Month: February 2015

Kirkus Reviews (Print)
February 1, 2015, Sunday

ORHAN’S INHERITANCE

FICTION

In Ohanesian’s debut novel, a Turkish man confronts secrets about his
family and his country’s history and is faced with an impossible
choice: Should the past remain in the past, or should all stories,
even the most painful, come to light? When his grandfather dies, Orhan
returns from Istanbul to the small village where he grew up and the
contentious relationship he shares with his father; the tension is
exacerbated when his grandfather’s will reveals that he has left the
family dye business to Orhan and the family house to a strange woman
in an Armenian-American nursing home. While the rest of the nursing
home prepares for an exhibit called “Bearing Witness: An Exhibit About
Memory and Identity,” Seda at first refuses to talk to Orhan about her
connection to his grandfather.

When she finally unburdens herself, giving voice to a harrowing tale
of unimaginable sacrifice, he must decide what to do with this new
information about his family and about the horrors of his country’s
history. In a complex balance, Ohanesian often condemns language as
insufficient to convey these stories of loss and pain, while at the
same time recognizing that telling the story can be cathartic and even
universally necessary. The heart of the novel seems to suggest that
“[t]here is only what is, what happened. The words come much later,
corrupting everything with meaning.” There are deep reflections on
guilt, both collective and individual, and the power of memory to
destroy or to heal. By rejecting the power of the written word but
also, in writing a novel, relying on it to be powerful, Ohanesian
explores both sides of this argument about bearing witness to Turkey’s
terrible legacy. A novel that delves into the darkest corners of human
history and emerges with a tenuous sense of hope.

Publication Date: 2015-04-07
Publisher: Algonquin
Stage: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-61620-374-0
Price: $25.95
Author: Ohanesian, Aline

Kirkus Reviews (Print)
February 1, 2015, Sunday

OPERATION NEMESIS
The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide

NONFICTION

Actor, playwright and novelist Bogosian (Perforated Heart, 2009, etc.)
retells the horrors of the Turkish attempt to eradicate the Armenians:
the century’s first ethnic cleansing.The Ottoman Empire was primarily
Muslim but mostly tolerated Jews and the Christian Armenians. However,
they were treated as second-class citizens, required to pay extra
taxes, never eligible for public office and banned from intermarriage.

In an attempt to modernize, a group of “Young Turks” allied with the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation in 1908 to overthrow the empire.
Though it was a bloodless coup, it soon became apparent that the Young
Turks had no need for the Armenians. The country was ruled by the
Committee of Union and Progress, a government as ruthless and cruel as
the old sultan. The CUP was led by a triumvirate of Djemal Pasha,
Talaat Pasha and Enver Pasha; by 1913, any semblance of democracy was
lost. Then, in late April 1915, prominent Armenian leaders were
rounded up and disappeared. This was the beginning of the genocide
about which Hitler said, “[W]ho remembers the Armenians?” The
killings, massacres, torture and deportations of Armenians went on
through World War I. War-crime trials by the occupying British were
ineffectual. Bogosian explores the life of survivor Soghomon
Tehlirian, a young man who was fixated on revenge for the deaths of
his people. In 1919, the ARF approved a “special mission” called
Nemesis to find and execute the guilty parties, and Tehlirian was the
perfect man for their mission. He found Pasha in Berlin and killed
him, then stood trial, thereby bringing the world’s attention to the
fate of the Armenians. The author gives a clear, concise view of
Turkey’s history in the 20th century, and it’s not pretty. Difficult
reading, but an extremely well-written political statement about
Turkey-not just then, but as it is now.

