If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.
please enlighten me as to how long your great and powerful turkey has been trying its hand at capitalism and how many times better your economy is...perhaps if you welcomed your neighbors and didnt have the heartlessness to bloackade a country just coming out of a major war and earthquake and restructuring of its entire economy we would be further ahead economically then we are now. but then again you just love pointing fingers and saying we are the ones obstructing peace and friendship. take some time and think about it.
Tigran, do you really accuse Turkey of bolckading border when you do your best to harm Turkey?
How many times is our economy better than yours, let me think
Maybe you have to ask as "how many times is the economy of Kars province is better than Armenia"
BS - exactly the opposite - nopt only did they do nothing but they maintained a blockade and this was particualrly harmful through the extremely tough winters that followed.
Additionally Turkey refused highly expert/specialized Armenian aid in their latest earthquake that could have resulted in hundreds if not thousands of lives being saved.
BS - exactly the opposite - nopt only did they do nothing but they maintained a blockade and this was particualrly harmful through the extremely tough winters that followed.
Additionally Turkey refused highly expert/specialized Armenian aid in their latest earthquake that could have resulted in hundreds if not thousands of lives being saved.
You really live in a kind of dream world. Turkey sent tons of wheat to Armenia. People collect money, bank accounts for aid was opened.
Oh! How evil are these Turks.. they always think about how to harm Armenians.
BTW - as recetnly as 2003 I passed by large tent refugee camps of Turks (Kurds)....
Turkey: Neighbors Send Aid But Not All Is Accepted
By Charles Recknagel
Turkey continues to dig its dead out from under the rubble of last Tuesday's
earthquake and foreign countries are rushing to send help. But as RFE/RL
correspondent Charles Recknagel reports, politics is sometimes getting in
the way of the efforts to help.
Prague, 25 August 1999 (RFE/RL) -- As Turkey's casualties from last week's
earthquake continue to mount, countries throughout the region are sending
aid whether or not they have good political relations with Ankara.
But not all of the help has been welcomed by the Turkish government. In the
past days, Ankara has rejected all aid from Armenia and sent back some from
Greece.
That reaction has shocked many ordinary Turks still struggling to cope with
the quake's aftermath and helped to fuel a growing public debate in Turkey
over how well the government is responding to the country's greatest
national disaster in decades.
As of yesterday, the death toll from the earthquake which struck
northwestern Turkey one week ago is more than 14,000 people. UN officials
have said they expect the toll to rise to 45,000 as the bodies of tens of
thousands of missing people are likely to be found beneath the rubble. At
the same time, tens of thousands of others have been injured and at least
200,000 have been made homeless.
The staggering toll from the trembler -- the worst to hit earthquake-prone
Turkey in 60 years -- has prompted an outpouring of international aid. Since
the quake hit, more than 2,000 relief workers from 51 countries have raced
to help its victims.
The help from countries within the region has come both from Turkey's
friends and foes.
Caucusus and Central Asian republics which are linked to Turkey by their
shared Turkic roots and culture have responded with supplies, financial
donations and rescue teams. Azerbaijan, the closest geographically to Turkey
has sent 100 relief specialists, including 30 doctors.
RFE/RL's correspondent in Baku, Zamira Gazyeva, says that reports of the
death toll have shocked Azerbaijanis.
"I can tell you right away that it was truly a great tragedy for our people
because the Turkish people are our brothers. The Turkish Republic is our
fraternal country. And I can tell you that the very first day we learned the
news, we observed a day of mourning in Azerbaijan. From the first days,
Azerbaijan has given Turkey material aid in the form of oil. In addition,
our rescuers, 30 rescuers, are taking part in recovery operations."
Elsewhere in the region, Turkmenistan has sent $100,00 in aid to the Turkish
government. Uzbekistan has donated $200,000 and yesterday sent a 25-member
rescue team to Turkey. Kazakhstan has sent a 20-person rescue team which
arrived last week.
Kyrgyzstan also sent a plane carrying a rescue team, doctors and aid to
Turkey last week. And the Russian republic of Tatartstan has said it is
readying a planeload of humanitarian aid and publicly collecting funds to
help the victims.
Other neighbors of Turkey who are more often regarded as rivals than friends
have also sent help. Syria, which last year had a political showdown with
Ankara over its support of the Turkish-rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),
sent 125 tons of supplies and medicine along with medical teams.
Baghdad, which repeatedly accuses Turkey of violating its sovereignty by
conducting military sweeps against PKK bases in northern Iraq, promised to
send Turkey aid in oil. But it is unclear how or when Iraq, which is under
UN trade sanctions, might make good on its pledges.
Turkey's archrival in the eastern Mediterranean, Greece, said it would do
everything possible to get relief to Turkey and will press the European
Union (EU) to adopt aid measures aimed at earthquake victims. But Athens
stopped short of saying it would lift its longstanding veto of EU
development aid to Turkey as Ankara has often demanded.
Armenia -- a country which itself experienced a massive earthquake in 1988
-- had hoped to send a team of 100 disaster specialists and 10 trucks of
relief supplies last week. But the convoys, which Yerevan says were ready to
depart within hours after the trembler struck, were refused by the Turkish
government. News reports say that Turkey informed Armenia that it had plenty
of help already and did not need more.
Historically, Turkish-Armenian relations have been poisoned by the 1915
massacres of Armenians in Turkey by the Ottoman government. More recently,
Turkey has kept its border with Armenia closed since 1993 to punish Yerevan
for supporting ethnic Armenians fighting Baku for independence in
Nagorno-Karabakh. But Ankara's politically-based refusal of the Armenian
aid, as well as reports it sent back some food aid to Greece, has only
shocked earthquake victims who desperately need help to rebuild their lives.
Yesterday, several Turkish papers demanded the dismissal of Turkey's Health
Minister Osman Durmus after he gave a long speech on television rejecting Yerevan's help and saying Turkey can face the disaster alone. Durmus, a member of the ultra-nationalist National Action Party (MHP), also said that aid from UN navy hospital ships was not needed. As he put it: "foreign teams neither understand our lifestyle nor culture."
The outrage over Durmus' remarks has added to mounting criticism within
Turkey that the government has responded too slowly with its own relief
efforts and that official disregard of building codes significantly
contributed to the scope of the disaster.
The debate heightened Monday (Aug. 23) as Tourism Minister Erkan Mumcu broke ranks with other cabinet members and called Ankara's response to the earthquake "a declaration of bankruptcy for the Turkish political and
economic system." Earthquake victims and foreign relief workers have
complained that it took 48 hours after the quake struck for Ankara to put a
coordinated rescue effort into place.
Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit last week acknowledged the scope of the
destruction in a speech on Turkish television. But he defended his
government's response.
"This is certainly one of the worst catastrophes in the history of the world
and certainly the worst in Turkish history. The activities of government
officials are continuing at full speed in spite of the serious obstacles of
the first two days."
Meanwhile, news reports yesterday said that thousands of Turks made homeless by the earthquake have begun to leave the stricken area to find shelterb elsewhere in the country rather than await the government's rebuilding efforts. Many of those leaving said they are exhausted by sleeping out of doors and by what they called the chaotic nature of Ankara's relief efforts.
(RFE/RL correspondent Jeremy Bransten contributed to this report)
RFE/RL has more than 700 full-time journalists and 1,300 freelancers reporting the news in 27 languages in 23 countries. We operate where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established and provide what many people cannot get locally.
Meanwhile we saw Turks on TV cheering at the news of this earthquake - yes
Before the earthquake, Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan had settled in Spitak, Gyumri, and Vanadsor, and in adjacent areas. After the earthquake, the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Turkish and Azerbaijani blockade—along with dramatic changes transpiring in the Soviet Union—brought reconstruction to a halt by 1991, leaving thousands of people to live in temporary shelters that were completely inadequate for Armenia's cold winters and hot summers. Even more difficult were the subsequent winters without adequate fuel or food. If one had tried to invent a more disastrous confluence of events, it would have been difficult. One of the worst natural disasters of contemporary history was followed by the blockade of a landlocked country
...
However, it is a sad commentary on human nature that politics gets in the way of humanitarian responses. Obviously, the biblical story of the Good Samaritan seems to be more often taken to heart by individuals than by national leaders. Nevertheless, the outpouring of support from around the world—although notably not from Armenia's closest neighbors, Turkey and Azerbaijan—was incredible, motivated, in part, by awareness of the failure of the worldwide community to prevent the slaughter of over a million Armenians in 1915.
Scholarship is a powerful tool for changing how people think, plan, and govern. By giving voice to bright minds and bold ideas, we seek to foster understanding and drive progressive change.
Let me understand clearly:
1. You shamelessly deny that Turkey sent tons of wheat to Armenia at 1988 earthquake.
2. But you couldn't find any evidence to your shameless lie and change the subject.
What you copy/past from RFE/RL thing is not related what I said as you know very well. So did you satisfied now wino? Do you feel now as if you proved anything?
TURKEY SENT TONS OF WHEAT TO ARMENIA AT 1988, IF YOU HAVE ANY EVIDENCE THAT DENY THIS THEN STATE IT, OTHERWISE DON'T TRY TO PLAY RHETORIC GAMES BY CHANGING THE SUBJECT. HELLOOO, ANYBODY THERE???
What a looser group, you even use your dead people at earthquake as a material to your "lets destroy Turkey" hobby. When "real Armenians" suffer at Armenia you just throw up shameless lies to struggle against your inferiority complexes and identity crisis and never care what really Armenia needs.
Comment