Twitter and YouTube have been blocked in Turkey after a court decision. The blocks come just a few days after an Istanbul prosecutor was killed when his office was taken hostage by members of a far left group. An image of him being held at gunpoint spread on social media while the siege was ongoing.

Turkey has previously blocked social media during the 2014 elections after leaked footage of corrupt politicians spread on the internet. In the second half of 2014 Turkey filed five times more content removal requests to Twitter than any other nation.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/06/us-turkey-twitter-idUSKBN0MX0JG20150406

A gunman poses with Prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz with a gun on his head after being taken hostage in his office in a court house in Istanbul March 31, 2015

A Turkish prosecutor and his two captors were killed Tuesday after a shootout with police at an Istanbul courthouse, bringing a six-hour hostage standoff to a bloody end.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/31/report-turkey-hostage/70711160/

Holocaust Memorial Day 2015

We must stop denying the Armenian genocide.

But the year 2015 also marks the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century, organised and perpetrated throughout different regions of the Ottoman Empire by the government of the Young Turks in 1915 during the course of World War I.

The Armenian genocide in commemorated every April.

According to Prime Minster David Cameron, a national service of commemoration at the Cenotaph in London on Anzac Day, 25 April, 2015, will be a high-profile UK-Led event arranged in co-operation with the governments of Australia and New Zealand, who have held a ceremony there on that date for the last 98 years.

Unsurprisingly, the prime minister’s announcement also includes a UK-led Commonwealth and Ireland ceremony at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Helles Memorial in Turkey on 24 April, 2015, the eve of the Gallipoli landings. The Prince of Wales will be leading the UK delegation.

But the year 2015 also marks the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century, organised and perpetrated throughout different regions of the Ottoman Empire by the government of the Young Turks in 1915 during the course of World War I.

Armenian people across the world have been commemorating the Armenian Genocide on 24 April every year.

The British Armenian Community has petitioned Downing Street every year calling for official recognition of the veracity of the Armenian Genocide by the government in the UK, urging our successive prime ministers to stop the denial of the first genocide of 20th Century and complying with Turkey’s policy of unjust denial.

In a blatant act of denial, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Edogan invited Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to ceremonies marking the Centenary of the Battle of Gallipoli in Çanakkale on 24 April 2015, which coincides with the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

This is the first time that the Battle of Gallipoli will be commemorated on 24 April.

President Sargsyan rebuffed Erdogan’s invitation by reminding Erdogan of the invitation handed to him in person several months ago for the events to be held in Yerevan, Armenia on 24 April, 2015 to mark the Centenary of the mass killing of Armenians across Ottoman Empire, to which the Turkish president has not ever responded.

Genocide scholars agree that 70% of the Armenian population, roughly 1.5 million, were killed mercilessly or fell victim to starvation and illness during the forced deportations. Massacres and deportations continued throughout 1916 and occurred with lesser intensity until 1923.

In an open letter addressed to Turkey’s Prime Minster in 2005, the International Association of Genocide Scholars invited Turkey to face its history and officially recognise the Armenian Genocide. Since 1965 over 20 countries and international bodies, including Germany, Canada, France and Italy have recognised the veracity of the Armenian Genocide.

Turkey and its allies remain adamant by denying the historical validity of the Armenian Genocide. The UK, USA and Israel’s governments fail to realise that by supporting Turkey’s policy of denial, they promote injustice.

In the case of the British government, they deny their own history by forgetting the fact that in the course of World War One the British government revealed the truth about the genocidal fate of the Armenians.

So why, 100 years on, does today’s British government refuse to acknowledge that truth?

The first phase of the massacres and forced deportations of Armenians began with the arrest, confinement and murder of 1,000 Armenian community leaders, doctors, lawyers, merchants, pharmacists and teachers in Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul, capital of Ottoman Turkey, on 24 April 1915.

This date is therefore significant and commemorative for Armenians across the globe.

Given the recent changes in Turkey and following the assassination of the Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the Armenian Genocide is commemorated in Turkey every year. Turkish intellectuals openly address the subject, inviting their government to change their policy of denial.

The Turkish government should realise that after 100 years of denial, it is time to acknowledge their past and accept that millions of Armenians and other Christians fell victim to their ‘relocation’ policy of Christian minorities.

