Month: September 2013

CULT DIRECTOR HAD HUGE INFLUENCE ON MOVIEMAKERS

Western Daily Press
September 23, 2013 Monday

Obituaries

Richard Sarafian, an influential director whose 1971 car chase
thriller Vanishing Point brought him a decades-long cult following,
has died aged 83.

His son Deran said on Saturday that Sarafian died on Wednesday at a
Southern California hospital of pneumonia contracted while recovering
from a fall.

Sarafian worked in television in his early career, directing episodes
of 1960s shows like Gunsmoke, I Spy, and the notoriously terrifying
Living Doll episode of The Twilight Zone.

But he was best known for Vanishing Point, a dark story of a
drug-fuelled auto pursuit through the Nevada desert. The film and
director had a major influence on the maverick moviemakers who would
dominate 1970s Hollywood.

Sarafian’s fans included Warren Beatty, who cast him in two of his
own films, and Quentin Tarantino.

An obituary report in The Guardian says that Sarafian was born in New
York to Armenian immigrants. He would later boast of his colourful
working life, which he insisted included stints making “a few honest
bucks” smuggling whiskey from Virginia into Tennessee. He was also
employed as a researcher on Life magazine. Sarafian worked as an army
news service reporter in Korea; he met Robert Altman, who was then
directing industrial documentaries, while stationed in Kansas City.

Sarafian was initially interested in medicine and law, but a
lackadaisical approach to his studies resulted in him taking
the supposedly easier option of a film-making course at New York
University. He was employed as Altman’s assistant and married Helen
Joan Altman, the director’s sister. They had five children, divorced
and remarried.

He made his first film, Terror at Black Falls, in 1962, followed by
Andy (1965), a drama about a man with learning difficulties, shot as
part of a scheme by Universal to encourage new directors.

He also had acting roles in a number of high-profile films including
Bugsy (1991) and Bulworth (1998). He provided the voice of a beaver
for Dr Dolittle 2 (2001).

Sarafian’s wife died in 2011. He is survived by his children, Deran,
Damon, Richard, Tedi and Catherine.

THREATS TO SYRIAN CHRISTIANS HEIGHTEN CONCERNS IN CONGRESS ABOUT AIDING REBELS

The National Journal
September 22, 2013

by Sara Sorcher

Members of Congress know that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad is
the bad guy, but they’re increasingly worried about toppling him
from power, after Christian organizations have galvanized America’s
religious base.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., worries that the presence of extremist
groups linked to al-Qaida within the fragmented Syrian opposition
poses a “direct threat” to religious minorities there, including
Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the population in a
country home to ancient biblical scenes such as the Damascus road
on which Paul had his conversion experience. Qaida-linked groups’
vision of a “post-Assad Syria is one with no Christians in it,” Van
Hollen told National Journal Daily. “It’s an extremist, intolerant,
fundamentalist Islamic state. So this is a very real factor in the
whole question of U.S. support for the rebels.”

Syria’s bloody civil war changed Christians’ relatively protected
status under Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, a Shia
offshoot. His primarily Sunni opposition largely sees Christians
as Assad’s allies. Extremists seized the ancient Christian enclave
Maaloula where the language of Jesus Christ is still spoken, killed
a Catholic priest, and two prominent Syrian bishops were abducted.

While Van Hollen would support giving the Obama administration a
very limited authorization for the use of force in Syria if needed,
he is against arming the rebels because of the risk that extremists,
who are the best fighters within the opposition, could get the upper
hand in the conflict. “I’m not convinced we have clearly established
whose hands these weapons will end up in,” Van Hollen says. “People
… don’t want to be dragged more deeply into a civil war that could
result in these radical extremist groups taking over.

“Yes, Assad must go, but you don’t achieve your goal if you replace
him with somebody as bad or worse.”

Worried about the fate of their Christian brethren in Syria,
a swath of Christian organizations have launched grassroots
lobbying campaigns to encourage members of Congress to oppose any
U.S. military interventionranging from a strike to arming rebelsfor
fear of exacerbating the volatile situation on the ground and putting
minority groups in dangerand perhaps on the road to extinction. Tens
of thousands of phone calls and letters have flooded Capitol Hill
offices in recent weeks.

“There are no good guys in this scenario,” said Tony Perkins, president
of the conservative Family Research Council. “Siding against Assad
will only strengthen the hands of those who have direct links to
the attacks on Christians.” As members of Congress solicited his
group’s opinions on Syria, Perkins said, “we were very clear” that
intervention was not in Christians’ “best interest.”

Armenian Christians used to number about 100,000 in Syria; during
the conflict, their numbers have been reduced by half as they fled
the country or were targeted in attacks. Should the opposition come to
power, the Armenian National Committee of America’s executive director,
Aram Hamparian, said, “we have no assurances … they would respect
the rights of Christians.” That group alone, working through local
chapters, spurred 9,000 activists to contact lawmakers.

Hamparian’s concerns appear to be shared by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va.,
who believes the dwindling populations of Jews and Christians in Egypt
and Iraq could signal a similar fate for Syria’s Christians. “First
the Saturday people then the Sunday people,” Wolf laments. He opposes
intervention. “You have to be very concerned, or else you’re going
to see the Christian community emptied.”

Some groups are looking ahead. Darrin Mitchell, president and chief
lobbyist of the American Christian Lobbyists Association, says his
group is urging his members to write and call their elected officials
to draft legislation that would ask “all Islamic governments, including
a new future Islamic government in Syria, to protect and respect the
rights of religious minorities including the Christian population in
their respective countries” amid fears “that if an al-Qaida backed
Islamic government takes over in Syria … that Christian worship
would be severely restricted and that Christians in general would
experience extreme persecution.”

The fate of Syria’s Christians, said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., resonates
with the American people. “When you talk about how there are Christians
on the side of Assad, it makes people say, ‘Oh, gosh, what are we
going to do now?” Paul said. “I don’t think many people would argue
Assad had protected the Christians…. When people hear that and they
also hear al-Qaida’s on the other side, al-Nusra’s on the other side,
and the Islamic rebels are committing atrocities such as beheadings
they put on videotape to show the world, killing priests …

it shows it’s not Thomas Jefferson and George Washington versus a
tyrant. It’s a little more messy than that.”

ERDOGAN, THE ANTI-ATATURK

The National Interest
September 2013 – October 2013

by Aram Bakshian Jr.

THIS NOVEMBER 10, at precisely 9:05 a.m., for the seventy-fifth time
in the history of the Turkish Republic, the nation will grind to a
halt. In Istanbul, for sixty seconds sirens will drone, ferryboat
horns will blare in the Golden Horn and traffic will freeze.

Throughout the country, millions of ordinary Turks will stand still
and mute to mark the death anniversary of their nation’s founding
father. It is an impressive moment, and deservedly so. Mustafa Kemal,
known to history as Kemal Ataturk (“Father of the Turks”), was an
indomitable blend of soldier, diplomat, politician, intellectual and
nation builder. One of the twentieth century’s most remarkable leaders,
he was a man of iron will and incredible vision.

A war hero even as the Ottoman Empire he served crumbled around him,
Ataturk was instrumental in defeating an invading British army at
Gallipoli. At the end of World War I, when the victorious Allies
occupied Istanbul and began to partition Ottoman territory, he
took to the Anatolian heartland, forged a new citizen army, routed
Greek forces that had seized Smyrna (now Izmir) and much adjoining
Turkish territory, and then drove the Allied occupation forces out
of Istanbul. But that was only the beginning. As president of his
own newly minted, custom-designed Turkish Republic, with inspired
eloquence and brute force, he dragged his fellow countrymen,
many of them literally kicking and screaming, into the twentieth
century. The Turkish language was modernized and systematized. The
Latin alphabet replaced an archaic Arabic script. Massive industrial,
education and infrastructure initiatives were launched and a new
sense of Turkish identity-part authentic, part invented in rewritten
history textbooks-replaced the old Ottoman way of thinking. In
most respects, this was a great plus for the vast majority of poor
urban and rural Turks. Under the Ottoman Empire, even in the glory
days when it ruled large chunks of Europe, Asia and Africa, and was
mistress of the Mediterranean, most ordinary Turks were part of the
impoverished peasant masses. Commerce, finance and other professions
were monopolized by a small, educated elite, many-in some cases,
most-of them non-Muslim Greeks, Armenians and Jews.

The end of the empire changed all that. At times it was not a pretty
picture; transforming the truncated remains of the multiethnic Ottoman
Empire into a cohesive, racially rooted nation-state was achieved at
great human cost and more than a little tampering with historical
truth. While Ataturk had condemned the extermination of Armenians
during World War I by his Young Turk predecessors, calling it a
“shameful act,” he presided over a brutal but less horrific forced
mass transfer of populations in which Anatolian Greeks-who, like the
Armenians, had lived there for centuries before the arrival of the
first nomadic Turkic invaders-were driven from their homes. The same
fate, it is worth noting, awaited a smaller number of ethnic Turks
living in Greek territory.