Publication Date: 2015-04-21
Publisher: Little, Brown
Stage: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-316-29208-5
Price: $28.00
Author: Bogosian, Eric

Kirkus Reviews (Print)
February 1, 2015, Sunday

AS THE POPPIES BLOOMED

FICTION; Historical

On the eve of war and destruction, an Armenian family tries to
maintain its traditional way of life in this historical novel.As this
luminous, doom-tinged tale begins, it’s 1913 in eastern Turkey, and in
the little Armenian village of Salor, the headman’s teenage daughter
Anno is hiding in an abandoned well, not only to escape from war or
soldiers, but to evade prying eyes on this busy day when her sister is
getting married and to steal a moment with Daron, the young man she
loves. Their Romeo-and-Juliet story occupies much of the novel. Anno’s
father objects to the marriage; he wrongly believes that Daron’s
father has been sexually immoral.

As this knot gets unraveled, the villagers go about their daily,
age-old agrarian routines. And some men quietly make dangerous trips
to gather arms and ammo, especially after 1915, when the Ottoman
government begins rounding up and murdering Armenian intellectuals and
political leaders. Armenians remember the massacres of 1894 and wish
to be prepared this time. “But,” as one fedayee, or freedom fighter,
observes, “how will a tiny band of men such as ourselves, with nothing
but the guns we can smuggle, protect our people from the whole of the
Turkish army?” They can’t, and this knowledge hangs over the reader
like the clouds veiling Salor’s nearby Mount Maratuk. In her debut
novel, Boyadjian vividly conjures the specific sensory details of the
Armenians’ lost world-food, drink, nature, daily tasks, and handmade
objects, such as a rug given for a wedding “with such a joyous blend
of deep reds, oranges, and yellows that everyone gasped.” The story is
fiction but is based on memories from the author’s four
grandparents-all survivors of the 1915 Armenian genocide. Their
survival adds a note of hope.Powerful and sensitive, this tragic novel
helps illuminate a historical episode still too little known or
acknowledged.

Publication Date: 2015-01-04
Publisher: Salor Press
Stage: Indie
ISBN: 978-0-9911241-0-7
Price: $15.95
Author: Boyadjian, Maral

Kirkus Reviews (Print)
February 1, 2015, Sunday

Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me

Living with the Armenian legacy of loss and silence

NONFICTION; Memoir

Kalajian’s (co-author: They Had No Voice: My Fight for Alabama’s
Forgotten Children, 2013, etc.) “ethno-memoir” is an elegiac
reflection on growing up under the specter of the trials a family, and
a whole people, experienced. Kalajian, in his third book, touches upon
both his upbringing as an American boy and his being a bearer of a
tortured Armenian past.

The remembrances are deeply personal meditations on what it was like
to live distanced from a world with which he had very little direct
contact even as it powerfully shaped his life. Readers will sense the
author’s background as an investigative journalist as he tries to
wrestle the facts of his history from his family’s laconic resistance
to speak openly about it. Kalajian’s inscrutable father is a near
mystery; only slowly, in fits and starts, does Kalajian learn about
his adventurous but hardship-ridden life. He had no idea his father
went to China or Borneo and no idea his father grew up in Greece or
that he was raised in an orphanage. Even his more voluble mother’s
tales were carefully edited and studiously redacted. While not
intended as a work of rigorous scholarship, Kalajian’s book contains
considerable discussion about the history of Armenians, and much is
revealed about their experience with Turkish persecution and global
neglect. However, this is largely an autobiographical tale. “I am not
a historian, and this is not a book of facts and dates and sober
analysis,” he says. “This is a story told by a man born in midair
whose only hope for a good night’s sleep is to close his fingers
around the frayed cord of history and tug with all his might.” His
polished, sometimes even poetic prose evokes a sense of curiosity and
lament. In response to his family’s silence-and to the silence of a
whole people still shellshocked by their grim treatment-Kalajian has
become a professional storyteller and an excellent one at that. An
affecting account of an American man attempting to uncover his
Armenian heritage and history.

