November 2020 ~ US World News

For Armenians around the world, the recent one-sided peace deal to end the conflict involving the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh must be seen through the lens of history. And that history is stitched together by widespread persecution and mass suffering over hundreds of years. It is a history that includes the first genocide of the 20th century, when more than 1.5 million Armenians were systematically exterminated by the Ottoman Turks, an event Turkey still denies to this day. Framing today’s conflict over land gravely misses the point.Armenians see these latest acts of aggression by Turkey vis-à-vis Azerbaijan as a continuation of genocide and a threat to their very existence. In some ways, history is repeating itself. Regardless, these events further underscore why recognition of the Armenian genocide and the war over Nagorno-Karabakh are not mutually exclusive.To fully understand why this decades-old conflict suddenly reignited, one must examine the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. During his rule, Erdogan has sought to increase Turkey’s regional influence and on many occasions has glowingly talked about resurrecting the Ottoman Empire, all while styling himself as a modern-day sultan.During the Trump administration, Erdogan has tried to stretch that influence from the Aegean Sea to the South Caucasus. It is one of the reasons that Turkey has been a staunch supporter of Azerbaijan in the latter nation’s efforts to retake Nagorno-Karabakh. With the two nations bound by strong cultural, ethnic, and historic ties, Turkey has vowed to help Azerbaijan on the battlefield or at the negotiating table. However, Erdogan’s belligerent and hostile behavior has only reminded Armenians of their terrible past.Since the conflict erupted last month, Turkey has armed and sent Syrian mercenaries, including Islamic terrorists, into the region to help Azerbaijan fight Armenians where there have been confirmed reports of war crimes and atrocities. We’ve seen this before. A hundred years ago, Ottoman Turks enlisted the help of Kurds, who participated in massacres of Armenians and played a vital role in the Armenian genocide. It is as if Erdogan has turned to the Ottoman Empire’s playbook.There’s no denying Turkey’s role in fueling the fire in Nagorno-Karabakh through its reckless actions and rhetoric. But Ankara’s ongoing campaign to deny the Armenian genocide has also helped it there. Denial has helped establish a level of insouciance from countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and Israel, thereby allowing Turkey to continue to act with impunity. Thus it can, for example, provide Azerbaijan with drones that are indiscriminately killing innocent civilians and destroying cultural centers and churches that have stood since long before Azerbaijan became a country.For far too long, the West has turned a blind eye to Turkey’s egregious behavior. There is a reason that more journalists sit in Turkish prisons than anywhere else in the world, and that Ankara regularly tops the annual lists of human-rights violations. Turkey’s considerable success in refusing to acknowledge its historical role in the Armenian genocide makes Ankara today believe that it can do what it wants without consequences. It is why Erdogan felt compelled to challenge the United States to impose sanctions on his country for its involvement over Nagorno-Karabakh and launched a personal attack on French president Emmanuel Macron.These recent actions by Erdogan did not happen overnight. Ankara has been trying to shape U.S. foreign policy for years concerning Turkey and the Armenian genocide. As part of an effort to sow doubt about the veracity of the Armenian genocide, Turkey has embarked on a years-long campaign to block any U.S. legislation that formally acknowledges it. For the most part, Turkey has successfully used the cover of NATO and realpolitik to convince lawmakers that recognizing the Armenian genocide is not in the political interests of the United States. When Congress finally passed a nonbinding resolution last year that formally affirmed recognition, Ankara officially responded by calling the bill political theater. There were even multiple reports that President Trump tried to thwart the resolution on the Senate floor to appease Erdogan.It should not surprise us, then, when we see Turkey’s wanton disrespect for the rule of law and aggressive behavior in its actions in Nagorno-Karabakh. In many ways, we have allowed it to happen, and have even encouraged it. We have only ourselves to blame.It is often said that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. It is also often said that denial is the last stage of genocide. That is why recognition of the Armenian genocide goes hand in hand with a real resolution of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenians know all too well what happens when this type of aggression goes unchecked. Until Turkey comes to terms with its past, we can expect Ankara to continue its quixotic quest to revive the Ottoman Empire.

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Donald Trump’s last-ditch campaign legal efforts have centered on witnesses who allege that they witnessed voter fraud and other suspicious activity in battleground states across the country. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has brandished stacks of papers detailing what she said were hundreds of affidavits from allegedly aggrieved voters or poll-watchers in TV appearances, and the MAGA faithful have seized on the allegations as proof that Trump secretly won the election.But when those claims actually reach a judge, the allegations collapse in often spectacular fashion—putting one more roadblock in Trump’s attempts to wrestle the election away from President-elect Joe Biden.The latest bruising response to Trump’s voter witnesses came Friday in a state court order from Michigan. The Trump campaign had asked Chief Judge Timothy M. Kenny to block the certification of Michigan’s votes, citing a number of witnesses who alleged seeing suspicious things happening with the ballot count, mostly at Detroit’s TCF Center.But when Kenny actually saw the witness claims, he wasn’t impressed. In his Friday opinion, Kenny rejected the Trump campaign’s request, describing one witness affidavit as “rife with speculation and guess-work about sinister motives.”Instead of alleging voter fraud, Kenny said, many of the accusations made by witnesses in fact described routine vote-counting procedures. Had the Republican challengers only attended an optional walk-through training of the site, according to Kenny, they would not have been so alarmed.“There is no evidentiary basis to attribute any evil activity by virtue of the city using a rental truck with out-of-state license plates,” Kenny wrote in response to one complaint.Kenny also rejected claims of voting irregularities made by Melissa Carone, an IT contractor for Dominion Voting Systems, whose voting machines have figured into vote-theft conspiracy theories about the election that have been boosted by Trump. Carone has made appearances across right-wing media as a sort of star witness for the Trump campaign propping up the “rigged” election narrative, but Kenny decided that her allegations didn’t match any other witness statements.Experts: Trump’s New Michigan Lawsuit Is Recycled Junk“The allegations simply are not credible,” Kenny wrote.Carone has run into similar problems on her tour of pro-Trump media. In a Thursday appearance on Fox Business host Lou Dobbs’s show, Carone told an odd story about pollworkers not receiving enough meals that left even Dobbs baffled.The Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.Trump campaign witnesses have also run into trouble in Arizona. On Thursday, the campaign took bogus allegations about Sharpie pens being used to invalidate votes to court in Maricopa County. Once again, their alleged voter fraud witnesses failed to make the campaign’s case.The Sharpie conspiracy theory—dubbed “Sharpiegate” by Trump allies—centers on the idea that poll workers deliberately gave Republican voters Sharpies to render their ballots uncountable. But Sharpie use wouldn’t invalidate ballots, according to election officials across the state.Instead, many of the witnesses cited by Trump lawyers in Maricopa County were only alleging after the fact that they may have seen something suspicious—even if they couldn’t exactly say what that thing was. Some, for example, complained about poll workers who pressed various buttons, but they were unable to prove that there was anything nefarious in the button-pressing.The Maricopa Superior Court judge also removed various Trump campaign accusations, gathered via internet forum, from the record, questioning whether soliciting “evidence” on the internet could reliably bring in credible claims. Making matters worse, a Trump campaign lawyer eventually conceded that the campaign was not alleging fraud, instead pointing out “good faith errors.”On Friday, the judge dismissed the Arizona case, since Biden had built up such a lead that the ruling wouldn’t affect whether Biden or Trump won the state.Even outside of courtrooms, Trump’s supposed voter fraud witnesses have failed to back up their claims. U.S. Postal Service mail carrier Richard Hopkins briefly became a star on the right in the aftermath of the election, after he alleged that postal workers in Pennsylvania were backdating ballots to meet the Nov. 3 deadline. Hopkins’ claims were championed by conservative operative James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas group, and Hopkins raised more than $100,000 on GoFundMe.In an interview with postal investigators, though, Hopkins recanted his claims. While he later claimed in an interview with O’Keefe that he felt misled by the investigators, audio released of the interview released by Project Veritas confirmed that Hopkins had recanted at least some of his voter fraud allegations.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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