The only substantial minority that remained in modern Turkey were
the Kurds, fellow Muslims but with their own language and customs,
who are still a source of considerable friction today. Even they were
subjected to a clumsy attempt at what might be called bureaucratic
assimilation. The republic invented a new name for them: until a
few years ago, they were officially classified as “mountain Turks,”
denied a legitimate identity of their own.

A charismatic speaker and popular hero, Ataturk stumped the republic,
defining a new sense of “Turkishness” and denouncing anything and
everything he considered divisive or reactionary-from fez and veil
to traditional Ottoman music and religious orders. Like Peter the
Great in Russia two centuries before, he was determined to overcome
centuries of backwardness and decline, by brute force if necessary-and
it often was. Also like Peter the Great, he had seen the greater world
outside his homeland, and he liked what he saw. Once firmly in power
in the mid-1920s, he would declare:

“~SI have no religion, and at times I wish all religions at the
bottom of the sea. He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold
his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My
people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates
of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go.”~T

Only it didn’t. Today, many informed observers feel that Ataturk’s
achievement is at risk, threatened by a rising Islamist tide led by
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an unashamed-and historically
uninformed-admirer of an idealized version of the Ottoman-Islamic past
that exists mainly in his own imagination. It is both significant and
ironic that the mass anti-Erdogan protests that swept Turkey this
June were initially triggered by his arbitrary decision to destroy
Gezi Park, one of Istanbul’s few remaining green areas, to replace it
with a “replica” of Ottoman-era military barracks and a shopping mall.

Other plans included building an enormous new mosque in adjoining
Taksim Square, site of the Monument of the Republic.

Why this nostalgia for a romanticized, not to say imaginary,
Ottoman-Islamic past? Perhaps it begins with a deep sense of grievance
on the part of Turkish Islamists, shared by their brethren throughout
the Middle East-the belief that a golden age of Islamic dominance
was destroyed by the forces of Western Christianity and Western
technology. Whatever is driving this nostalgia for a romanticized past
of Islamic vibrancy and power, it has become a compelling force in
modern Turkish politics. The late Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard,
a leading political scientist of our time, called Turkey a “torn
country”-a nation belonging culturally to a particular civilization
but whose leaders wish to redefine it as belonging to another. Hence,
any effort to understand the dynamics of Turkish politics today must
begin by probing the rise to power and remarkable national stewardship
of Kemal Ataturk, as well as the leadership vacuum that ensued upon
his death.

HE WAS one of many bright, young Ottoman officers of his generation
who had been posted as military attaches in Europe before World War I.

These young men often came home dazzled by Western society and
technology, with a newfound contempt for traditional Ottoman culture
and religion and with an indiscriminate zeal for all things Western
and modern. At the dawn of the twentieth century, this often meant
embracing fashionably “enlightened” free thinking, anticlericalism,
and the rather naive belief that science and rational materialism
could solve all of society’s ills if only the right people (i.e.,
themselves) could take charge from their elders.

In 1908, they did, pressuring the reactionary Sultan Abdul Hamid II
to hold parliamentary elections and embrace constitutional government.

When he tried to renege a year later, Young Turk officers and their
troops deposed him, replacing him with Sultan Mehmed V, an elderly
nonentity who served as a ceremonial figurehead. But rather than
arresting the imperial decay, the Young Turks actually accelerated
it, suffering a string of humiliating defeats in the first Balkan
War, losing most of what was then European Turkey. The humiliation
only ended when the Christian victors-Serbia, Greece, Montenegro
and Bulgaria-turned on each other in the second Balkan War and the
Turks managed to reclaim some of their lost territory. Total disaster
followed after the Young Turks plunged their creaky old empire into
World War I on the side of the Central powers, proclaiming a jihad
against the ultimately victorious Allies.

Unlike Enver Pasha and the other members of the Young Turk junta,
Kemal Ataturk put no stock in jihads. While he would sometimes invoke
the name of Allah to rally the masses during the early days of the
republican struggle following World War I, his mission was modernizing
and Westernizing Turkey.

While a new class of privileged, Westernized Turks rose to the top of
republican society and replaced most of the old minority-dominated
commercial and professional elites, millions of poor city dwellers
and the vast majority of the rural peasantry remained poverty
stricken, uneducated and, for better or worse, true to their old
customs and Muslim faith in a quiet, low-key way. The shallow tide of
Western modernity swept over them but did not carry them with it. If
Ataturk-who played as hard as he worked and was a notoriously heavy
drinker-had not died early, he might have completed his modernizing
mission by sheer force of character. But his passing in 1938 at
the relatively young age of fifty-seven left a void no successor
could fill. His loyal wartime aide, Ismet Inonu-a brave soldier and
a staunch patriot, but a leader of limited vision-succeeded him,
but Ataturk’s initial reforms froze in place.

When he died on the morning of November 10, 1938, in his small, modest
bedroom in Istanbul’s vast old Dolmabahce Palace, all the clocks
in the building were stopped. They remain so to this day. Like the
static moment of mourning each year commemorating Ataturk’s death,
the stopped clocks in the Dolmabahce Palace serve as an unintentional
reminder of what that premature death meant to Turkey: the beginning
of a long era of suspended animation, of social and political inertia
bordering on stasis.

Even with the strongest of wills and best of intentions, Ataturk’s
successors would have had a hard time continuing his work. He had
died at the worst possible time. In 1938, the Western democracies
were still reeling from the Great Depression. To many politicians
and intellectuals, Communism and fascism-both with a heavy emphasis
on police-state tyranny and centrally managed economies-seemed to
be the wave of the future. Europe was also about to plunge into a
disastrous Second World War, and Turkey’s leaders would have their
hands full simply protecting the sovereignty and neutrality of their
impoverished, militarily vulnerable nation.

Ataturk’s whole life had been spent broadening his understanding and
seeking sensible new solutions. The Turkish future he envisioned
was one of expanded education, opportunity and prosperity for the
poor, uneducated Turkish masses with gradually evolving democratic
institutions as progress was made. While his rhetoric remained in
place, most of his vision died with him. Until free-market economic
reforms were ushered in by Turgut Ozal, who served as a genuinely
reformist prime minister and then president from 1983 to his suspicious
death in 1993, Turkey did remain a secular state-but it also remained
a 1930s-style corporate state based on crony capitalism, government
corruption, and a senior military and moneyed class that defended
its own special privileges at least as zealously as it protected
the secular state. When politicians-Islamist or otherwise-got in
the way, they were removed by force. One of them, Adnan Menderes, an
economic reformer who courted religious voters by promising to remove
restrictions on the traditional Arabic-language call to prayer and
to allow new Muslim schools and the building of new mosques, was not
only removed in a coup d’etat but also hanged by the military after
a hastily improvised trial.

The sad case of Menderes-a genuine reformer but also a rabble-rousing
populist who jailed opposition journalists and politicians and openly
appealed to voters on religious lines-starkly illustrates the fault
line in modern Turkish politics. On the one hand, all too often
the advocates of needed economic and social reform have also been
political demagogues willing to play the religion card and trample
on the rights of their political opponents. On the other hand, when
the republic has been “rescued” from such men by the military, and
the secular nature of the state has been preserved (along with the
special privileges of the “rescuers”), desperately needed economic
and social reforms have been either tabled or rescinded.

This pattern is far from unique to Turkey. The same scenario has played
out repeatedly in Muslim countries as different as Egypt, Pakistan and
Bangladesh. What makes it particularly tragic in the case of Turkey
is that-unlike new postcolonial nations with artificial borders and
no strong patriotic tradition to draw on-it possesses most of the
raw materials for a healthy, modern civil society. Indeed, Turks
have been trying to “modernize” since at least the last quarter of
the eighteenth century.

Admittedly, the results have been mixed at best. Sultan Selim III,
who reigned from 1789 to 1807, attempted to revive the empire and
modernize the obsolete Ottoman military system only to be overthrown
by the traditional Janissary corps and murdered shortly afterward.

Sultan Mahmud II, who reigned from 1808 to 1839, managed to establish
a “new model” army of sorts, abolish the Janissaries and modernize
the civil service. But the empire had already begun to disintegrate,
with Greece gaining full independence and Egypt remaining nominally
Ottoman but autonomously ruled by its own hereditary dynasty of
Khedives. The Western-oriented technocrats of the “Tanzimat” reform
era of the mid-nineteenth century and the later Young Turk movement
that overthrew the reactionary Sultan Abdul Hamid II had both tried to
inject new life into the Ottoman Empire to little or no avail; indeed,
it was Young Turk leader Enver Pasha’s insistence on entering World
War I on the side of the Central powers that sealed the empire’s fate.

Only with the death of the empire, which left a smaller but more
cohesive core Turkish nation, was Ataturk able to succeed where
the best and brightest of Ottoman soldiers, sultans and statesmen
had failed. And yet a strong residue of sentiment remained in the
country that resisted any impulse toward Westernization and longed
for a return to that golden age of Islam that lit up the world before
the West’s inexorable rise.

