World Press on Iran, Turkey and the Caucasus (November 25, 2011)

The New York Times reported that two days after the British government announced it was cutting off all transactions with the Central Bank of Iran and other Iranian banks, Iran’s Parliament on Wednesday voted to scale back diplomatic relations with Britain, with one lawmaker calling for the British ambassador to be expelled. “Britain’s government once again showed a depth of hatred and enmity towards the Islamic republic system worse than that of the devil, and it took another step towards being an enemy,” said a statement signed by 228 lawmakers and read in Parliament. Britain and the United States imposed new sanctions this week to increase the pressure on Tehran to halt its nuclear activities.

The Turkish information agency Hurriyet published the article headlined “Ex-Soviet states take first step to Putin 'Eurasian Union'.” It says that Three ex-Soviet states were Friday to agree the first steps towards creating a Eurasian economic union, a project backed by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to bind closer the former USSR. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Kazakhstan and Belarus counterparts Nursultan Nazarbayev and Alexander Lukashenko were to sign a declaration on further economic integration at a summit in Moscow, the Kremlin said in a statement. Putin first evoked the idea of creating a Eurasian Union in a newspaper article published shortly after the announcement that he would seek to return to the Kremlin as president in 2012 polls.

The same agency reported that Turkey said it could tolerate no more bloodshed in Syria and it was ready to take action with Arab powers if President Bashar al-Assad failed to take steps towards ending the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. An 11:00 a.m. GMT deadline given by the Arab League to Syria to agree to accept observers or face sanctions has expired today.  Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu had told a news conference in the morning that he hoped the Syrian government would give a positive response to Arab League plan on resolving the conflict.

“Armenians express hope over apology” is one more article published by Hurriyet. It says that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s apology on behalf of the Turkish state on Nov. 24 over the killings in Dersim in 1938 has created a stir among Armenians both in Turkey and abroad. “It looks as if Erdoğan is ready to discuss official history in Turkey. I hope he presents this attitude for the Armenian genocide as well. Recognizing the genocide would gain Turkey prestige and make it possible for her to face up to its history,” Ara Sarafyan, director of the London-based Gomidas Institute, told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday. Sarafyan said they were ready for a commission of historians to tackle the issue, but he called for the disclosure of Turkey’s confidential archives as well.