Publication Date: 2014-05-31
Publisher: 8220 Press
Stage: Indie
ISBN: 978-0-615-97902-1
Price: $16.95
Author: Kalajian, Douglas

The Age (Melbourne, Australia)
January 31, 2015 Saturday

Lest we remember

BOOKS Reviews
REVIEW BY JENNIFER BALINT

Book: An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians? by
GEOFFREY ROBERTSON, VINTAGE

April 24, 1915, marks both the eve of the Anzac landing at Gallipoli,
Australia’s “coming of age”, and the night in which Armenian
political, intellectual and community leaders were rounded up in
Constantinople and throughout the Ottoman state, imprisoned, and
mostly executed. The 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing comes
one day after the 100th anniversary of a mostly unrecognised genocide,
the estimated 1.2 million Armenians killed by the Ottoman state under
cover of the First World War.

In An Inconvenient Genocide, international human-rights barrister
Geoffrey Robertson makes the case for the atrocities perpetrated
against the Armenian population to be categorised, legally, as
genocide. He is insistent that it is a matter of law, not history nor
morality.

The significance of this book is that since the establishment of
modern-day Turkey, the genocide has been denied. The systematic denial
has left the Armenian community in a state of unrecognised mourning.
As Robertson outlines, Turkey spends millions of dollars promoting its
justification of the massacres as “strategically necessary in a civil
war”, and has made denial a condition of diplomatic relations. In
showing that this is a matter of law, not history, Robertson engages
directly with Turkey’s denialist stance that it be “left to
historians”.

The crime was always known. At the end of the war, Ottoman newspapers
wrote editorials denouncing the massacres, and parliamentarians
decried the actions of the Young Turks; one railed “we inherited a
country turned into a huge slaughterhouse”. The Allies had promised an
international tribunal, describing the crimes – with the term used for
the first time, as Robertson notes – as a “crime against humanity”. No
international tribunal eventuated. The Ottoman state set up its own
tribunal, which was shut down with the rise of the Kemalist party and
the establishment of the modern Turkish state.

Robertson’s book is an important contribution. Its strength lies in
its systematic presentation of the evidence, that he then applies to
the law of genocide – graphic eyewitness accounts by missionaries, aid
workers, army officers, business people, consuls and ambassadors, part
of which was collated by the British government in 1916, two
commissioned US reports in 1919, the evidence presented at the Ottoman
courts-martial, cables sent by key political leaders clearly outlining
genocidal intent, even of the laws passed at the time that gave
authority to the state to obtain the “abandoned” homes and property of
deportees.

He also includes diary entries found at the Australian National
Archives from Australian diggers who as prisoners of war were
witnesses to the slaughter of Armenians and the horrific deportations
they were subject to that resulted in death, rape and abduction.
Diaries from British servicemen are witness to the complicity of
Germany, a complicity that extended to assisting the key political
leaders to escape.

Robertson’s conclusion, in relation to the deportations authorised by
the Ottoman state, is that “those political leaders who gave the
orders intended that a substantial part of the Armenian population
would be exterminated in consequence. There is no other inference that
is ‘reasonable’.”

And if Turkey finds it so hard to recognise it as a genocide, he
maintains, then it should at least know that it is clearly a “crime
against humanity” for which it should apologise and make reparations.
“If these same events occurred today,” he argues, “there can be no
doubt that prosecutions before the International Criminal Court of
Talaat [Pasha] and other CUP [Committee of Union and Progress]
officials for genocide, for persecution and for other crimes against
humanity would succeed.”

The larger question in this book is what can be done when there is no
possibility of criminal legal accountability now that all the main
perpetrators are dead. Here, Robertson argues for the pursuit of legal
means as well as non-legal, including an apology and the gift of Mount
Ararat to Armenia. He cautions against genocide denial laws, although
his argument for “freedom of speech” neglects the harm that genocide
denial causes. And he illustrates what he terms “genocide
equivocators” through his own Freedom of Information requests that
reveal how the British government was advised not to recognise the
genocide.

