Month: November 2009

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator
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November 28, 2009

1. NKR Leadership Makes Boston Visit Ahead of Thanksgiving Day Telethon
2. Grandson of Cemal Pasha Makes Overture to Armenian Community
3. Commentary: What Is The Alternative?
4. Commentary: Visit of Catholicos of All Armenians to Damascus

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1. NKR Leadership Makes Boston Visit Ahead of Thanksgiving Day Telethon

*By Alin K. Gregorian
Mirror-Spectator Staff*

WATERTOWN, Mass. – The prime minister of Karabagh, Ara Harutunian, and his
entourage, including the charismatic Primate of Karabagh, Archbishop Pargev
Mardirossian, Karabagh’s representative to the US Robert Avetisyan and
policy advisor David Babayan, made a local stop at the Armenian Cultural and
Educational Center. The visit was one of several around the country that the
group was making in advance of the annual Armenia Fund Telethon, which was
scheduled to be broadcast on Thanksgiving Day.

Armenian Fund USA Chairman Raffi Festekjian showed a short film on the
group’s focal point for its fundraising this year, which is the city of
Shushi.

Shushi, a former capital of Armenia and one of the largest cities in the
Caucasus in the 19th century, has been in ruins since the war for
independence. It is going to receive increased support from the government
of Karabagh also, which, according to Harutunian, is going to relocate the
Ministry of Justice, as well as the Ministry of Culture and the Artsakh
branch of the Armenian Agricultural University to the city in the upcoming
years.

Festekjian opened the program by noting that the global economic
difficulties have made life especially difficult for the rural residents of
Armenia and Karabagh.

`The best way to provide a long-term solution is to make them fundamentally
independent,’ he said. As part of that independence, Karabagh needs improved
infrastructure, including water, power lines and healthcare facilities. The
next step, he said, is to develop the region’s businesses through training
and micro financing.

Mardirossian, speaking English fluently, said: `Seventeen years ago, our
brothers and sisters gave their lives for Artsakh. It is time to come
together and rebuild our historic capital.’

He suggested that if Shushi remained in its current dilapidated state, some
outside the community could question the Armenians’ desire to hold onto the
city.

`It is time to restore our symbol,’ he said, reciting the names of some
prominent Armenians who hail from there, including Boghos Nubar Pasha and
Muratsan.
`In the 19th century, it was the biggest city in the Caucasus. Now we just
have 3,000 Armenians in Shushi,’ he said.

Harutunian, who has been premier since 2007 and was on his first-ever visit
to the US, thanked Armenia Fund and Festekjian. While acknowledging the
problems of the republic, he noted that many advances had been made since
the end of the war, including the construction of modern highways and
provision of healthcare for the citizens, as well as renovated schools and
community centers.

He spoke about the pounding that Shushi received during the war, when it
became the base for the retreating Azerbaijani forces. As it is perched high
up in the mountains, Shushi gave the Azeris the vantage point they needed to
attack the Armenian forces based in the capital Stepanakert, which is
located down the mountain. Thus, Armenian forces had to make the difficult
decision to attack Shushi in order to regain it from the Azeris, a strategy
that worked yet left the city in the shambles it has remained in since.

Harutunian related that the liberation of the city occurred on May 7 and 8,
1992. `Every soldier who participated in the liberation of Shushi felt proud
to partake in this historic mission,’ he said. `There is a saying in
Armenian that the person who controls Shushi is the person who controls
Karabagh. This mission is the equivalent of reconquering and liberating
Shushi in 1992.’

The mellow atmosphere of the event disappeared for a while, as the issue of
the protocols between Turkey and Armenia, and also the negotiations over the
settlement of the fate of Karabagh, created some tense moments. One
audience member in particular insisted that Karabagh would be lost to
Armenians.
A calm yet forceful Mardirossian replied, `In 1992 I came here and I said
victory would be ours, in the face of grave inequality in strength. Did I
lie? No. Don’t doubt [the future of Karabagh]. It is ours and will stay
ours.’

Harutunian related some history of Karabagh. He noted, `We are not waiting
for anyone’s permission to keep the lands we have. No one allowed us to take
Lachin, Kelbajar or the rest, but we took them anyway.’

He added, `After the liberation of Khojaly, Turkish troops came very close
to the Armenian border and while Artsakh was liberated settlement by
settlement, the Turks announced they were going to intervene and attack
Armenia. But those threats could not get the Artsakh army to stop; instead
it motivated them. Not only Turkey exerted pressure, but the global powers
always pushed us to give back those territories.’

He complained about the leadership of Armenia then, led by former President
Levon Ter-Petrosian, suggesting that they stopped helping the effort in
Karabagh by not giving them food or weapons, and that in 1993, asked the
Artsakh leadership to give back regions to Azerbaijan. `We still went on
to
take Aghdam, Fizuli and Jibril,’ said Harutunian. `Support from the diaspora
at that crucial time, however, did not stop. Let me thank you once again for
it. I am telling you this so that you know there is no pressure that can
force us to give back and retreat from our past. The only way Artsakh would
cease to be Artsakh is when the last Artsakhtsi dies in Artsakh.’

After the meeting, the Karabagh delegation was hosted by the Knights of
Vartan Ararat Lodge at Sheraton Commander Hotel in Cambridge, where more
than 100 members gathered to greet them. Sbarabed (commander) Nelson
Stepanian gave a welcoming speech. At the end, Avak Sbarabed (grand
commander) of Knights of Vartan, Haig Deranian, spoke.

For more information on the campaign or Armenia Fund USA, visit

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2. Grandson of Cemal Pasha Makes Overture to Armenian Community.

*By Alin K. Gregorian*
WATERTOWN, Mass. – The Armenian Cultural and Education Center on Tuesday,
November 17, was packed by Armenian-Americans eager to hear the grandson of
one of the three architects of the Armenian Genocide apologize for the sins
of his grandfather and to reach out a hand to the community.

If Turkish journalist and grandson of Cemal Pasha, Hasan Cemal, expected a
big, warm embrace, he was mistaken. However, the audience members were
certainly interested in what he was saying.

He opened his comments with the phrase `Barev harkeli barekamner’ (hello
esteemed friends), to the surprise of many. `I came here tonight to hear
you, to understand you. I came here to open my heart to your suffering,
pains and sorrows – pains coming from your history, coming from Anatolia,’
he said. `I am not here to compare or to equate your suffering. I am here to
understand them. I came here because my dear friend Hrant Dink said, `first
let us understand each others’ pain.’

He repeated the phrase, as well as the Armenian greeting, several times.

`My conscience does not accept the denial of the grand catastrophe which
Armenians were subjected to in 1915. In the memory of Hrant Dink, I reject
this injustice,’ he added. `To make excuses for such a crime is to collude
in it.’

Hasan Cemal’s grandfather, Cemal Pasha, one of the three leaders of the
Young Turks who had masterminded the Armenian Genocide, was assassinated on
July 21, 1922, in Tbilisi, Georgia. The younger Cemal met a few years ago
with the grandson of his grandfather’s assassin.

Cemal explained that he had initially learned about the Armenian Genocide
from Dink, later to be educated by the books of fellow panelist Taner Akçam.
`He touched my heart, and my friend Taner Akçam has touched my mind,’ he
noted.

His following comment, to a certain extent equating the sufferings of Turks
and Armenians, as well as tying the comments to the recently-signed
protocols between Armenia and Turkey, disconcerted some members of the
audience. `We should not become prisoners or captives of our pains and
suffering. We should not forget the past,’ he said, but should go on in
life.

He added, `It is a very interesting period between Turkey and Armenia. The
normalization process could start with the establishment of diplomatic
processes. For the sake of peace, it is better not to be a captive of the
past. The Turks endured suffering, too, in Anatolia. The Kurds suffered,
too, in the denial of their language and identity.’

Again, he changed his tone to say, `I know pain such as this cannot be
compared or equated.’

His comments perplexed some members of the audience.

However, fellow panelist Akçam was able to get to the heart of the matter.
`This is a very emotional moment,’ he said, adding, that with his intimate
knowledge of both communities, he realizes problem arise because the two
sides do not understand each other.

`The first time you met a Turk, you think of them as someone who murdered
your ancestors and supports the policy of denial,’ he said. `For Turks,
Armenians are traitors who killed innocent diplomats.’

Akçam, the chair of Armenian Studies at Clark University in Worcester, said
Turks tend to view Armenians as a single bloc that focuses on the Genocide
exclusively. Any Turks who break from their pack and try to embrace the
Armenians, he said, is regarded with suspicion in the Armenian community.
`In 1999, 2000, in the eyes of most of you, I was not an average Turk. Some
thought I am in the secret police or an agent. We viewed each other through
a prism. Now we are becoming more like individuals.’

He added that Turks and Armenians have different views when it comes to
their perception of time. `For you the past is present and lives today. The
Turks built it up with denial. When I say there are positive changes, you
say `we’ve heard it before.’ The Turks have no sense of history. Our
youth
have no idea what happened in 1908.’

He summarized, `One side is frozen in a tunnel of history, whereas the other
side is completely unaware of it. This meeting is part of getting past it.’

The third panelist, Asbed Kotchikian, who focused on the diasporan
experience, related his first experience interacting with a Turk, a fellow
college student in Beirut. While he said they never became close friends,
they talked enough to break down some of the stereotypes with which they had
grown up. `Opening of hearts and souls is not enough; we have to open
minds,’ he noted.

Kotchikian, who teaches at Bentley College in Waltham, noted that increased
dealings in civil society – including gatherings such as this – add to
the
two sides’ understanding of each other.

Kotchikian noted that Turkey seems to have changed tremendously. `Is Turkey
the same Turkey as 100 years ago? Twenty years ago? For me, the
transformation, even cosmetic, on [their position on] the Kurds is
monumental.’

The question-and-answer session that followed gave Cemal an opportunity
again to pay tribute to Hrant Dink, suggesting, `Hrant placed so much
importance on establishing diplomatic relations and opening the border. It
is very, very important.’

Asked about the protocols that were signed in October by the Armenian and
Turkish foreign ministers, Cemal said, `Armenian-Americans should attach
importance to those protocols. It is a very important turning point. It
could change the whole picture.’

Akçam suggested that perhaps a commission could be formed in Turkey to
examine Turkish textbooks and to restore them to contain the correct version
of history. `Changing public perception is very important,’ he stressed.

The program was organized by the Friends of Hrant Dink.

Sossi Aroyan of the Friends of Hrant Dink introduced the panelists and acted
as moderator.

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3. What Is The Alternative?

*By Edmond Y. Azadian*

On November 22, presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Munich for the
sixth time trying to resolve the untractable issue of Nagorno Karabagh. The
results were mixed once again. The meeting, which was held under the
auspices of the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
co-chairs, generated neither a breakthrough nor much enthusiasm.

