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Harut Sassounian

BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN

The Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, Sahak Mashalian, once again issued a pro-Turkish statement, this time on the eve of the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, trying to please his Turkish masters and undermine President Joe Bidens April 24 acknowledgment.

We all understand that the Armenian community and the Patriarch in Turkey are hostages in the hands of the Turkish government. As such, they are under pressure to make pro-Turkish statements. However, there are red lines that no Armenian should cross, regardless of the circumstances or reasons. Our ancestors sacrificed their lives during the genocide, not succumbing to Turkish pressures and physical threats. The Patriarch, who is supposed to be a man of God, is obligated to tell the truth even if his life is in danger.

As I have suggested before, if the Patriarch does not want to get in trouble with the Turkish authorities, he should simply keep his mouth shut. He should not volunteer to issue statements on non-religious issues and not desecrate the memories of 1.5 million perished Armenians. We should not jump to the conclusion that every time the Patriarch issues a pro-Turkish statement he is necessarily doing it under duress. Furthermore, the Patriarch should ask himself if the Armenian community has received any benefits in return for his multiple pro-Turkish statements.

Certainly, the Turkish government has repeatedly exploited the Patriarchs words to disseminate pro-Turkish propaganda worldwide. For example, on April 23, 2021, when it became known that President Biden would issue his much anticipated acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide, the Anadolu Agency (AA), the official Turkish governments news service, reported Patriarch Mashalians condemnation of President Bidens upcoming statement. The AA headlined its news with the Patriarchs words: Using 1915 incidents for politics saddens Armenians.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a recent visit to the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul

How could President Bidens acknowledgment of the genocide, welcomed by Armenians worldwide, sadden Armenians? On the contrary it saddened the denialist Turks and thrilled Armenians. Patriarch Mashalian should just stick to religious subjects and not pronounce judgements on other matters. Regardless of whether he is pressured by the Turkish government to make political statements or does it voluntarily, the Patriarch should refrain from taking such positions, saying that as a clergyman he only deals with religious subjects.

Here are excerpts from the pro-Turkish statement made by Patriarch Mashalian on April 23, 2021, to the Anadolu Agency which was publicized widely in the Turkish media:

It saddens us to see that the suffering of our people and the suffering of our ancestors are instrumentalized by some countries for everyday political purposes. The tension caused by the usage of the issue in parliamentary agendas for decades has not served the rapprochement of the two nations. On the contrary, it provokes hostile feelings and delays peace. We, just like our predecessors and late Patriarchs, will continue to wish for peace, friendship and well-being between Turks and Armenians. We will encourage the rebuilding of relations based on neighborhood and common grounds speedily. We prefer to be one of those who hopefully expect the revival of neighborly relations, which are unique to these lands and exist in the traditions of the two communities, between Turkey and Armenias authorities. Dear Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during his time as both Prime Minister and President, has been the only top state official in the history of the Turkish Republic to give messages on this occasion. These messages show a spirit, sharing our pain and a certain respect for the children of our nation that lost their lives in exile. In our opinion, it would be appropriate to take these as positive steps towards rapprochement in the future. If only the joint history commission they [Turkey] proposed could have been established, then at least 15 years of progress would have been made. If only the [Armenia-Turkey] protocols could have been implemented, borders could have been opened. Then the resolution of the Karabakh [issue] could have resulted differently. We still do not think it is late. The project to build a six-country basin, proposed by our Dear President for Caucasia, can bring the peace of the century to the communities in the region.

Leaving no doubt as to the pro-Turkish position of the Patriarch, Turkeys Communications Director Fahrettin Altun endorsed his statement: Sahak Mashalian, the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, aptly noted that past sufferings must not be exploited for short-term political gains. [The Patriarch said]: We will continue to live together, peacefully and as brothers and sisters, in this land.

Turkeys presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin also expressed support for Mashalians remarks: Abusing history for a narrow political agenda helps neither the past nor the present.

