.
Gordon says that Veteran’s Today's correspondents are in Georgia and have had first-hand knowledge of this manufacture and shipping of chemical weapons through Turkey into Syria.
So I do hope and pray that this is not the first stage of a series of false flag poison gas attacks that Gordon is predicting.
I think we need to put this news out to the world and tell people to take a look at this story at Veteran’s Today and at Press TV about the manufacture of sarin gas at Tbilisi and the fact that a rogue group of Americans is apparently behind this – people connected with the Bush administration.
So I’m afraid that the war party in the US is up to its usual tricks.

Source: Panorama.am

[Yervant1]

Voice of America News
April 10, 2014



Seizure of Syrian Town Recalls Century-Old Turkish-Armenian Dispute

Dorian Jones

April 10, 2014

ISTANBUL - Syrian rebels recently overran Kassab, a town near the
Turkish border inhabited by ethnic Armenians. That action has drawn
attention to Turkey's relationship with radical Islamic factions in
the Syrian conflict, and it has resurrected a century-old controversy.

Ankara has faced mounting international criticism since Islamist
fighters overran Kassab in late March. Many of the town's ethnic
Armenian residents fled, charging that Ankara had supported the
jihadists.

Turkey denies the charges, but some observers say whether or not they
are true, it is paying a high price. All the more so, given that the
attack on Kassab occurred on the eve of key anniversary - every April
Armenians commemorate what they say was the killing in 1915 of more
than one million of their people by Turkey's then Ottoman rulers.

Armenians are stepping up their drive for international recognition of
those killings as genocide ahead of next year's 100th anniversary.

Members of the Armenian diaspora community are leading the criticism
of Turkey over the attack on Kassab, charging that Turkey facilitated
it, or at least failed to use its influence to prevent it.

Ankara strongly rejects the charge that what happened in 1915 amounts
to genocide, and disputes the number of deaths. But Sinan Ulgen, a
visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, said the issue will
not go away. He noted that a legislative proposal in France to make it
illegal to deny that the 1915 killing of Armenians was genocide, while
it was ultimately rejected by France's constitutional court, caused a
major diplomatic uproar.

"We see this constantly. The bill, which led to a big crisis between
Turkey and France, is just one example," said Ulgen. "And now we are
coming to 2015, the centennial of the 1915 events, and obviously
Turkey will have to address that."

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has already compared the events in
Kassab to those of 1915. Ankara is working to contain the damage, with
state media broadcasting interviews with Armenians from Kassab who
have taken refuge in Turkey.

But Semih Idiz, a diplomatic columnist for the Turkish newspaper Taraf
and the Al Monitor website, said Ankara has blundered.

"I think it was a miscalculation, bringing up the whole Armenian
issues, and it will also highlight the fact that Turkey is helping
these extreme jihadist groups," said Idiz. "So it will really be a
question of how the situation is going to be managed and what actually
happens in Kassab itself. Now if things get out of hand, it will
reflect badly on Turkey."

Ankara denies it is supporting groups like the al-Qaida-affiliated
al-Nusra Front, one of the militant Islamist factions in Syria. It
also claims -- as do the Syrian rebels in Kassab -- the town's ethnic
identity is being respected.

With the Turkish government already facing growing criticism both
nationally and internationally over its relations with jihadist groups
in Syria, observers say the events in Kassab will add to the pressure
on Ankara to review its strategy toward Syria.

[Yervant1]

Kesssab attacks linked to Turkey's strategic goals - opinion

13:26 * 12.04.14


Turkish rebels' attacks against the Syrian town of Kessab are linked
to far-reaching strategic goals to invade Latakia, which is a
stronghold for President Bashar Al-Assad, an Armenian expert has said.

At a news conference on Saturday, Turkologist Gevorg Poghosyan
explained Turkey's support to Islamist rebels by an attempt to
increase influence in the region.

"Turkey has now launched a counter-attack in the face of the
large-scale campaign in connection with the Kessab events. That is why
it is offering aid and care to the Armenian elderly of Kessab. They
are fortunately alive, though they are in Turkey. Btu they remained
alive only because that was in Turkey's interests," he noted.

Sargis Hatspanyan, an Istanbul-Armenian activist also attending the
debate, said he thinks both Turkey and the United States are
responsible for what happened to the Kessab Armenians. "Without the
United States' knowledge, a bird even does not fly from one tree to
another in Turkey," he said, noting that the US has three military
bases on the country's territory.