Once again OSCE co-chairs praised the determination of the two presidents
yet they conceded that several unresolved issues remained to be taken up in
early November in Athens, Greece by the foreign ministers of the two
countries.

What is significant about these meetings is the mindset of the participating
interlocutors.

Before departing for Munich, the Azerbaijani president, Ilham Aliyev, once
again, raised the specter of war, reiterating his belligerent statements:
that Baku has to resort to the military option should these meetings fail to
produce results. He also brandished his military hardware by announcing that
Azerbaijan has converted its petro dollars into armaments.

The OSCE co-chairs admonished the Azeri president’s rhetoric, which may
damage the ongoing delicate negotiations. The French and Russian OSCE
co-chairs bluntly announced that military option is not a solution. They
also acknowledged that military threats were for domestic consumption.

This is not the first time that the Azeri president has threatened war with
Armenia.

Even if the belligerent statements are intended for the domestic audience,
it should not be discounted, but rather be taken seriously.

Besides reprimands from the OSCE co-chairs, the Turkish news media have also
been critical of Aliyev’s war rhetoric. War will not be Armenia’s choice.
And nor was it in the 1990s when the Baku government thrust the war upon the
Armenians. At that time, Azerbaijan was badly defeated, creating a huge
internal refugee problem.

But those refugees are still living under the tents, despite the flow of
petro-dollars, to solicit sympathy from the international community and to
justify another war.

Should Armenia face another act of aggression, what would be the remaining
alternatives?

It is wise that the Armenian side has not escalated the war rhetoric.
Instead, the Yerevan administration is soft peddling, which has been
appreciated by the OSCE co-chairs. Only the presidential office issued a
statement that should Azerbaijan engage in any military adventure, Armenia
may recognize Karabagh’s independence and sign a mutual defense pact.

Any war is winnable under certain conditions: a) technological edge in
military hardware; b) commitment and resolve to defeat the enemy or c)
international endorsement. No war can be initiated unless a major power
approves it.

The first Karabagh war was won because of Armenia’s resolve and
preparedness. It was a chaotic situation where technological advantage did
not play a critical role, if we discount the participation of the former
military brass from the Soviet army.

During that war, Russia not only provided the armaments, but also the
political and military support.

Should a war break out, we are not sure what level of sophistication the
Azeri army enjoys to use its new military hardware.

This time around, Russia’s intentions remain unclear. Moscow has its
interests in Azerbaijan’s energy resources. Also, it is not in Russia’s
interest to push Baku into the lap of Western powers.

What would Armenia offer to offset those interests?

Armenia’s resolve has also been weakened by the constant and permanent
outflow of its population and internal political division.

We would not like to know the level of preparedness because that may betray
secrets about the plans of the Armenian side.

We would be certain of Russia’s support had a conflict flared up in Javakhk,
seeking independence or autonomy, because it is in Moscow’s interest to
further destabilize Georgia and to chip away some more territory from
Georgia.

Rather than criticizing the Armenian government and insulting its leaders,
it is time to demonstrate some solidarity, raise the alarm for the
international community and begin a recruitment of volunteers, giving a
signal to Aliyev that the entire diaspora is behind Armenia and Karabagh.

It was no surprise, perhaps, that support came from the most improbable
quarter, Levon Ter-Petrosian’s HAK opposition group. Indeed, the first
president criticized the ARF position, and came to President Sargisian’s
rescue, albeit, a little late.

It is also rewarding to learn that the Armenia Fund phonathan in Europe has
scored unprecedented results, despite all the campaign to discredit the
government. We hope the telethon results will be equally successful.

If we wish to preserve the peace, we need to be ready for war.

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4. Visit of Catholicos of All Armenians to Damascus

*By Hagop Vartivarian*

>From November 13-18, for the first time in history, the Catholicos of All
Armenians went on a pastoral visit from Holy Echmiadzin to Damascus, the
historic city of the erstwhile Umayyads, the first Muslim dynasty (661-750),
and the capital of the present-day Syrian Arab Republic. As expected, the
Damascus Armenian community, as a whole, welcomed its pontiff with open
arms.
During the past half century, Damascus witnessed the saddest pages of our
contemporary history, especially the days of our church split, beginning in
1956, and the fratricidal fighting resulting from that. Furthermore, ever
since the day that the intervention of Vazken I, Catholicos of All
Armenians, to put an end to the crisis within the Catholicosate of Cilicia
and restore amity and legality failed due to the revolt against the
authority of the Mother See and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s
forcible establishment of its dominance over the Cilician Catholicosate, the
Damascus Armenian community remained loyal to the supremacy of Holy
Echmiadzin and, till this day, continues to extend its unmitigated love and
respect to the Mother See.

In 1928, by the decision of the Administrative Council of the Patriarchate
of Jerusalem, with the approval of the then patriarch, Archbishop Yeghishe
Tourian and by unanimous decision of the St. James Brotherhood’s General
Assembly, the jurisdiction of the diocese of Damascus, as well as that of
the dioceses of Beirut and Latakia, Syria, was freely turned over to
Catholicos Sahag Khabayian, the elderly occupant of the throne of the See of
Cilicia in exile, in order for the latter to have authority over a few
dioceses. However, the Damascus Armenian community, led by its patriotic
national and political organizations – ADL, SD Hunchak Party and AGBU –
generally speaking, remained firm in its faith, and the general populace
directed its love and faith solely to Holy Echmiadzin, while holding the See
of Cilicia in respect.

The leaders of these organizations of ours didn’t have an easy time of it,
especially in the wake of the Cold War, when a heated political atmosphere
prevailed throughout the Middle East and from which the Armenians of
Damascus could not, of course, remain exempt.

Unfortunately, instead of striking Turks, some Armenians struck other
honorable, law-abiding fellow nationals who displayed solicitude toward the
traditions of the Armenian Church.

Thus, in 1956, when the then-Prelate of the Diocese of Damascus, Bishop
Shavarsh Kouyoumdjian was in the diocesan office next to the church, working
on his book about the history of the Armenians of Damascus, a 17-year-old
youth, at the bidding of those in charge of the ARF at that time and with a
pistol given by them to him, fired twice upon the bishop. Fortunately, His
Grace Shavarsh was rushed to the hospital where he was saved from certain
death. He had cultivated the best of relations at the highest level with
the governmental authorities at that time. The country’s president was
Shukri al-Quwatli, while the foreign minister was Sarraj.

Prior to the visit of His Holiness Vazken I, another despicable event had
already occurred; namely, a group of Dashnaks rushed into the courtyard of
St. Sarkis Church and then, once inside the church, attacked Mihran Der
Stepanian, the chairman of the diocesan executive council and prominent ADL
leader, leaving him so bloodied that it could have cost him his life.

They resorted to these vile measures in order to make it clear to the
Armenians of Damascus that if they didn’t cooperate with the ARF, they would
be subjected to the same acts that were committed against the Prelate and
the chairman. Unfortunately, terror remained the sole means of enforcing the
ARF’s exclusive control and authority. They had carried out such acts in
Beirut, where patriotic youths whose allegiance was to Echmiadzin became the
victims of fratricidal fighting; during that same period, law-abiding
members of the Brotherhood of the See of Cilicia were thrown out of the
monastery in Bikfaya in broad daylight; and well-known figures in the
Armenian community and political party leaders like Prof. Parounag Tovmasian
and Nubar Nazarian became targets of terrorist attacks.

The Cold War had already begun to have an impact on Armenian life, as well.
In 1958, Syria united with Egypt to form the United Arab Republic, and
Al-Wehda (unity) developed between the two countries. George Mardigian, the
head of ANCHA, went to Syria where he tried to buy officers of the Syrian
army with large donations. During those same days, a Dashnak from Damascus,
Sarkis Bekiarian, was arrested as an agent working for the United States and
the location of his body would permanently remain unknown. Furthermore, a
large number of Dashnaks were arrested because large quantities of
ammunition were found in the ARF club and churches in Aleppo, while others
left Syria for good.

Thus, a severe struggle began in Damascus, during which many of our ADL
members, like Krikor Asilian, were also subjected to interrogation as
Communists. Here we are obliged to acknowledge, for the historical record,
the great effort carried out by our Hunchak friends to maintain the
diocese’s loyalty to the Mother See. Mrs. Gulizar Gartatsoghian,
Khashmanian, Laleyian and other Hunchaks fought wholeheartedly for the sake
of the supremacy of the Catholicosate of All Armenians. AGBU leaders, as
well, like Levon Yacoubian and others, remained on the front lines of this
struggle with the same patriotism; that patriotic spirit still exists within
the Armenian community of Damascus.

Having appealed to the Syrian government to intervene, as necessary, our
friends prevented those in control of Antelias from entering Damascus.
During the initial days, even Catholicos Zareh I was sent back to Antelias
from the Syrian border, because his entry into the country was prohibited.
The same happened later on to Catholicos Khoren I. Until now, the entrance
of the catholicoi of the See of Cilicia to St. Sarkis Church is forbidden.
After the passing of Bishop Shavarsh, various patriotic clergymen were
called into service within the diocese for a short time, such as Archbishop
Serovpe Manoogian, the former Primate of Paris; however, Archbishop Knel
Djeredjian, one of the most courageous clergymen of the Armenian Church,
remained, until his last breath, the vanguard in the movement to keep the
Damascus Armenian community on Echmiadzin’s side.

Until now, as well, St. Sarkis Church remains on the register of properties
belonging to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The same was the case
with Sourp Nishan Church ofBeirut but this property was turned over to the
Catholicosate of Cilicia during Archbishop Yeghishe Derderian’s term as
Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem.

And thus, for the first time, a Catholicos of All Armenians – our beloved
universal Catholicos Karekin II – has gone to Damascus, having already
completed his first decade as pontiff of the Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin.
His pastoral visit to Damascus came at a time, when that city’s Armenian
community was marking over fifty years of loyalty to the Mother See. It had
honored the supremacy of Echmiadzin even dating back to the time when Bishop
Dohmouni was the prelate. As it turned out, Catholicos Karekin’s visit has
been a blessing, particularly at this time when the masses of Diasporan
Armenians should warm up even more to Holy Echmiadzin and the motherland,
the Republic of Armenia.

`Window to the Future’
What you need to know about the person shaping Turkey’s muscular new foreign
policy.

Newsweek Web Exclusive
Nov 28, 2009

Expect to hear a lot more of the name Ahmet Davutoglu. The former university
professor who became Turkey’s foreign minister last year is the man behind
Ankara’s landmark new diplomatic outreach, including a previously
unimaginable rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia and a new warmth with
Syria.

Some Western analysts are dismayed at these developments, interpreting them
as a sign that Turkey is turning East at the expense of the West. The
mild-mannered Davutoglu typically gets angry at these suggestions, saying
these comments come from those who begrudge Turkey its expanding role in the
region.