When the term “genocide” was coined, it was with the memory of the
Ottoman massacres. The Holocaust led to its becoming law, but it was
the Armenian genocide that motivated its development, a story Robinson
tells in the book.

While he dismisses historians, arguing that it is lawyers who make
judgments on whether or not an act can be characterised as genocide,
using the law to make the case is necessary in the face of Turkey’s
continued denial. What Robertson clearly shows, as historians and
social scientists have said for decades, and victims and their
descendants have known, what the Ottoman state did, was, in fact and
in law, a genocide.

Jennifer Balint teaches in the school of social and political sciences
at the University of Melbourne.

Lowell Sun (Massachusetts)
January 31, 2015 Saturday

Whistler House seeks artwork for genocide exhibit

LOWELL — The Whistler House Museum of Art is seeking artwork that
addresses genocide for an upcoming exhibit running March 18 through
April 25. The deadline for entries is Feb. 6.

The exhibition will bring attention to genocide, the systematic,
widespread extermination or attempted extermination of an entire
national, racial, religious or ethnic group.

It will use art to raise awareness and educate people on the
atrocities wrought on various groups, including the Armenian, Jewish,
Cambodian, Bosnian, Sudanese, Rwandan and American-Indian cultures.

This year is significant in that it marks the 100th anniversary of the
Armenian genocide, the 70th anniversary of the end of the Jewish
Holocaust and the 40th anniversary of the Cambodian Genocide.

All works of art presented should be rooted in genocide memories and
commemoration and present those stories through artistic expression.

Works in any media may be submitted for consideration, though
submission does not guarantee acceptance. Artwork of all sizes will be
considered for inclusion. No entry fee will be charged.

Contact Heather Linton at for application forms.

From: Baghdasarian

LA Weekly, CA
Feb 1 2015

Eric Nazarian

By Siran Babayan

Eric Nazarian screens and discusses his 2011 short, Bolis. The film
follows Armenak Mouradian, an Armenian oud player who travels to
Istanbul (Bolis) for the first time to take part in a music festival
and goes in search of his grandfather’s oud shop with only a
photograph and street name. The Armenian-born, L.A.-raised director
won the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship
in 2008, and has directed music videos for System of a Down frontman
Serj Tankian.

OikoTimes
Feb 1 2015

Live from Nicosia: Cyprus Decides 2015

Posted on February 1, 2015 8:32 pm by Fotis Konstantopoulos (Greece)

NICOSIA, CYPRUS – Welcome to the national final of Cyprus. Through
Eurovision Song Project, Cyprus will decide its participation for the
60th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. Six acts came to the
final through a series of auditions and challenges and tonight we will
find out the winner. Minus One and Panagiotis Koufogiannis are
considered the top favourites but still everything is open.

Throughout last week the tele voting was open and tonight along with
the jury we will find out the winner. Watch the show live here or here
while we will bring you live report of the show. Tonight the show is
hosted by Antri Karantoni while the jury made of Alex Panayi, Tasos
Tryfonos, Elena Patroklou and Despina Olympiou will be enhanced with
former French HoD, Mr. Bruno Berberes and Italian HoD Nicola Caligiore
who spoke in fluent Greek!

Antri Karantoni opened the show performing a remix of “Rise like a
phoenix” while Tasos Tryfonos is co hosting the show. During the jury
presentation the Italian HoD spoke in fluent Greek! making the
audience applauding. In the meantime Alex, Elena and Despoina go on
stage and perform all together the 1987 Italian entry “Gente di mare”
by Umberto Tozzi & Raf. In the audience, Cypriot national broadcaster
has also invited the Austrian ambassador in the island. After a
dreadful attempt with an “Austrian Heidi” but it seems the organisers
didn’t know that “Heidi” was a Swiss novel and cartoon and not
Austrian! Now time for the real business.

