Erdoğan Calls US House of Representatives' Resolution on Armenian Genocide 'Slander' - Polygraph.info
Erdoğan Calls US House of Representatives' Resolution on Armenian Genocide 'Slander' - Polygraph.info |
- Erdoğan Calls US House of Representatives' Resolution on Armenian Genocide 'Slander' - Polygraph.info
- Probe into ex-WWL Radio host Seth Dunlap suffers setback as judge denies arrest warrant - NOLA.com
- Turkish Politician Claims Invasion is to Fight Terrorism, But ISIS Prisoners Are Escaping - Polygraph.info
| Posted: 05 Nov 2019 07:48 AM PST On October 29, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide – the Ottoman Empire's mass murder of ethnic Armenians in 1915-1923. On October 30, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed the nation's parliament condemning the U.S. congressional resolution and calling the genocide a "slander against our country." That claim is false. The draft U.S. Resolution 296 was introduced in the House of Representatives on April 8, 2019. The resolution referred to the U.S. record on recognizing the Armenian genocide: "Whereas the United States has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, through the United States Government's May 28, 1951, written statement to the International Court of Justice regarding the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, through President Ronald Reagan's Proclamation No. 4838 on April 22, 1981, and by House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, and House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 1984." The Ottoman Empire's mass atrocities against ethnic Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites and other Christians in the early years of the 20th century are a well-documented historic fact. In 1997, the International Association of Genocide Scholars unanimously passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide. The U.S. Holocaust Museum's archives provide detailed evidence of the systematic mass extermination and expulsion of the ethnic Armenians, with estimates of the number of victims ranging from several hundred thousand to 1.5 million.  Turkey and Azerbaijan deny the Armenian genocide. According to the Armenian National Institute in Washington, DC, as of 2019, the governments of 29 countries recognized the Armenian genocide, including the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Russia. While the governments of Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia adopted laws criminalizing denial of the Armenian genocide, the United Kingdom has refused to recognize the massacre of ethnic Armenians as genocide, saying the 20th century events did not fully meet the conditions of the United Nation's Genocide Convention. "The massacres were an appalling tragedy, which the British Government of the day condemned. We fully endorse that view. However, neither this Government nor previous British Governments have judged that the evidence is sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that these events should be categorized as genocide as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, a convention which is, in any event, not retrospective in application," the UK said in 2007. However, the UK's three devolved legislatures – Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – have recognized the Armenian genocide.  Although most of sources list the U.S. among the nations that recognized the Armenian genocide, the question of whether the United States has officially recognized it, as the House resolution states, remains a matter of dispute. There is no vote scheduled in the Senate on the resolution and the U.S. Senate Historical Office has identified no instance when the upper chamber approved a similar resolution recognizing the genocide. "There have been a number of resolutions introduced over the years, but it looks like the closest one came to passage was in early 1990 when a resolution introduced by Bob Dole of Kansas made it to the floor for consideration," Assistant Historian Daniel Hold wrote to Polygraph.info. Dole's resolution failed two procedural votes. At the time, Sen. Dole was minority leader in the Senate, as the leading Republican Party member. Despite President Reagan's use of the term in the 1981 proclamation, the Obama White House never referred to the 1915 Armenian atrocities as "genocide," with the former ambassador to the U.N. now calling the failure a "mistake." Erdoğan's recent comments are not out of character. During his presidential campaign in 2014, Erdoğan, then Turkey's prime minister, said in interview with the national TV channel NTV: "I was called a Georgian. I apologize for this, but they even said [something] worse: They called me an Armenian," sparking outrage and accusations of racism. In 2016, reacting to the German Bundestag's recognition of the Armenian genocide, Erdoğan said: "I am addressing the whole world. You may like it, you may not. Our attitude on the Armenian issue has been clear from the beginning. We will never accept the accusations of genocide." In their October 2006 open letter, the leaders of the International Association of Genocide Scholars said historians who deny the Armenian genocide are pursuing a political agenda. "Scholars who deny the facts of genocide in the face of the overwhelming scholarly evidence are not engaging in historical debate, but have another agenda. In the case of the Armenian Genocide, the agenda is to absolve Turkey of responsibility for the planned extermination of the Armenians—an agenda consistent with every Turkish ruling party since the time of the Genocide in 1915," the letter said.  |