A SUPERFICIAL glimpse at the medieval world would seem to bear
out this wistful view of history. As the doyen of Near and Middle
Eastern historians Bernard Lewis has pointed out, “In the course of
the seventh century, Muslim armies advancing from Arabia conquered
Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, all until then part of
Christendom, and most of the new recruits to Islam, west of Iran and
Arabia, were indeed converts from Christianity.” Further gains would
be made in Spain, much of which was overrun by Muslim North African
Arabs and more recently converted Berber tribesmen. Eventually other
non-Arab converts to Islam, most notably primitive but tough Tartar
and Turkic nomad warriors, would carve out Muslim empires in large
parts of Eastern Europe, Russia, the Levant, India and the Balkans.

More important than this military success was the fact that, in the
early years of the Muslim surge, cities like Baghdad, Damascus,
Alexandria and, to a lesser extent, Cordoba were centers of a
cultural flowering that preceded and-by preserving, recovering
and building on classical knowledge lost in most of the surviving
Christian West-helped make possible the brilliant achievements of
the European Renaissance. This, in turn, led to the development of
the modern Western civilization that would, in a few centuries,
leave the Islamic world behind in the dust. Was the rise of the
Christian West responsible for the decline of the Muslim East? Or was
the relatively short period during which Muslim-conquered cities in
the formerly Christian world of antiquity became centers of progress
and learning a mere blip on the screen, a temporary, albeit benign,
“hijacking” of more advanced, more populous societies by a primitive,
desert-sprung society of warrior-conquerors that overran them?

Surely it is no coincidence that nearly all of the cultural blossoming
under early Islamic rule occurred in places far from Mecca and Medina
(the cradles of Islam), and with centuries of history rooted in the
Greco-Roman and early Christian past. Other centers of high Islamic
culture like Persia and Mughal India were also homes to ancient
civilizations long predating Islam. Thus, the intellectual, spiritual
and aesthetic roots of the short-lived golden age of Islamic culture
were almost entirely pre-Islamic in their origins and nature. Even
the system of “Arabic” numerals that revolutionized mathematics was
not really Arabic at all; it was borrowed from India by Arab traders.

The decline of Islam’s golden age occurred as Islam tightened its
grip on the cultures it had overrun and, in the case of Europe,
as a rapidly progressing Christendom began to push back the Islamic
advance. The more pervasive Islam became in the territories it had
conquered, the more those territories fell behind, perhaps because
of the Islamists’ belief that their religion contains a complete,
hermetically-and prophetically-sealed formula for the running of every
aspect of human society. Such a mind-set has a built-in hostility to
the spirit of inquiry and the desire to subject prescribed notions
of faith and fate to the tests of intellectual rigor. Ask no new
questions and you will discover no new answers.

The decline of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire mirrored the earlier
decline in the rest of the Islamic world, culturally, militarily,
economically and intellectually. “The Ottoman experience,” writes
Turkish historian M. Sukru Hanioglu in his Brief History of the
Late Ottoman Empire, “provides a superb opportunity to examine the
impact of modernity in a non-European setting.” Leaders like Ataturk
who lived through the imperial collapse attempted to build a modern
Turkish alternative. It was a daunting task, and even its partial
success was a remarkable achievement, remaining so to this day.

AT THE height of the Cold War, it used to be said that Vienna, which
had repulsed a Turkish attack at the height of Ottoman power, was
two different cities. Approached from the Communist-dominated East,
Vienna was a bustling, modern metropolis compared to anything Hungary,
Poland or Czechoslovakia had to offer. But approached from the West,
Vienna seemed more like a charming but antiquated relic than a living
center of modern commerce and culture. Earlier this year, while
reviewing Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s novel Silent House,
it occurred to me that the same is true, though in a very different
way, of contemporary Turkey:

“~SStraddling the great divide between Europe and Asia, Christendom
and Islam, Turkey wears two faces. Viewed from the East, it looks
like a prosperous pillar of stability and civic order, especially
when compared to any of its Muslim neighbors. Viewed from Western
Europe, however, it presents a different picture, that of a country
dangerously divided: on the one hand, a pampered and often corrupt
pseudo-Western economic and social elite relying on the Turkish
military to protect both its privileges and its secular values; on the
other hand, a growingly militant and sometimes violent mass movement
of Islamists-many of them poor urban immigrants from the backward,
neglected countryside-determined to purge their country of alien
“impurity” and turn it into a theocracy by whatever means necessary.”~T

For ten years now the latter of these two flawed factions has had the
upper hand, thanks mainly to one man-the determined, driven visionary,
Erdogan, who wants to remake Turkey in his own image and his own
imagination. A powerful orator and skilled political organizer with
a strong autocratic streak, boundless energy and an obsessive sense
of his (self-perceived) historic mission, Erdogan was described by
one observer I spoke with in Istanbul this May as

“~Sa strange joke played on Turkey by history. If Kemal Ataturk had
had an evil twin, it would have been someone exactly like Mr. Erdogan.

Most of his views are mirror opposites of Ataturk’s, but he is the
first overwhelming, larger-than-life figure in Turkish public life
since the Ghazi [Ataturk] himself.”~T

Like Ataturk, whose father was a minor government official, Erdogan
rose from obscure origins through intelligence, drive and unbounded
ambition. But there the similarity ends. Ataturk was, at most, an
agnostic who felt that Islam, as practiced in the Ottoman Empire,
was an enemy of progress; Erdogan is a devout Muslim who often waxes
nostalgic about the good old imperial days. But that was after his
party-the Justice and Development Party (AKP)-came to power in 2002
with a 34 percent plurality in the national parliamentary elections.

On his way to the premiership, Erdogan had run as a democratic
reformer, promising to fight entrenched corruption, open up the economy
to competition and growth, and bring basic services such as improved
schools and sanitation to the poorer regions of the country, just as
he had done to Istanbul’s poorer neighborhoods as a reforming mayor.

Erdogan kept many of his promises. Government graft and cronyism
still exist, but the swag is no longer the privileged preserve of a
small, old elite. Corruption has not been eliminated, but it has been
democratized. And Erdogan has devoted billions of lira to development
projects, especially in poor, rural areas where they are most needed.

As a self-made business millionaire himself, he also understood-and
delivered on-economic and regulatory reforms following the
earlier example of Turgut Ozal, mentioned above. Under Erdogan’s
leadership-although not entirely due to it-in less than a decade
the Turkish economy became the eighteenth largest in the world and
per capita income nearly tripled, which helps to explain the AKP’s
strong showings in the 2007 and 2011 elections (it received nearly 50
percent of the vote in the latter). It can truly be said that, as prime
minister, Erdogan delivered on much of his public agenda. The problem
is with his private agenda. According to Der Spiegel he once said,
“Democracy is like a train. We shall get out when we arrive at the
station we want.”

After his party’s record victory in the 2011 elections, Erdogan seems
to have decided he was approaching his station. Wall Street Journal
correspondent Joe Parkinson summed it up rather neatly:

“~SSince [the 2011 elections], the prime minister has sought to
impose further restrictions on alcohol consumption and abortion and
repeatedly called for all women to have at least three children to
grow Turkey’s population. He has held forth on what citizens should
eat at the family dinner table, and intervened to censor sex scenes
in prime-time television series. His government has sought to muzzle
the press; Turkey now jails more journalists than Iran or China.”~T

He has also denounced raki, an anise-based liquor similar to the Greek
ouzo-Turkey’s alcoholic beverage of choice for centuries-declaring
ayran, a drink made from diluted yogurt, the new national beverage. He
has even declared war on white bread, his personal preference being
the brown variety. On the brighter side, unlike the unhinged Latin
American dictator in Woody Allen’s comedy classic Bananas, he has
yet to order everyone to wear their underpants over rather than under
their trousers.

More significantly, Erdogan has pushed for constitutional changes that
would reduce parliamentary powers-and those of the prime minister-while
transforming the office of the president from a largely ceremonial post
to an “imperial” presidency his friends liken to that of Charles de
Gaulle and his opponents liken to that of Vladimir Putin. If he can
get the desired changes, he intends to run for the presidency and,
if elected, would be eligible to run again for a second five-year
term, giving him ten years as an elected autocrat. As Ilter Turan,
a political scientist at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, told the New
York Times, Erdogan “has a highly majoritarian understanding of
democracy. He believes that with 51 percent of the vote he can rule
in an unrestrained fashion. He doesn’t want checks and balances.”