HOVIG – STONE IN A RIVER

A beautiful ballad by a Greek Armenian singer. Hovig is dressed in
dark blue shirt, tie and trousers. Dark blues stage for him. When it
comes to the vocal performance we give him immediately 12 points. He
is perfect and he is amongst the favourites tonight. The song is
definitely a safe ballad that can really approach the jury votes
easily and not to mess with tele voting. It could be a good and safe
choice for Cyprus. There is a bit of confusion on whether the dancers
behind me are needed, still the jury give the best compliments to this
performance.

DOODY – MAGIC

DoOdy is not alone on stage and performs his song along with a band.
Sometimes you listen something unstable in his voice while performing
but still you listen a voice that surely resembles to Constantinos
Christoforou, with whom Doody are siblings. Overall the song is a safe
mid tempo tune and DoOdy is feel ing quite comfortable. In the song
bridge, all together come in the front of the stage and perform the
R’n’B part of the song. He is just 20 years old and already he shines,
well done DoOdy. The jury agrees with us that DoOdy is great on stage,
has fresh image but he needs to improve his vocals. Read his interview
to oikotimes.com.

PANAGIOTIS KOUFOGIANNIS – WITHOUT YOUR LOVE

Panagiotis is the favourite in most polls for Cyprus 2015 national
final including ours. Recently we spoke to Panagiotis, the interview
of which you can read here. He has an amazing ballad and an even
greater vocal performance. His retro outfit with white suit jacket and
black trousers make him an ultimate 30s hunk. This is a ballad the
juries will surely vote in Vienna and the tele voters will not be able
to ignore. He is surrounded by female string players and two female
backing vocals. The jury praises his performance resembling it with
that of Johnny Logan.

MINUS ONE – SHINE

Well Turkey might be out but for sure they have voted this song which
definitely resembles with their 2010 and 2011 entries. Minus One is an
extremely popular band in Cyprus and despite not topping the
international polls we are sure that they will fight hard for the
trophy and will not be a surprise seeing them in Vienna, mark my
words. The rock ballad / mid tempo anthem song is working nicely for
them although the lead singer Francois Micheletto (who speaks fluently
French as he descents from France) needs to rest his voice! The jury
praises them and Bruno Berberes says it clearly: He wants to see them
in Vienna.

GIANNIS KARAGIANNIS – ONE THING I SHOULD HAVE DONE

This ballad is presented in retro mode as the broadcast turns into
black and white. Great vocal performance and definitely another song
that juries in Vienna will definitely not ignore. Giannis (aka John)
is giving a great smooth and nerdy performance which cannot be
ignored. The song reminds me a former Eurovision entry (Tom Dice, Me
and my guitar) but it’s smooth and sae choice for Cyprus. The jury is
stunned with the performance as every time small details make this
song brat for them. Not a bad choice for Vienna I would say!

NEARCHOS & CARIS – DEILA DEN AGAPO

Charis is a former Junior Eurovision participant for Cyprus and now
joined by Nearchos they performa Greek – French ballad. We give our
sincere condolences to Nearchos for the loss of his grandfather this
week and we hope tonight’s show to compensate them. Christern Björkman
said in the Eurochallenge phase that Charis should know French since
she performs a song in that language. It’s the only song performed
even partially in Greek tonight. I think it’s the weakest entry
tonight but still it’s decent and vocally both are performing
perfectly. There is a dance act behind them with two pair of male and
female dancers dancing under a white clothe.

so that’s it from the live report. we continue with the show and of
course we are ready to inform you about the results.

From: A. Papazian

The Trentonian, NJ
Feb 1 2015

Assistant Mercer County Prosecutor to head county bar association

By Isaac Avilucea

TRENTON >> Whenever Assistant Prosecutor Michelle Gasparian presents a
case to a jury, she often follows The Rule of Three, laying out
beginning, middle and end. She is fashioning a similar approach as new
president of the Mercer County Bar Association.

Her yearlong tenure will be defined by The Three Cs: collegiality,
community service and continuing legal education.