Yet while Davutoglu is no stranger to Turkish politics-he began serving as
chief foreign-policy adviser to the ruling AKP in 2002-he remains something
of a cipher, even in his home country. To remedy that, NEWSWEEK’s
Turkish-language partner, NEWSWEEK Türkiye, recently examined the forces
that shaped Davutoglu and how he is changing relationships with Turkey’s
neighbors in the Middle East, the Balkans, and the Caucasus.

Some of the highlights from the magazine’s comprehensive profile, written by
Yenal Bilgici with reporting by Semin Gümüsel and Nevra Yaraç:

Davutoglu risked the deadly Izmit earthquake to save the manuscript of his
signature book, Strategic Depth: Turkey’s International Position, which lays
out the conceptual framework for what he now calls his "zero problems with
neighbors"policy. When the shaking started on Aug. 17, 1999, he managed to
flee his endangered Istanbul home unharmed-but then ignored warnings of
aftershocks to dash back into the house and eject the computer disk
containing his years of work. Now in its 30th printing, the book brought him
national and international recognition.

The foreign minister is a somewhat reluctant politician. After Turkey’s
ruling AKP won the elections of 2002, he turned down requests to serve in
the government and opted instead to continue his university work while
serving as an adviser to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Five years
later, he was on the verge of a full-time return to academia when rebels
from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) attacked the Daglica military post
in Turkey’s eastern city of Hakkari, killing 13 soldiers. "I cannot leave
now," Davutoglu told his inner circle. Instead, he stayed on to take up the
position of foreign minister and facilitate recent agreements aimed at
granting long-denied rights to the Kurdish minority and ending two decades
of attacks by the PKK.

The peripatetic minister went to 13 countries in October alone, raising
Turkey’s diplomatic profile to its highest level in years. Indeed, Davutoglu
won unprecedented praise in Arabic media, like the London-based Al-Hayat
newspaper, where a columnist begged the foreign minister to help solve
Lebanon’s problems as well. "You carry ideas, aspirations, solutions, and
medicine in your luggage," wrote the columnist. "You are the window to the
future."

Davutoglu may be known for his temperate demeanor, but he has little
patience with Ankara’s political elites and their unassertive approach to
diplomacy. "These rootless elites are conditioned to not being noticed and
not taking initiative rather than coming to the front and being decisive
during critical periods," he wrote in an uncharacteristically sharp tone in
Strategic Depth. "They think of being passive as a safer and risk-free
policy." These criticisms, writes Bilgici in NEWSWEEK Türkiye, are a
beginner’s guide to understanding Davutoglu and his policy. The second
pointer to his character: the minister’s constant use-and embodiment-of the
term "self-confidence."

Davutoglu is also known for his work ethic and self discipline. A family
friend told NEWSWEEK Türkiye that, while working on his book, the professor
once spent three straight days without leaving his chair. A former student
says Davutoglu believes that sleeping eight hours a night is a luxury. "We
do not have the right to sleep this much," he frequently told the student.

Davutoglu’s conscientiousness manifested itself at a relatively early age.
As a high-school student at the prestigious Istanbul High School for Boys,
where he was taught by German teachers who had come to Turkey during World
War II, he presented his teachers with ambitious reading lists of dense
philosophical and scientific works that he thought would serve him well in
the future. His instructors advised him and his friends to go out and play
ball for a while instead. Davutoglu took the advice to heart; even after
he’d become a professor, he continued to play soccer with his students (as a
highly regarded forward), right up until he was appointed foreign minister.

While honing his soccer prowess, Davutoglu was refining his language and
academic skills too. In addition to the German learned in high school, he
took all-English programs to graduate from the economics and political
sciences department of Bogazici University. He learned Arabic while studying
on a scholarship in Jordan, worked on his doctoral thesis at Cairo
University, and learned Bahasa Malaysia while a professor at Malaysia’s
International Islamic University. His thesis, a comparative analysis between
Western and Islamic political theories and images, was published in 1993 by
American University Press with the title Alternative Paradigms: The Impact
of Islamic and Western Weltanschauungs on Political Theory. Davutoglu’s
postdoctoral work included critiques of the theories of Samuel Huntington
(clash of civilizations) and Francis Fukuyama (end of history).

Colleagues say that Davutoglu’s oratorical skills are equal to his writing
ability. "There is no one the minister cannot make drop their guard in 10
minutes," one high-ranking team member told NEWSWEEK Türkiye. One example:
when Ankara refused to allow U.S.-led forces cross Turkish territory for the
2003 invasion into Iraq, a local Jewish leader came over to read Davutoglu
the riot act. The visitor initially said he could only stay 10
minutes-partly because he needed to prepare for a fast the following day-but
ended up spending three hours with Davutoglu after being won over by the
minister’s erudite discourse about Jewish culture, history, and the
background to the upcoming fast. Next time, the Jewish leader said, he’d
like to stay for the day.

Davutoglu is not without his critics, who have accused him of double
standards for criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza while failing to condemn
the approach of a fellow Muslim-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir-in Darfur.
But even those who don’t support him see him as a statesman who is both a
thinker and a doer. And right now, he’s the talk of more than just Ankara.

Find this article at

© 2009
From: Baghdasarian

Triumph of the Turks
Turkey is the surprising beneficiary of U.S. misadventures in the Middle
East.

Newsweek
Published Nov 28, 2009
>From the magazine issue dated Dec 7, 2009

By Owen Matthews and Christopher Dickey | NEWSWEEK

Archibald Wavell himself could scarcely have imagined how horribly accurate
his prediction would prove to be. Having watched in dismay as the victorious
European powers carved up the Ottoman Empire after World War I?"the war to
end war"?the British officer commented that they had instead created "a
peace to end peace." And sure enough, the decades since have spawned a
succession of colonial misrule, coups, revolutions, and an epidemic of
jihadist violence. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 could be viewed as
a last-ditch attempt by the world’s sole remaining superpower to impose
order on the region. Instead, the net result was to create a power vacuum,
leaving Iraq too weak to counterbalance its neighbors and threatening to
destabilize the whole map.

Turkey, the old seat of Ottoman power, did its best to stay out of that
fight, refusing even to let U.S. forces cross Turkish soil for the 2003
invasion. Still, it’s the Turks?not the Iranians, as many observers
claim?who are now emerging as the war’s real winners. In economic terms
Turkey is running neck and neck with Iran as Iraq’s biggest trading partner,
even as most U.S. businesses sit helplessly on the sidelines. And in terms
of regional influence, Turkey has no rival. The country’s stern-faced prime
minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is working to consolidate that strength as
he asserts Turkey’s independence in a part of the world long dominated by
America. Next week he’s in Washington to meet with President Obama, but only
a few weeks ago he stood shoulder to shoulder with his "good friend" Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad in Tehran and defended Iran’s nuclear program.

That’s only one example of the behavior that’s disturbing many of Turkey’s
longtime NATO partners. Among the biggest worries has been the souring of
ties with Israel, once Turkey’s close ally, over the military offensive in
Gaza earlier this year that human-rights groups say killed more than 1,400
Palestinians. Erdogan walked out of the World Economic Forum in protest over
the deaths, and recently scrapped a decade-old deal allowing the Israeli Air
Force to train over Turkish territory. At the same time, the Turkish prime
minister has repeatedly supported Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir,
claiming he couldn’t possibly be guilty of genocide in Darfur because he’s a
"good Muslim." Right now there are "more points of disagreement than of
agreement" between Washington and Ankara, says Philip Gordon, Obama’s point
man on Turkey at the State Department.

What scares Washington most is the suspicion that Ankara’s new attitude may
be driven less by the practical pursuit of Turkey’s national interest than
by thinly concealed Islamist ideology. Erdogan has always denied mixing
religion and politics, but his ruling Justice and Development Party (known
by its Turkish initials, AKP) has been investigated repeatedly by Turkey’s
top courts on charges of undermining Turkey’s constitutional commitment to a
strictly secular state. But official policy notwithstanding, Turkish
attitudes toward Europe have displayed a marked cooling over the past five
years, and a corresponding rise in hostility toward Western institutions
like the International Monetary Fund. "No one in the government has made any
attempt to reverse rampant anti-Americanism in Turkey," says Kemal Köprülü
of the independent ARI think tank. "The government cannot admit it, but most
decision making in foreign and domestic policy simply doesn’t take Western
values into account."

On the other hand, Turks could be excused for thinking that Western decision
makers don’t always lose sleep over Turkish interests. During the Cold War,
Washington did anything necessary to stabilize the region and keep the
Kremlin from gaining ground, often backing nominally pro-Western despots
like the Shah of Iran and the Turkish generals who seized power from
civilian governments three times in as many decades. The result was a
disaster for America; it ended up with unreliable allies who were hated by
their own people. In Turkey, the cumulative anti-U.S. resentment peaked in
2003 when the Bush administration pressed Ankara to let U.S. forces invade
Iraq through Turkish territory?a plan that was derailed only at the last
moment by a parliamentary revolt.

That was the low point of Turkey’s relationship with the United States. But
it was also the start of Turkey’s rise to economic recovery and regional
influence, and the beginning of a new kind of relationship with Washington.
Indeed, Turkey’s new standing in the region has a chance of transforming the
country into something far more valuable to Washington than a subservient
tool or proxy. The Turks say they’re seeking to become what Turkish Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu calls a "partner to solve the region’s problems."
Whatever ambitions they may have harbored in earlier years, it’s only in
this decade?especially since 2002, when Erdogan and the AKP came to
power?that Turkey has had the economic and political strength, as well as
the military presence, to fill such a position.

Turkey’s economy has more than doubled in the past decade, converting the
nation from a backwater to a regional powerhouse. At the same time, its
financial focus has moved closer to home: Turkey now conducts more trade
with Russia, Iraq, and Iran than it does with the EU. Energy politics have
also favored the Turks, who find themselves astride no fewer than three
competing energy supply routes to Europe?from Russia, from the Caspian, and
from Iran. Years of reform and stability are paying off as well. Ankara is
on the verge of a historic deal with its Kurdish minority to end an
insurgency that has left 35,000 dead in the past quarter century. In turn,
Turkey is making peace with neighboring countries that once supported the
insurgents, such as Syria, Iran, and Armenia. The principle is simple, says
a senior Erdogan aide who’s not authorized to speak on the record: "We can’t
be prosperous if we live in a poor neighborhood. We can’t be secure if we
live in a violent one."

The advantages keep compounding. Thanks to judicious diplomacy and expanding
business ties throughout the region, Turkey is close to realizing what
Davutoglu calls his "zero-problems-with-neighbors policy." The new stance
has boosted Ankara’s influence even further; the Turks have become the
trouble-ridden region’s mediators of choice, called in to help with disputes
between the Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, between Iraq and
Syria?even, before Erdogan’s outburst in Davos, between Israel and Syria.
Speaking at a recent press conference in Rome, Erdogan expressed little hope
that Turkey could do more for Syria and Israel. "[Prime Minister Benjamin]
Netanyahu doesn’t trust us," he said. "That’s his choice." But others in the
region still welcome Ankara’s assistance: Turkish diplomats are excellently
trained in conflict resolution.