Describing Turkey as a small United States, the activist said both
countries are seeking to devastate Syria as the only country not
governed by Sunnis.

http://www.tert.am/en/news/2014/04/12/turkey-qesab/

[Yervant1]

17:18 15/04/2014 » SOCIETY

One dead, 60 injured in rocket attack on Damascus Armenian school

“According to preliminary information, one person died and about 60 were injured in the rocket attack on the Armenian Catholic school in Damascus,” says a report posted on the Facebook page of Armenian Foreign Ministry.

Source: Panorama.am

[Yervant1]

TURKEY 'AIDED ISLAMIST FIGHTERS' IN ATTACK ON SYRIAN TOWN

Rebels and eye-witnesses claim that Turkish authorities allowed
fighters to enter Syria through a strategic border post to carry out
assault on Armenian town of Kasab

A severely damaged house in the Armenian Christian town of Kasab
Photo: REUTERS

By Ruth Sherlock, Beirut

6:40PM BST 14 Apr 2014

Turkey facilitated an attack carried out by Islamist fighters against
the Armenian town of Kasab inside Syria, eyewitnesses have told
the Telegraph.

In an operation that was months in the planning, Turkish authorities
gave rebel groups the mandate they needed to attack, allowing them
access through a heavily militarised Turkish border post, whose
location was strategically vital to the success of the assault.

"Turkey did us a big favour," said a Syrian activist with the rebel
group, whose name the Telegraph knows but has been asked not to
reveal. "They allowed our guys to enter from their border post.

"We needed to hit the regime from different sides and this was the
only way from near the coast, so it was a big help."

Kasab, the ancestral home of the Armenian ethnic minority in Syria,
which had remained relatively sheltered from the conflict in Syria.

Residents were woken on the morning of the attack, on March 21,
to screams and cries.

"We woke to the sounds of the shelling. There was no time even to get
dressed," remembered Bedros, 45, an Armenian resident who asked not to
be identified by his real name. "I grabbed my wife and my children. We
had no time to take our things. Some people fled in their night gowns."

Two days later Kasab was in the hands of an alliance of Islamist
groups, including the jihadist Jabhat al-Nusra, aligned with al-Qaeda.

Almost all of the villages approximately 2,000 inhabitants had fled.

The night of the attack a relative of Bedros had gone to one of the
main border posts with Turkey, which is only lightly armed with
Syrian troops, reportedly because of an agreement signed decades
before the war.

"By the time he arrived the attack had begun. He saw the Islamist
fighters standing with the Turkish army. They started launching their
shells from the border".

The Turkish foreign ministry has issued a statement stating that the
claims that the government aided the opposition in the attack are
"totally unfounded and untrue".

However, the findings of investigation by Human Rights Watch (HRW),
which included interviews with local eye-witnesses, directly contradict
this claim.

"It is not feasible that these groups could have crossed into Syria
from where they did without the knowledge of the Turks," Lama Fakih,
the Syria and Lebanon researcher at HRW told the Telegraph.

"One of the areas they used was an official border crossing that
residents say has a Turkish military presence."

The entry through the Kasab border crossing allowed the rebels to
attack the Syrian military positions near village from several sides,
making it key to the rebel assault.

Rebel groups had wanted to attack Kasab for a long time, said the
female activist, but Turkey had previously denied them access.

"In the past the Turks refused to give us passage, because they said
that in order to succeed in the attack we needed to be united,"
she said, referring to the battles that took place at the end of
last year between the extremist Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham,
and other rebel groups in the area.

The attack on Kasab sparked dark memories of the Ottoman massacres
for its inhabitants, and a hysterical flurry across social media from
pro-government sources claiming horrific massacres in the town.

Residents themselves brought up memories of massacres in 1909, and
the genocide in 1915, when Kasab villagers were slaughter in their
thousands by the Ottomans.

"We always thought the Turks would attack us one day," said Bedros, the
fellow family members who he is sharing his new lodgings in Lebanon,
nodding as he spoke. "And with the attack on Kasab it was clear that
Turkey helped. The attackers came from Turkish territory."

Kasab was however the Syrian regime's 'Achilles heel' in the well
defended coastal province of Latakia, where many Alawites, the same
religious minority as President Assad, live.

Al-Nusra and the Islamic Front have pushed deeper into the terrain,
taking control of Samra, giving them access to the coastline and
engaging in fierce battles for 'observatory 45', the highest mountain
point in the area, and a strategically vital military position.

"You can see why we needed to take Kasab," said Dr Mahmoud, diplomacy
envoy for the Islamic Front. "You can see what has happened. Now the
regime is very very afraid."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/10765696/Turkey-aided-Islamist-fighters-in-attack-on-Syrian-town.html