Category Archives: Caucasus

A Martyr For ISIS-K in Austria

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Last December I reported on heightened security at Cologne Cathedral due to suspected plans for an attack by the Islamic State.

Now it turns out that the supposed mastermind of the operation, a 40-year-old ISIS terror suspect from Dagestan, has been found dead in his cell in Austria on the day he was to be deported to Russia.

In a bizarre twist, at the end of the article the newspaper provides information on how to call the suicide hotline.

Many thanks to Gary Fouse for translating this article from the Austrian daily Heute:

Planned attack in Vienna

ISIS suspect found dead in cell prior to deportation

A 40-year-old from Dagestan reportedly had planned an attack in Vienna on 24 December. Shortly before his deportation, he has now been found dead.

July 11, 2024

A terror cell from the notorious ISIS offshoot, Islamic State-Khorasan (ISPK), caused a lot of commotion last Christmas Eve with attack plans against St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. After an investigation by State Security, five terror suspects were arrested in Germany and Vienna.

Surprisingly, the group was released from custody at the end of May. According to the judiciary, there was no exigent suspicion of a crime. All the suspects — four men and one woman — were transferred to deportation custody.

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The Day(s) That Turkish President Erdogan Humiliated America

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The following summary by David Boyajian recaps the events in D.C. seven years ago when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bodyguards roughed up American citizens. He also looks at the larger issue of the behavior of those same bodyguards on other occasions, both in the USA and elsewhere.


Turkish bodyguards attacking protesters, Washington DC, May 16 2017

The Day(s) That Turkish President Erdogan Humiliated America

by David Boyajian

Weak. Deceitful. Cowardly.

Those words describe America’s ongoing responses to the savage, unprovoked attack on peaceful protestors by Turkish President Erdogan’s security detail in Washington, DC.

It happened on Tuesday afternoon, May 16, 2017 following his meeting with President Trump.

Shortly after his motorcade arrived at the Turkish ambassador’s Sheridan Circle residence, where protestors had lawfully assembled across the street, Erdogan commanded his bodyguards to “attack, attack.”

Breaking through police lines, they kicked, punched, and bloodied the protesters, including women. Other Turks, purportedly not in Erdogan’s entourage, did the same.

The motorcade then brutalized a female demonstrator on its way to the Turkish Embassy. Assaults on Americans continued there.

The day saw a minimum of eleven persons, some with severe injuries, transported to the hospital.

Among those set upon and injured: Two U.S. Diplomatic Security members, six Secret Service agents, and a DC police officer.

Turks Allowed to Escape

Turkish Ambassador Serdar Kilic promptly asked that the bodyguards not be detained.

Sure enough, some 90 minutes later, U.S. security released them and accompanied Erdogan’s caravan to Joint Base Andrews where they jetted off to Turkey.

It was the fastest “joint move and departure I’ve ever seen,” said one U.S. agent.

The administration let the Turkish bodyguards flee, allegedly because they had diplomatic immunity.

Indignation

Then, too late, came the indignation, such as:

  • The State Department expressed its “concern to the Turkish government in the strongest possible terms.”
  • The bodyguards should be “charged and prosecuted,” said a unanimous House resolution in June.

Astonishingly, Trump said nothing about the attack. Perhaps this was due to his and his associates’ close relationships with Turkey and Erdogan.

There was good news, though.

On August 29, 2017, a federal grand jury indicted 15 Turkish bodyguards on felony charges.

That suggested that releasing them had been a serious error.

But then came Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s disgraceful meeting with Erdogan in Ankara on February 15, 2018.

America Caves in to Turkey — Again

Tillerson ordered that no American translator, aide, or transcriber attend the meeting.

That violated State Department protocol and ensured that no American could witness what Tillerson would bargain away.

Just the day before, the Justice Department moved — surely not coincidentally — to drop its case against most of Erdogan’s bodyguards. Charges were dismissed eight days later. Apparently, the entire detail has since dodged U.S. justice.

Tillerson obviously struck a Faustian deal to let Turkey’s unhinged president and his thugs off the hook.

That betrayed the American security agents, police, and demonstrators whom the Turks had assaulted and injured. It also mocked the First Amendment’s freedoms of assembly and speech.

American credibility took a hit as Ankara got away — like so many times before and since — with its crimes.

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Data Points

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On November 24, 2015 a Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Su-24 supersonic tactical bomber over either Syria (the Russian version) or Turkey (the Turkish version). The crew ejected from the Russian aircraft, and one of them met a horrible fate when he parachuted into the hands of the mujahideen of a Turkmen militia in Syria.

As might be expected, the Russian government objected vehemently to what the Turks had done, and demanded that the Turkish government make amends. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was defiant, however, and responded belligerently to Russia’s communications. He continued with his customary bombast and braggadocio for months afterwards.