That can scarcely be said for Iran. The Tehran regime remains paralyzed by
infighting and is far from loved in most of the Arab world. Saudis in
particular think back fondly to the Ottomans facing off against the
Persians, not to mention their feelings about Sunni Turks versus Shiite
Iranians. "Saudi Arabia is welcoming the new Turkish comeback," says Jamal
Khashoggi, editor of the influential Jidda daily Al-Watan. Not the least
important part of the charm is that Erdogan’s government has a distinctly
Islamic (and by Saudi lights, a distinctly Sunni Islamic) coloration?"even
if no Turkish officials would say that publicly, because it is politically
incorrect," says Khashoggi.

Still, the Turks believe they’re wise not to play an antagonistic role, and
officials in Ankara insist that Erdogan’s warm words to Ahmadinejad are no
more than atmospherics. At base, they say, Turkey shares the West’s goals
regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions; it’s just doing things in its own way.
"We have been dealing with [Iranians] for centuries," says the Erdogan aide.
"We show them the respect and friendship they crave. Would our being hostile
to Iran do anything to solve the problem of their nuclear program?" When the
International Atomic Energy Agency offered Iran the option of exporting most
of its low-enriched uranium in return for French-made fuel rods in October,
Erdogan offered Ahmadinejad a deal (apparently with Washington’s blessing):
Iran could store its uranium in Turkey rather than send it to a non-Muslim
country.

Tehran ultimately said no, but the effort demonstrated that Turkey is
prepared to do its part to keep the region peaceful and safe. Ankara insists
that its new friendships in the region are no threat to its longstanding
ties to the West. "NATO is Turkey’s strongest alliance, and integration with
Europe is the main objective of Turkish foreign policy," insists Davutoglu.
"But it doesn’t mean that because of these strong ties, we can ignore the
Middle East, we can ignore Asia, Central Asia, North Africa, or Africa." The
world has changed radically since the fall of the Ottomans, and Turkey is
unlikely ever to regain the imperial power it wielded for 350 years, from
Algiers to Budapest and Mecca. But as the world tries to move, at last,
beyond the 90-year-old peace that ended peace, no other country is better
positioned to pick up the pieces.

With Sami Kohen in Istanbul

Find this article at

© 2009

-and-the-tiger/

The lion and the tiger
David Edmonds
18th November 2009 – Issue 165 Free entry

Armenia excels at chess. Its top player now has a shot at becoming
world champion. How did this tiny country become a giant at the game?

Grandmaster Levon Aronian: the popularity of the game in Armenia has
made him into the country’s David Beckham

View more images from the Armenia chess championships taken by Magnum
photographer, Stuart Franklin, who took the iconic images of tanks
rolling into Tiananmen Square

Levon Aronian likes to sleep late. But at 11am on a weekday in August
this year, his dreams were disturbed by what sounded like people
chanting his name. In a semi-conscious state he got up, looked out of
the window and saw a large group of people outside where he was
staying. `You must win for Armenia!’ shouted the crowd. They were
there because in his native country, Levon Aronian is a megastar. He
is 27 years old, charming, handsome, wealthy and the best in his
nation at chess. And his countrymen take chess very seriously. The
patriotic zeal focused on him during the August tournament was more
intense than usual. If Aronian did well, he might one day become world
champion.

Armenia is a tiny, poor country in the Caucasus, with a population of
just over 3m. It has a long history of bloodshed and oppression; when
it appears in the news it is usually because of its entanglement in
some labyrinthine regional feud. And it excels at the ancient,
cerebral game of chess. In the international Chess Olympiad, held
every two years, Armenia took bronze in 2002 and 2004, then gold in
2006 and 2008, eclipsing traditional powerhouses such as Russia, the
US, Germany and England. National celebrations followed the most
recent victory, along with a set of commemorative stamps. Armenia has
27 grandmasters (GMs), the elite rank awarded to around 1,200 of the
world’s best players. With more grandmasters than China and many more
per capita than Russia, this little nation is a chess superpower. But
why?

This summer I visited Jermuk to try to find out. Jermuk is a resort
town 100 miles from the capital, Yerevan, and for two weeks in August
its largest sanatorium was home to 14 of the world’s most brilliant
men. They were there for a tournament organised by FIDE, the world
chess federation.

The 14 players consisted of a Frenchman, a Bulgarian, an Uzbek, three
Ukrainians, an American, a Hungarian, three Russians, an Israeli and
two Armenians, including Aronian. The arbiter was Belgian, and the
guest of honour – a chess legend called Svetozar Gligoric, a deaf,
frail and octogenarian GM who padded around in a tracksuit – was
Serbian. The sanatorium, a vast grey stone edifice, was once
frequented by senior communist apparatchiks, who came for the hot
springs. Like much of Armenia, it is stuck between the Soviet era and
modernisation. The rooms have been upgraded, but the menu
hasn’t. Every day there was pork, creamy mashed potato and buckets of
buckwheat. To cater to the guests’ medical requirements, a phalanx of
doctors in navy-blue tunics was on hand. One room was dedicated to
gastroscopy, another housed the proctologist. The ominously titled
`treating doctor’ had a separate area which I dared not enter.

The players were mostly in their twenties, with a few in their
thirties and one or two `old men’ who had turned 40. They were civil
to each other but close friendships are tricky. As top grandmasters,
their lives are intertwined; they compete in the same tournaments
across the globe. Between games the players ran into each other in the
dining hall, by the pool or in the sauna. But most ate alone, or
huddled with their second – a kind of coach-cum-sparring partner who
helps them prepare. At 3pm each day, the clocks were started: ahead
lay up to six-and-a-half hours of exhausting intellectual combat.

It’s nervy stuff, not least because this was a crucial contest, the
fifth of six tournaments that constitute the grand prix. Aronian won
two of the previous tournaments, and if he came first or second here
he would win the grand prix. There was a cash prize, but more
importantly the winner would claim a spot in a knockout round of just
eight players, leading to the chance to take on the world champion,
currently India’s Viswanathan Anand. So Aronian stood within 13 games
of a shot at the ultimate prize in chess.

With the games in progress, I headed outside the sanatorium and, in
the thin mountain air, listened to groups of boys and old men
passionately debate the moves. They offered me 64 different
explanations for why Armenians are world-beaters at chess. Armenia’s
heritage as a cog in the Soviet chess machine plays a part, although
that alone can’t explain why it outstrips other former eastern bloc
nations. Some of them emphasised education – Armenian literacy rates
are higher than in the US or Britain. A few others pointed to
Armenia’s tradition of creativity in many fields, including music and
painting. Armenia is poor and chess is cheap, one man told me. Then –
and this is a favourite rationalisation – there’s the individualistic
nature of the game. Armenians take perverse gratification in their
incompetence at team games. (Weight-lifting is the only other sport at
which Armenia excels.) The British ambassador, whom I later met in
Yerevan, pressed a more physical, less abstract explanation upon
me. Armenia is so mountainous that there’s no room for football
pitches and athletics fields – but chess needs only space for a small
board.

Yet to truly understand Armenia’s success requires a deeper look into
the country’s past, and in particular one moment, a generation ago, in
which this most highbrow game first began to embody the spirit of a
subjugated people.

***

There have been two Tigran the Greats in Armenia’s history. The first
Tigran the Great, an Armenian king born in 140BC, was an aggressive
risk-taker and a tactical wizard. He launched ambitious military
offensives and under his rule Armenia briefly became the most powerful
state east of Rome. According to Niccolo Machiavelli, an overreliance
on cavalry was his undoing: his knights were so burdened with armour
that when they fell off their horses they could barely rise again to
fight.

Two millennia later came the second Tigran the Great, Tigran Petrosian
(1929-84). Also known as `Iron Tigran,’ he has a prominent position in
the chess pantheon and was world champion for six years from 1963. In
1972, when the mercurial American Bobby Fischer was trouncing his
opponents en route to his legendary world championship match against
Boris Spassky, Petrosian was the only man to win a game against him,
although he too succumbed after. Fischer said he could sense the exact
moment that Petrosian’s ego crumbled.

The Jermuk tournament in which Aronian was competing was named after
Iron Tigran. Petrosian is an unlikely national hero: he was born not
in Armenia, but in Tbilisi, capital of neighbouring Georgia. He was,
however, ethnically Armenian, and as he rose in prominence Armenians
adopted him as their own. To most western observers he was just
another Soviet from a Kremlin-run conveyor belt that, since Stalin,
had promoted the game to demonstrate communist superiority over the
west. But to Armenians he was one of them. For many, national identity
meant more than communist ideology; for others it was a weapon to be
wielded against this ideology. In any event, chess and national pride
became fused in 1963, as Petrosian took on the Russian Mikhail
Botvinnik.

The match took place in Moscow, but crowds gathered in Yerevan’s
central square where a giant board had been set up. The moves were
relayed by telex and discussed by the throng as if they were war
communiqués. The aficionados knew what sort of chess to
expect. Grandmasters, just like artists and musicians, have an
instantly recognisable style. `Levon’ means `lion’ in Armenian and
Aronian’s chess is appropriately bold and adventurous. But Tigran
means `tiger’ in Russian and it would be hard to imagine a more
unsuitable fit with Petrosian’s defensive play. He avoided risk and
aimed to pre-empt any attack, plug any weakness. He would often lull
opponents into overreaching and then exploit the smallest
advantage. Bobby Fischer said Petrosian could `smell’ danger 20 moves
in advance. Yet for all its caution, his play was lethally
effective. Aram Hajian, an Armenian-American who works with the
Armenian chess academy, says that just as every American of a certain
age can recall where they were when Kennedy was shot, so every
Armenian can remember where they were when Petrosian vanquished
Botvinnik in that same year, 1963. The Armenian won by a convincing
12.5-9.5: Botvinnik’s stamina flagged as his opponent masterfully
shuffled and reshuffled his pieces.

Chess became the nation’s favourite pastime soon afterwards. Even the
colours became fashionable: photographs of the time show women dressed
in black-and-white shoes and dresses. A statue of Petrosian, with his
victor’s wreath, would later be erected outside Yerevan’s magnificent
four-storey chess club. One amateur player, also called Petrosian, had
a dream after his namesake’s victory that if he had a son he should
also call him Tigran. And this younger, unrelated Tigran Petrosian
became a member of Armenia’s recent gold-medal winning chess
team. Indeed, as Iron Tigran became famous, and especially after 1963,
`Tigrans’ proliferated. The current prime minister is a Tigran, as is
his finance minister. A decade ago filmmaker Tigran Xmalian made Black
& White, a film that uses chess as an allegory for Armenian 20th
century politics. It contains footage of Petrosian – an unassuming
looking chap with thick, slicked black hair – hunched over the board
in positions of concentration: hands flat over his ears, cupping his
cheeks with his palms, stroking his jaw. Before one game a man rushes
forward and throws some soil beneath Petrosian’s feet – Armenian
soil. For once, says Tigran Xmalian, we Armenians were celebrating,
not crying.