ALL OF these factors help to explain how what began as the protest
of a few environmentalists to save a small wooded park in Istanbul
metastasized in hours into mass protests involving hundreds of
thousands-possibly millions-of Turkish citizens in major cities
across the country. In Washington before my recent trip to Turkey,
and in Istanbul days before the demonstrations began and were brutally
suppressed, I talked with Gareth Jenkins, a British journalist who has
resided in Istanbul since 1989. Jenkins is an expert on the Erdogan
government’s mass arrests and show trials of civilian and military
critics of its regime, as well as its mounting efforts to intimidate
journalists by arresting and trying reporters and applying economic
pressure-fines, litigation and the threat of the same-to newspaper
and broadcast owners.

Some of the allegations of planted evidence and rigged trials would be
funny were it not for the human price paid by the innocent victims. In
one case, a retired general returned to his home to find it had been
ransacked and to learn he was about to be charged with conspiring to
overthrow the state. He knew he was innocent, but he was told that
investigators had found incriminating documents in his home that named
him as a plotter. It turned out that the “evidence”-which must have
been planted and was probably concocted-had nothing to do with him,
but contained the similar name of another retired general who was
probably innocent as well: two cheers for the gang that couldn’t frame
straight. When I asked Jenkins why Erdogan’s power plays seemed to
be growing more and more blatant, he mentioned that in November 2011
the prime minister underwent emergency surgery for the removal of a
malignant growth in his intestines, that he had a second operation in
February 2012, and that he is now heavily medicated and subject to
frequent health checks-with a distinct possibility that his cancer
will return. Heavy medication could explain some of Erdogan’s odder
statements in recent weeks, such as his declaration that “there is now
a menace which is called Twitter. . . . To me, social media is the
worst menace to society” and that “the death of 17 people happened”
during the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in New York. (The latter
was a totally false claim; there were no fatalities at all.) He also
repeatedly has claimed that anti-Erdogan demonstrators desecrated an
Istanbul mosque by smoking and drinking beer in it, even after the
imam of the mosque insisted that no such thing happened and that
the demonstrators had been invited to take shelter in the mosque,
suffering from police-inflicted injuries and tear-gas inhalation.

Whatever Erdogan’s physical life expectancy may be, the mass
demonstrations made it clear that time is not on his side. The
prodemocracy demonstrators, overwhelmingly nonviolent and well
behaved, were also overwhelmingly young, the vanguard of a rising
generation of Turks who care about personal freedom and will not be
bullied into silence. They represent a new political demographic that
can’t be pinned down as strictly right wing or left wing, observant
Muslim or secular. And they are a generation of young people with
access to electronic communications no tyranny can fully block, with
a strong awareness of their rights and of those who would deny them
those rights.

But you can’t beat something with nothing. The absence of strong,
credible opposition leaders has left the political stage to the
highly skilled Erdogan, who sometimes reminds this observer of a
cross between Huey Long, Margaret Thatcher and Juan Peron. In the
short term, growing doubts and divisions among his parliamentary
followers may put more of a brake on his aspirations than any number of
peaceful demonstrators. But, as Jenkins points out, even if most of the
protesters represent a specific section of society, the demonstrations
that swept the country “are arguably Turkey’s first ever spontaneous,
grassroots political movement . . . the participants [are] feeling
empowered, determined but also bewildered by what is happening. They
have never been here before. And neither has Turkey.”

One thing is certain. Except for the ones in the Dolmabahce Palace,
the clocks in Turkey have started ticking again.

Aram Bakshian Jr. is a contributing editor at The National Interest.

He served as an aide to Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan and writes
frequently on politics, history and the humanities.

DOGUBAYAZIT – THE HIDDEN TOURIST ATTRACTION IN EASTERN TURKEY

Travel Video News
Sept 26 2013

Dogubayazit is a city and district of Agri Province of Turkey, and is
Turkey’s most eastern district, the border crossing to Iran. Elevation
1625 m. Area 2,383 km². Population (2010) 115,354 (up from 73,794 in
1980) of which 69,447 live in the town of Dogubeyazit, the remainder in
the surrounding countryside. The town of Dogubayazit is a settlement
with a long history. It lies 15 km southwest of Mount Ararat, 93
km east of the city of Agri and 35 km from the Iranian border. The
town stands on a plain surrounded by some of Turkey’s highest peaks
including: Ararat (5,137m), Little Ararat (3,896m), Tendurek Dagi
(3,533m), Kaletepe (3,196m) Aridagi (2,934m) and Gollertepe (2,643m).

The weather on the plain is hot and dry in summer, cold and dry
in winter.

The Dogubayazit district of the eastern Turkish province of Agri has
become the focus of interest for domestic and foreign tourists along
with the solution process, an initiative to resolve the Kurdish issue
which has scaled down terror-related court cases and revived tourism
in eastern Turkey.

Chairman of the Chamber of Trade and Industry in Dogubayazit, Ali
Efe told Anadolu Agency that Dogubayazit has hosted a great many
of domestic and foreign tourists so far with its historically and
naturally beautiful landscapes, such as Agri Mountain, Ishak Pasha
Palace, the meteor pit, the ice cave on Agri Mountain and Balik Golu
(Fish Lake)

The district remains at the forefront with its historical and cultural
elements, said Efe, noting that more tourists have begun to visit
Agri Mountain, the highest mountain in Turkey.

Expressing the attraction of rumors that traces of Noah’s ark were
found on Agri Mountain, Efe stated thousands of mountaineers climbed
to the summit every year.

Efe also expressed that more people have especially begun to visit
these beauties in Dogubayazit after the solution process, adding, “the
Turkish government’s democratization package will be more effective in
the development of the region. We will give the necessary assistance
to those who want to invest in this region.”

The area has had a rich history with monuments dating back to the time
of the Kingdom of Urartu (over 2700 years ago). Before the Ottoman
Empire the site was referred to by its Armenian name, Daroynk. In the
4th century the Sasanians failed to capture the Armenian stronghold and
royal treasury at Daroynk. Princes of the Bagratid dynasty of Armenia
resided at Daroynk and rebuilt the fortress. It was subsequently
conquered by Persians, Romans, Arabs, and Byzantines all of whom would
have used the plain to rest and recoup during their passages across
the mountains. Turkish peoples arrived in 1064, but were soon followed
by the Mongols and further waves of Turks. The castle of Daroynk was
built and rebuilt many times throughout this history, although it is
now named after the Turkish warlord Celayirli Å~^ehzade Bayazit Han
who ordered one of the rebuildings (in 1374).

Ultimately, the town was renamed Beyazit itself in the 16th century.

After its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in 1514 the area was ruled
by Turkish generals, later including Ishakpasa, who built the palace
that still bears his name.

The town saw fighting in the Turko-Persian War of 1821-1822, was
attacked by Russia in 1856, and taken by the Russians during the
Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. When the Russians retreated many
of the Armenian population left with them to build New Beyazit (now
Gavar at Armenia) on the shore of Lake Sevan.

Dogubeyazit was further ravaged during World War I and the Turkish
War of Independence.

EDWARD NALBANDIAN DELIVERS LECTURE AT HARVARD

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Sept 26 2013

26 September 2013 – 7:03pm Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian
delivered a lecture on the foreign policy of Yerevan at the John
F. Kennedy School of Management at Harvard as part of his working
visit to the United States.

The press service of the Armenian Foreign Ministry said Nalbandian
presented Armenian-American relations and the efforts of Armenia
and the international community for a peaceful settlement of the
Karabakh conflict, as well as possible solutions to the Syrian
crisis and Yerevan’s position on a number of issues of regional and
international issues.

Nalbandian met with a representative of the University of Harvard,
Jackie O’Neill, and they discussed the possibilities for Armenian
students to study in Harvard.

The Minister also held a meeting with Professor Emeritus of the Harvard
Medical School, Dean Ernest Barsamian, and on behalf of the President
of Armenia awarded him the Order of M. Heratsi.

INDIA, ARMENIA HOLD POLITICAL, ECONOMIC CONSULTATIONS

Net Indian
Sept 26 2013

NetIndian News Network

India and Armenia reviewed the entire gamut of bilateral relations
at two days of political and economic consultations between the two
countries which ended here today.

The two countries held their seventh round of Foreign Office
Consultations along with the sixth meeting of the Inter-Governmental
Commission.

Mr. Sergey D. Manassarian, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia and Mr
Ashok K. Kantha, Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs
held wide-ranging Foreign Office level consultations yesterday.

Among other things, they discussed regional and international matters
and exchanged views on the current international situation. They
expressed satisfaction at the close cooperation in international fora
between the two countries.

The sixth session of the India-Armenia Inter-Governmental Commission
(IGC) on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technological, Cultural
and Educational Cooperation was also held in New Delhi over the past
two days.

An official press release from the Ministry of External Affairs said
the discussions included a review of ongoing cooperation in various
fields like Information Technology, Science and Technology, Health,
Development Cooperation, Tourism & Civil Aviation and Culture.

Both sides decided to intensify bilateral efforts to implement various
project related proposals. They also agreed that bilateral agreements
currently under discussion would be finalized expeditiously.

Mr Manassarian and Mr Kantha signed a protocol on the outcome of the
IGC session.

