World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (April 21, 2011)

The Washington Post published the article headlined “Iranian leader rebuffs Ahmadinejad over official’s dismissal.” It says that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received a public rebuff Wednesday when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, confirmed that the intelligence minister, whom Ahmadinejad had dismissed Sunday, is to keep his job. Two weeks ago, for reasons that remain unclear, Ahmadinejad abruptly replaced Mashaei, who holds several government positions, as the head of the president’s office. Mashaei’s promotion of Iranian culture over Islamic culture has angered hard-line Shiite clerics, who say they would prefer to see him leave. But analysts say the aide still wields considerable influence on the president, whose son is married to Mashaei’s daughter.

The Los Angeles Times reports on an effort of the US to maintain the support of Armenian Americans while not offending Turkey. The author writes that the Armenian genocide was widely documented at the time. Numerous Western governments protested to the Ottomans. Imperial German officers serving with their Ottoman allies sent home accounts of the massacres. Still, contemporary Turkey, which is several regimes and nearly 100 years removed from the Ottoman Empire, insists that others join it in the delusion that history is not history but malleable diplomatic clay. Clarity, though, is something President Obama seems determined to avoid, as he attempts to maintain the support of Armenian voters while soothing Turkish sensibilities. On last year's memorial anniversary, for example, he issued a statement that scrupulously avoided the word genocide.

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet published the article subtitled “Azerbaijan closes two international NGOs.” It says that the Baku offices of the Washington, DC-based, National Democratic Institute, or NDI, and the Oslo-based Human Rights House Network, or HRHN, last month both received written warnings from the Justice Ministry that they could not operate in Azerbaijan without official registration or, in the case of HRHN, meeting existing registration requirements. The Azerbaijani government has stopped their operations in what some local observers claim is a further attempt to clamp down on the country’s relatively weak civil society.

“Tbilisi eyes EU membership within 15 years” is another article published by Hurriyet. Georgian Deputy Prime Minister Giorgi Baramidze has expressed hope that his country will become a European Union member – or be in the final stages of joining the union – within 15 years, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, or RFE/RL, reported on its website. Speaking to RFE/RL ahead of a meeting with EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele, Baramidze, who is also Georgia's state minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, said there were no specific timetables but that he had "some kind of time frame" in mind.

Press TV reports that The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) has passed Iran's proposal of support for democratic movements amid a wave of revolts across the Middle East and North Africa. Following a week-long discussions at the 124th IPU Assembly in Panama City, Panama, the participants agreed to defend the rights of the Middle Eastern and North African countries to determine their own destiny. The Iranian lawmakers delivered speeches at IPU's specialized committees and elaborated on the Majlis stance vis-à-vis different regional and global developments. On Wednesday, IPU Secretary General Anders Johnsson called on countries in the Middle East and North Africa to step up political reforms as proposed by many parliaments, including Indonesia, New Zealand, Iran and Venezuela.