Petrosian’s triumph led to an outpouring of nationalism and affected
the way that Armenians related both to their Russian neighbours and to
the darkest episode in their history. That episode began on 24th April
1915, when Armenian leaders were rounded up and murdered in
Constantinople (now Istanbul). It was the start of what the Armenians
call their genocide. Many Turks dismiss the term, maintaining that the
killings are inflated in number and were never official policy. But
most reputable historians disagree. Caucasus specialist Tom de Waal
dislikes the semantic quibbling: `For me it’s enough to say that in
1915 there were lots of Armenians in eastern Anatolia. Several years
later there were none.’ Up to 1.5m people were butchered in their
homes or died as they were deported. But it was only in 1965 that the
Kremlin, facing large public demonstrations in Yerevan, finally
authorised the construction of a national memorial. Today this bleak
complex, consisting of a dozen tapered concrete slabs symbolising each
devastated province, stands in the peaceful hills overshadowing
Yerevan.

During the final years of Ottoman rule there was much talk about a
solution to `the Armenian question.’ The Ottoman Turks thought the
Armenians were money-grubbers. They were accused of being enemies
within. Under communism, Armenians were known for their business
acumen and the nation provided many of the Soviet Union’s best
engineers, mathematicians and scientists. `Armenians were the brainy
boys with glasses in the front of the class,’ says de Waal.

These, of course, are stereotypes usually attributed to another
minority. The parallels between Jews and Armenians are striking. Both
have well-knit diasporas – there are more than three times as many
ethnic Armenians living outside the country as inside and remittances
are key to sustaining the economy. Both have strong lobby groups in
Washington. Both take inordinate pride in the achievements of their
ethnic group – singer Cher and tennis player Andre Agassi are two
Americans that Armenians claim as their own. Both have histories
marked by identity-shaping tragedies. And both Israel and Armenia are
small nations and chess giants.

Further, Armenia’s regional politics often look as intractable as
Israel’s. Armenia has a closed border with Turkey and with Turkey’s
close ally Azerbaijan. The borders were closed because of the dispute
over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan overwhelmingly
populated by Armenians and over which the two nations fought a war in
the early 1990s.

Modern Armenia had only a brief period of independence at the end of
the first world war before being absorbed into the Soviet Union. Since
its rebirth in 1991, says Aram Hajian, it has been in search of an
identity. `Armenia is an ancient nation but it is newly reborn. Many
people know it’s the first nation to adopt Christianity, 1,700 years
ago, but in more modern times it’s not clear how Armenia wishes to
present itself to the world. And presenting itself as the king of the
intellectual game is not such a bad image to portray.’ There will be
an added piquancy to the 2012 chess Olympiad, to be held in
Istanbul. If Armenia takes part it should thrash its oldest adversary,
as Turkey has only two grandmasters.

***

The long-time world champion and now political activist Garry Kasparov
was born Garry Weinstein, but his mother was Armenian. Levon Aronian
has an Armenian mother and a Jewish father too. With those genes, he
said mischievously during a break in the competition, `my genius was
guaranteed.’ He was eating supper in the dingy dungeon dining hall
along with Arianne Caoili, a rare female player who accompanied
Aronian to the tournament. `But you have two advantages over
Kasparov,’ said Caoili. `You speak better English, and your back is
less hairy.’ Three years ago, when Armenia won the gold medal at the
chess Olympiad for the first time, Caoili briefly and inadvertently
helped propel the game into the mainstream news. The brainy, beautiful
Filipino-Australian, a master-strength player, was dancing with
Aronian when an English GM, Danny Gormally, became jealous and punched
him. Another Armenian took umbrage at this assault on his nation’s
idol and later thumped Gormally back. Typically, Aronian proved the
more astute tactician; he and Caoili are now together.

It was an incongruous episode – fisticuffs are rare in professional
chess, where revenge is exacted slowly, often agonisingly, over the
board. But it is perhaps not so incomprehensible when set in the
stressful context of competition chess.

The players have their tics and idiosyncrasies. When playing white, GM
Ernesto Inarkiev sits hunched over the board for several minutes
before making his first move, even though he must know what he’s going
to play. This may be gamesmanship, or a much-needed period to ease
himself into combat. His fellow Russian Evgeny Alekseev is marked by
his poor dress: while most wear suits and open-neck shirts, Alekseev
looks like a teenager dragged from bed. The Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk
most conforms to the caricature of the mad chess genius, with
messed-up hair and a habit of staring longer at the ceiling than the
board. Everyone has an Ivanchuk story. One is about a brilliant
novelty he once rolled out in a match. `How did you conjure that up?’
he was asked. `It occurred to me on my wedding day,’ he said. He is
regarded with a certain awe by his fellows as someone who has achieved
a kind of transcendental unity with the game; doing nothing else,
thinking about nothing else. He says that a chess player struggles for
a perfect game as the artist strives for a faultless painting. After
ten days at the Jermuk competition, he still couldn’t remember where
the bathroom was and kept opening the wrong door.

Back at the contest, it was round ten. Aronian had lost two games and
was hovering above the middle of the pack of 14. He desperately needed
a win. His opponent was the second seed and another world top-ten
player, the Russian Dmitry Jakovenko. Aronian claimed to feel pressure
but didn’t show it; he was preternaturally calm. He began with pawn to
c4 (an opening known as `the English’). A quiet start evolved into a
crowded middle game. Move 18 was the turning point when, after an
apparently simple move, pawn to e5, several of his until-then dormant
pieces sprang into action. Then he tightened his grip, forcing
Jakovenko’s king on a wild flight from one side of the board to the
other, only to be finally, humiliatingly, cornered. Outside the
sanatorium, where big boards were erected for the spectators and the
pieces were moved by girls with long poles, the crowd erupted into
applause.

At the post-match press conferences some grandmasters were fidgety,
still racked with the tension of the game just completed. Not
Aronian. He stroked his chin and delivered his post-mortems in soft
cadences, with an air of detachment, as if he’d just had a refreshing
stroll in the park.

Among the spectators, Aronian was compared to international
celebrities. `He’s our David Beckham,’ said one elderly, leather-faced
man as the sun glinted off his bald head. Aronian is always in demand
for autographs and always obliges. And chess has made him rich – if
not in Beckham’s league.

Armenia is one of the poorest countries in the former Soviet
Union. After a few years of double-digit growth, when it was briefly
dubbed `the Caucasian tiger,’ its economy, dependent on global metal
prices, imploded. In the west, a chess player ranked, say, 200th in
the world, would struggle financially. But in Armenia a GM can earn
$40-$70,000 a year in prizes and appearance fees. What’s more,
grandmasters who remain in Armenia (Aronian now lives in Germany) are
guaranteed a salary by the state of roughly the average wage.

A sophisticated structure is in place to develop the next generation
of Aronians. Down the road from the match venue is a classroom where
the country’s best juniors are brought to train. There’s a boy who won
the European under-10s, another who was under-12 world champion. In
fact, all the children have won medals in national or international
competitions. In the afternoon they watch the grandmaster games. In
the morning, after physical exercise, there are four or five hours of
chess coaching: three-minute blitz games, opening theory, endgame
technique and sessions on tactics. To inspire them, the floor is made
up of 64 black-and-white squares.

Overseeing all of this is Serzh Sargsyan, a man with two presidencies
to his name. He is head of Armenia’s Chess Federation and, when not
embroiled in chess responsibilities, he is the president of Armenia
itself. Silver-haired and with twinkly eyes, he has a machine-gun
cackle and a sinister CV. (His background is in the security
services.) Next year he plans to make chess part of the national
curriculum, dismissing criticism that the money could be better spent
on infrastructure or hospitals. `With this money we could build 1km of
road,’ he said. `What’s better, to build this road, or to have tens of
thousands of children playing chess? Chess trains the mind. Kids who
play chess are more organised, more disciplined, more honest.’ He
believes that chess has helped put Armenia on the map and that it can
become the centre of the country’s international brand. `We don’t want
the world to recognise Armenia just by the genocide and the
earthquake.’

***

On the final day, after his slow start, Aronian needed other games to
go his way even if he won. He took his place at the board as the
photographers clicked away. Then the players were left alone. There is
a loneliness to chess played at the highest levels. It goes deeper
than the mechanics of competition, the sitting in silence for
hours. These men are part computer, part artist. Show them a
particular distribution of pieces for a split-second and they can
memorise the configuration and reproduce it at will. Most have
exceptional memories. Many are musical; in this tournament Aronian
listened to Bach before each game. They all have language skills –
conversation glides from Russian to English to German. But, said
Aronian, what they create can be grasped by very few. In that sense,
it differs from music or football. We may not be able to compose like
Mozart but we can enjoy his compositions. We may not be able to bend
it like Beckham, but we can marvel at his striking of the ball. `To
understand the beauty of the games played at our level,’ Aronian said,
`you have to be rated 2,200 or higher.’ In Britain, only a couple of
hundred people are at that level. Aronian made this point with regret
rather than arrogance.

Whether or not they can fully comprehend it, hundreds of thousands of
fans around the world followed the final game. The boards were hooked
up to sensors and moves were online as they were made. Armenians could
track the tournament via their television news.
Those watching were not disappointed. Aronian ground out a victory,
turning a nano-advantage into a strong lead, and then into an
unstoppable force. His opponent, playing black, had been fixed with a
weak pawn structure by move 12, but it was another 24 moves before an
embattled pawn fell and a further 20 before it was clear that
Aronian’s pawns were sweeping down the board and black
capitulated. The win gave him second place in the tournament and
victory in the grand prix. The world title is now in his sights.

Armenian nabobs were in attendance at the night-time award
ceremony. The entire town turned out for the speeches, music and
fireworks. The president handed Aronian the keys to an apartment in
Yerevan – a none-too-subtle plea for the star to return to his
homeland. But Aronian and Caoili were heading back to Germany, the
weight of the nation’s expectations still upon him. The young genius
appeared typically unfazed. `I’m a chess player first, an Armenian
second,’ he said.
That is unlikely to affect his countrymen’s passion for Aronian, or
for chess. As Tigran Xmalian told me, Armenians love the game because
they’ve been attacked, invaded and oppressed by so many empires over
two millennia. Chess offers salvation, `because every pawn can become
a queen.’

