Batumi 2026: Bulgaria and Armenia power to gold

Karlos Nasar stepped on the platform on Friday at the European Weightlifting Championships in Georgia once again to assert his dominance, while youngster Emma Poghosyan claimed her first senior title.

In the men’s 94 kg category, Nasar reinforced his status as one of the sport’s most explosive talents. The Bulgarian secured the snatch gold with a successful lift of 176 kg, finishing just ahead of Armenia’s Ara Aghanyan, who took silver with 175 kg. Turkiye’s Hakan Şükrü Kurnaz was third with 166 kg.

Nasar demonstrated his ambition by calling for a world-record weight of 183 kg on his third attempt, though the lift went unsuccessful.

He was equally clinical in the clean & jerk, opening with 210 kg to immediately secure the discipline gold and the overall crown. With the absolute title secured, he loaded a massive 223 kg for a world-record attempt. While he fell short of completing the lift, his total of 386 kg earned him the European title.

Aghanyan claimed Armenia’s fourth silver in total with a result of 381 kg, while France’s Romain Imadouchene took the bronze with 370 kg. The French also won silver in the clean & jerk.

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/batumi-2026-bulgaria-and-armenia-power-to-gold

Where to go looking for lavash, dolma and gata in Yerevan

In the Armenian capital, sunken ovens and open-air barbecues rule the food scene with blistered breads, charcoal-smoky meats and flaky sweets, leading to a cuisine shaped by tradition, trade and occupying influences

Anita Rao Kashi

A few minutes south of the city centre in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, tree-lined avenues fall away and eye-catching pink architecture gives way to stark Soviet-style buildings. None is as plain and squat as the GUM Market, a sprawling covered market that looks quite boring from the outside. Inside, however, is another story.

Once through the door, it is just one humungous hall, and an assault on the senses. Rows and rows of colourful dried fruits, heaps of fresh produce, pickled vegetables and preserves, cheeses, fresh baked breads and sweets stretch out in all directions. The air is thick with the combined aromas, and the vendors, mostly cheerful women, shout out greetings and try to coax and cajole visitors into sampling their wares. The place is a microcosm of Armenian food.

Located at the intersection of empires, Yerevan’s avenues bear the vestiges of those that passed through it – from the Ottomon and Persian empires to most recently the Russians. From these passing cultures have come layers of spices, stuffed vegetables, grilled meats, preserves and fermented foods and the use of fire in various ways. All these layers are visible at the GUM Market.

Once the sensory overload has abated a bit, my guide Vako, explaining away the variety, says meals are usually not rushed affairs. A typical spread has cheese and herbs accompanied by thin lavash bread, followed by salads and sujukh, then grilled meats, dolma and then lastly gata. As the day progresses, we sample many of these components.

Breads for all reason

Walking around the city, it is common to come across basement bakeries, many of them generations-old, that constantly churn out lavash, the iconic sheet-like thin bread. They are made in tonirs, clay ovens that are sunk into the floor, and resemble large tandoors. The lavash is very central to the Armenian scheme of things, sacred even, to the extent that it found its way into UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

One section of GUM Market is set aside for this and it is fascinating to watch women stretching the dough into translucent sheets and slapping them against the walls of the tonir. A few minutes later, the blistered bread is peeled off with a hooked rod and stacked into a steaming pile. Scenes like this are visible across neighbourhoods in the city and it is easy to spot them because of the fragrant air that hangs around them. The lavash serves multiple purposes: to scoop up vegetable and meat dishes, mop up sauces, wrap around grilled meats and cheeses, or just snack on them with tea or coffee. There are other versions of the bread, stuffed with herbs, cheese and vegetables. Called zhengyalov hats, it is a meal in itself as I discovered at Lavash Restaurant on Tumanyan Street; it went very well with matsun, a thick curd like dish with herbs.

Hearty meats

Locals like to joke that smoky smell is the default perfume of Yerevan. And it’s not just from the tonirs. As the sun goes down, thousands of small and big barbecues come to life all over the city, in restaurants, on street-sides and in backyards. On them hiss and sizzle khorovats, chunks of meats that are mildly marinated, or sometimes not at all, because the emphasis is on the quality of the meat.