Interestingly, President Erdogan sent a letter to the Armenian Patriarch on April 24, denying the Armenian Genocide and agreeing with the Patriarchs words.It is not surprising that the Turkish government supported Archbishop Mashalians candidacy for the Patriarchal elections over other less subservient candidates.

The Patriarch must realize that by making propaganda statements on behalf of Turkey, he is losing the respect of Armenians both inside and outside Turkey. His anti-Armenian words are viewed as those of a sold out Turkish agent. The Armenian Church and Armenians in Turkey should pressure the Patriarch to resign since he has lost the support of the Armenian community and can no longer function as their religious leader.

The only countries around the world that criticized President Bidens April 24 statement were: Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. This places the Armenian Patriarch in the shameful company of the enemies of the Armenian nation!

Read the original here:
How Can the Armenian Patriarch Be as Pro-Turkish as Erdogan? - Asbarez Armenian News

Andrew North is a journalist based in Tbilisi and a regular commentator on Asian affairs. He has reported widely from South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's military buildup on Ukraine's border has incited a complex power struggle with Turkey over the Black Sea that will ripple across Central Asia.

And just as he did last year in the Caucasus, Turkey's mercurial President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is matching words with hard power -- sending Ukraine additional missile-firing drones.

Russia says the 80,000-strong force it deployed to the edge of Ukraine's Donbas region was just an exercise, but Putin also appears to have been trying to gain leverage with Washington. It seems to have worked, with U.S. President Joe Biden offering a summit meeting with the man he recently called a "killer."

But it was Turkey's Erdogan who took the most concrete action in response to Russia's saber-rattling -- perhaps better described these days as tank-rumbling -- by inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to Istanbul earlier this month to reaffirm their strategic partnership.

For Erdogan, the issue is ensuring that Russia does not expand its Black Sea influence following its seizure of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Crimea has a dominant position jutting out into the middle of the giant inland sea and Moscow has bolstered its surface and submarine fleet there, as well as installing S-400 surface-to-air missiles capable of hitting aircraft flying along most of Turkey's Black Sea coastline.

Erdogan is also pressing ahead with a $12.5 billion plan for a new waterway linking the Black Sea with the Mediterranean as an alternative to the Bosporus. The so-called Istanbul Canal would relieve pressure on the increasingly clogged Bosporus, increase Turkey's freight revenues, and give it greater naval flexibility.

While international coverage of the conflict has faded, Moscow has never stopped backing separatists in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region as a means of unsettling Kyiv and blocking its push to join Western institutions such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union.

The irony, of course, is that there's no love lost between Erdogan and his NATO allies, not least over the fact that he too has bought Russia's S-400 missile system. That didn't help Turkey's case in trying to stop Biden from going ahead with this weekend's decision to formally declare the 1915 mass killing of Armenians under the Ottoman Turks a "genocide." But on Ukraine, Turkey and the West are on the same side.

It is the same playbook Erdogan used successfully last year in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, matching vocal support for Azerbaijan with balance-shifting weaponry on the battlefield, such as its Bayraktar TB2 combat drones. There, too, Russia was on the other side, backing Armenia, though showing far less interest than it does in Ukraine.

Turkey has committed to supplying Ukraine with more of the drones that proved so decisive for Azerbaijan. Russian-backed separatists do not have the same capability, giving Ukrainian forces a major potential advantage. Ankara has also signed a deal to sell Ukraine four stealth warships, helping to boost its Black Sea naval capacity.

The Kremlin, predictably annoyed, followed a tried-and-tested template by rolling out Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to blame Ukraine for the rise in tensions, while condemning Turkey for facilitating what he called Kyiv's "militaristic" tendencies. Moscow has also suspended most flights to Turkey, ruining the holiday plans of at least 500,000 Russians.

The Black Sea tussle adds to a growing list of places where the two veteran strongmen have been squaring off. Ankara has been trying to deepen its influence in the resource-rich and Turkic-language speaking states of Central Asia, butting up against Russian interests in a region that, like Ukraine, Moscow regards as its backyard. They have also backed opposing sides in the wars in Syria and Libya.

Turkey has been assiduous in using soft power with its companies and diplomats extending their presence and influence, in addition to 20 new embassies across Asia. It is also keeping a hard-power presence in Afghanistan even after U.S.-led NATO troops leave this September, as part of a separate deal it has done with Kabul to keep some forces there.

But while Turkey may have the second-biggest military in NATO after the U.S., going up against Russia over Ukraine is a huge gamble. It comes amid growing economic strain, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, and dissent over Erdogan's strategic approach.

An influential group of former Turkish navy officers and diplomats recently denounced the Istanbul canal project, saying it threatened existing arrangements controlling access to the Bosporus by other nations. Flexing its authoritarian muscle, the government reacted by arresting 10 former admirals who signed the statement, accusing them of mounting a quasi-coup.

On that count, Putin would probably agree. While there may be much that divides the two leaders, Erdogan is known to be grateful to his Russian counterpart for his rapid backing during a failed Turkish military coup in 2016. Support from the West was notably lacking by comparison.

But modern geopolitics is more than ever an a la carte menu, with choices that both complement and conflict. And this time around, the West is more than happy to have Turkey's strongman on its side as it wrestles with his bigger rival across the Black Sea.

Continue reading here:
Erdogan and Putin battle it out for control of the Black Sea - Nikkei Asia

[Dimitris Papamitsos/Prime Minister's Office/INTIME NEWS]

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Thursday that a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes sense and will take place, adding that I am not able to tell you when but it will not be too late.

In a wide-ranging interview on Alpha TV Thursday night, the Greek premier noted that as he has said in the past, such a meeting should not be news, although he appreciates the buzz around it at this stage, given the heightened tension throughout 2020.

Regarding the visit to Ankara last week by Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias and his controversial public confrontation with his counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, Mitsotakis said it was handled impeccably.

He noted however that he could not reveal what he and Dendias discussed before and after the latters visit to Ankara and limited himself to saying that I instructed the foreign minister to respond if he was provoked.

Dendias pointed out Thursday that expressing Greeces firm positions does not negate the effort for improved relations.

Speaking to Euronews, Dendias said Greece seeks common ground with Turkey but this needs to be based on international law and the Law of the Sea.

He also added that his public confrontation last week with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is not something he wanted to happen.

Meanwhile, speaking earlier on the Arab News network, Dendias initially raised some eyebrows in Greece when he said, among other things, that Greece believes in renewable energy sources and that it is not going to start digging up the bottom of the Mediterranean to find gas and oil. This, he said, would be costly as it would take 10 to 20 years to find and exploit these resources. He stressed that Greece does not plan to become a country of oil and gas production in the near future. His statements were interpreted by some quarters as a departure from the main directions of Greek foreign policy in recent years, especially in the field of energy and maritime zones.

In response Greek Foreign Ministry officials intervened, stating that what Dendias said does not concern the existing energy program of the country. Moreover, the same officials added the views of the minister of foreign affairs on green energy and sustainable development are known and have been repeatedly expressed.

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Mitsotakis, Erdogan meeting on the cards - Kathimerini English Edition

The sum refers to the dollars sold by Turkeys state banks to support its lira currency in foreign exchange markets.

Where is the $128 billion? asked posters on billboards around Istanbul intended by Turkeys main opposition to embarrass and annoy President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK).

The gambit seems to have worked. Police took the posters down,using cranes in some instances, according to videos shared online by the opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP), which said it would keep putting them back up.

The question has also trended on social media, while the AK on Tuesday blocked a CHP call to debate the missing funds in parliament.

The sum refers to the dollars sold by state banks to support the Turkish lira in foreign exchange markets. The unorthodox policy began around the 2019 municipal elections and was ramped up in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic laid bare the liras vulnerability and Turkeys reliance on external funding.

Bankers have calculated that the sales totalled $128.3bn in 2019-20.

Erdogansays the sales helped to support the economy, but they sharply depleted Turkeys buffer of foreign reserves, leaving it more exposed to crisis, and opposition politicians want to know more.

[Erdogan] says you cannot even ask me questions, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu told party members on Tuesday, accusing the AK of stifling debate. Those leading the country must give an account to the people.

Kilicdaroglu said a prosecutor had ruled that some posters that bore a silhouette of the presidential palace were an insult toErdogan. Insulting the president is a crime in Turkey.

The lira, which has lost more than 50 percent of its value since the end of 2017, held around 6.85 versus the United States dollar between May and August 2020, which economists attributed to forex sales. It later weakened to a record low of 8.58 by November, after the sales stopped. The lira traded at 8.08 on Wednesday.

The CHP first posed the question about the sales in February, prompting Erdogan to defend the legacy of his son-in-law, former Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, who had overseen the policy.

Albayrak abruptly resigned in November whenErdogannamed Naci Agbal as governor of the central bank, which had backed the dollar sales with swaps.

Agbal was in turn fired last month, partly, Reuters news agency reported, because Erdogan was uncomfortable with the banks investigation into the sales, which cut its net foreign exchange reserves by 75 percent last year.

The net buffer was $10.7bn on April 2, the lowest in at least 18 years, central bank data shows. Excluding $41.1bn in outstanding swaps, the reserves are deeply negative.

AK lawmaker Mustafa Savas said the sales helped Turkey avoid raising interest rates or seeking International Monetary Fund support.

The CHP has asked how the sales were conducted and at what rate. AK lawmaker Nurettin Canikli said they were all conducted at market rates.

Canan Kaftancioglu, the CHPs Istanbul organisation head, said just a fraction of the $128bn could have supported Turks through a 28-day coronavirus lockdown that the party has urged in the face of a surge in infections.

They will never prevent us from asking these questions, she said, adding that the posters would hang outside CHP buildings until an answer was provided.

The rest is here:
Where is the $128B? Turkeys opposition presses Erdogan - Al Jazeera English

ISTANBUL The unpredictable roller coaster that has become Turkish politics was on full display this past week after 104 retired admirals publicly challenged President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an open letter and 10 of them ended up in jail, accused of plotting a coup.

It was no accident that the episode came as Mr. Erdogan finds himself in the midst one of the most intense political passages of his career, as the worsening pandemic and economy have left the president sliding in the opinion polls even as he amasses more powers.

To inspire the party faithful, Mr. Erdogan has returned again to herald one of his favorite grand ideas: to carve a canal, through Istanbul, from the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea to open a new shipping route parallel to the narrow Bosporus.

For now, the use of those natural waterways is governed by the Montreux Convention, an international treaty forged in 1936, between the two World Wars, in an attempt to eliminate volatile tensions over one of the worlds most vital maritime choke points.

Alongside his support for the canal construction project, Mr. Erdogan has signaled that he could dispense with the treaty. A spokesman for the Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., told a television presenter last month that the president had the power to do so if he wanted.

Alarm was not long in following.

Under the treaty, Turkey agreed to free passage of civilian and trade vessels but a strict control of warships, especially of outside powers, which has held the peace in the region. While analysts say that reneging on the agreement is both unlikely and dangerous for Turkey, the mere suggestion threatens to send ripples of anxiety throughout the region and beyond.

Among the first to object strongly were Turkeys own retired admirals, who last weekend put their names to an open letter on a nationalist website warning that the Montreux Convention was an important founding document for Turkeys security and sovereignty and should not be put up for debate.

On Monday, Mr. Erdogan confirmed Turkeys commitment to the treaty but denounced the admirals. On Wednesday, he came out roaring and combative with a speech to A.K.P. lawmakers, blaming the main opposition party, the Republican Peoples Party, for the whole episode.

The issue, the political columnist Murat Yetkin wrote on his blog, the Yetkinreport, shifts the current agenda from the pandemic and the economy to fields that the A.K.P. likes.