Alexandria, Egypt: in praise of Alex
In Alexandria, Teresa Levonian Cole marvels at a city where remnants
of an ancient past are the foundation for its modern charm.

By Teresa Levonian Cole

Sunday Telegraph/UK
Published: 8:00AM GMT 29 Nov 2009

‘It was also here that Archimedes studied hydraulics and gave us his
eponymous screw; Euclid composed his Elements of Geometry; and the
astronomer Sosigenes formulated the Julian calendar’ Photo: GETTY

I stood on a promontory once home to one of the Seven Wonders of the
World and gazed across a crescent bay. Before me lay a city where,
1,700 years before their European counterparts, Aristarchus
ascertained that Earth revolves around the sun, Eratosthenes
calculated the circumference of the Earth (accurate to within 50
miles), and Herophilus first suggested that blood circulates through
the body.

On the trail of the Pharaohs It was also here that Archimedes studied
hydraulics and gave us his eponymous screw; Euclid composed his
Elements of Geometry; and the astronomer Sosigenes formulated the
Julian calendar, setting the length of each month that is still in use
today. And all the knowledge in the world was stored in the Great
Library of Alexandria, accidentally burned to the ground, some say, by
Julius Caesar in 48BC.

In the distance, amid the accretions of a modern skyscape, the huge
inclined disc of the new, resurrected library shone like a rising sun.
I came back to Earth, surrounded by a gaggle of Egyptian
schoolchildren. Intoxicated by the romance of a fairy-tale castle,
they ran amok along the ramparts of Fort Qaitbey.

Little survives of the glory days of the city that Alexander the Great
founded in 331BC. Like one of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities,
Alexandria is a city of the imagination, which permits only ghostly
glimpses of her illustrious past. The famous lighthouse, built in the
third century BC, was destroyed by earthquakes during the Middle Ages,
its foundations and pillars of Aswan granite subsequently incorporated
into a 15th-century fortress.

The fort overlooks the Eastern Harbour, in which archaeologists still
seek remains of the lighthouse and the Ptolemaic palaces of the
Brucheion. Statues have been dredged from the watery depths to grace
the city’s elegant museums while, back on terra firma, successive
generations of donkeys have fallen through loose rubble to reveal,
here and there, a Hellenistic temple, ancient catacombs, a Roman
amphitheatre.

Alex (as the city is affectionately known) has long been popular with
wealthy Cairenes seeking respite from the summer heat on the slim,
wind-battered beaches. But of the 12 million foreign tourists that
flock annually to Egypt, only a tiny percentage visit Alexandria.
Those who do, arrive on a whistle-stop tour of the ancient monuments,
inspect that curious Ptolemaic syncretism of Hellenistic and pharaonic
religion and art, before hastening, disappointed, to the more dramatic
treasures of Upper Egypt.

But to do that is to miss the point. Alexandria’s charm is revealed
only through time spent idling through her backstreets, sipping
coffees served in tiny cups at pavement tables, lingering at simple
fish restaurants overlooking a bobbing fleet of colourful boats and
unwrapping the semi-opaque onion layers of her past.

I lunched at the fish market, choosing from a huge display of the
freshest catch, and sipping a chilled bottle of very palatable Jardin
du Nil with my loup de mer. But for the minarets that pepper the
skyline, I could have been anywhere in the Mediterranean. As I
strolled along the Corniche – the 16-mile waterfront that stretches
from the Western Harbour to the summer palace of the playboy King
Farouk, in Montazah Gardens, to the East – even the call of the
muezzin, proclaiming the city’s Arab identity, failed to convince.

Despite the mosques and the old men gathered to smoke shishas along
the waterfront, Alexandria has all the hallmarks of Europe; albeit the
dystopian, anachronistic Europe of the Belle Époque.

The lie of the land may have changed little during the centuries that
saw Cleopatra lose the city to Rome, St Mark martyred, and Napoleon
trounced at nearby Aboukir, but the buildings we see date only from
1882 – the year the British Navy flattened Alexandria to quell a local
rebellion. They bear witness to the prosperity of the early 20th
century, which saw lavish parties held in neo-Classical mansions that
have been restored to their former splendour along the 16-mile
Corniche. Italians and French, Greeks and Armenians, Jews and Arabs
mixed in this most cosmopolitan of cities, leaving traces of their
heritage in their architecture, café life and jewellery shops, before
society’s elite decamped in the wake of Nasser’s Nationalist measures
in the Fifties.

The Souk Attarine became renowned as a place to pick up antique
bargains from retreating Europeans. Today, still, one can discover a
beautiful bronze statue, a Sèvres porcelain vase or a Venetian
chandelier in the narrow streets where furniture-makers reproduce the
popular French styles of yesteryear.

On Saad Zaghloul square, the somewhat faded Cecil Hotel testifies to
the cultural magnet that was Alexandria in the early 20th century.
Agatha Christie, Somerset Maugham and Henry Moore were among the
luminaries to grace its portals. Churchill stayed here, as did
Montgomery, who outfoxed Rommel at El Alamein, an hour’s drive along
the coast – allegedly plotting his strategy over whiskies in the fusty
bar that bears his name.

Cafés with names like Délices, Elite, Athineos and Pastroudis hang on
by a thread, evoking the vibrant intellectual life of a period when E
M Forster penned his famous Alexandria: A History and a Guide and, in
1941, Lawrence Durrell gathered the material that would become the
Alexandria Quartet, his "prose poem to the Capital of Memory". The
grandest of these cafés, the Trianon, sits on the site of Cleopatra’s
memorial to Mark Antony. Wood-panelled, high-ceilinged, with a
francophone chocolatier at the rear, it could have been plucked
straight from Saint-Germain.

"The best way to know Alexandria," confirmed Forster, "is to wander
aimlessly." Behind the sparkling façade of the Corniche, where the
magnificent $220 million (£120 million) new library proclaims a new
dawn, and the city’s first luxury hotel, the Four Seasons, awaits an
international clientèle, there lies yet another reality. It is the
Alexandria of nostalgia, captured in the poignant poems of Constantine
Cavafy, where the architectural whimsy of cornices, friezes, pediments
and columns, languish sooty and crumbling like loveless Miss Havishams
at the city’s heart.

It is an Alexandria where cars, trams and donkey carts choke the
narrow streets, the smell of cardamom coffee and falafel perfumes the
air, street vendors twist skeins of dough into delicious pastries, and
women buying bright gold jewellery and sparkling gewgaws crowd hidden
alleys.

I found Hajj Ali’s workshop in an unpromising backstreet. Hajj Ali has
a large nose, few teeth and bags of charm. His family, he tells me,
have been in the same trade for 150 years, making the distinctive
horse-drawn calèches – known locally as hantoors – that are seen all
around the city. He fashions them entirely by hand, from the
iron-rimmed wooden wheels, to the folding leather hoods, for the
starting price of a mere £400. He is the best hantoor-maker in
Alexandria. And it seems a satisfying full-circle that Hajj Ali should
be exporting this 19th-century mode of European transport to clients
in France and Italy today.

The sun was sinking behind Fort Qaitbey, and Alexandrians were
preparing for their moonlit passeggiata. True Mediterraneans, they are
creatures of the night. Exhausted by the experience of so many
centuries in a single day, I hailed a carriage and clip-clopped along
the Corniche, back to the Four Seasons, and the comforts of the
present.

Getting there
Bailey Robinson (01488 689700; ) offers four
nights’ b & b at the Four Seasons Alexandria, from £1,100 per person,
including return flight and internal transfers.

Defending the Armenian Church in Georgia

Asbarez
Nov 28th, 2009

Demonstrations outside the Georgian Embassy in Yerevan. Photo by Andre Arzoo

BY ANDRE ARZOO

YEREVAN-Armenian students and activists gathered at Yerevan’s Republic
Square on November 24 and marched toward the Georgian Embassy in
protest of the Georgian Government’s intentional neglect of the
numerous ancient Armenian Churches within its borders, as well as its
restriction against officially registering the Armenian Apostolic
Church as an active diocese in today’s Georgian State where several
hundred-thousand Armenians reside.

St. Gevorg Mughni Chruch.
The demonstration against the Georgian Government’s policy was an
active and outspoken response to the recent collapse of a wall of the
ancient `Mughni Surp Gevorg’ Armenian Apostolic Church, on Nov. 19,
2009 in Tbilisi, Georgia – illustrating the tragic consequences of
such policies of discrimination & religious intolerance.

The damage and collapse caused by the lack of maintenance and upkeep
was to such a degree that nearby buildings were also damaged within
the Sololaki District of the Georgian Capital (The Georgian Times).
Surp Gevorg Church remains closed due to its critically deteriorating
condition, and unfortunately, is not the only Armenian Church
suffering from such circumstances in Georgia.

St. Norashen Church, Tbilisi.
The ancient Armenian `Surb Norashen Church’, also located in Tbilisi,
Georgia, dates back to 1467 A.D. and was closed off from any religious
activities in the 1930’s by the then Communist Govt., and instead, was
used as a book depository much like many other religious sites at the
time.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly Independent State of
Georgia purposely neglected returning the Armenian church to the
Armenian Apostolic Church Diocese in Tbilisi – gating off the church,
destroying ancient Armenian tomb stones, and boarding up the church
instead.

An Armenian Tombstone. Photo by Andre Arzoo
Chairman of the Armenian Center of Cooperation in Georgia, Karen
Elchyan, has categorized this process as `Georgian-ization,’ where the
government has intentionally isolated & boarded up Surp Norashen
Church; restricting public access, encircling it with concrete walls
displaying Georgian Crosses, and initiating a campaign to annex
Norashen to the neighboring Georgian Orthodox Church, claiming it as
one of its own.

A U.S. State Department’s Global Report in November 2005, describing
the state of religious freedom in the Georgian Republic, declared:

`Many problems among traditional religious groups stem from property
disputes. The Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic Churches have been
unable to secure the return of their churches and other facilities
that were closed during the Soviet period, many of which later were
given to the Georgian Orthodox Church by the [Georgian] State,’ the
report states, noting that `the prominent Armenian church in Tbilisi,
Norashen, remains closed, as do four other smaller Armenian churches
in Tbilisi and one in [the region of] Akhaltsikhe.’

Among the 29 Armenian Churches functioning in Tbilisi in the beginning
of the 20th-Century, only 1 remains active. Many analysts and members
of the Armenian Community in Georgia view this as an attempt to
completely assimilate or drive out what remains of this centuries old
ethnic-Armenian population.

What is needed now is decisive action within the Armenian Diaspora
today by petitioning their influential community organizations, such
as the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), the Armenian
Assembly of America (AAA), youth organizations, student groups, who
are active within the Armenian-American Community, as well as other
communities, so as to lobby their respective governments for support.