As I followed these events in the news, I assumed that Turkey would eventually pay a price for its actions. Russia does not let that sort of attack go unanswered, especially one that is carried out by a less powerful adversary. But the Russians were (and are) patient and thorough, and I knew they would wait until the moment was right to exact their revenge on the strutting popinjay of Anatolia.

Mr. Erdogan continued in the same vein until the middle of the following June, when he suddenly changed his tune. Without any prior indication of contrition, on June 27, 2016 he made a groveling apology to Russia, obsequiously asking forgiveness for Turkey’s “mistake”.

A few days before the Turkish president said sorry, the Russian government had cut off all flights across the Black Sea to Turkey. The Anatolian beach resorts were favored destinations for Russian holidaymakers during the summer months, so this was a significant move. The Russian government also advised any of its citizens who were in Turkey to leave.

For his part, Mr. Putin declined to accept Mr. Erdogan’s apology. He said that unfortunately, an apology was not enough, and that Turkey needed to experience harsher consequences.

At that point I said to Vlad: “Holy [excrement]! Putin is about to do something to Turkey — wait and see!”

It was one of those rare occasions when, after putting a lot of data points together, I went out on a limb and made a specific prediction, on the record, with Vlad as my witness.

On June 28, 2016 — the very next day — a group of mujahideen carried out a suicide bombing attack at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul. 45 people were killed and more than 200 others wounded. Vladimir Putin expressed his sincerest condolences to the citizens of Turkey for the horrible tragedy that had befallen them.

Strangely enough, no terror group ever claimed credit for the attack. The attackers were eventually identified, and they hailed from the “stans” — Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Their atrocity may have been organized and coordinated by Chechen terrorists.

The FSB, continuing the work of its Soviet-era KGB predecessors, is known to have thoroughly penetrated all the terrorist networks in that part of Central Asia.

All of the above data points led me to conclude that Vladimir Putin had ordered the hit on the airport in Istanbul. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a fact, regardless of whether it can ever be proven.

Turkey was required to experience harsh consequences for shooting down a Russian jet, and it did. Afterwards Mr. Putin and Mr. Erdogan shook hands and made up. Cordial relations between the two countries were re-established.

And you can bet that Turkey will never, ever shoot down another Russian jet, not as long as Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in power.

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I wrote the above recap of what happened eight years ago as a preface to the events of March 22, 2024. I assume that readers know the general outline of what happened at Crocus City Hall last Friday, so I won’t give a detailed account of the attack and its aftermath.

Here are some relevant data points that I have observed:

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From Gaza to Berlin

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The topic of this post is not easy write about. What I say here will not earn me any approval. On the one hand, I’ll be excoriated as a tool of the Mossad. On the other, I’ll be denounced as an “anti-Semite”.

So I can’t win, no matter what. But I still feel obligated to write about it, because the issue is an important one that is not being widely discussed in mainstream forums.

These matters are sensitive and contentious, which means that I expect readers to go the extra mile to preserve decorum in the comments. I don’t want the conversation to devolve into an orgy of Jew-hatred, which would be its natural tendency. I know it’s difficult, but it is possible to voice serious criticism of Israel and Jewish groups without invoking the Great Hebrew Menace.

This discussion concerns current events in Gaza. The atrocities of October 7 of last year are a given — I’m not a “denialist” about what happened that day — but they are not the primary topic. My focus is on what has happened in Gaza since October 7.

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As I write, the war in Gaza is still raging, and a ground campaign in Rafah is looming. Critics of the IDF’s actions repeatedly employ the term “genocide”, due to the alarming official Palestinian casualty figures from Gaza. Which is strange, because people who wouldn’t dream of believing the pronouncements of the US government, or the Israeli government, or EU governments, seem to have no problem crediting the Palestinian statistics on casualties in Gaza. The same people who think the Jews inflated the death toll in the Holocaust believe whatever numbers the Poor Palestinians put out.

As if the “Palestinian health authorities” weren’t a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hamas. As if Hamas hasn’t always openly proclaimed that high civilian casualties work to its advantage. Why wouldn’t they inflate those numbers? How could they do otherwise?

Regardless of the actual figures, the damage to the infrastructure of Gaza has been horrific.

It’s very difficult to acquire credible information about conditions in the Gaza Strip, because almost everything published — whether in the mainstream media or the alternative media — is propaganda put out by one side or the other. The current prevalence of AI-generated images and video has made it that much more difficult to separate truth from pseudo-reality.

However, some information may be gleaned from satellite photos, which indicate that well over half of the buildings in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. Much of the population of northern Gaza has fled south, and is now trapped between the Israeli-enforced dividing line in central Gaza and the border with Egypt, which enclave is about to be invaded by the IDF. The Egyptians, knowing full well the risks associated with importing large numbers of Palestinians, are only allowing a trickle of traffic through the Rafah border crossing. As a result, a huge number of displaced residents are packed into tent cities near Rafah.