NNN

From: Baghdasarian

ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF GEORGIA AT THE 68TH SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Georgia Online, Georgia
Sept 26 2013

Georgia Online
16:06 – 26 September ’13

President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili delievered his last speech
as the president at the UN General Assembly on September 26th.

President`s administration has released the speech on the official
website.

Mr. President,

Your Excellencies,

Distinguished Delegates,

It is a great honor to represent again my beloved nation at this
rostrum.

During the past decade, as I had the privilege to address this hall,
Georgia has moved from a failed state to a market democracy.

We have experienced both advances and setbacks, both breakthroughs
and mistakes. But the world has been able to witness the constant
commitment to freedom of the Georgian people.

I ask you today to once more hear the voice of a nation that transcends
political, social, and religious differences in a common love for
freedom.

A voice that-despite all the problems we have encountered and the
challenges we still have to overcome-is full of hope.

And, looking at our world today, I do think that this voice of hope
is needed.

The optimism of the early 1990s-when the spread of liberal and
democratic values seemed natural-when the End of History had been
proclaimed -and when the United Nations was set to become the heart
and the soul of a world finally at peace – this optimism of the 1990s
has been crushed by a wave of pessimism and cynicism.

The world is not at peace. Humankind has not reconciled with itself.

And the UN did not become the soul or the heart of a united globe.

Western civilization, once triumphant, is now trying to tackle a deep
economic, social, and mental crisis.

In Eastern Europe, the colored revolutions are challenged by the
forces they had defeated a few years ago.

In the Middle East, the glorious images of the cheering crowds of
Cairo and Tunis have been replaced by the horrendous videos of the
gassed children of Damascus.

There are many good reasons to be disillusioned.

But should the dogmatic optimism of the 90s be replaced by an equally
dogmatic pessimism-by a sense of resignation that suffocates hope?

Should the fact that the expansion of democracy and freedom turns
out to require profound struggle -should this lead us to renounce
our beliefs and our principles?

I came here today to share the hopes of my nation, and to speak out
against this ambient fatalism.

I came here to address those who doubt, those who hesitate, those
who are tempted to give in.

If the West is outdated, then why do millions of Poles, Czech,
Estonians, Romanians, and others cherish so much the day they entered
NATO? And why are millions of Ukrainians, Georgians, Moldovans,
and others desperately knocking on the doors of the European Union?

If freedom is no longer fashionable, how do we explain that the
suicide of an unknown citizen in a remote Tunisian town has changed
the map of the world?

No.

History did not come to an end in 1989 or 1991 and it never will.

But freedom is still its motor and its horizon.

Everywhere, men and women who want to live in freedom are confronted
by the forces of tyranny.

The question is: are we going to be actors or spectators in this
confrontation?

Distinguished delegates,

Ladies and gentlemen,

As I speak, the Eastern European countries aspiring to join the
European family of free and democratic nations are facing constant
pressures and threats.

Armenia has been cornered, and forced to sign customs union which is
not in this nation’s interest or in the interest of our region.

Moldova is being blockaded, Ukraine is under attack, Azerbaijan faces
extraordinary pressure, and Georgia is occupied…

Why?

Because an old Empire is trying to reclaim its bygone borders. And
“borders” is actually not the right word, since this Empire – be it
the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation, or the
Eurasian Union – never had borders. It only had margins.

I came today to speak in the name of these margins.

Unlike most nations, the Russian Federation has no interest in having
stable states around it.

Neighboring countries in constant turmoil is what the Kremlin is
seeking.

It rejects the very idea of strong governments in Georgia, Ukraine,
or Moldova, even ones that try to be friendly to its interests.

I was never a great fan of what the French call “La langue de bois”,
but as my second term nears its end, I feel more than before the urge
to speak my mind.

So let us be concrete.

Do you think that Vladimir Putin wants Armenia to decisively triumph
over Azerbaijan, for instance? No. This would make Armenia too strong
and potentially too independent.

Do you think then that the contrary is true, that Moscow wants Baku to
prevail over Erevan? Obviously not. The current rise of a modernized
Azerbaijan is a nightmare for the Russian leaders.

No, they do not want anyone to prevail and the conflict itself is
their objective, since it keeps both nations dependent and blocks
their integration into the European common space.

Do you think that the electoral defeat of the forces that led the
Orange Revolution in Ukraine has led the Kremlin to take a softer
approach to this country?

To the contrary. The government lead by Viktor Yanoukovich is under
permanent attack, a commercial war has been launched against Ukraine
ahead of the European Summit of Vilnius and Russian officials now
speak openly about dismembering this nation.

Do you think the Kremlin would agree to discuss the de-occupation
of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, now that the government has changed
in Tbilisi? Far from it! The annexation of Georgian lands by Russian
troops continues.

Yesterday, the occupants have expelled again Georgian citizens from
their homes and villages, the homes and villages of their parents
and grand-parents. In daylight and in total impunity.

Despite the friendly statements made by the new Georgian government in
the recent weeks and months, the Russian military keeps advancing its
positions, dividing communities with new barbwires, threatening our
economy, moving towards the vital Baku-Supsa pipeline, approaching
more and more the main highway of Georgia and thus putting into
question the very sustainability of our country.

We are one of very few nations of history, and I’m very proud of it,
that stand unfortunately, full-blown Russian attack. And we are the
only one from many centuries whose statehood and independence has
survived. Despite full-blown attack by more than hundred thousand
strong Russian army, despite bombing by two hundred planes, attacked
by full Russian black sea fleet and tens of thousands of mercenary.

Our statehood and independence has survived against of all these
things. But let us not risk losing now in times of peace. We survived
because we were united; we survived because the World was with us. I
hope the World will stay with us when this pressure is applied to us.

I came here in the name of Georgian people to ask EU international
community to react strongly to this aggression. And to help us to
put end to the Russian annexation of our lands.

The hostility of Vladimir Putin and his team towards the government I
had the privilege to lead for almost a decade was not based on personal
hatreds or cultural misunderstandings. Any such interpretation was
just a smokescreen.

My predecessor, President Shevarnadze, came from the highest Soviet
nomenklatura. He was returned to power in Georgia with direct Russian
help in the 90s, through a military coup. He was well known for his
Soviet diplomatic skills unlike me. And yet, Russia has constantly
undermined his authority and even tried to assassinate him several
times.

This is not about Gamsakourdia, Shevarnadze, Saakashvili, or
Ivanishvili

Those names actually do not matter when the stakes are so high.

This is about the possibility-or not-of true statehood in Georgia,
and beyond.

Why?

Because the current Russian authorities know perfectly well that-as
soon as strong institutions are built in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, or
any other place-as soon as functioning states emerge-such institutions,
such states will reflect and enforce the will of their people, which
is to become fully independent and move towards Europe.

The Georgian experience of successful reforms and the creation of a
functioning state was therefore considered to be a virus — a virus
that could and would contaminate the whole post-Soviet region – we
became the least corrupt country in Europe, the world’s number one
reformer according to the World Bank, one of the top places to do
business, the least criminalized country in Europe, after being one
of the most criminalized one — and that was the virus that should
be eliminated, by every means possible.

This is why the Georgian nation has suffered an embargo, a war,
an invasion, and an occupation – all since 2006.

But this also is why the resistance of the Georgian people and the
resilience of the Georgian democracy are of the outmost importance
for the entire region.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The efforts to roll back the advances of the EU and NATO in our region
– progress based on the will of our people – are becoming ever more
intense.

These efforts have a name: the Eurasian Union.

It makes me seek when KGB agent Vladimir Putin lectures the World
about freedom values and democracy. This is least of the things he can
do to the world being dictatorial leader of one of the last empires
left. But this new project is much more dangerous than his lectures.

The Eurasian Union has been shaped as an alternative to the European
Union and unveiled by Vladimir Putin as the main project of his
new presidency.

Because European and Euro-Atlantic integration take a lot of time and
require tremendous efforts-because there are moments when you might
think you are pursuing a mirage-because the threats become so strong,
the pressures so direct, while the promises seem so far away-some
people in our region might fall victim to fatigue and ask themselves:
why not?

Today, I want precisely to explore this “why not?”

Much more than with a choice of foreign policy or of international
alliances, our nations are confronted with a choice of society,
a choice of life.

Our people have to decide whether they accept to live in a world of
fear and crime a world in which differences are perceived as threats
and minorities as punching bags a world in which opponents are facing
selective justice or beatings a world, Ladies and gentlemen, that we
all know very well in our region since this is the world from which
we are coming.

The Eurasian Union is both our recent past and the future shaped for
us by some ex-KGB officers in Moscow.

On the opposite side, our revived traditions and our centuries old
aspirations lead us towards another world called Europe.

European societies are far from perfect and there too, you can have
fears, doubts, angers, hatreds even.

But there, meritocracy prevails over nepotism, tolerance is a fundament
of public life, current opponents are the future ministers and not
the prisoners to be or the enemies to beat.