The pandemics toll is now worse than ever in Turkey, with more than 50,000 new cases recorded daily. An increasingly sharp economic crunch looms, too, as the governments pandemic support for businesses is scheduled to end and inflation and unemployment remain alarmingly high.

In the midst of the troubles, Mr. Erdogans party has slipped to below 30 percent in a recent opinion poll, and his political ally, the Nationalist Movement Party, has fallen as low as 6 percent, making his re-election to the presidency in 2023 seem increasingly difficult.

Even his own supporters recognize that a bruising fight lies ahead. We have entered the long two-year election process leading to the 2023 elections, Burhanettin Duran, the director of SETA, a pro-government research organization, wrote in a column in the Daily Sabah newspaper this past week.

Due to the recent declaration, he said, referring to the admirals letter, now there is a possibility that the process will be painful. He predicted a combined domestic and international campaign against Mr. Erdogans government.

Mr. Erdogan has promised that his multibillion-dollar canal plan would create a construction and real estate boom and bring in revenue from an increase in shipping traffic.

Opposition parties have denounced the project as a corrupt, moneymaking scheme, warning that the canal would be financially unsustainable and would destroy Istanbul with uncontrolled urban sprawl.

Investigative journalists have exposed real estate deals in which prospectors from the Middle East have bought up much of the land along where the canal will be built.

Yet Mr. Erdogan said at a regional party congress in Istanbul in February that the project would go ahead, despite opposition.

They dont like it, do they? They are trying to prevent it, arent they? he said in his keynote speech. Despite them, we will build the Istanbul Canal.

The admirals are far from the only opponents of the canal. Others include the popular mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, along with environmentalists, ecologists and urban planners.

But the admirals raised particular ire from Mr. Erdogan and his fellow Islamists by including in their letter criticism of a currently serving admiral who was caught on video attending prayers with a religious sect.

The retired admirals made a point of reaffirming their adherence to the secular ideals of the Turkish republics founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The government machinery pounced swiftly.

Ten of the signatories were detained on Monday, and another four were ordered to report to the police but were not jailed in view of their advanced years. Mr. Erdogan accused them of plotting a coup, a toxic allegation after four years of thousands of detentions and purges since the last failed coup. Some saw that as a warning to serving officers who might have similar thoughts.

Mr. Erdogan had got his groove back Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, wrote in an analysis.

The admirals letter did not come out of the blue. A year earlier, 126 retired Turkish diplomats had penned an open letter warning against withdrawing from the convention. The debate reveals the deep divisions between secularists and Islamists that have been tearing Turkey apart since Mr. Erdogans rise to power in 2002.

Caught up in their own dislike of the secular republic that replaced the Ottoman Empire, the Islamists distrust the Montreux Convention, said Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations. That was an erroneous reading of history, she added, but Mr. Erdogan feels that the convention needs to be modernized to meet Turkeys new coveted role as a regional heavyweight.

Secularists, as well as most Turkish diplomats and foreign policy experts, see the Montreux Convention as a win for Turkey and fundamental to Turkish independence and to stability in the region.

Russia would have most to lose from a change in the treaty, said Serhat Guvenc, a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, although any alteration or break up of the convention seems inconceivable, since it would demand consensus from the multiple signatories.

Russia would resent it and be provoked, he said. The United States and China would gain, since neither currently is allowed to move large warships or aircraft carriers into the Black Sea.

Most analysts said that Mr. Erdogan and his advisers knew the impossibility of changing the Montreux Convention, but that the veteran politician is using the issue to kick up a storm.

It is the governments way of lobbying for the canal, Ms. Aydintasbas said. Erdogan is adamant about building a channel parallel to the Bosporus, and one of the governments arguments will likely be that this new strait allows Turkey to have full sovereignty as opposed to the free passage of Montreux.

That interpretation is both inaccurate and dangerous, she said. Inaccurate because as long as Montreux is there, no vessel is obliged to use the new canal. Dangerous because it could aggravate the Russians and the international community.

More here:
Sliding in the Polls, Erdogan Kicks Up a New Storm Over the Bosporus - The New York Times