“I look at us as a family,” Gasparian said of the association’s 1,200
members. “We are often on the other side of each other. But in the
end, we are joined by a profession and the ethics that guide our
profession.”

The association’s blood-like bond was evident when colleague, fellow
bar member and Mercer County Assistant Prosecutor John Carbonara
suffered a devastating stroke in November.

The association raised nearly $13,000 to help his family defray
medical costs. Carbonara is undergoing therapy and slowly recovering.
The hope is he’ll be able to return to work sometime in the future.

“It’s been a blow,” Gasparian said of losing Carbonara, a bulldog of
an attorney who, along with Gasparian’s husband, Brian McCauley,
helped prosecute several Bloods gangsters who orchestrated the
infamous Myspace murder of 20-year-old Arrell Bell.

To that end, the association knows what it’s getting in Gasparian, a
graduate of Rutgers School of Law, a 16-year veteran of the county
prosecutor’s office and a committed bar member who worked herself up
the ranks since she joined in 1997 as a law clerk.

She served two four-year terms as a trustee before becoming the first
female prosecutor and ninth woman to hold the position, replacing
immediate past president and former Rutgers classmate, Dorothy
“Dottie” Bolinsky, of Drinker Biddle & Reath in Princeton.

Gasparian’s parents, Armenian immigrants who came to the U.S. in their
late teens, were particularly proud of their daughter’s distinction as
the association’s first Armenian president.

Garparian’s goals are lofty. They include strengthening the
association’s relationship with the judiciary, expanding membership
and increasing the organization’s position as a community stakeholder.

She has plans for “Breakfast with the Bench,” an hourlong event for
attorneys to get to know judges and staff in the family, civil and
criminal divisions.

The organization will continue to work closely with the Trenton Area
Soup Kitchen, Meals on Wheels and Volunteer Lawyers CARE, which offers
free legal consultation.

The organization already sponsors professional development seminars
and a daylong event to help attorneys get mandatory continuing
education credits. But Gasparian hopes to drive down costs of events
to encourage membership and participation among younger attorneys.

Gasparian’s bend toward public service is a theme in her career. She
could have ventured into the lucrative path of private practice but
has remained at the same post for the duration of her legal career.

“The system needs to have people who believe in the system for the
system to work, and I’m one of those people,” she said. “I may never
have a beach house, but I consider it rewarding.”

While with the county prosecutor’s office, she has spent more than
five years in the homicide unit and was cross-designated to the U.S.
Attorney’s Office.

She worked with Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Askin in 2007 to
secure the convictions of several reputed members of the Bounty Hunter
set of the Bloods street gang involved in a massive drug ring in
Trenton.

Recently, her poignant remarks at at the sentencing of William
Marshall captured the family of Ruschell Fireall’s deep sense of
betrayal. Marshall was convicted of murder after he ran his
ex-girlfriend off the road and gunned her down in front of her family
in November 2012.

“If she wasn’t going to be with him, she wasn’t going to be,” Gasparian said.

Gasparian’s line of work could callous the softest of souls. But she
said there’s a difference between being tough and unflinching.

“You are dealing with people who may have experienced the worst thing
in their life,” she said. “You have to be analytic and clinical but
caring and compassionate. You can watch it on TV. But when you’re
inside the belly of the beast, when it’s a real situation, it’s such
tragedy.”

Gasparian hopes the stint as president is as fulfilling.

“I want it to be a great year,” she said, “and I’m confident it will be.”

From: A. Papazian

Arutz Sheva, Israel
Feb 1 2015

French President to Turkey: Probe Armenian Genocide

France’s President, Francois Hollande, called to Turkey to take
measures towards investigating the truth behind the mass murder of the
Armenian people, 100 years ago, in the country.

“I am convinced that because 2015 is the 100-year anniversary of the
mass murder, Turkey will demonstrate new gestures, and will take new
steps towards recognizing the genocide,” Hollande said.

From: A. Papazian