Inside the Norashen Church. Photo by Andre Arzoo. Our worldwide
Armenian network not only has the access but also the resources and
potential determination to rally their respective host countries
toward pressuring the Georgian Govt. to not only protect and
rehabilitate centuries old Armenian Churches, but to also register the
Armenian Apostolic Church, and other active religious groups, as legal
religious entities within today’s Georgian Republic.

The several hundred thousand strong Armenian Community in Georgia
deserves the same rights of religious and ethnic tolerance as their
brethren enjoy elsewhere, let’s not take our rights and good fortune
for granted.

Please help reverse the Georgian Government’s campaign, by signing
this petition urging influential organizations within the Armenian
Diaspora to lobby their respective governments to mobilize and take
action in defense of our ethnic and religious heritage.

Visit of Catholicos of All Armenians to Damascus
The Armenian Mirror-Spectator
By Editor on Nov 28, 2009 in Armenia

By Hagop Vartivarian

>From November 13-18, for the first time in history, the Catholicos of
All Armenians went on a pastoral visit from Holy Echmiadzin to
Damascus, the historic city of the erstwhile Umayyads, the first
Muslim dynasty (661-750), and the capital of the present-day Syrian
Arab Republic. As expected, the Damascus Armenian community, as a
whole, welcomed its pontiff with open arms.
During the past half century, Damascus witnessed the saddest pages of
our contemporary history, especially the days of our church split,
beginning in 1956, and the fratricidal fighting resulting from
that. Furthermore, ever since the day that the intervention of Vazken
I, Catholicos of All Armenians, to put an end to the crisis within the
Catholicosate of Cilicia and restore amity and legality failed due to
the revolt against the authority of the Mother See and the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation’s forcible establishment of its dominance
over the Cilician Catholicosate, the Damascus Armenian community
remained loyal to the supremacy of Holy Echmiadzin and, till this day,
continues to extend its unmitigated love and respect to the Mother
See.

In 1928, by the decision of the Administrative Council of the
Patriarchate of Jerusalem, with the approval of the then patriarch,
Archbishop Yeghishe Tourian and by unanimous decision of the St. James
Brotherhood’s General Assembly, the jurisdiction of the diocese of
Damascus, as well as that of the dioceses of Beirut and Latakia,
Syria, was freely turned over to Catholicos Sahag Khabayian, the
elderly occupant of the throne of the See of Cilicia in exile, in
order for the latter to have authority over a few dioceses. However,
the Damascus Armenian community, led by its patriotic national and
political organizations ‘ ADL, SD Hunchak Party and AGBU ‘ generally
speaking, remained firm in its faith, and the general populace
directed its love and faith solely to Holy Echmiadzin, while holding
the See of Cilicia in respect.

The leaders of these organizations of ours didn’t have an easy time of
it, especially in the wake of the Cold War, when a heated political
atmosphere prevailed throughout the Middle East and from which the
Armenians of Damascus could not, of course, remain exempt.

Unfortunately, instead of striking Turks, some Armenians struck other
honorable, law-abiding fellow nationals who displayed solicitude
toward the traditions of the Armenian Church.

Thus, in 1956, when the then-Prelate of the Diocese of Damascus,
Bishop Shavarsh Kouyoumdjian was in the diocesan office next to the
church, working on his book about the history of the Armenians of
Damascus, a 17-year-old youth, at the bidding of those in charge of
the ARF at that time and with a pistol given by them to him, fired
twice upon the bishop. Fortunately, His Grace Shavarsh was rushed to
the hospital where he was saved from certain death. He had cultivated
the best of relations at the highest level with the governmental
authorities at that time. The country’s president was Shukri
al-Quwatli, while the foreign minister was Sarraj.

Prior to the visit of His Holiness Vazken I, another despicable event
had already occurred; namely, a group of Dashnaks rushed into the
courtyard of St. Sarkis Church and then, once inside the church,
attacked Mihran Der Stepanian, the chairman of the diocesan executive
council and prominent ADL leader, leaving him so bloodied that it
could have cost him his life.

They resorted to these vile measures in order to make it clear to the
Armenians of Damascus that if they didn’t cooperate with the ARF, they
would be subjected to the same acts that were committed against the
Prelate and the chairman. Unfortunately, terror remained the sole
means of enforcing the ARF’s exclusive control and authority. They had
carried out such acts in Beirut, where patriotic youths whose
allegiance was to Echmiadzin became the victims of fratricidal
fighting; during that same period, law-abiding members of the
Brotherhood of the See of Cilicia were thrown out of the monastery in
Bikfaya in broad daylight; and well-known figures in the Armenian
community and political party leaders like Prof. Parounag Tovmasian
and Nubar Nazarian became targets of terrorist attacks.

The Cold War had already begun to have an impact on Armenian life, as
well. In 1958, Syria united with Egypt to form the United Arab
Republic, and Al-Wehda (unity) developed between the two
countries. George Mardigian, the head of ANCHA, went to Syria where he
tried to buy officers of the Syrian army with large donations. During
those same days, a Dashnak from Damascus, Sarkis Bekiarian, was
arrested as an agent working for the United States and the location of
his body would permanently remain unknown. Furthermore, a large number
of Dashnaks were arrested because large quantities of ammunition were
found in the ARF club and churches in Aleppo, while others left Syria
for good.

Thus, a severe struggle began in Damascus, during which many of our
ADL members, like Krikor Asilian, were also subjected to interrogation
as Communists. Here we are obliged to acknowledge, for the historical
record, the great effort carried out by our Hunchak friends to
maintain the diocese’s loyalty to the Mother See. Mrs. Gulizar
Gartatsoghian, Khashmanian, Laleyian and other Hunchaks fought
wholeheartedly for the sake of the supremacy of the Catholicosate of
All Armenians. AGBU leaders, as well, like Levon Yacoubian and others,
remained on the front lines of this struggle with the same patriotism;
that patriotic spirit still exists within the Armenian community of
Damascus.

Having appealed to the Syrian government to intervene, as necessary,
our friends prevented those in control of Antelias from entering
Damascus. During the initial days, even Catholicos Zareh I was sent
back to Antelias from the Syrian border, because his entry into the
country was prohibited. The same happened later on to Catholicos
Khoren I. Until now, the entrance of the catholicoi of the See of
Cilicia to St. Sarkis Church is forbidden. After the passing of Bishop
Shavarsh, various patriotic clergymen were called into service within
the diocese for a short time, such as Archbishop Serovpe Manoogian,
the former Primate of Paris; however, Archbishop Knel Djeredjian, one
of the most courageous clergymen of the Armenian Church, remained,
until his last breath, the vanguard in the movement to keep the
Damascus Armenian community on Echmiadzin’s side.

Until now, as well, St. Sarkis Church remains on the register of
properties belonging to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The
same was the case with Sourp Nishan Church ofBeirut but this property
was turned over to the Catholicosate of Cilicia during Archbishop
Yeghishe Derderian’s term as Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem.

And thus, for the first time, a Catholicos of All Armenians ‘ our
beloved universal Catholicos Karekin II ‘ has gone to Damascus, having
already completed his first decade as pontiff of the Mother See of
Holy Echmiadzin. His pastoral visit to Damascus came at a time, when
that city’s Armenian community was marking over fifty years of loyalty
to the Mother See. It had honored the supremacy of Echmiadzin even
dating back to the time when Bishop Dohmouni was the prelate. As it
turned out, Catholicos Karekin’s visit has been a blessing,
particularly at this time when the masses of Diasporan Armenians
should warm up even more to Holy Echmiadzin and the motherland, the
Republic of Armenia

The five stages of dying and death

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29/11/09

IT’S THAT time of year when we start working our way into a state of
mass hysteria over Turkey’s EU progress report which would not include
any sanctions for her failure to implement the Ankara Protocol, also
known as the refusal to fulfil her obligations to the EU and Cyprus.

I do not want to sound morbid but our reaction to the progress report
saga, has very strong similarities to Dr Kubler-Ross’ five stages of
dying and death – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
OK, in 2006 we jumped from bargaining to acceptance, without going
through depression, but that was because we had a very able foreign
minister.

We have already gone through the first stage, with the most of our
politicians and newspaper scribes insisting that Turkey would not
emerge from next month’s European Council unscathed. We remained in
denial, even after many of the EU’s top dogs announced that there was
no provision for punitive measures in the 2006 decision. `Turkey would
not pass unscathed,’ was the denial slogan, as it had been three years
ago.

This week we entered the anger stage, when the content of the first
draft of the progress report, prepared by the Swedish presidency, was
made public and included nothing about sanctions. Sweden got the
Brit-treatment from furious politicians, who called on the government
to take a tough line and block all new negotiation chapters.

A seething Perdikis, instructed the government to drop its illusions
and together with Greece prepare for the worst-case scenario. It would
be more accurate to say that righteous rage characterised the anger
stage.

WE DEVIATE slightly from Dr Kubler-Ross’ theory, because we are
dealing with a society and not an individual. Different members of our
society enter each stage differently.

Comrade president entered the anger stage before everyone else as his
letter to all heads of EU member-state, was sent before the release of
the Swedish presidency’s draft, which according to Phil `caressed the
Turks’. The letter was pretty abrupt and contained no diplomatic
niceties, presumably to emphasise Tof’s rage.

The Disy Fuhrer, in contrast, proved once again that he is ahead of
his time, by already entering the bargaining stage. Our smartest
politician, suggested a compromise whereby Turkey would be given a
grace period of six months to help in the peace talks and to implement
the protocol. If the Turks failed to do so by June, we would impose
sanctions, or at least go through the five stages of dying again.

DEPRESSION takes over, when the bargaining, at all the different
decision-making tiers of the EU, fails to yield any result, and it
becomes apparent that our European partners – not just the Brits and
Swedes – are not even prepared to give the Turks a gentle smack on the
bum, to help our government save face.

And finally, acceptance sets in during the December European Council,
when our depressed president finally comes to terms with the fact that
our partners are united in not wanting to take any punitive measures
against the pampered Turks.

But there, the similarities with Dr Kubler-Ross’ theory end, because
after acceptance, there is a happy ending – nobody dies, the president
returns home to a villain’s welcome and rest of us look forward to the
next time our EU partners will stop us punishing the arrogant Turk.

ALL THIS, could still be proved wrong, because the National Council,
which meets later this week, could come up with an ingenious plan to
force the European Council to impose sanctions on Turkey and make
Patroclos look like a fool.

This is a very remote possibility when you hear what actually happens
at National Council meetings. After last week’s meeting, one of the
participants confided to a hack that if he had a knife he would have
been tempted to commit hara-kiri in front of everyone as an act of
protest against the infuriating nonsense that is said during the
discussions

`And the worse thing of all,’ he said, `is that all the leaders come
out and make serious-sounding statements in front of the cameras,
giving the impression that we have been having debate about really
important matters. Nothing could be further from the truth.’

