Families stream to battlefields for 100th year of Gallipoli

April 24, 2015

GALLIPOLI, Turkey (AP) — Families of soldiers who served in the Gallipoli campaign of World War I, along with world leaders, streamed onto the battle sites on Friday for ceremonies marking 100 years since the British-led invasion.

Representatives of countries that faced off in one of the most iconic events of the war were honoring the dead in a joint ceremony, on the eve of the centenary since troops landed on beaches here. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Britain's Prince Charles each laid wreaths at a memorial for the fallen Turkish soldiers at Gallipoli before listening to a recitation from the Muslim holy book as well as prayers for peace. A band in Ottoman Janissary costume performed old Turkish military marches.

"Despite the appalling sacrifices made by so many in two world wars, intolerance combined with the willingness to use the most barbaric violence remain a persistent and prevailing source of division and conflict," Charles said at the Turkish memorial.

"We all have a shared duty ... to find ways to overcome intolerance to fight against hatred and prejudice so that we can truly say we have honored the sacrifice of all those who have fought and died here in Gallipoli and elsewhere," Charles added.

Ceremonies were to later move to the British memorial site, where Prince Harry, Charles' son, was scheduled to deliver a speech. The main events are scheduled for Saturday, the anniversary of the dawn landings by troops — mostly from Australia and New Zealand — who were rowed in to narrow beaches with scant cover only to encounter rugged hills and fire from well concealed Turkish defenders.

The doomed Allied offensive aimed to secure a naval route from the Mediterranean to Istanbul through the Dardanelles, and take the Ottomans out of the war. It resulted in over 130,000 deaths and came to be seen as a folly of British war planning. Around 44,000 Allied troops died in the campaign; about 86,000 were killed on the Ottoman side.

The campaign, however, helped forge national identities for countries on both sides. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk used his prominence as a commander at Gallipoli, known as Canakkale to the Turks, to vault into prominence, lead Turkey's War of Independence and ultimately found the Turkish Republic.

Similarly, the tragic fate of troops from Australia and New Zealand is said to have inspired an identity distinct from Britain. The anniversary of the start of the land campaign on April 25, known as ANZAC Day, after the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, is marked as a coming of age for both nations.

"The Battle of Gallipoli is a striking reminder that the Great War was truly a World War," Charles said. "Not only were its combatants were drawn from so many different nations but also because its effects were truly global."

"It destroyed old empires and created new fissures just as it brought some countries together in shared endeavors and strengthened national identities," Charles said. Erdogan, in his address, said all fallen soldiers were now considered the children of Turkey, echoing the words of Ataturk who paid tribute to the dead soldiers from Australia and New Zealand after the war.

"You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us," Ataturk's eulogy reads. "They have become our sons as well."

Last month, Turkey marked the centenary of a naval victory against the Allies, when the Ottoman army held off British and French ships in the Dardanelles on March 18, 1915.

Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report.

Powerful former Syrian army general dies in hospital

April 24, 2015

BEIRUT (AP) — Rostom Ghazali, the Syrian general once considered the most powerful man in Lebanon and a key suspect in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, has died in a hospital in the capital Damascus, a Syrian activist and local media reported on Friday.

Ghazali, in his early 60s, was once head of his military's powerful political security branch and one of Syrian President Bashar Assad's most trusted generals. There was no official government comment and the circumstances of his death remain unclear.

Director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdurrahman said Ghazali died nearly two months after he was admitted with a head injury. Abdurrahman said Ghazali had been clinically dead for weeks, quoting informed medical officials in the hospital.

The Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV, which has access to Syrian officials, and other Lebanese TV stations also reported Ghazali's death, quoting officials. Reports at the time of Ghazali's injury said he was beaten by the bodyguards of another Syrian general, in a dramatic escalation of a political dispute.

The reports said the disagreement between the two generals started after Ghazali's men were not allowed to play a bigger role in a government offensive against opposition fighters battling the government.

Lebanese media reported that both Ghazali and his rival general were sacked. Reshuffles in Syria's security and military apparatuses are generally not made public. Ghazali, a Sunni Muslim from the southern village of Qarfa, rose in the military to become the intelligence chief in Lebanon in 2002, replacing long-serving general Ghazi Kenaan who became Interior Minister.

Ghazali kept the post until 2005 when Syrian forces had to withdraw from the tiny Arab country, ending nearly three decades of military presence following massive anti-Syrian protests after Hariri's February 2005 assassination.

A U.N. probe later that year concluded that high-ranking Syrian and Lebanese security officials, including Ghazali, plotted Hariri's assassination. A U.N.-backed tribunal is currently trying five Hezbollah members in absentia over the killing. Both Damascus and Hezbollah have strongly denied involvement.