The choice – when it is put like that – is so obvious for the people
of Eastern Europe that some Kremlin strategists (they call themselves
politechnologists) have decided to cancel the truth and have shaped
lies that they are spreading throughout Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova
and many other places.

Their mouthpieces in our respective countries – this conscious
or unconscious 5th column – identify the European Union with the
destruction of family values, the erosion of national traditions and
the promotion of gays and lesbians.

Strangely, in recent years and even more in recent months, we hear
in Tbilisi, Kiev, or Chisinau the same ugly music that was first
orchestrated in Moscow- we hear that our traditions are collapsing
under the influence of the West, that Christian holidays will be
replaced by gay pride events, and Churches by multicultural Disney
Lands-we hear that our orthodox identity is under threat…

And after all – here we come – we hear that we share with our former
masters a common respect for decency and traditions.

Are we so naïve to believe these lies, as other generations did,
allowing our sovereignty to be kidnapped?

Are we so unfair to our ancestors to think that their memory would
be honored by attacks on mosques or some pogroms?

Are we so unaware of our own History that we allow it to repeat
itself endlessly?

When we hear the fake music of the orthodox brotherhood sung by Russian
imperialists, can’t we hear the true voice of the Patriarch Kirion who
was assassinated or the eternal voice of the Patriarch Ambrosi Khelaya
who was tortured during days and weeks only because he appealed to
the Geneva Conference against the invasion of his country?

And he told his Russian interrogators, you can have my body but you
will never have my soul.

Are we so deaf as not to hear the voices of the killed bishops and
priests? Are we so uneducated that we do not recall who has repainted
our churches and erased our sacred frescos? Are we so blind today
not to see the destruction of our churches in the occupied territories?

We need to know our History. And our History teaches us that tolerance
is the basis for sovereignty in our region. It is not only a moral
duty: it is an issue of national security.

We need to know our History and understand that the same old
imperialistic principle – divide to rule – is applied today as it
was two centuries ago.

Looking at our region today, those who have some knowledge of the
Caucasian history might remember the Armenian – Azerbaijani bloodshed
of 1905, directly created by the tsarist administration, and compare
it to the beginning of the conflict in the Karabach in the late 1980s.

The Russian army was presented in large numbers and in front of its
eyes the war started and they were pretending to help both sides in
facts to deepen the conflict.

They might recall – as I do too well – the beginning of the war in
Abkhazia in the early 1990s, when Georgian paramilitary groups were
getting their weapons from the same Russian troops who were actually
leading the Abkhaz militia and bringing in Chechen mercenaries in
order to kill any form of solidarity between nations of the North
and the South Caucasus.

Just as they were sending – for the same reason – more than one
century before – Georgian officers at the forefront of their wars
against Chechens, Ingush or Daghestani.

We could also look at other margins throughout the times, we could
look at Poland or Ukraine, and we would see the same pictures.

Everywhere, the Empire has always inflamed the relations between
subjugated people and separated them by a wall of fanatical antagonism.

It used to work, unfortunately. But what is even more unfortunate is
that it is still working today.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Distinguished delegates,

The European Union – the greatest political success of recent decades
– has been built on three pillars, which also could be characterized
as three rejections: the rejection of the extreme nationalism that
had led Europe to the collective suicide of two world wars and the
horrors of Nazism -the rejection of communism that was threatening
to spread throughout the continent-and, in the end, the rejection of
colonialism and imperialism.

It took time for the French and British Empires to accept this third
rejection, but giving up their colonies was the price to pay for the
modernization of their economy and the development of their democracy,
and also for the European unification to actually be realized.

The Eurasian Union is based on the exact opposite premises.

It is fuelled by intolerance, it is lead by old KGB structures and
it is shaped to revive an old Empire.

Of course, joining the Eurasian Union is therefore very easy. There
are no social, economic, or political criteria to be met: becoming a
colony, in fact, requires no effort at all. Passivity and mediocrity
are the only requirements.

On the other hand, to get into a real Union, there is no alternative
to making a Herculean effort and meeting exact criteria – because
such principles are precisely what create the Union.

So, to those who doubt, I tell that it is precisely because the EU
demands effort and imposes criteria-it is precisely because it does
not seek to absorb us (while the other one is dreaming about it) –
that the choice should be obvious.

But there is an even better reason for saying that the choice is
obvious.

The choice is obvious because the Russian project is doomed to fail.

No Empire is sustainable today, and certainly not the Russian one.

If we look at History, France and UK have lost their colonies not
only because these colonies fought for their independence, but also
because people in Paris and London ultimately did not believe anymore
in their Empire.

Exactly the same is happening in Russia nowadays.

The imperial dream is being rejected first at its margins as we
have seen.

But, most crucially perhaps, the idea of the Empire is rejected at
its very center.

Such a rejection does not manifest itself only in public protests or
in the rising polls of the opposition in the main cities of Russia.

It expresses itself in the universal cynicism of Russian elites
towards Putin’s eurasian vision.

The very people who are supposed to serve it do not believe in the
viability of this project.

Rejected at its margins, rejected at its center, the imperialistic path
will come to a dead end, the Eurasian Union will fail and Russia will –
after all – become a nation state with borders instead of margins.

Then, it will start to seek stable relations with stable neighbors.

Then, cooperation will replace confrontation.

It will happen, and much sooner than people think, to the benefit
of the margins, but most of all to the benefit of the Russian people
themselves.

It will happen because the imperial project is absurd for a generation
of Russian citizens who are among the most enthusiastic users of
Internet in the world.

It will happen because ethnic discrimination Russia is using inside
its territory is not going to consolidate and make Russia more strong
and as a united state.

It will happen because the endless resources provided by the revenues
of oil and gas are challenged by the perspectives offered by the
exploitation of shale gas and shale oil.

It will happen because gas alone does not replace economic
modernization.

It will happen because of the corruption and the absence of justice.

It will happen because entire regions have been alienated by
discriminations and violence, because the people of Chechnya,
Ingushettia, Daghestan, Tatarstan and many other places have been
so much persecuted that they do not feel part of any common project
with Moscow.

It will happen because frustrations, angers, hatreds are too strong
and the unifying ideal too absent.

It will happen. Not in the coming decades, but in the coming years.

Few years from now, Vladimir Putin will have left the Kremlin and
vanished from the Russian politics even if he says that he will be
for another twenty years.

Russian citizens will remember him as a ghost from the old times,
the times of the Empire – the times of corruption and oppression.

Nobody knows whether this process will be calm or violent, whether
his successor will be nationalistic or liberal, or both together, but
what matters is something else: Russian will no longer be an Empire,
it will become finally a normal nation state.

This is the horizon we should prepare for, all together.

Meanwhile, as our region will remain an area of confrontation, the
formerly captive nations should unite their strengths instead of
cultivating their divisions.

Some leaders, some countries in the past had understood that the
freedom of one was depending on the freedom of all subjugated nations,
like the Poland of Pilsudski that was inviting all the oppressed
people to unite under the flag of polish independence.

But never had our ancesters benefited from a vast and powerful enough
force that had understood its strategic interest was to preserve
the sovereignty of each of our nation. Today, this force exists:
it is the European Union.

As we come closer to the Vilnius Eastern Partnership Summit, I
would like to reiterate a call that I have made several times in the
recent years.

By launching the Eastern Partnership, as a response to the 2008
invasion of Georgia, the EU has offered to our nations a platform to
cooperate under its benevolent umbrella. We should invest much more
in it. We should develop common projects, first and foremost focusing
on the necessary reforms that we should carry on together.

Because reforms mean – for all of us – statehood and independence.

Catherine the 2nd knew it well and – when Poland started to implement
successfully an ambitious program of reforms following the precepts
of the French or British Enlightment – she wrote a long and secrete
letter to Friedrich the Great.

This letter was and remains one of the most impressive expression of
the nature and the strategy of the imperialistic project.

It reads that ongoing reforms are dangerous both for Russia and Prussia
because they will turn Poland into an true State, that they need to
be stopped and that Poland should be attacked and dismembered before
they are fully implemented.

This letter will not sound unfamiliar to those who know how much
Vladimir Putin was loathing the Georgian experience throughout this
last decade.

Because lots of Russians were asking if this once corrupt Georgia,
criminalized country, disintegrated failed state could make it why
Russians cannot make it. This was ideologically dangerous project.

For the first time, an efficient nation State was being built in the
Caucasus and the reforms had to be crushed before they would bear
all their fruits.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Unity should be our rule in Eastern Europe, including in the divided
Caucasus.

I have spoken about the beginnings of the war in Abkhazia, I could
have recalled an older scene that is very symbolic of the History of
the Caucasus.

At the end of the rebellion lead by Shamyl against the Russian Empire,
after Shamyl had surrendered himself, the last Chechen leader still
fighting – named Baysongour – had been wounded and captured.

As they were going to hang him, the Russian officers gathered a crowd
of Daghestani men to witness the execution. They ordered one of them
to remove the chair on which Baysongour was standing in order kill him.