The smoky flavours, from grilling chicken, lamb and pork that are salted, are exquisite. They taste even better; crusty on the outside and tenderly juicy on the inside. For a more complex flavour profile, the chunks are paired with grilled onions, tomatoes, peppers and fresh herbs, and wrapped in lavash. Though restaurants serve this, the best place to have it is on Proshyan Street, locally called barbecue street, a row of stalls that the locals prefer. There are also dry cured sausages that are sliced thinly that have black pepper, fenugreek and garlic, which are bit chewy in texture.

Greens and grains

Though Armenian cuisine might feel meat-heavy, it is actually wonderfully balanced with an abundance of vegetables. In summer, tables are filled with tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, beets and herbs such as basil, dill and tarragon. But by far the most popular vegetarian dish is dolma, grape leaves wrapped around rice with lentils and grains, though minced meat is also known to find its way into the stuffing. When the vines become dry, grape leaves are replaced by cabbage. Even better are peppers and tomatoes that are hollowed out and filled with stuffing and seasoning, making for a sumptuous meal. At Dalan Art Gallery and Restaurant on Abovyan Street, a pretty al fresco restaurant with greenery and filled with art, the dolma and salads are simple, fresh and flavourful. Armenian cuisine also has its own version of pilafs that are packed with dried nuts and apricots accompanied by stewed eggplant. There’s also matsun, which is eaten as a dip or accompaniment, or diluted and consumed as a drink.

Sweet connections

If the GUM Market is anything to go by, then it is safe to say Armenian desserts tend towards a profusion of dried nuts. Apricot is the country’s national fruit and are found everywhere and in various avatars – fresh, dried, stuffed, dipped in sugar syrup… But there are a plethora of others and the most popular way to consume them is dipped in molasses with spices and turned into sujukh. However, there are also a variety of baked desserts, chief among them being gata, which is part cake, part pastry and wholly delicious. Across Yerevan, bakeries make versions of this, their windows are filled with trays of discs or parallelogram-style pieces, their tops etched with beautiful decorative patterns. I stop to taste it at one of the stalls in GUM Market where it is fresh out of the oven. The outer layer is flaky and the inside is soft, buttery and fragrant, and makes for a soul-satisfying bite at the end of a meal.

As the sun sets, the city feels like it aglow, owing to the abundance of pink stone buildings, especially at Republic Square. This is also where I witness another Yerevan tradition – the pulpulak, communal drinking fountains from which passersby stop briefly to hydrate. Such fountains dot the entire city and are adorned with traditional Armenian inscriptions and even ornaments and are considered to be a symbol of purity and renewal. Not just tasting food around Yerevan, but even the simple act of drinking from a communal water fountain feels like peeking into the warm, generous heart of the city itself.

Anita Rao Kashi is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru.

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Police Restrict Armenian Genocide Remembrance Event Near Turkish Embassy Under Newer Rally Laws

A local Armenian community group said on April 24 that the Georgian Interior Ministry has denied them holding an Armenian Genocide remembrance event near the Turkish Embassy in Tbilisi in a break of tradition and under stricter rally laws that require advance police notice and allow the ministry to request changing time, location, and route of a demonstration.

Armenian Community of Georgia, a non-governmental organization, said in a statement that the community has been holding a peaceful event on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, marked on April 24 to commemorate the victims of a mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century, for twenty years near the Turkish Embassy in Tbilisi.

According to the group, in 2026, too, they applied to Tbilisi City Hall in advance, “in full compliance with Georgian law and terms,” but received a call from a representative of the Georgian patrol police notifying a rejection to hold an event at the traditional place, citing the need “to avoid potential risks.”

The group said it took them days to trace the original letter in public agencies.

The Interior Ministry’s letter, when finally obtained, reportedly cited the provisions of recently tightened protest laws which allow police to request a change in time, location, or the form of an assembly. The laws, adopted in December, cite a need to strike a “balance” between freedom of assembly and rights of those living, working, or pursuing entrepreneurial activities in the areas of a planned rally, as well as public safety and order and uninterrupted movement of transport and people, and “other human rights and freedoms.”

“Since there is a probability of violation of the requirements of the above-mentioned norm by holding the assembly at the site you indicated, given its placement and location, we ask you to consider the advisability of changing the location of the assembly,” the group quoted the Ministry’s letter.

The community group said such decisions are taken “in a non-transparent form” and the parties are notified “with significant delay.”

“This practice does not comply with the rule of law standards and undermines the trust in state institutions,” the group said, adding that they “do not find it possible to change the location of the event and won’t be holding the event that has turned into a tradition at any other address but the territory near the Turkish Embassy.”

From Notification to De Facto Permit Regime?

The ruling Georgian Dream party introduced in December stricter police notice rules as part of yet another package restricting the freedom of assembly, in an apparent attempt to crack down on daily anti-government rallies on Tbilisi’s Rustaveli Avenue. Over the past months, however, other groups, too, reported restrictions on holding rallies at desired places, including miners from Chiatura who had arrived to hold protests in Tbilisi.

Under the new rules, organizers of rallies to be held “in areas of movement of people or transport” are required to notify the Ministry of Internal Affairs no less than five days in advance for non-spontaneous rallies and “immediately within a reasonable time” for spontaneous rallies.

The ministry will have three days to review the request and propose an alternative location, time, or route if the planned gathering “poses a real threat to public safety, public order, the normal functioning of enterprises, institutions, and organizations, the unimpeded movement of vehicles and people, or to human rights and freedoms.”

Those who fail to comply with the ministry’s orders will be treated as offenders and face detention of up to 15 days for participants and up to 20 days for organizers. Critics, including Georgia’s Public Defender, have warned that such provisions risk effectively introducing a de facto permit regime that contradicts the Georgian Constitution.

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Saturday Mothers commemorate Armenian intellectuals

At their 1100th vigil in Istanbul, the Saturday Mothers commemorated the Armenian intellectuals who were detained on April 24, 1915. The arrests are considered the beginning of the genocide against the Armenians.

Relatives attended the gathering carrying photographs of the disappeared and carnations, accompanied by numerous human rights defenders. This time, the focus was on the remembrance day of the Armenian genocide and the deportation of the Armenian elite in Istanbul—an event regarded as the beginning of the genocide. The statement was read by lawyer Eren Keskin from the Human Rights Association (IHD).

On the night of April 24 to 25, 1915, the Young Turk regime under Interior Minister Talat Pasha ordered the arrest of numerous Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul. The arrests were carried out on the basis of prepared lists. Police units went to the homes of those concerned and claimed that they were to be taken for short interrogations. The detainees, including members of parliament, writers, doctors, journalists, and academics, were first taken to police stations and then transferred to the central prison of Sultanahmet. They were among the leading figures of Armenian society.

On April 25, the detainees were deported by special train toward Ayaş and Çankırı in central Anatolia. In the following days, the wave of arrests expanded; in total, around 250 Armenian intellectuals were detained. For many of them, this path ended in death: the majority were murdered in the following months, and many remain missing to this day. In official records, their fates were often later obscured with entries such as “escaped” or “released.”

As part of the vigil, Haçadur Malumyan (Agnuni), one of the founders of the Armenian newspaper “Azadamard,” was also commemorated. He was arrested on the night of April 24 and initially deported to Ayaş. From there, he sent a telegram to Talat Pasha demanding his release, but without success.

On June 2, 1915, Malumyan, together with five other intellectuals, was transferred under the pretext of being brought before a court in Amed (tr. Diyarbakır). On the way, near Siverek, the group was murdered by an armed unit linked to the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, a paramilitary apparatus of the Ottoman Empire. Their deaths were also later concealed.

In the press statement, Keskin described the deportation of Armenian intellectuals as the beginning of a “great catastrophe” and at the same time drew a connection to the present. “Failing to confront the past nourishes today’s lawlessness and the culture of impunity,” Keskin said. Even after 1,100 weeks, the Saturday Mothers maintain their demand for truth and justice, adding: “No matter how many years pass, we will not forget our disappeared. Against forgetting, we defend memory; against denial, the truth.”

At the end, Saturday Mother Hanife Yıldız spoke about the ongoing search for the disappeared. “These weeks may be easy to say, but what we have experienced, how we have been burned, continues,” she said, accusing those responsible of still “not wanting to hear.”

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