In 2012, after a bomb killed four of the country's top generals in Damascus, Ghazali was named by Assad as head of the Political Security Department and stayed in the job until mid-March. With Ghazali's death, several people accused by anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians of being involved in Hariri's killing have died.

Kenaan, the Interior Minister, died in his Damascus office in late 2005 about a month after speaking with investigators about Hariri's assassination. Syrian officials said he shot himself to death, but some in Lebanon believe he was killed.

Syria's Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat was among several top generals killed in a Damascus bombing in July 2012. In 2005, an inadvertently released passage of a U.N. investigative report on the killing cited a witness saying that Shawkat, head of military intelligence at the time, was among those behind Hariri's assassination. Shawkat was the brother-in-law of Assad.

In October 2013, Maj. Gen. Jameh Jameh was killed while fighting rebels in eastern Syria. At the time of Hariri's assassination, Jameh was the second highest ranking Syrian intelligence official based in Lebanon and was Syria's intelligence chief in Beirut.

Meanwhile, Syrian state TV said a plane on a training mission in the country's south crashed because of a technical failure and the pilot is missing. The Observatory however reported that Islamic State fighters downed the plane.

There was no way to independently verify the conflicting reports.

Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

Kazakhstan votes for continuity while keeping eye on Ukraine

April 24, 2015

ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) — As oil-rich Kazakhstan votes for a president Sunday, the governing elite is pounding home a mantra of stability as fears percolate about the country's massive Russian minority taking inspiration from the Moscow-backed insurgency in Ukraine.

With authorities clamping down on all opposition, Nursultan Nazarbayev's re-election is a done deal. The former Communist party boss' two rivals — a trade union leader and a Communist politician— have negligible public profiles and are standing only to create the illusion of competition.

Instead of electioneering in the traditional sense, the 74-year-old Nazarbayev's team is rehearsing well-worn refrains on social and ethnic harmony. Kazakhstan's vast diversity of peoples — from Uzbeks to Koreans and Chechens to Tatars — is a source of both pride and anxiety.

Russians are by far the largest minority, accounting for almost one-fourth of the 16 million people spread across a land four times the size of Texas. Recently, niggling anxieties about the potential for such a large ethnic group to pursue a separatist agenda have been rekindled by unrest in Ukraine, where ethnic Russians have been goaded by Moscow into mounting an armed insurrection.

Those concerns were only deepened in August, when Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a back-handed compliment to Nazarbayev, who took charge in Kazakhstan in the late 1980s. "He has done a unique thing. He created a state where no state ever existed. The Kazakhs never had a state," Putin told a gathering of pro-Kremlin youth activists.

Ukrainians have become accustomed to hearing Russian chauvinists declaring their country a recent invention. So Kazakhs felt a chill when they heard Putin make similar remarks about their own country.

Nazarbayev acted swiftly in the post-independence years of the early 1990s to sideline the grassroots Slavic groups, who militated for language rights and autonomy for Russians living in northern regions.

Moscow currently enjoys warm diplomatic and economic ties with Kazakhstan, as did Ukraine before the president there was toppled in a pro-Western uprising. A sudden change in Kazakhstan's trajectory could, some fear, re-ignite calls for autonomy. That's one reason why Nazarbayev is at pains to stress national harmony and close ties with the Kremlin.

Nazarbayev has also been disciplined in keeping Kazakh nationalists on a short leash. Tight control over the media has ensured that news of occasional clashes, such as those that occurred earlier this year between Kazakhs and ethnic Tajik communities in the southern village of Bostandyk, do not travel far.

The higher official status of the Kazakh language is promoted as gingerly as possible, to avoid causing offense. The language question is treated so cautiously, in fact, that it is rare for Russians to bother learning Kazakh at all, although authorities are trying to change that by pushing its use among the very young.

Also, all prospective candidates for the presidential election were made to take a Kazakh language test. Many failed. The weekend presidential election was preceded Thursday by a congress of the Assembly Peoples of Kazakhstan, a talking shop devoted to cultivating national unity. Before the event, Nazarbayev met with the deputy head of the assembly to discuss "Kazakhstan's model for interethnic harmony," the president's office said.

It is widely accepted that as long as Nazarbayev is around, inter-ethnic tensions will likely be kept at bay. Speaking at Thursday's congress, he declared that the authorities would "robustly prevent any form of ethnic radicalism, regardless from where it arises."

But the fear is that Nazarbayev's successors could seek to cheaply bolster their mandate by striking a populist nationalist chord. Nazarbayev has given no clues about heirs, however, leaving political observers to speculate idly about the future.

Leonard reported from Kiev, Ukraine.

Former Polish foreign minister Bartoszewski dies at 93

April 25, 2015

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a former Auschwitz prisoner and member of Poland's underground World War II resistance who helped save Jews and later served twice as the country's foreign minister, died Friday in Warsaw. He was 93.

Bartoszewski died after being taken to a hospital in Warsaw on Friday afternoon. His death was confirmed by a number of leaders, including President Bronislaw Komorowski, who wrote on Twitter that he was deeply saddened.

"This is a huge loss; a great Pole has left us," Komorowski wrote. Poland's former prime minister Donald Tusk, now EU Council president, said that Bartoszewski was "not to be substituted by anyone." In Tusk's government, Bartoszewski was deputy minister in charge of international dialogue, chiefly with Germany and Israel.

Parliament Speaker Radek Sikorski said flags at the parliament building would be lowered to half-staff in Bartoszewski's honor. The Polish media also paid homage to him, remembering his achievements and some of his notable quotes, including: "It is worth being honest, though it doesn't always pay off. It pays off to be dishonest, but it isn't worth it."

Very much present in the public life, Bartoszewski was widely respected not only for his wartime resistance, but also as a historian, author of books on World War II history, social activist and politician. He spent a large part of his life working for Polish-German reconciliation, making it a focus of his writings and speeches in Poland and in Germany.

A Polish Catholic, Bartoszewski, was born in 1922 in Warsaw. The son of a bank clerk, he grew up next to Warsaw's Jewish district and had many Jewish friends. When he was still just a teenager he fought in the defense of Warsaw against the Germans, who invaded the country in September 1939. Caught in a street roundup in Warsaw in 1940, he was sent to Auschwitz, which was first used by the Nazi Germans for Polish resistance fighters. There he was given the prison number 4427.

In a very rare occurrence, he was released in April 1941 thanks to the efforts of the Polish Red Cross, which he had worked for before his arrest. Back in Warsaw, he wrote a detailed report from his time at the camp, the first known written witness account from Auschwitz. He also reported on Auschwitz to Poland's clandestine resistance Home Army, commanded from London by Poland's government-in-exile. He joined the resistance, the underground Home Army, and organized secret help to the prisoners of the Pawiak prison, where the Germans held and tortured Polish resistance members and ordinary people.

He also joined a resistance unit devoted to saving Jews, known as Zegota. For his efforts to help the Jews he was honored by the Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, as a "Righteous Among the Nations" in 1965. He was also an honorary citizen of Israel.

Before the war was over, however, he took up arms yet again against the Germans, fighting in the ill-fated Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The war's end meant new hardship for Bartoszewski, who became the target of the new, imposed communist regime, which considered all Home Army independence fighters a threat, because they opposed the Soviet-backed communist rule. For his independent thinking and pro-democracy writings Bartoszewski was imprisoned — on fabricated espionage charges — and spent nearly seven years in prison before a court finally ruled in 1955 that he had been unfairly arrested. He found work as a lecturer at a Catholic university, and also wrote for Radio Free Europe and lectured in Germany.

In the 1980s he was active in Solidarity, the movement that eventually helped toppled communism, but that earned him some four months' confinement under martial law. Bartoszewski was an animated and exhaustive speaker who had a lot to say on many issues. He met often with young people, hoping to encourage them to embrace peace and tolerance. He said he saw it as an obligation to bear testimony to the decades of cruelty he witnessed during the war and under communism.

He appeared active and charismatic until the end. Just last Sunday Bartoszewski took a leading role at observances marking the 72nd anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, speaking with energy and at length to a group gathered to honor the fallen ghetto fighters.

Former President Aleksander Kwasniewski said Bartoszewski died in his own style. "I heard on the radio today that he was taken to hospital, and right after that came the news that he had died. Very much like him: quickly, without bothering us with his situation. He has done his job here and has gone to the supreme authority," Kwasniewski said.

Bartoszewski is survived by his second wife Zofia, and son Wladyslaw, a historian.

Poland bans 'provocative' Russian bikers loyal to Putin

April 24, 2015

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish authorities said Friday they will not allow a nationalistic Russian motorcycle group loyal to President Vladimir Putin to enter Poland, but insisted the move is not political and was made in part because Polish authorities would not be able to guarantee their security.

The Night Wolves group had planned to enter Poland next week to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Their plan was to cross several countries on their way to Berlin, following a path taken by the Red Army in its defeat of Adolf Hitler's Germany.

Many Poles reacted angrily to the plan for the symbolic drive through their country at a time of deep strains between Russia and the West. Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz recently called it a "provocation."

The Foreign Ministry in Warsaw said that it was refusing to let the bikers enter Poland because it did not receive precise information from them about their route and schedule, information "necessary to ensure proper security for the participants."

The ministry said it also received information about the group's plans too late. The decision was relayed to the Russian Embassy in Warsaw in a diplomatic note on Friday. Ministry spokesman Marcin Wojciechowski insisted that the decision was not politically motivated.

The Russian Foreign Ministry later issued a statement saying: "The authorities spoiled this memorial action under the far-fetched pretext of 'presenting late and insufficient information'. This is an obvious lie."

Night Wolves leader Alexander Zaldostanov, known as "The Surgeon," was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying the run would begin as planned on Saturday. "If we give up on our ride, then let's give up on everything. Let's give up on May 9, let's give up on our graves, our history and our past," he was quoted as saying.

Asked when the Night Wolves might try to cross the border into Poland, he said "I don't want to reveal all our plans." Both Germany and the Czech Republic, which the Night Wolves also planned to cross on their trip, expressed unease with the planned ride Friday.

The German Foreign Ministry said that "in view of the organization's activity so far, it is not of the opinion that this ... initiative can make a contribution to strengthening German-Russian relations." It said that it was important for the German government to mark the anniversary of the end of the war "in dignity."

The Czech Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it "respects" the Polish decision and that it was asked by Russia to assist the bikers but refused to do so. The Night Wolves, which is estimated to have several thousand members, is strongly nationalistic and Slavo-centric, even conducting runs to Russian Orthodox holy sites. The group has close ties to President Vladimir Putin, who has been shown riding with the club, and last year it held an elaborate rally in Sevastopol honoring Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Associated Press writers Jim Heintz in Moscow, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Karel Janicek in Prague contributed to this report.

Armenia marks centennial of killing of 1.5 million

April 24, 2015

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — The presidents of Russia and France joined other leaders Friday at ceremonies commemorating the massacre of Armenians a century ago by Ottoman Turks, an event which still stirs bitter feelings as both sides argue over whether to call it genocide.

The annual April 24 commemorations mark the day when some 250 Armenian intellectuals were rounded up in what is regarded as the first step of the massacre. An estimated 1.5 million died in the slaughters, deportations and forced marches that began in 1915 as Ottoman officials worried that the Christian Armenians would side with Russia, its enemy in the World War I.

The event is widely viewed by historians as genocide but modern Turkey, the successor to the Ottoman Empire, vehemently rejects the charge. It says that the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest. On the eve of the centennial, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted that his nation's ancestors never committed genocide.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande and other dignitaries assembled Friday morning at the Tsitsernakaberd memorial complex in the capital, Yerevan. Each leader walked along the memorial with a single yellow rose and put it into the center of a wreath resembling a forget-me-not, a flower chosen as the symbol of the commemoration.

"We will never forget the tragedy that your people went through," Hollande said. France is home to a sizeable Armenian community. Among the French Armenians at Yerevan was 90-year old singer Charles Aznavour, who was born in Paris to a family of massacre survivors.

For many Armenians, the massacre anniversary is not only a moment of grief but also a reminder of the resilience of the nation. "We feel a big pain today, historic pain but at the same time we feel a big historic strength," Nadezhda Antonyan, a teacher from Yerevan said on the sidelines of the ceremony. "We should not only survive but we must live, be strong and build our statehood."

Russian President Vladimir Putin used his speech to warn of the dangers of nationalism as well as "Russophobia" in a clear dig at the West-leaning government in Ukraine. Earlier this month, Turkey recalled its ambassadors to Vienna and the Vatican after Austria and Pope Francis described the killings as genocide. The European Parliament has also triggered Turkey's ire by passing a non-binding resolution to commemorate "the centenary of the Armenian genocide."

Armenian President Serge Sarkisian expressed hope that recent steps to recognize the massacre as genocide will help "dispel the darkness of 100 years of denial." Armenians and Turks planned to march in Istanbul's main square to remember the Armenian intellectuals who were rounded up in the city 100 years ago and to urge the government to recognize genocide. A small nationalist group planned a protest denouncing the genocide accusations.

Sarkisian welcomed the rally in Taksim Square to honor the dead, calling them "strong people who are doing an important thing for their motherland." Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu earlier this week issued a message of condolence to the descendants of the victims, without calling the killings genocide.

On Friday, Volkan Bozkir, the minister in charge of Turkey's relations with the European Union, attended a service at the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul to honor the dead in the 1915 massacre — a first by a Turkish government official.

"We respect the pain experienced by our Armenian brothers," Bozkir said. "We are in no way opposed to the commemoration of this pain." In Yerevan, thousands of mourners lined up to lay flowers at the memorial on Friday despite the pouring rain. Many expressed disappointment at Turkey's refusal to apologize and recognize atrocity as genocide.

"It doesn't benefit either the Turks or us to live in eternal animosity," said mourner Karen Bakhshinian. "We need to look for a way-out of this deadlock. Sooner or later we are going to have to find it."

Sophiko Megrelidze in Yerevavn, Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.