By doing so, they wanted to fuel the local vendettas and oppose
the people.

Seeing this, Baysongour moved the chair himself, committing a forbidden
suicide and preserving the relations between neighbors.

But for one failure, how many successes this strategy has encountered
among the Caucasian nations?

It needs to come to an end. And this is why I have launched several
projects during my Presidency reinforcing the people-to-people contacts
between North and South Caucasus, projects focusing mostly on education
and on University exchanges.

That’s why Georgian Parliament has recognized genocide of Circassian
people one of the most unknown and tragic pages of the history of
the world when the whole nation was wiped out because their land was
needed by Russian Empire.

We need to build on those small efforts.

We need to prepare for the times when the Empire collapses. So that
its legacy of hatreds is swiftly overcome.

And we, as citizens of Georgia, need to prepare for the times when
Russian troops will leave our occupied regions, when Moscow will
withdraw from Tskhinvali and Sukhumi.

We need to prepare ourselves to welcome back our Ossetian and Abkhaz
fellow citizens as brothers and sisters, and not as enemies.

Because these times will come sooner than we think.

Ladies and gentlemen,

As my second term nears its end, I take pride in the many
accomplishments that Georgia achieved during my tenure in office.

We took Georgia literally out of darkness, brought unprecedented
transparency into our public service, put our children back to schools
and took the gangs out of them. We have brought our nation closer
than ever to its European dream and worked tirelessly to renew the
spirit of tolerance that guided Georgia in our glorious past.

We did many good things. But I realize that some of these things
were done at a very high cost. In our rush to impose a new reality,
against the background of internal and external threats, we have cut
corners and made mistakes.

We went sometimes too far and other times not far enough.

I acknowledge fully my responsibility in all these shortcomings
and I sincerely care for all those who have felt that they did not
benefit enough from our work-or even that they were victims of our
radical methods.

I want to tell to all Georgian citizens-to those who supported our
project, our policies and our party and to those who rejected them-I
want to tell them how proud I am of their maturity and their bravery,
how humble I feel looking at the sacrifices and the efforts they
have made.

We are and should remain a nation united in a common love for freedom
and dignity.

We are and should remain a nation united in the deepest respect for
the sacrifices made by our soldiers in Afghanistan, a nation sharing
the same sorrow when they lose their lives and taking the same pride
in their bravery.

We are the nation that are proud of our soldiers that stood up to
hundred times exceeded of Russian invaders and gave us time to gather
and to mobilize to protect and save our independence – something that
many other countries couldn’t do during 21 century, much bigger and
much powerful than us.

We are and should remain a nation united in our historical destiny to
join the European family of democratic nations, the family we should
never have been separated from, our family.

The path of the Georgian people towards freedom, regional unity
and European integration is far from over and I will continue to
dedicate every day of my life to its success, as a proud citizen of
a proud nation.

Thank you.

HIS HOLINESS PATRIARCH KIRILL PARTICIPATES IN CELEBRATIONS ON THE OCCASION OF CONSECRATION OF THE ARMENIAN CHURCH COMPLEX IN MOSCOW

Russian Orthodox Church, Russia
Sept 26 2013

On 17 September 2013, a solemn ceremony of the consecration of the
church complex belonging to the Armenian Apostolic Church took place
in Moscow, in Trifonovskaya Street.

Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos Karekin II of All Armenians officiated
at the consecration. Attending the celebration was His Holiness
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia.

At the main gate of the church complex, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill
was met by Bishop Ezras (Nersisyan), head of the New Nakhichevan and
Russia diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Among the honorary guests of the ceremony were Armenian President
Serzh Sargsyan, hierarchs of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Russian
and Armenian statesmen, representatives of Christian confessions and
the Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist communities.

His Holiness Catholicos Karekin II addressed the participants and
numerous guests of the celebrations. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill
also greeted all those present, saying in particular:

“With a special feeling, I would like to greet the Armenian community
in Russia on the occasion of this momentous historical event. We know
that in hard times the Armenian community had endured as much suffering
as other Christian communities in our country, and the churches erected
by the Armenian people in the territory of Russia were often subjected
to destruction. Such fate befell the Armenian churches in Moscow and
when, much later, the Armenians got an opportunity to gather together
for prayer, it was in a small chapel in the Armenian part of the
Vagankovskoye Cemetery. We know that the size and appearance of the
chapel could not meet the real needs of the Armenian community. And I
would like to express my gratitude to You, Your Holiness, and to His
Grace Bishop Ezras for the efforts you have made to build a church
in Moscow which by its size and splendor would satisfy the needs of
the large Armenian community living in the territory of the Russian
Federation and in Moscow in particular…

“Our Churches – the Russian Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic
Church – have been maintaining fraternal cooperation for centuries.

This Christian foundation forms a common platform which helps the
Armenian and Russian people to develop their spiritual life… I am
deeply convinced that the further development of relations between
the Russian Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church,
our joint work and projects will foster the spiritual growth of our
people and, therefore, contribute to strengthening bonds between our
nations – the bonds which are stronger than any political and economic
relationships. For we know that there were times when no political
or economic relations existed but people lived in peace and respect,
treating each other as brothers and sisters. God willing, the spiritual
growth of the Russian and Armenian people will contribute, among other
things, to strengthening brotherly relations between our nations and
countries. I would like to wholeheartedly greet You, Your Holiness,
and all those present on the occasion of such remarkable celebration.”

At the conclusion of the ceremony, Patriarch Kirill, Catholicos
Karekin and President Serzh Sargsyan opened a monument symbolizing
fraternal relationships between the Russian Orthodox Church and the
Armenian Apostolic Church.

From: Baghdasarian

IS ARMENIA TURNING EAST?

ISN – International Relations & Security Network, Zurich
Sept 26 2013

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan at the European People’s Party
in Yerevan.

By Mikayel Zolyan for Foreign Policy Centre (FPC)

When on September 3rd 2013 Serzh Sargsyan, after meeting Russian
president Vladimir Putin in Moscow, announced that Armenia has asked to
join the Customs Union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, this came
as a surprise. It came as a surprise for both for Armenian public,
and for Armenia’s partners in the West, most of all for EU officials
responsible for the block’s eastern policy. The reason: Armenia
had already completed the negotiations regarding the Association
Agreement with EU (including DCFTA) and was supposed to pre-sign the
agreement in November. It has been made clear to Armenian authorities
that membership in the Customs Union would be incompatible with the
association process and especially with the DCFTA provisions.

Armenian authorities seemed to understand that point and continued to
claim their willingness to advance relations with Europe. As for the
Customs Union, Armenian officials of various levels repeated numerous
times that the country had no intention of joining, and moreover,
that this was impossible given absence of a common border between
Armenia and the countries of the Customs Union.

Thus, in spring 2012 Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan gave a
well-publicized interview to Russian daily ‘Kommersant’, in which he
stated unequivocally that Armenia is not interested in the Customs
Union since it does not have a common border with the members of the
block, though he conceded that Armenia might be interested in some
kind of a special partnership with that organization. This March in
a press conference televised by all major channels President Serzh
Sargsyan said that no one was expecting Armenia in the Customs Union
and dismissed any talk of the Russian pressure as unfounded. Finally,
only several days before Sargsyan’s visit to Moscow, in an interview
to the ArmNews channel the Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister ruled
out Armenia’s joining the Customs Union, adding that there is no
precedent of a country joining a customs union with countries that do
not share a common border. Moreover, many pro-government media outlets
and commentators had been engaged during recent months in a media
campaign praising Armenia’s rapprochement with the European Union.

However, all these statements seem to have been forgotten as after
Sargsyan’s return from Moscow as senior government figures started to
praise Armenia’s potential benefits from joining the Customs Union. To
make matters worse, some Armenian government figures attempted to
spin Sargsyan’s announcement by saying that Armenia will continue to
aim for the Association agreement, thus prompting unequivocal denial
from the EU side. After a series of statements of varying degrees of
clarity from several EU sources, came unusually direct statements,
which left little room for doubt. Thus, in apparent response to
Armenian officials’ statements, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt
said on September 9th that European Union has no plans to finalize
an Association Agreement with Armenia at an upcoming EU summit in
Lithuania, adding that ‘we work with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia’.

EU officials also talked of the Russian pressure on Armenian
authorities. Many commentators tend to believe that the security
argument was used by Russia, who is Armenia’s main security partner
and the leading force in the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO), of which Armenia is a member. Armenia is locked in a
conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, so it is
particularly vulnerable to such pressures. However, given the internal
political situation in Armenia, there might have been other leverages,
which could have been used by Russia to influence Armenian government.