By acknowledging the truth, they will pave the way for Turkey’s democratisation and progress bringing the country closer to European values.

Raffi Sarkissian is a co-chair of the Armenian Genocide Centenary Commemoration Committee.

“This report is part of series of reports that provide analysis to track and assess impacts of the armed-conflict on the socioeconomic situation and the lives of people in Syria during the current crisis. The report is the fourth in the series and covers the four quarters of 2014.”

One of the more interesting statistics from the report is that life expectancy at birth decreased from 75.9 years in 2010 to an estimated 55.7 years at the end of 2014, reducing longevity and life expectancy by 27 per cent

http://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/alienation_and_violence_impact_of_the_syria_crisis_in_2014_eng.pdf

In part of a recent rash of attacks on historical sites and museums in the Middle East, the Islamic State has destroyed monuments at the archaeological site of Nimrud. Nominated as an Unesco World Heritage site, Nimrud was one of the major cities of the Assyrian Empire. Many see this as an effort on part of the Islamic State to destroy the cultural heritage of the Islamic world and to enforce their interpretation of Islamic law.

“Islamic State militants in eastern Syria have captured at least 70 Assyrian Christians — including many women and children — in one of the largest recent abductions against religious minorities by the extremists, watchdog groups said Tuesday.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/watchdog-groups-islamic-state-abducts-christians-in-syria/2015/02/24/2a0ad814-bc32-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html

Hundreds of Turkish forces in armoured vehicles have entered war-torn northern Syria to evacuate troops guarding a historic tomb, demolishing it and moving the remains to a different site.

The remains of Suleyman Shah, who died in the 13th Century, were moved to a site in Syria closer to the border.

Turkey considered the shrine sovereign territory.

Islamic State (IS) militants in the area had threatened to attack it last year.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which has lost control over much of northern Syria as a result of the country’s civil war, condemned the incursion as “flagrant aggression”.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31572257

Immolation and ISIS

ISIS has executed another 43 people by fire in an iron cage. After the Jordanian pilot was burned alive,  the Washington Post article below that ISIS justified its actions with an old “eye for an eye” type of law called “qisas.” In the Jordanian pilots case, this could be applicable since he was a bomber, but I’m unsure how it would be directly applicable to police officers and Sahwa fighters. I think that the Post’s conclusion that the IS wants to introduce a new form of terror is more accurate, especially in light of this news.

http://http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/04/the-chilling-reason-the-islamic-state-burned-a-jordanian-pilot-alive/

http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq

I had the change to look through some of the first issue. The quality of the publishing is a little astounding, even if the message is ridiculous.

But they quickly realized they had stumbled across something a whole lot more valuable in the ancient Mediterranean harbor of Caesarea.

Their chance discovery a few weeks ago led to a trove of nearly 2,000 gold coins that had languished at the bottom of the sea for about 1,000 years, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Tuesday.

It’s the biggest hoard of gold coins ever discovered in Israel — and it could lead to further archaeological finds.

“There is probably a shipwreck there of an official treasury boat which was on its way to the central government in Egypt with taxes that had been collected,” said Kobi Sharvit, director of the Marine Archaeology Unit of the antiquities authority.

He offered other theories about the origin of the treasure.

Perhaps the coins were meant to pay the salaries of a military garrison in Caesarea, Sharvit speculated, or came from a merchant ship that sank while traveling from port to port along the Mediterranean coast.

Marine archaeologists are planning to carry out salvage work at the site to find out more.

Coins from Shiite caliphate

The coins themselves come in several different denominations and are very well preserved, the antiquities authority said. The oldest of them is a quarter dinar minted in Palermo, Sicily, in the second half of the ninth century.

Most of the pieces, though, are from the Fatimid Caliphate, the Shiite Muslim empire that ruled large parts of North Africa and the Middle East around the turn of the first millennium.

Sharvit said he believed the coins, of various dimensions and weights, had been uncovered by winter storms.

He thanked the people who found the treasure — members of a local diving club — for quickly reporting their discovery rather than trying to keep the coins for themselves.

“These divers are model citizens,” he said. “They discovered the gold and have a heart of gold that loves the country and its history.”

You could watch the Video at:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/18/middleeast/israel-gold-coins-discovery/index.html