| Probe into ex-WWL Radio host Seth Dunlap suffers setback as judge denies arrest warrant - NOLA.com Posted: 08 Nov 2019 08:40 AM PST A New Orleans police detective went to a judge on Wednesday and applied for a warrant to arrest former WWL Radio sports talk-show host Seth Dunlap on a count of extortion, multiple criminal justice sources say. According to one of the sources with knowledge of the application, the detective presented evidence to back up his central allegation: that the openly gay radio personality used his phone to launch a homophobic insult at himself via the radio station's Twitter account before demanding nearly $2 million to settle complaints about a hostile workplace. But Magistrate Commissioner Robert Blackburn rejected the warrant. The sources said Blackburn didn't find the evidence backed up a charge of extortion, which is defined as making threats to a person "with the intention (to) obtain anything of value." The extent of the threat that Dunlap is accused of making — he allegedly warned he would go "scorched earth" on the station if it didn't accede to his settlement demands — didn't justify the felony charge, Blackburn said. The Police Department can still pursue an arrest warrant alleging that Dunlap committed a different offense based on the same evidence, or it could renew its request for an extortion charge by bolstering its application with more evidence. It wasn't immediately clear where the investigation into Dunlap — who has maintained his innocence and has pledged to sue the station over its treatment of him — goes next. NOPD officials on Friday would say only that the case remained "active and ongoing." The bizarre case has drawn national media attention since it began nearly two months ago. It gained new notice last week when the station fired Dunlap, 35, following an extended, paid leave of absence.  WWL Radio has fired former talk-show host Seth Dunlap, despite his denying claims by the station that he commandeered its Twitter account to … Dunlap used his Twitter account Sept. 10 to promote his analysis of a Saints win the previous day. Shortly thereafter, WWL Radio's official Twitter account retweeted Dunlap while referring to him as "a fag." Though the tweet was quickly deleted, screenshots of it circulated just as rapidly. Many condemned the station and expressed support for Dunlap, who days earlier had published a lengthy post on his personal Facebook page about his challenges as a gay man working in sports media. Within days, Dunlap announced that he was going on leave to ponder his next steps, including the possibility of filing a suit alleging a hostile workplace. In the meantime, WWL Radio and its corporate parent, Pennsylvania-based Entercom, hired a digital forensic specialist to identify whoever had sent the insult to Dunlap from the station's Twitter account, which several people could access. WWL later announced that the forensic probe showed the tweet came from an IP address — a unique number given to cellphones and other pieces of hardware — associated with Dunlap's phone. The station also said it had surveillance video depicting Dunlap opening the door of his office shortly after the offensive tweet went out and showing his phone to a co-worker while appearing to talk about the tweet. On Sept. 24, WWL Radio's management took the information to the NOPD and filed an extortion complaint, alleging a cash-strapped Dunlap had sent the tweet shortly before demanding $1.8 million from the station to drop plans for a lawsuit against the station. WWL Radio ended Dunlap's leave on Oct. 31 and terminated his employment that same day.  WWL Radio officials believe the homophobic slur tweeted from the station's official account to talk show host Seth Dunlap earlier this month w… The criminal justice sources said NOPD investigators obtained additional electronic search warrants before unsuccessfully applying Wednesday for the arrest warrant. One source said the context of Dunlap's "scorched earth" remark — during talks to potentially settle his workplace issues — factored into Blackburn's decision not to grant the warrant. The source said Blackburn said that the setting didn't support a criminal charge of extortion, which usually involves someone demanding payment to remain silent about pictures or messages that compromise the people being threatened. The newspaper was unable to review the warrant application. Extortion in Louisiana can be punished by up to 15 years in prison. WWL-TV legal analyst Donald Foret said a couple of state-level computer offenses could fit the case. Foret, a former prosecutor, said a relatively easy "jump" from extortion would be computer fraud, defined in part as "the accessing of any computer, computer system, computer network, or any part thereof with the intent to … obtain money, property or services by means of false or fraudulent conduct, practices or representations." Computer fraud is punishable by up to five years in prison. Online impersonation, a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months, could also fit the alleged facts of the case, Foret said. The law prohibits posting messages online under another's identity to threaten, defraud or generally harm others. WWL Radio and WWL-TV have different owners and managements. Dunlap and his attorney, Megan Kiefer, deny the claims of WWL Radio and Entercom. They say Dunlap passed a lie-detector test which asked if he was responsible for the offensive tweet. "Mr. Dunlap has maintained from the beginning that he did not send the tweet, and he voluntarily took and passed a polygraph test, the results of which have been released to the public," Kiefer said. Kiefer said Dunlap's dismissal compounded the damages he had already suffered. She alleges that WWL and Entercom only involved the police to retaliate against Dunlap for not letting them settle his workplace complaints cheaply. Dunlap began hosting his own weeknight show on WWL Radio, "The Last Lap with Seth Dunlap," in 2017. Before that, he co-hosted a sports show after starting at the station as a sales representative. New Orleans police on Thursday obtained a search warrant seeking information from WWL Radio talk-show host Seth Dunlap's cellphone, which is …  |