The current government is still struggling with the lack of democratic
legitimacy, which came as a result of the long history of disputed
elections and heavy-handed treatment of protesters. Particularly,
the events of March 1st2008, when 10 people were killed as the
government cracked down on post-election protests in Yerevan, are
still haunting Armenia’s internal politics. The latest presidential
election in 2013 did not help to mitigate the lack of legitimacy,
and probably even made the matters worse: though Serzh Sargsyan was
announced the winner, opposition leader Raffi Hovannisian refused
to accept the official results, and started a campaign of protests,
which however were smaller in scale than those in 2008 and gradually
died out after Sargsyan’s inauguration.

Sargsyan’s announcement probably also came as a surprise for Armenian
civil society. Numerous Armenian NGOs have been involved in various
projects connected with the European integration and the reforms that
were expected within its framework. The announcement made in Moscow
became a cause for worry since Armenian government commitment to the
Association Agreement was perceived as a certain guarantee that the
authoritarian tendencies, which already exist in the country would be
kept in check. Now, some NGO figures argue, the Armenian government
will be judged against the standards that exist in the countries of the
Customs Union (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan) which can be described
as anything but democratic. In the days preceding the announcement
and immediately after it several attacks took place, aimed at civic
activists, who had participated in anti-government protests. These
attacks, carried out by unidentified men, still remain unsolved and
the victims claim that state authorities are to blame.

Whether it was a coincidence or not, many in the civil society
perceived these attacks as a sign that the Armenian government’s
authoritarian tendencies are getting stronger within the new
geopolitical context.

Against this background, fears that by joining the Customs Union
may mean creation of “a new USSR” and will lead to ceding a part
of Armenia’s sovereignty became quite visible in Armenia. Some
even feared that Armenia, which had acquired independence from
Russia only around 22 years ago, might be reduced to a status of a
client-state of Russia. Over a hundred activists protested Sargsyan’s
announcement September 4th in front of the President’s residence and
on September 5th outside of the ruling party headquarters. The scale
of the protests however remains relatively small, mostly confined to
politically active youth and civil society representatives. As for the
main political forces, they seem to be reluctant to spoil relations
with Russian authorities by opposing the union too harshly. Thus
the opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC/HAK) criticized the
government for squandering Armenia’s international credibility as a
result of its U-turn, but refrained from commenting on whether Customs
Union membership would beneficial for Armenia or not. Moreover, ANC
leader Ter-Petrosyan warned his party members against ‘resorting to
anti-Russianism’ in the criticism of the government. This careful
stance is shared by most other political forces represented in the
parliament. As for the larger public, the ‘Russian’ option still
remains quite popular among many Armenians, especially among the
middle aged and older citizens, who tend to have a nostalgia for the
Soviet times, and who do not seem to understand the intricacies of
European integration.

Mikayel Zolyan is historian and political analyst from Yerevan
(Armenia). Currently, he teaches at several universities in Yerevan
and works at Yerevan Press Club NGO in Yerevan.

BETWEEN MOSCOW AND BRUSSELS: ARMENIA’S FOREIGN POLICY DILEMMA ITA ENG

Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso, Italy
Sept 26 2013

Mikayel Zolyan | Yerevan
26 September 2013

A Customs Union with Russia, Belorus and Kazakhstan turns Yerevan away
from signing an Association Agreement with Brussels. While the Armenian
public opinion is divided, civil society activists have been intimdated

On September 21 Armenia celebrated its 22nd day of independence. Along
with celebrations in various parts of the Armenian capital, a very
different kind of demonstration took place in central Yerevan. Civic
activists had called a march to protest what they saw as a threat to
Armenian sovereignity. This was one of the several protests that took
place after Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan announced in Moscow on
September 3 that Armenia would be joining Customs Union with Russia,
Belorus and Kazakhstan.

Serzh Sargsyan’s announcement came as a surprise not only to most
Armenians but also to EU’s foreign policy representatives. Several
years’ negotiations between Armenia and EU on signing Association
agreement had been concluded and Armenia was expected to pre-sign the
agreement in November. The most essential element of the Association
agreement is the establishment of Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade
Area (DCFTA), which is incompatible with Armenia’s membership in the
Customs Union, as EU officials had warned on several occasions.

Armenian officials seemed to be aware of that. Thus, in a TV interview
given this spring, Sargsyan unequivocally ruled out the perspective
of Armenia’s participation in the Customs Union. However, after the
Moscow statement, Armenian officials were trying to convince the EU
to sign the Association agreement without the trade provisions. This,
however, would make the Association agreement an almost symbolic
gesture, devoid of any practical significance. Therefore, the EU
officials sent out a clear signal that they would not consider this
option. The Moscow statement also led to a complete reversal in the
rhetoric of the Armenian government: officials are praising the Customs
Union and declaring that Armenia has always had the long-term goal of
joining it and it was simply waiting for approval from Customs Union
members. However, European officials also seem to see the Russian
shadow behind the abrupt U-turn in Armenia’s policies.

Il commissario UE SÌ~Ltefan FuÌ~Hle con il ministro degli Esteri
Nalbandyan (PanARMENIAN Photo_ Tigran Mehrabyan) A struggle for
influence Armenia seems to be caught up in the struggle for influence
between EU and Russia. The field of struggle is the region covered
by the EU’s ”Eastern Partnership” program (EaP): Ukraine, Moldova,
Belorus, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan. The big prize in this struggle
is Ukraine. Russia, which sees Eastern Partnership as a part of
EU’s expansive strategy, has been trying to persuade Ukraine to join
the Customs Union, rather than sign the Association agreement. Some
commentators believe that the statement regarding Armenia’s inclusion
into the Customs Union, was supposed to send a signal to other EaP
states, most of all Ukraine. If it was, however, it backfired, as not
only Ukraine, but also Moldova and Georgia announced that they would
definitely continue the process of Association Agreement with EU,
including the DCFTA.

In any case, Armenian government’s credibility suffered a serious blow,
first of all in the eyes of the European partners. EU enlargement
commissioner Å tefan Fule, who recently visited Yerevan, lamented the
lack of trust and confidence in relations with Armenian government
. Russian government, however, also seems to be disappointed by what
it sees as Armenia’s attempts to forge relations with EU behind its
back. Many commentators pointed out, that contrary to expectations,
no high-ranking Russian officials, were present at the inauguration of
the newly-built enormous Armenian cathedral in Moscow on September 17,
which was attended by Armenia’s president.

Internal reactions: Armenians divided The reaction in Armenia itself
has been mixed. Political forces, wary of spoiling relations with
Russia, which could damage their chances of coming to power one day,
tried to refrain from criticizing openly the Customs Union. Certain
opposition forces, like the Armenian National Congress, however,
criticized Sargsyan’s government for its way of handling the issue,
which has led to a loss of credibility both with Europeans and
Russians. The decision to advance integration with Russia may also be
popular with many Armenians, especially those of middle or senior age,
who, having grown up in the USSR, have a strong emotional connection to
Russia. Besides, a smear campaign, orchestrated by a previously unknown
organization called “Armenian Parents’ Committee”, which aimed at
discrediting European values by equating them with sexual promiscuity,
might have further damaged the image of EU in the eyes of many ordinary
Armenians, who are known to be conservative on social issues.

Civil society organizations, however, namely those that have been
involved in EU-backed democratization efforts, have been more vocal in
their criticism of the government’s conduct. The way the decision was
taken, without any public discussion or consultations, under obvious
foreign pressure, is what most alarmed its critics, who fear that,
as a result of Sargsyan’s policies, Armenia is losing the capacity to
act as an independent player in international affairs. Various groups
of civic activists, using Facebook, organized protests against the
president’s decision. Two of these activists, Haykak Arshamyan and
Suren Saghatelyan, were severely beaten after one of these protests
on September 5. “A gang of six or seven people, all well-built, in
black T-shirts, ambushed us near my home, in the darkness” says Haykak
Arshamyan. The attack followed a series of similar attacks on other
civic activists, who had taken part in other protests, though these
protests were related to local issues rather than foreign policy. The
police has failed to find the attackers so far. Arshamyan believes the
aim of the attacks was to intimidate activists and prevent them from
protesting. “This tactic may work with some people”, he says, “but
it won’t work with others: activists will only become more determined”.

The protests, as well as attacks against activists that follow them,
may be a sign of a coming instability. While the majority of Armenians
are largely unaware of the intricacies of the European integration or
Customs Union, they are immediately affected by social issues. The rise
in the prices of Russian gas this spring has led to a chain reaction,
as prices for various products and services started growing.

Attempts of Yerevan city authorities to raise the prices for public
transportation triggered a civil disobedience campaign, when mostly
young activists refused to pay the new fee and staged sporadic
protests. City authorities eventually backed down and re-introduced
the old fee, but they are planning to raise the prices in autumn.

Armenian universities have decided to raise their fees as well, which
also promises headaches to the authorities, as student activists are
vowing to protest this decision. Veterans of the war in Karabakh,
unhappy with the size of their pensions, are also protesting. All
this means that Armenia may be heading into a rough ride this autumn,
and that makes Armenian government extremely weak, given the intensity
of the pressures coming both from inside and outside of the country.

From: Baghdasarian