What will become of these refugees when the war is finally over? Israel is not too keen on repopulating the devastated areas of Gaza with them. And some Israeli organizations have plans for postwar Gaza that include establishing new Jewish settlements there. These are not the official plans of the Israeli government, but they are not the ravings of wild-eyed zealots in fringe groups, either. They are being openly discussed in public forums, which means the government is well aware of them and is not trying to shut them down.

If the Palestinians in the tent cities are not to be allowed back into northern Gaza, where then will they be resettled? There is some discussion of “voluntary” migration — that is, conditions in the crowded camps will become so harsh that residents there will be ready to emigrate somewhere, anywhere that will have them. If the Egyptian government can be induced to open the border for a steady, larger flow, this process can begin.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is working towards exactly that end:

On December 25, 2023, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed at the Likud Knesset faction meeting that he was working on the voluntary immigration of Gaza residents to other countries. “Our problem is finding countries that are ready to absorb them, and we are working on it,” Netanyahu said.

It goes without saying that no Islamic nation will accept any refugees from Gaza. They have all made it clear that they do not want Palestinians in their countries. And with good reason — nobody in his right mind would want to import Palestinians. That’s why the Egyptians have steadfastly resisted opening the Rafah crossing fully.

Thus Mr. Netanyahu is, for all practical purposes, expecting the West to take in the wretched refuse from Gaza. Canada, under the inspired leadership of Justin “Baby Doc” Trudeau, has already shown an eagerness to bring in the puir wee bairns of Palestine. I don’t know whether the USA will be similarly welcoming, since this is an election year, but we’ll see. As for the EU, it will vary from country to country, depending on how lefty the government in question is. I would expect Ireland, for example, to take its share, and possibly also Germany, under the Green-led traffic light coalition.

And Israel may have found a different solution to the problem: it is negotiating with Congo to take in the homeless and tempest-tost from Gaza. The article doesn’t mention the issue of payment, but I’m cynical enough to assume that the Congolese, already ridden with poverty and political strife, will extract a high price in return for the placement of Palestinians in their new tropical ghetto.

Regardless of their ultimate destination, the denizens of Gaza are problematic for anyone who is foolish enough to take them in. The Israelis, who have a closer acquaintance with the Palestinians than anyone else (with the possible exception of the Jordanians), have a jaundiced view of them.

Some Israelis — it’s not clear what proportion — are extreme in their attitude. Mia Schem, a former hostage held by Hamas, had this to say:

“It was important to me to relay the truth about the nature of the people who live in Gaza, who they are truly are and what I experienced there,” she said in the interview.

“It is important to you that the world understands, what? That I went through a holocaust,” Schem added. “Everyone over there is a terrorist. [emphasis added]”

Ms. Schem is not alone in her views, and some people are even harsher in their assessment of Gaza. Ilana Mercer (who is Jewish), refers to remarks made by Eliyahu Yossian — an “Israeli analyst and veteran of Unit 8200, a high-tech spy branch of the Israeli military” — according to a tweet from the account of Electronic Intifada:

These days, Israel’s political discourse is marred by the likes of Eliyahu Yossian, a mainstream opinionator. Listening as I did with difficulty to Yossian, I detect the delicate Iranian twang in his accent, although there is no sign of delicacy in this zealot’s worldview. Nothing authentically American, either. “Hamas is not the enemy,” he vociferates, “Gaza is. You level the area, and you kill the largest possible numbers, because the woman there is an enemy, the baby there is an enemy and the first grader is an enemy… and the pregnant woman is the enemy.” Yossian goes on to explain that Israel must not entertain “Western values” because these “blur basic logic.”

“The woman there is an enemy, the baby there is an enemy and the first grader is an enemy”: This is an exact mirror of Hamas’ doctrine about the Jews, by which they justify terrorist attacks that kill Israeli women, children, and the elderly. By definition, no Jew is innocent; all must die.

I don’t have to tell you that these constitute competing genocidal doctrines. In other words, the conflict in Gaza is trending towards a war of extermination. One side or the other will be exterminated.

Therefore, as an alternative, what Mr. Netanyahu is proposing is to export an entire population of what some Israelis consider to be dangerous terrorists who deserve extermination. The aim is to dump them on the Gentiles of the West, or perhaps on the Sons of Ham south of the Sahara. If the price is right, surely Congo or Gabon or Zambia would be willing to accept them. Anywhere but Israel.

Why is he doing that? If they all deserve to be killed, why ship them out to Berlin or Toronto instead of burying their corpses in the rubble of Gaza City and Khan Younis?

The answer, of course, is that this is a cynical strategy that will allow Israel to retain the moral high ground. Since 1948 the Israelis (and Jews in general) have had the reputation of conducting wars in the most humane manner possible, taking more Israeli casualties in order to avoid civilian deaths. It never seemed to do them any good; the Israelis were reviled just as much, no matter what. But they did it anyway. And, at least in the West, no one is acknowledged to wage war more ethically than the Jews of Israel.

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From Jerusalem to Yerevan

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As part of my work here at Gates of Vienna, I routinely have to read large quantities of material. That means I encounter many things I don’t agree with. I make a point of doing exactly that, because if I only read things I already agree with, I never learn anything new.

These days that also means I read a lot of stuff by people who don’t like Jews. Which is OK. I like Jews, but I don’t require that everybody else like them.

However, even though I’m a philo-Semite, that doesn’t mean that I think U.S. foreign policy should be subordinate to Israel’s. Even so, there are a lot of people who do think that, even if most of them never articulate it fully. They believe that the United States has a responsibility to make sure Israel wins its wars.

We don’t. We have a responsibility to take care of America’s interests. Period.

It’s quite possible that many American Jews will be appalled by my assertion. They may consider it an anti- Semitic position. Unfortunately, we live in a time when taking care of national self-interest is deprecated, and basing foreign policy on the loftiest moral principles is elevated to an absolute imperative. The concept of national interest is passé. It’s so 1945. It’s even — gasp! — Bismarckian.

The confusion of moral issues with those of national interest is one of the primary sources of our current political mess. Conducting foreign policy based on moral idealism rather than pragmatic national security is a guaranteed recipe for trouble.

And putting the interests of the state of Israel ahead of — or even on a par with — those of the United States is prima facie evidence of unseemly political influence. Tipping the scales in favor of a sovereign foreign entity can only be accomplished through the liberal application of money as a political lubricant at appropriate points in the machinery of state.

Tracking the various conduits through which mammon flows to corrupt political functionaries, and tracing that flow back to its ultimate source, is a project that would consume several lifetimes of effort, so I won’t attempt to get into it here. It’s just worth keeping the general rule in mind: if you want to learn why a politician acts against the interests of his constituents and his country, follow the money.

One way you can tell that money — rather than moral principles — guides US foreign policy vis-à-vis Israel is to look at a parallel case, that of Armenia.

On a strictly moral basis, Armenia’s case for assistance is every bit as strong as Israel’s. Like the Jews, the Armenians were targeted for genocide in the 20th century, beginning in 1915, with the Turks of the Ottoman Empire as the perpetrators. There are numerous photos of heaps of corpses of Armenian women and children, just as there were of the Jews during the Holocaust.

Like the Jews, Armenians had their property seized by the state. Like the Jews, the Armenians were deported en masse to concentration camps — in their case in the Syrian desert. Women and girls were crucified along the route. Their bodies were left to rot in the blazing sun.

At least a million Armenians were slaughtered or died of disease and starvation. The death toll was roughly half of the Armenian population.

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Putin Punishes Russia’s Key Ally

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While the world’s attention has been focused on Ukraine and Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) has gone largely unremarked by the international press. Just a few weeks before Hamas launched its attack on Israel, Azerbaijan brutally attacked the Armenian enclave of Artsakh, subjecting it to the same sort of bestial atrocities that have gained international opprobrium when committed by Hamas. The plight of Armenians in Artsakh — who have a legitimate and ancient claim to the territory, unlike the “Palestinians” of Gaza — has gone largely unnoticed.

To help make up the deficit, David Boyajian sends this report.


Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Credit: CaucasusWatch.de)

Putin Punishes Russia’s Key Ally

by David Boyajian

Oddly, few Western writers on the South Caucasus have ever grasped Christian Armenia’s significance as Russia’s only ally and military outpost among the region’s three countries.

Simply put: Were Russia to lose Armenia, the U.S./NATO/EU and pan-Turkism would inevitably dominate the Caucasus/Caspian and, perhaps, beyond. Putin understands this.

Georgia and Azerbaijan are, after all, headed away from Russia.

Though always under Russian pressure, Georgia is an unofficial NATO candidate with sizeable Western investments. NATO countries and Israel have been modernizing its military. Tbilisi is also the middleman for Baku’s gas/oil pipelines extending to Turkey and elsewhere.

Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel deposits, pipelines, and U.S./European commercial/economic ties are well-known.

Less talked about are the Aliyev autocracy’s pan-Turkic ideology; formal alliance with NATO’s Turkey; deployment of international terrorists; dependence on Israeli weapons / military prowess; and longtime backing by America’s Jewish lobby.

Elected ostensibly as a democratic reformist in 2018, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan grew friendlier with the West than had Yerevan’s previous leaders.

This enraged Putin. That is problematic: Armenia is dependent on its ally for gas, oil, the nuclear power plant, weapons, remittances from Armenians in Russia, and more. However, Pashinyan didn’t break with Moscow.

Nevertheless, Putin resolved to punish and humiliate Armenia to force it totally and irrevocably under Russian domination.

Punish and Humiliate

In 2020, Putin silently but indisputably greenlighted Azerbaijan, Turkey, international terrorists, and Israel to sledgehammer Christian Armenia and Armenian-populated Artsakh/Karabagh into submitting to Russia.

We know that near its borders Russia is extremely NATO-and-terrorist-phobic.

And yet:

In Azerbaijan’s 44-day war in 2020 (Sept. 27-Nov. 9) against Artsakh’s Armenians, Turkey openly delivered American-supplied F-16s, Bayraktar drones containing NATO parts, additional weapons, generals, troops, and several thousand jihadist terrorists to Azerbaijan.

Tellingly, the Kremlin was unruffled.

Moreover, Tel Aviv — the West’s friend, not Moscow’s — overtly resupplied Baku with hi-tech weapons.

The Kremlin, again, voiced no particular alarm.

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Azerbaijan = Corrupt + Terrorist + Evil

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David Boyajian’s latest report concerns the corruption and outright criminality of the Aliyev regime in Azerbaijan.


Ilham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin

Azerbaijan = Corrupt + Terrorist + Evil

by David Boyajian

There may be no regime more loathsome and deserving of U.S./European condemnation and punitive sanctions than that of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his crew of criminals and monsters.

Corrupt to the Core

State Sponsor of Terrorism

  • Azerbaijan deployed thousands of terrorists/jihadis against Christian Armenians in the early 1990s, including Afghan Mujahedin, Chechens, and Turkey’s Grey Wolves.
  • Azerbaijan had long befriended Osama Bin Laden. Baku’s Al-Qaeda cell belonged to the network that bombed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. A dozen Americans and 212 others perished.
  • Columbia University’s Peace-Building/Human Rights program and others have documented Aliyev’s using thousands of terrorist mercenaries in his unprovoked 2020 war against Armenian-populated Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh (N-K) and Armenia. Turkey openly transported them from Syria and Libya. The jihadis included one-time ISIS commander/war criminal Sayf Balud and miscellaneous murderers, rapists, and kidnappers. Reportedly, Pakistan also sent terrorists. During the war, Azeri zealots chanted, “Jihad, jihad, jihad.” In Baku? No, in Washington, DC.
  • The EU Parliament denounced (January 20, 2021) Baku and Ankara for using “foreign terrorists” against Armenians.
  • The UN’s Working Group on Mercenaries condemned (November 6, 2020) Baku’s and Ankara’s hiring of jihadis. Predictably, the UN probe has stalled, doubtless due to obstruction by the U.S. and others.
  • The Senate Foreign Relations Committee grilled (July 21, 2021) neo-con Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs potty-mouthed Victoria Nuland about Turkey’s delivering terrorists to Azerbaijan. She refused to answer in open session. That’s consistent with America’s scandalous and long-running downplaying of Azerbaijan’s and Turkey’s state sponsorship of terrorism.

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Crisis in the Caucasus

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David Boyajian’s latest report summarizes the dire situation faced by Armenia, which is being devastated by Azerbaijan with Turkish help and Russian complicity.

Crisis in the Caucasus: Two Facts You Aren’t Being Told

by David Boyajian

1. Armenia is more critical to Russia’s security than Ukraine is

Armenia is Russia’s sole ally in the Caucasus, a region I’ve often termed Ground Zero for Cold War 2.0.

Without its Armenian partner, Russia would lose the Caucasus (Georgia/Armenia/Azerbaijan) and Caspian Sea — and possibly Turkic Central Asia — to pan-Turkism and NATO. Pan-Turkic ideology parallels NATO’s own anti-Russian ideology and ambitions.

In contrast, even if Ukraine joined NATO, the Russian-NATO power balance would not change drastically. Realistically, Europe and America aren’t about to launch a major, unprovoked attack on a nuclear/WMD-armed Russia.

The Turkey-Caucasus-Caspian-Central Asia belt, however, has long posed an existential challenge for its northern neighbor.

Though vulnerable to another Russian attack, Georgia remains a possible NATO candidate and Western darling. It hosts Europe-bound gas and oil pipelines originating in Azerbaijan. Georgia is also currently the West’s only path into/out of the Caucasus/Caspian. Azerbaijan, an ally of Turkey and Israel, has fallen into line with Georgia.

Turkey and Azerbaijan (“Two countries, one nation”) closed their borders with Armenia three decades ago. That left Christian — Apostolic, Catholic, and Evangelical — Armenia as the only physical obstacle to full U.S./NATO/Turkish penetration of Russia’s underbelly. That explains much of why Moscow needs Yerevan, and is obvious from glancing at a map.

Given its genocidal experiences with Turkey and Azerbaijan, Armenia has necessarily allied itself with Russia. While Armenia prizes its independence, it must rely on Russia for its gas and oil, the operation of its nuclear power plant, weaponry, and more.

Unfortunately, the West has rarely assisted Armenia militarily despite their millennia-long and contemporary friendly relations. Indeed, the so-called Christian West and certain thinly disguised dark forces now prefer Turkic mass murderers.

However, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, elected/reelected in 2018/2021, has been friendlier with the West than have previous Armenian leaders.

That has angered Putin. He now wants to totally dominate Russia’s ally lest America/NATO/Turkey knock over the region’s remaining domino: Armenia.

2. Russia is blockading the ancient Armenian-populated province of Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh

Around December 12, 2022, Azerbaijan initiated what has turned into a food, fuel, electricity, medical, and communications blockade of the 120,000 Christian Armenians of Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabagh].

Azerbaijan did so mainly by placing phony “demonstrators” on Artsakh’s only road to/from Armenia.

In the 1920s, Stalin maliciously assigned the ancient, Armenian-populated province of Artsakh to Azerbaijan as part of his divide and conquer strategy. Prior to 1918, incidentally, no country named Azerbaijan had ever existed.

From 1991 to 2020, Armenia’s and Artsakh’s militaries successfully protected Artsakh against constant Azerbaijani attacks. That changed in late 2020. Armenians lost much of Artsakh due to deliberate Russian passivity and Turkey’s and Israel’s siding with Azerbaijan.

Baku now seeks not only to ethnically cleanse Artsakh but also, with Ankara’s backing, to seize huge swathes of Armenia itself.

Continue reading →

The Dream of Greater Turkey

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Lucine Kasbarian has published an article at WND News Center about Pan-Turkism. Some excerpts are below:

Pan-Turkism’s Aggressive Dreams of Empire — Yesterday and Today

by Lucine Kasbarian

Turkey’s imperial ambition of creating a Pan-Turkic empire, ruled from Ankara, is on display in today’s Caucasus and elsewhere.

This racist ideology envisions an empire that would include any country or region speaking a Turkic-type language regardless of how distant that language is from the language spoken in Turkey and regardless of whether the people in those regions approve of such an empire. This doctrine was and continues to be a key element of Turkish foreign policy.

A country standing in the way, Christian Armenia, is considered the Cradle of Civilization. In Biblical tradition, Noah’s Ark rested upon the peaks of Mt. Ararat — the historic symbol of Armenia. The Armenian language is considered to be one of the mothers (if not the mother) of all Indo-European languages.) Armenia is decidedly non-Turkic.

Read the rest at WND News Center.

Trump’s Turkish Problem

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David Boyajian sends his analysis of Donald Trump’s unseemly relationship with Turkey and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Bidniz is bidniz, I guess.

Trump’s Turkish Problem

by David Boyajian

American presidents have habitually kowtowed to Turkish demands.

However, President Trump’s business investments in Turkey, Turkish-tainted associates, and baffling deference to President Erdogan have spawned an exceptionally troubling record.

That record could provide additional fodder for Trump’s Republican, Democratic, and Justice Department (DOJ) foes, especially as Turkey remains a rogue NATO member and supporter of international terrorism.

Below is a mere fraction of the dismal Trump-Turkish saga.

A Little Conflict of Interest

“I have a little conflict of interest” regarding Turkey, admitted Trump in 2015.

Indeed, since 2012, Trump Towers/Mall in Istanbul has earned him a reported $10 million in naming rights.

Mehmet Ali Yalcindag is Trump’s Turkish partner in that venture. He’s chaired the Turkey-U.S. Business Council (TAIK) — linked to the Turkish government — since 2018. He was also reportedly an intermediary between Berat Albayrak (Erdogan’s shady son-in-law) and Jared Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law).

In 2020, Yalcindag’s letters to Trump’s Agriculture, Commerce, and Energy secretaries lobbied for increased business with Turkey. Yalcindag conspicuously cc’d Trump, thereby apparently (and inappropriately) leveraging their business partnership.

From 2013 until late 2020, DC’s Mercury Public Affairs served as TAIK’s registered Turkish foreign agent.

Following Trump’s inauguration, Mercury hired his communications director, Bryan Lanza, and registered him as a Turkish agent. Ballard Partners, headed by top Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard, also soon became a Turkish agent.

Donald Jr.’s Post-Thanksgiving Turkey Trot

Donald Trump Jr. went hunting in Antalya, Turkey right after his father’s election.

Accompanied by an unnamed businessman — Yalcindag, allegedly — Donald Jr. bagged two wild goats.

The self-indulgent trip to a repressive country highlighted the Trump family’s Turkish blind spot.

Continue reading →

Turkey’s Bizarro World

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David Boyajian discusses Turkey’s (thus far) successful attempt to veto the attempt by Finland and Sweden to join NATO.

Bizarro World: Mega-Terrorist Turkey Accuses Finland and Sweden of Supporting Terrorists

by David Boyajian

Welcome to bizarro world.

That’s where Turkey, a notorious state sponsor of international terrorism, has the sheer gall to accuse Finland and Sweden of supporting terrorists.

Even more bizarre: Neither Finland, Sweden, the U.S., NATO, EU, nor any other country or leader has, to my knowledge, pointed out Ankara’s glaring hypocrisy.

Turkey claims that Finland and Sweden host members of the PKK, the militant Kurdish organization that the U.S. and EU regard as terrorists. Both Nordic nations deny the charge.

Like many Europeans, however, Finns and Swedes sympathize with Kurds. Turkey has long repressed and ethnically cleansed the latter.

Regardless, Ankara is blocking uber-civilized Finland and Sweden from joining NATO.

Ironically, Turkey — autocratic, infamously violative of human rights, and systemically corrupt — would be unqualified to join NATO today were it not already a member.

The point is: Who is Turkey to accuse others of terrorism?

Mega-Terrorist Turkey

No objective analyst disputes Turkey’s longtime sponsorship of ISIS and other terrorist groups.

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What I Understand About Ukraine

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Karl-Olov Arnstberg is a Swedish writer, ethnologist, and retired university professor. In the following essay he provides a Swedish perspective on the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Many thanks to LN for translating this post from the blog Invandring och mörkläggning:

What I understand about Ukraine

Sunday Chronicle by Professor Emeritus Karl-Olov Arnstberg
March 13, 2022

The media reports well on what is actually happening in Ukraine, especially on Russian advances, waves of refugees and the suffering Putin is inflicting on completely innocent people. However, I am quickly getting tired of all these crying people on display, including journalists, as well as the lack of analysis. I would also like to see some more sarcastic comments about the Swedish PC elite, like the one I received in an email from a friend.

He writes that logically, Swedish feminists should react to young Ukrainian women fleeing to the safety of the West, instead of staying and defending their country, side by side with the men. If Swedish feminists think that women should have exactly the same opportunities as men, and preferably a few more, surely they should also think that women should have the same obligations, i.e. to share the risk of being maimed and killed? But no.

The same double-entry bookkeeping applies to nationalism. At home, nationalism is a shameful thing, almost the same as Nazism, but now the Swedish PC elite unreservedly praises the Ukrainian men who patriotically fight for their country.

Just as I get tired of seeing crying people on news programmes, I get tired of all these emotional comments calling Putin a monster. He is mad, he is an evil man, right up there with Hitler. Probably he is also demented.

Not that I have anything against Putin and the assault on Ukraine, but as a researcher I was taught early on that if you want to understand social processes you have to try to see the course of events from the perspective of the central actors. In fact, if I do not understand Putin’s actions to the point where I realise that I myself might well act in the same way, if I were in his position, then the analysis is incomplete. The reason why this is so important is, of course, that only then might one have a chance of understanding what will happen next. Just talking about how much you detest Putin, and how disgusting he is, becomes rather meaningless virtue-signaling.

So, like many others, I have searched for information online, and this is what I have understood and what I think all ordinary Swedes trying to understand the war should know. So I am not writing the following in the role of an “expert”. What little I think I know, I should have been told by the Swedish media, but this is not the case.

I’ll start with the Mongols. They conquered most of today’s Russia, including Ukraine. The Swedes were also astonishingly close until things went wrong in Poltava. Napoleon showed that Russia was vulnerable. Hitler attacked and got a long way into the Soviet Union.

On March 3 of this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Napoleon and Hitler had the goal of mastering all of Europe, and now the US is trying. The Russian foreign minister has even said that the US is a new invader of Europe, following in the footsteps of Napoleon and Hitler. The Russians carry the past into the present; they do not hijack history, as modern Westerners do. When Putin talks today about having a buffer zone between himself and NATO, it is a direct continuation of the Warsaw Pact, which was created by the Soviet Union in the 1950s precisely to provide such a buffer between the enemy and themselves. According to Putin, the Russians did not lose the Cold War, because it never ended. He has also said that the fall of the Soviet Union was the geopolitical tragedy of the century. It should be remembered that he was a member of both the Communist Party and the KGB.

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Erdogan Triumphs as Putin Stabs His Best Ally in the Back

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With tension ratcheting up over Russia’s possible plans for an invasion of Ukraine, David Boyajian examines some other major issues of the region, especially in the Caucasus.

Erdogan Triumphs as Putin Stabs His Best Ally in the Back

by David Boyajian
January 19, 2022

President Putin has been making some astonishing demands, including:

  • NATO mustn’t admit additional countries near Russia, such as Ukraine and Georgia.
  • NATO must cease military activity in non-NATO territories: Georgia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and parts of eastern Europe.

Yet, incredibly, Putin has himself been enabling a NATO member’s aggression bordering Russia.

In 2020, the Kremlin embraced Turkey’s sending American-designed/equipped F-16s and Bayraktar drones containing NATO components into Azerbaijan.

Turkey and Azerbaijan (“one nation, two states”) subsequently defeated the Armenian populated Artsakh Republic/Nagorno-Karabagh and Russia’s longtime ally, Armenia. Israel backed Azerbaijan militarily.

The brutal 44-day war ended with a so-called peace agreement on November 9, 2020.

Russia facilitated Turkey’s (and, de facto, NATO’s) participation in Putin’s self-defeating grudge war against Armenians:

  • Putin stood aside as Turkey openly deployed troops, weapons, and thousands of Russian-hating international terrorists into Azerbaijan.
  • Turkey and Azerbaijan struck parts of Armenia, not just Artsakh. Yet Russia and the Russian-led CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) patently ignored their defense pacts with Armenia.
  • For decades, Russia had stopped battles over Artsakh between Azerbaijan and Armenians at an early stage despite Artsakh’s lacking a defense treaty with Russia. This time, though, Moscow intervened only belatedly (November 2020) as it posted Russian “peacekeeping” troops in parts of Artsakh.
  • Moscow welcomed Turkish soldiers to partner with Russians in “monitoring” the peace agreement.
  • Since the war ended, Putin and the CSTO (Azerbaijan isn’t a member) have shamelessly humiliated their Armenian ally. For instance, Russia is permitting Azeri troops — unquestionably at Turkey’s urging — to invade southern Armenia, seize highways, kill civilians, and attack Armenia’s diminished military.
  • Russia and the CSTO continue to rebuff Yerevan’s legitimate requests for assistance.
  • In contrast:
    • In January, Putin promptly dispatched CSTO troops into member-state Kazakhstan to subdue violent protests.
    • NATO never signed a formal agreement barring eastward expansion. Therefore, despite the Kremlin’s contention, NATO isn’t legally required to bar Ukraine’s possible membership. Russia and the CSTO are, however, legally required to adhere to their signed, formal defense pacts with Armenia but aren’t doing so.

Russia’s Angry President

Elected on an anti-corruption platform in 2018’s democratic “Velvet Revolution,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was reelected in 2021.

Russia dislikes democratic leaders. They’re harder to arm-twist and bribe. True, Pashinyan has been somewhat friendlier to Western nations than Armenia’s earlier leaders.

Yet, post-independence (1991), Yerevan has maintained excellent political and economic relations with the EU, U.S., and NATO. In 2005, America built one of its largest embassies in the world under President Robert Kocharyan, a Putin favorite.

Regardless, Putin hated Pashinyan, barely spoke to him, and never gave him a chance.

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Talking Turkey About Terrorism

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Below is a press release from Armenian Americans for Human Rights (AAHR), chaired by David Boyajian.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman Menendez Fail to Question the Nominee for U.S. Ambassador to Turkey about Terrorism

Several times this year, the U.S. State Department and Treasury Department have cited Turkey as a financial base for ISIS and al-Qaeda.

Turkey has long sponsored ISIS and other international terrorist organizations. No serious analyst disputes this.

Turkey has armed, financed, and deployed terrorists in such locations as Syria, Libya, and Azerbaijan.

On September 28, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) and Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) quizzed President Biden’s nominee to be ambassador to Turkey, former U.S. Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

The SFRC —and particularly Sen. Menendez —shocked observers by failing to ask Flake even a single question about Turkey’s sponsorship of terrorism.

Since 2014, veteran State Department advisor Dr. David L. Phillips, Director of Columbia University’s Program on Peace-Building and Rights, has thoroughly documented Turkey’s backing of ISIS and other terrorist groups.

This year he wrote that if a “non-NATO country behaved like Turkey, it would warrant designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism,” like Iran and North Korea.

In 2014, Vice President Joe Biden told his Harvard University audience that Turkey and others had been giving “hundreds of millions of dollars [and] tons of weapons” to al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and ISIS.

According to Turkey’s counterterrorism chief from 2010-2013, Ahmet S. Yayla, “Turkey was a central hub for… over 50,000 ISIS foreign fighters, and the main source of ISIS logistical materials [including] IEDs, making Turkey and ISIS practically allies.”

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