CONVENIENTLY, the meeting finished just when the evening TV news shows
were beginning so all the leaders felt obliged to talk to the waiting
camera crews, despite agreeing, at the meeting, not to make any
statements to the media.

But none of them was able to resist the temptation when they realised
their interview would be broadcast live on the evening news shows. I
blame EUROKO leader Demetris Syllouris who was out of the palazzo
first and went straight to the waiting cameras.

His associate, deputy Rikkos Erotocritou, showed what a sucker he is
for TV exposure by standing next to Syllouris, looking into the void
and saying nothing, like a long-suffering wife who can been seen but
not heard. His bemused look said more about the meeting than all the
fine words uttered by his leader. More significantly, his ears did not
flap once during the interview.

MY FAVOURITE National Council couple is Edek’s, featuring leader
Yiannakis Omirou and the socialist party’s honorary president for life
and beyond, Dr Faustus. `Does this guy bring his father to the
meeting?’ asked a foreign customer, unfamiliar with the political
scene, while watching the pictures on our establishment’s TV.

`Yes, because the old boy’s nurse takes the day off on Tuesdays, and
he has nowhere to leave him,’ a skettos drinker lied. The truth is
that the wise old doctor does not entirely trust Yiannakis’ judgment
yet and likes to keep an eye on the young man when he is expounding
his spiritual father’s complex views on the critically important
aspects of the Cyprob.

HE MAY think of himself as an Alpha male, but the Paphite health
minister with the big ego, Dr Patsalides is big softy really,
terrified of having an injection. Twice he had been asked by hacks
whether he would be having the swine flu vaccination and both times he
he responded negatively, offering some lame excuse.

After Greece’s health minister had the vaccination in public, to
re-assure a sceptical public which was afraid of the side-effects, a
hack asked the Paphite if he would be doing the same and he said no.
His reason demonstrated his sense of self-importance in all its glory.
`I do not think a minister should be vaccinated in public,’ he
pompously declared. The guy is a member of the Tofias government,
appointed on the recommendation of Marios Garoyian, and he is afraid
that a vaccination in public would diminish his personal standing?

THE QUESTION was put to him again this week, after very few people,
from the first high-risk group eligible for the free swine flu
vaccination, turned up at the flu clinics to have their injection;
everyone seems to be afraid of possible, adverse side-effects.

This time, he his excuse for not being vaccinated was much nobler and
contained an element of self-sacrifice. He said: `It would have been
easy for me to go and get vaccinated for communications purposes and
then tell people, see I am not afraid. That, however, would give the
wrong message as it would violate the priority principle that calls
high-risk groups to get the vaccine first.’

I think the guy is scared, either of having an injection or, like most
people, of the possible side effects of the vaccination. As for not
wanting `to violate the priority principle’, it is a candidate for
joke of the year. This is the minister who routinely violates state
rules – not just priority principles – sending patients abroad for
heart operations to prevent them from going to the American Heart
Institute.

He is content to break state rules, (smoking in state buildings, for
instance) but priority principles never, because these could cause
negative side-effects for the minister.

ANOTHER man who would never violate priority principles and makes a
habit of giving sermons about correct behaviour is deputy
Attorney-general Akis Papasavvas. He was in the news recently after he
reached an out of court settlement with his boss, Attorney-general
Petros Clerides, which made him 55,000 wealthier.

The case related to his forced retirement, when he was working at the
AG’s office as senior counsel in 2001. He challenged the decision in
the Supreme Court which decided his services were wrongly terminated.
Fourteen months later he was re-instated and a received all the
salaries he was not paid during his forced retirement.

However, when he was forced out he collected a total of 110,000 in
retirement bonus, pension payments for 14 months and unemployment
benefit. Public servants are entitled to six months unemployment
benefit when they go into retirement, even though they are collecting
a hefty state pension.

When he was re-instated he was asked to pay back the 110,000, as he
was paid all his salaries for the 14 months, but refused to do so,
insisting that the money was his and he had no obligation to return
it. By what law it was his, the holier than thou Papasavvas did not
say. Perhaps he was entitled to it because he was opposed to the Annan
plan.

TO ADD insult to injury, Papasavvas also sued the Republic, demanding
125,000 compensation for his wrongful dismissal, while unlawfully
holding on to 110,000 of the taxpayer’s money, which he probably
spent.

Faced with the compensation claim, Clerides filed a counter claim on
behalf of the state, demanding back the 110,000. But why had
Papasavvas not been taken to court sooner for holding on to state
money he was not entitled to?

Politis reported last weekend that a settlement was reached by which
Papasavvas would be paid by the taxpayer 55,000 in compensation and
the case would be closed. But Clerides obviously did a favour to
Papasavvas, who was rusfetologically appointed deputy AG, when his
great buddy Comrade Tof was elected.

Even assuming that the Judge awarded the full compensation Papasavvas
was claiming, he would only have been owed 15,000 once he had
returned the money he had taken from the state. Why had Clerides
agreed to pay him 55,000 in settlement? Was it because Papasavvas
enjoys presidential protection or had he pledged to donated the money
to charity?

THE STRATEGY for Tackling Cancer in Cyprus was presented to the public
by health minister Dr Patsalides last Tuesday. The strategy was
formulated by stakeholders, which said it all. For `stakeholders’,
read `clueless members of the public’ who are invited to sit on
committees, because even cancer strategy has to be decided
democratically in the People’s Republic.

The strategy contained in a 56-page book published by the health
ministry is truly embarrassing. It is a compendium of superficial
thinking peppered with popular wisdom which will come to nothing. This
strategy has as much chance of tackling cancer as glass of orange
juice every day. `What do you expect, when Chr. Andreou was on the
committee that drafted the strategy,’ remarked an oncologist customer
of the coffeeshop.

Chr. Andreou has been waging an ongoing campaign to have the B of C
Oncology Centre closed down, which made him an expert in formulating
cancer strategy.

WHY IS it that our illustrious Agriculture Minister, Michalis
Polynikis has only attended one meeting of the EU Council of
Agriculture Ministers? There has been a host of meetings of the
Council, to which he insists on sending a ministry technocrat rather
than attending himself.

It is not as if he is very busy. He has stopped talking on the radio,
he has solved our water shortage problem and he does not engage in
rusfeti, which can be very time-consuming, as the recent police
investigation showed. So why does he refuse to attend Council
meetings? How would he cope when we have the EU presidency and he will
have to chair meetings of the Agri ministers? We can’t have a ministry
official chairing a meeting of ministers.

HEART-FELT congratulations go to House President Marios Garoyian, who
was named `Politician of the Year’ by the Armenian community at a
ceremony on Friday night. We have been unable to obtain any
information regarding the reasons he received this prestigious award,
but one member of the Armenian community assured us that it had
nothing to do with Diko going through the `worst crisis in its
history’.

And when is this crisis going to be over, because we are still losing
sleep over it.

AN AID TO THE CITIZENS HAVING AUDITORY PROBLEM

Azat Artsakh Newspaper NKR
Published on November 20, 2009

The other day the minister of NKR Social Maintenance Narine
Astsatryan represented state programs of 2010 of children, invalids
and employment to the government, the aim of which is ensuring of
guarantees of social protection of NKR children being in difficult
life conditions, imrovement of institutions of care and protection,
integration of children into the society, improvement of health
problems. Fitting of `Bernaphone’ deaf-aid to the children of bad
hearing under 18 and those who have status of disability and
disability pension, granting and special consultation are also in
these rows. By information of the chief of the department of
social assistance of NKR Ministry of Social Maintenance Samvel
Israelyan, this program has been realized still 2007 by the assistance
of professor of department of hearing recovery and ear microsurgery of
RA `Armenia’ Republican Medical Centre Garegin Mirakyan and other
specialists. For this purpose by corresponding sums foreseen by the
state budget of 2009, 107 deaf-aids have been acquired. Our
interlocuter informed also, that if last year they got only two types
of this apparatus, this year 5 types of deaf-aids have been already
acquired. They are foreseen for people having different degrees of
auditory disturbance. From November 16 not only location of
`Bernaphone’ auditory apparatus, but also audit of auditory apparatus
set previous years, prescription of medecine, double examination
especially in children circles have begun. Professor G.Mirakyan
examined with special attention, gave separate professional
consultations. About 95 NKR citizens are registered in the list. The
program will take a continuous turn, efficiency of which is obvious.
Professor G. Mirakyan does not see any problem in the process of
realizing these works and greets the disposition of NKR Health
Minister A.Khachatryan and Minister of Social Maintenance
N.Astsatryan: `Thank God! One of our this year’s victims is, that in
Artsakh a sociological cabinet will work, which will concern with
patients having disturbance of hearing, all necessary special
consultations will be given. We express our gratification in that
connection and set up direct supervision. It’s a process demanding
uninterrupted work. We are eager to help everybody, so time is
limited, our activity – spacious, but we try to help in every possible
way’,- noted G. Mirakyan. One of this year’s news is, that the doctor
Gayane Tevosyan got requalification in the department of hearing
recovery and ear microsurgery of `Armenia’ Republican Medical Centre.
This program will take a continuous turn, because armenian specialists
arrive in Artsakh with great difficults, besides, in limited period of
time they have to examine about 350 patients. For realizing fully
the service, it’s necessary to have such specialists on the spot. Just
for that reason it was decided to create sociological cabinet, which
will make easier the works of armenian specialists, and will be also
great assistance for NKR people having bad hearing.

Zarine Mayilyan

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AMERICAN ARMENIAN COMMUNITY GETS ACQUAINTED WITH ARTSAKH PROBLEMS

Azat Artsakh Newspaper NKR
Published on November 26, 2009

On November 24, NKR Prime minister Ara Harutyunyan had a meeting
with members of West America’s administrative bodies of Hnchakyan
socio-democratic party, by the head of the assessor Hambik Safaryan.
Questions refering to Artsakh-Diaspora mutual relations, NKR
socio-economic development, azeri-karabakh conflict settlement and
armenian-turkish relations were discussed at the meeting. The NKR
Prime minister underlined the importance of continuous strengthening
and broadening of Homeland-Diaspora connections. It was noted mutually
the vital significance of Artsakh’s prosperity for all the Armenians.
The same day the head of NKR government had a meeting with the
benefactor Harut Brutyan. A number of questions refering to the
realization of various programs in our republic were discussed at the
meeting. On November 24, Ara Harutyunyan visited the primacy of
North America’s Western Diocese of Armenian Apostolic Church and met
with members of National Council of the Diocese and representatives of
the armenian community. The Prime minister aqcuainted the presents
with NKR socio-economic situation, programs of development of Shushi,
as well as the present stage of azeri-karabakh conflict settlement.
The chief of the main administration of information of the NKR
President’s stuff David Babayan, NKR permanent reprsentative in the
USA Robert Avetisyan participated in the meetings.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress