French military aircraft barred from Turkish space
In a continuing spat over France's backhanded recognition of the truth - that Turkey slaughtered more than a million Armenians a century ago - Turkey is refusing to allow French military aircraft to fly over, and French ships to sail in, its territory.
“Our requests [for an aircraft and two warships] have been rejected, so we are no longer issuing such requests. We are using alternative routes,” France’s Ambassador to Turkey Laurent Bili told the private news channel CNN Türk in an interview.
Bili said the first rejection was to a request for a French military aircraft that wanted to use Turkish airspace on its way to France from Afghanistan. Similarly, two French warships were not allowed to enter Turkish territorial waters recently. Turkey’s move against the French military was part of sanctions imposed against France after the adoption of the law at French Parliament late December last year.
Unfortunately, Ambassador Bili went on to engage in some dhimmi apologetics.
“There was such an atmosphere [in Ankara] that necessitated my return to France,” Bili said, adding that the Turkish reaction against the move was a surprise for many French people but did not affect Turkey’s image in the country. “France attaches great importance to its relationship with Turkey. We need to be calm. The law is not aimed against Turkey […] The number of Armenians living in France is 10 times more than the number of Armenians in Turkey. They have become a part of French history. I understand how sensitive issues are concerning ancestors, but cutting off ties is not a good idea.”
It's all just politics. So much for moral decency.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has some weird ideas about free speech. Where did she get them? I'm going to tell you, but first, you have to be in the mood so....
Let's go to the videotape.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced that the United States will not recognize the Armenian genocide (has anyone told Congress?) because the US doesn't want to 'compromise free speech.'
Geert Wilders, head of the party, and its Mideast expert, deputy Wim Kortenoeven, accused Turkey of abandoning its allies – Israel earlier this year, and now France.
Turkey severed diplomatic and military ties with France last week, over the French parliamentary resolution on the current Turkish government’s reaction to the Ottoman Empire’s massacre of Christian Armenians in 1915. The empire preceded the modern secular Turkish state founded in 1923, and the French deemed the state’s denial that these events represented genocide to be punishable by a monetary fine.
France is a leading member of the NATO military alliance, as is Holland.
Kortenoeven, a leading European specialist on the Mideast and author of several books on the region, told The Jerusalem Post that since Turkey has a short but disturbing history of abandoning allies, it could be a lethal mistake to entrust them with the custody of a crucial element of the new Western/European defense system against nuclear rogue states such as Iran and Pakistan. The Dutch lawmakers asked that the slated missile shield to be installed in Turkey be reconsidered.
The party’s military spokesman, Marcial Hernandez, also posed questions to the ministries regarding Turkey’s reliability as a NATO partner.
On Thursday, the lower house of the French parliament passed a bill making it a crime punishable by one year in jail to deny any genocide. That includes the Armenian genocide committed by the Turks between 1915-18, and Turkey reacted with predictable seething and rage (Hat Tip: Will).
Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday a bill passed by France's lower house of parliament, making it a crime to deny genocide, was racist, discriminatory and xenophobic and said it had opened wounds with Paris that would be difficult to heal.
Erdogan said Turkey was cancelling all economic, political and military meetings with NATO partner France and said Ankara would cancel permission for French military planes to land and warships to dock in Turkey as a result of the bill.
That's even more than the steps they've taken against Israel (so far).
Under the bill, those publicly denying genocide would face a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros (£29,000: $58,000).
Armenians say up to 1.5m people were killed by the Ottoman Turks in 1915-16.
Ankara says closer to 300,000 people died, and that Turks were also killed as Armenians rose up against the Ottoman Empire when Russian troops invaded eastern Anatolia, now eastern Turkey.
More than 20 countries have formally recognised the killings as genocide.
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Turkish TV announced the recall of the country's envoy in response to the bill.
Ambassador Tahsin Burcuoglu will leave France on Friday and further measures will be announced in Turkey by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Turkish embassy spokesman confirmed for French news agency AFP.
Earlier, Turkey's main political parties issued a joint statement condemning the bill, saying it "denigrates Turkish history", and there have been protests outside the French embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara.
"We are reviewing our relations with France," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after the French National Assembly passed the so-called Armenian genocide bill. "We will take our measures phase by phase depending on France's behavior from now on.
Erdogan said Turkey is recalling its Paris ambassador for consultations to Ankara, is canceling bilateral visits, and won't cooperate with France in joint projects within the European Union.
"We are stopping all kinds of political consultations with France. We are canceling bilateral military activities and joint exercises from now on. We are canceling the permission granted annually for all military overflights, landings and take-offs. We are starting permission process for every military flight individually. From today on, we are rejecting the permission requests of military ships to visit ports. We will not attend and held the bilateral Turkey-France joint economic and trade partnership committee meeting that was planned for January 2012 under the co-chairmanship of the economy ministers of the two countries," Erdogan said.
In 2001, France recognized the slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire nearly 90 years earlier as a genocide. Now, France is about to criminalize the denial of any genocide, including the Armenian one. And the Turks are outraged.
Faced with French President Nicolas Sarkozy's open hostility to Turkey's all-but stagnant bid to join the European Union, and buoyed by a fast-growing economy, Ankara has little to lose by picking a political fight with Paris.
With Turkey taking an increasingly pivotal and influential role in the Middle East, especially over Syria, Iran and Libya, France could experience some diplomatic discomfort, and French firms could lose out on lucrative Turkish contracts.
Even though nearly 100 years have passed since the killings that coincided with World War One, successive Turkish governments and the vast majority of Turks feel the charge of genocide is a direct insult to their nation.
Turkish leaders also argue that the bill, proposed by 40 deputies from Sarkozy's party, is a blatant attempt at winning the votes of 500,000 ethnic Armenians in France in next year's elections, limits freedom of speech and is an unnecessary meddling by politicians in a business best left to historians.
"This proposed law targets and is hostile to the Republic of Turkey, the Turkish nation and the Turkish community living in France," Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan wrote in a tersely worded letter to Sarkozy last week.
"I want to state clearly that such steps will have grave consequences for future relations between Turkey and France in political, economic, cultural and all areas," he said.
The volume of trade between France and Turkey from January to November this year was more than $13.5 billion, according to Turkish government statistics. France is Turkey's fifth biggest export market and the sixth biggest source of its imports.
Both Turkey and France are members of the World Trade Organization, which is supposed to eschew boycotts. Given the membership of the WTO, and the boycotts currently in effect (how much trade does Saudi Arabia do with Israel?) I would not count on that preventing a boycott.
I'd organize a flotilla in support of the Kurds, but I'm afraid no one would join. Perhaps the world believes the Turkish military when it claims that only Kurdish rebels have been killed. Of course, there's this bit of information to suggest that Turkey's surgical operation isn't so surgical:
Turkish authorities have not responded to reports from the Iraq's Kurdish authorities that a family of seven civilians was killed by an airstrike on Sunday.
The pile of rubble at top left is that family's car. There's not even anything left to swarm over. Here are some more details about the incident.
"Seven people, including women and children, were killed by a Turkish air strike against a civilian car in Kortek village" located northeast of the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan, said Hassan Abdullah, the mayor of the Qalat Dizah area.
"Today there was a rocket from a Turkish plane that hit a civilian vehicle, a pickup, carrying seven civilians. The seven were killed," Abdulla said.
"The rocket has badly damaged the car... We could not recognize the bodies, their ages, their identities or even their sex."
There are two possibilities for why the World doesn't care about this incident and others like it. One is that it's just Muslims killing Muslims, and so long as it's not Jews killing Muslims, the World isn't interested.
The other possibility is that because Turkey got the US and the EU to declare the PKK (Kurdistan People's Party) a terrorist organization many years ago, the PKK can do no right in the World's eyes. Of course, given the Turks' track record for lying and murdering (or attempting to murder) in Armenia, in occupied Northern Cyprus, and off the coast of Gaza, perhaps it's time for the World to consider whether the Turks lied about the PKK too.
If the World is willing to tolerate the lies and innuendo of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan regarding Israel, will they also tolerate it regarding Armenia? Erdogan, whose country committed genocide against the Armenians 90-100 years ago, murdering a million and a half of them in the process, is now demanding that Armenia apologize to Turkey!
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said in Baku that Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan should apologize for calling on school children to occupy eastern Turkey.
Speaking at a joint news conference with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Erdoğan said Sarksyan's remarks did not befit a statesman and called them a “historical mistake” that should be corrected.
When asked by a student at a literature contest ceremony if Armenians will be able to get back their “western territories” along with Mt. Ararat, Sarksyan said, "This is the task of your generation.”
Armenians attach great historical and cultural importance to Mt. Ararat on the eastern border of modern-day Turkey, around where Armenians are believed to have first adopted Christianity as an official religion in 301 A.D.
Sarksyan said his generation had fulfilled its task by “getting back” Karabakh, a part of what he called “our motherland.” Nagorno-Karabakh is an Azerbaijani territory which is currently under Armenian occupation.
Leaders of both countries have met dozens of times to find a settlement to the decades-long conflict but have failed to secure a peace agreement. Armenia currently occupies 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territories, including seven adjacent provinces populated by ethnic Azerbaijanis.
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Erdoğan said Sarksyan's behavior is a provocation and an attempt to fill youth with hatred, which he said will lead Armenia's youth into “darkness.” “There cannot be such diplomacy. Sarksyan has made a very serious mistake … he must apologize,” Erdoğan added.
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Aliyev also deplored Sarksyan's remarks and said Armenians should wake up “from a dream into real life.” He said Nagorno-Karabakh is an Azerbaijani territory and that Sarksyan's words that they will occupy, what he called, “historical Turkish lands” only show their occupation mentality, adding that it seems as if Armenia thinks they have already settled the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. “Azerbaijan will get back their territories, either through peace or military means,” Aliyev said.
In Yerevan, Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan rejected interpreting Sarksyan’s words as if he meant to encourage students to occupy eastern Turkey, stating that his words were taken out of context.
“I believe, Turks failed to read the full text, interpreting the president’s words out of context. Serzh Sarksyan’s statement is serious and reasonable. The only reason Turkey refuses see sense behind it is because the country doesn’t need it,” Kocharyan said, Armenian news portal panarmenian.net reported late on Wednesday.
Erdogan’s demand for an Armenian apology comes just a few days after he threatened Israel with a “Plan B” – a further downgrading of ties – if it did not apologize for last year’s Mavi Marmara incident.
“What we see here is a pattern developing,” one Israeli diplomatic source said of Erdogan’s most recent demand for an apology. “Who is going to ask Erdogan to apologize for Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus?”
The Knesset is preparing to give the Turkish government a smack across its arrogant face. With Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan making false accusations against Israel, the Knesset looks like it will finally fight back. After years of succeeding Israeli governments avoiding giving it recognition, the Knesset is on the verge of officially recognizing the Armenian genocide (Hat Tip: Joshua I).
Shortly before the one year anniversary of the Free Gaza Flotilla that marked a low point in Israel-Turkey relations, the Knesset made history Wednesday afternoon when it held its first open discussion on recognition of the Armenian genocide.
With a number of Armenian religious and lay leaders watching in the visitors’ gallery, MKs ranging from Shas to Meretz took the stand to speak in favor of officially recognizing the series of massacres and deportations that killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenians in the years during and shortly after World War I.
For years, consecutive governments had blocked attempts by MKs to raise the subject of recognizing the genocide out of concern that such recognition could damage relations with Ankara. This year, however, the government did not block the hearing.
MKs voted by a unanimous vote of 20-0 following the hearing to refer the subject for a further hearing to the Knesset’s Education Committee, a hearing that will also be broadcast, at least via Internet. In contrast, any previous discussions concerning the genocide had been held exclusively behind the closed doors of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Isn't this great? In one move, we're doing the right and moral thing and b**ch-slapping a government that has become a bitter rival.
Here's hoping the Mavi Marmara sinks the day after Israel officially recognizes the Armenian genocide.
AKP platform ignores Israel, blames Armenia for impasse
The platform of the AKP, Turkey's ruling party, for the upcoming elections, ignores Israel and blames Armenia for an impasse that has been reached in negotiations for Turkey and Armenia to reconcile their century-long differences.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose party is expected to win a third term in the upcoming June 12 elections, unveiled the manifesto, which Erdoğan called the AK Party's manifesto for 2023, on Saturday. The document summarizes strategy with respect to countries both in its neighborhood and beyond. But the document neglects to mention relations with Israel and ways to restore strained ties with the Jewish state. Relations between Turkey and Israel hit the lowest point ever last year after a lethal Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara, carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza to break Israel's naval blockade.
Eight Turks and one Turkish-American were killed by Israeli commandos during the raid. Turkey requests an official apology and compensation for families of the victims. Israel says its commandos acted in self-defense. The party’s manifesto, which includes its foreign policy vision, attaches importance to its growing relations with Middle Eastern countries and stresses ties with the US among its primary priorities, while failing to mention Israel.
So much for those who believe that the upcoming elections indicate that the AKP is moderating. As to Armenia, the Turks continue to eschew any responsibility for the genocide their great grandparents carried out nearly a century ago.
“Our position with respect to the solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem and genocide allegations is clear. The AK Party will not allow any solution not based on fairness and justice to be imposed on Turkey. With regard to reciprocal and simultaneous steps for a solution, Turkey will not refrain from doing what it needs to do,” the document notes.
Turkey and Armenia signed twin protocols in 2009 in Zurich to bury a century of hostilities, which also included opening of borders between Turkey and Armenia if their parliaments ratified the protocols. Faced with Azerbaijan’s fierce opposition, Turkey said Armenia needs to display a constructive position on Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks and pegged the ratification of the protocols to a possible breakthrough in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks.
Armenia suspended the process on April 22 last year and blamed Turkey for blocking the process.
Turkey is sounding more Islamist by the minute. After all, the Arab Muslim states are always pushing for 'just' solutions as a means for covering up their continued desire to wipe Israel out. What could go wrong?
In one of her final acts as Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal) has prevented a bill to recognize the Armenian genocide from reaching the House floor. The bill enjoyed broad, bipartisan support.
"Despite a broad bipartisan majority of U.S. representatives prepared to vote in favor of the Armenian Genocide Resolution [H.Res. 252],U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose today to let this session of Congress expire without bringing this human rights legislation to a vote," Armenian National Committee of America, or ANCA said in a statement on its website.
The Armenian Assembly of America, another major U.S. Armenian group, also reported in the last minutes of Wednesday's House meeting that "the House adjourns before considering final action on the Armenian genocide resolution."
The bill passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March. I guess 'Muslim outreach' and Turkey's 'honor' is more important than justice for Armenians to the Democratic leadership. Not a good omen for Jews.
Erdogan threatens to attack Israel if it wars with Lebanon or Hamas
In Lebanon on Thursday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened that his country would not 'remain silent' in the event that Israel goes to war with Lebanon or Hamas.
"Does (Israel) think it can enter Lebanon with the most modern aircraft and tanks to kill women and children, and destroy schools and hospitals, and then expect us to remain silent?" Erdogan asked on the final day of a two-day visit to Lebanon.
"Does it think it can use the most modern weapons, phosphorus munitions and cluster bombs to kill children in Gaza and then expect us to remain silent? We will not be silent and we will support justice by all means available to us," he added.
During the course of his trip, Erdogan met with officials and visited the north and south of the country.
On Thursday in Beirut, hundreds of Lebanese of Armenian descent clashed with army troops during a protest over the Turkish prime minister's visit.
He was inaugurating a hospital in the southern port city of Sidon as hundreds of protesters gathered in the capital's Martyrs' Square.
When demonstrators tore up a large poster of Erdogan and pelted troops with rocks, security responded by beating up a number of them.
There were no reports of major injuries.
4% of the Lebanese population is Armenian. Turkey murdered 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 in attacks that most countries consider to be genocidal.
Israel warming relations with another enemy of Turkey
Since Israel's relations with Turkey went to hell this past summer, with the Turks choosing Iran and Syria over their alliance with Israel and sending the terrorist-laden Mavi Marmara to attempt to run the Gaza blockade, Israel has been seeking new allies. The natural place to look is those countries with whom Israel did not have warm relations until now because of its alliance with Turkey. And so, over the past few months, Israel has greatly improved its relations with Greece. Now, Israel is courting another enemy of Turkey, which could have severe implications for the Turks in the 'international community.' Israel is warming relations with Armenia.
The report suggests that if Armenian-Israeli relations deepen, the powerful Jewish lobby in the United States could theoretically back the Armenian resolutions on genocide and undermine Turkey.
During and after World War I, the Ottoman Empire, whose seat of power became independent Turkey, uprooted Armenians from their homes, and conducted forced marches to the desert of what is today Syria. This became known as the Armenian Genocide. Some 1 to 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered between 1915 and 1923.
The Republic of Turkey, however, refuses to acknowledge that the Ottomans indeed performed genocide on the Armenians and attempts to block all recognition of the Armenian debacle.
In an article in The Washington Times under the headline “American Jewish community ends support of Turkish interests on [Capitol] Hill”, Eli Lake reminded readers that in 2008, leading Jewish organizations decided that they would no longer block the adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolution in Congress. Lake believed that this was a response to the worsening Israeli-Turkish relations at the time, a circumstance that could very well repeat itself now.
With a Republican-controlled Congress and Israeli support, the chances of Congress recognizing the Armenian genocide are far more than they were until now. It's about time that the right thing happened.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
In a continuing spat over France's backhanded recognition of the truth - that Turkey slaughtered more than a million Armenians a century ago - Turkey is refusing to allow French military aircraft to fly over, and French ships to sail in, its territory. 