| Posted: 17 Oct 2019 12:00 AM PDT On October 11, the Turkish military along with their allies in the Turkish Free Syrian Army (now called the Syrian National Army) invaded northeastern Syria as part of what they call Operation Peace Spring. The stated aim of Turkey was to create a 30-kilometer buffer zone in the north of the country, pushing out the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey considers to be part of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK). The PKK is officially recognized as a terrorist group in Turkey and has also been so recognized by a number of other countries including the U.S. The PYD, along with its armed wing the YPG/YPJ, were founded by the PKK and they express support for the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. The U.S. intelligence community, in its 2018 and 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessments, described the PYD's armed wing as the PKK's militia force in Syria. However, there is debate as to the level of operational involvement the YPG/YPJ have with PKK activities in Turkey.  In an interview with the Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency, the head of the Turkish Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee Volkan Bozkir said that Turkey's objective in Syria was to "ensure our border security" and "neutralize terrorists." He accused the Kurdish PYD of "oppression and cruelty" toward the people living in their territory. While the PYD has certainly been credibly accused of human rights abuses, Bozkir spoke of their "oppression and cruelty" and even compared their activity with the terrorists of the Islamic State (IS).While Human Rights Watch details "a range of human rights abuses" by the PYD, it also states some of the abuses by the Syrian government and "non-state actors" in the country "amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity." Moreover, if Turkey's aim is "neutralizing terrorists" as Bozkir claims, the invasion appears to be having the opposite effect. For months the SDF had warned about the burden they faced in housing thousands of Islamic State prisoners, both fighters and their family members. In order to relieve that burden, they asked European countries to take back the foreign fighters that were their citizens. Many of those countries either refused to take back their citizens, or preferred to decide repatriation on a case-by-case basis, leaving many still in captivity in Syria. With the Turkish invasion, the poorly-equipped, thinly stretched SDF forces have lost the ability to control their prisoners and there have been multiple reports of IS escapes and in the few days following the start of the operation.  Bozkir is also quoted as saying: "Turkey does not seek conflict with the Kurdish people. Kurds make up a significant portion of the Turkish population. They serve in our military, in our Parliament, they are business leaders in Turkey. In addition, Turkey has no ambition to occupy northeastern Syria. We remain committed to the territorial integrity of Syria. Turkey also has no interest in changing the demographics of the region, as some have alleged." This statement lacks critical context. First, while the SDF was founded and led by the Kurdish PYD, it was never entirely Kurdish in composition. Other ethnic groups, mainly Arabs but also Assyrians, Armenians, and Turkmen also fought with the group. Moreover, Turkey has vowed to create a "safe zone" within northern Syria, and thus it not entirely clear how Turkey will ensure that safety without an ongoing occupation. European Union leaders have said the EU will not pay for a safe zone. On the topic of changing demographics in the region, Bozkir spoke in his interview of making a safe zone for the voluntary return and resettlement of Syrian refugees, 3.6 million of which are currently living within Turkey according to him. Even if they go voluntarily to the new territory, their arrival could fit one of several definitions of ethnic cleansing if Turkey is replacing the current residents, especially Kurdish ones. According to the United Nations, ethnic cleansing may include "a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas." Fears of ethnic cleansing may be raised further by reports that Turkey's Syrian allies in the current operation have killed SDF fighters who surrendered. As for claims about Kurds being citizens of Turkey, serving in the army, etc., it should be noted that the protection of Kurdish civil rights, including the right to use their language in public life, is a relatively recent development in Turkey, and Kurds are still prevented from fully participating in Turkish politics. "The government continued its repressive measures against elected parliamentarians, mayors and municipalities from pro-Kurdish parties, although the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) secured 67 parliamentary seats (11.9 percent of the vote) in the June election," Human Rights Watch noted in a 2019 report on Turkey. "In the southeast, the suspension of local democracy continued as the government maintained control of 94 municipalities won in the 2014 local elections by the HDP's sister party, the Democratic Regions Party (DBP). At time of writing, 50 co-mayors remained jailed on politically motivated terrorism charges after their removal from elected office and the assignment of government appointees to their positions," HRW added.  |
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