Month: February 2015

Armenians of Bulgaria welcomed the withdrawal of the Armenian
Parliament standardization protocols of Armenian-Turkish relations

February 20, 2015

football diplomacy is over

The Association of Armenians in Bulgaria, welcomes the decision of
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to remove from Parliament the issue
of protocols signed in Zurich in 2009 between Turkey and Armenia
allegedly aimed at normalizing bilateral relations. “The Turkish
authorities have once again demonstrated to the world that in refusing
the desire for peace of Armenia are the direct heirs of those who
committed the genocide of the Armenians. The gesture of the President
of Armenia is fair and justified because Turkey not only regret the
crimes of its past, but strengthens its anti-Armenian policy and its
denial of genocide “wrote in a statement the Association of Armenians
in Bulgaria. It also says that instead of respecting the memory of the
victims of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, Ankara moves cynically
that day celebrations of the victory of the Battle of Gallipoli.
“Almost every day, the Turkish officials use various opportunity to
distort history and deny the existence of the Armenian genocide and
denying any responsibility for these crimes,” the statement continues
by saying that Turkey supports the Azerbaijani government in the
conflict opposes in Karabakh “what is foolish in these circumstances
to speak of improvement of Armenian-Turkish relations.”

Krikor Amirzayan

The Armenian Orphans Gathered from Deserts

BY STAFF
– POSTED ON FEBRUARY 18, 2015POSTED IN: ARMENIA, NEWS
By Zaven Yeghyaian
genocide-museum.am

In 1915-1923 as a result of the Armenian Genocide thousands of the
Armenian children were left orphans and converted to Islam. Many of
them had died of hunger and various epidemics raging at that time.

In autumn 1918, after the end of the World War I, the Armenian
associations, the Armenian Church, different individuals, especially
soldiers of the Armenian Legion and the Armenian Volunteer Regiments,
foreign relief organizations (the American Committee for Relief in the
Near East, the Lord Mayor’s Fund of London, the Danish Women’s Union,
the Russian “Red Cross”, the Union of Russian Cities, etc.), as well
as international organizations (the “Red Cross”, the League of
Nations) carried out active operations to save the Armenian orphans
from inevitable loss.

The Armenian orphans were gathered from different parts of the Ottoman
Empire, Syrian deserts, freed from the Muslim families and Turkish
state orphanages.

As a result of the orphan gathering operations in 1918-21, more than
77.000 Armenian children were gathered and sheltered in the orphanages
of the Armenian and foreign relief organizations of Turkey, Caucasus
and the Near East as well as state orphanages in the territory of the
Republic of Armenia.

“Thousands of the Armenian children were scattered in the villages in
the Turkish houses, mostly as servants, very few as adoptees, or adult
girls as wives. Just after the armistice, not only as a Patriarch, but
as an Armenian individual it was one of my first duties to collect the
Armenian orphans and bring them back to the nation”.

From: A. Papazian

Security system not changed in such situation – Vardan Khachatryan

15:23 * 22.02.15

It s truism that a security system is not to be changed in such a
volatile situation, ex-member of Armenia’s Parliament Vardan
Khachatryan told Tert.am as he commented on Armenian-Russian strategic
partnership.

“If you are to change a security system, you regularly find yourself
in such a dangerous situation when you lose the old without getting
anything new thereby becoming the easiest target for your prospective
enemies. In this context, we should consider that our security be
associated with Russia,” he said.

With respect to external challenges, he said that the major threat is
the deepening confrontation between the key political actors.

“That is, according to the ideas of the nations that have geopolitical
interests – the United States, France, China – the world needs
restructuring. Regrettably, Armenia’s role is all the processes is
among the most important ones, because if they want create problems
for Russia now, Ciscaucasia will be viewed as the most serious
problem, which has to do with Armenia,” he said.

According to Mr Khachatryan, evidence thereof is that the United
States plans to establish a sports base for 10,000 people in Georgia.

As regards the Islamic State threat, he said that it poses extreme
threats that defy imagination, and if things go on “we are going to
deal with an army of fanatics.”

“It is better if the Islamic State remains where it is than it would
be destroyed because in the latter case the fanatics will stream to
other countries. In this case, it is a matter of time when they blast
the countries from within,” Mr Khachatryan said.

Shirinyan: Opposition political field in Armenia is paralyzed

A compromise was reached between Armenia’s authorities and opposition,
but it is not clear how long internal political stability will last,
political scientist Levon Shirinyan told reporters today when speaking
about the relationship between Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) and
Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK).

“One can only say now that the sides reached a compromise and
regardless of what decision they took, it will be of importance to
further progress of Armenia,” Shirinyan said.

“Our public thinks that all problems can be solved in a day and during
a rally, but the reality is different,” the political scientist added.
In his words, HHK immediately launched a sharp attack and at first the
impression was that the ruling party decided to destroy businessmen
members of BHK, but HHK has currently retreated.

The opposition political field of Armenia is now paralyzed, but one
should not make hasty statements and analyses, Shirinyan said.

21.02.15, 21:57

US Official News
February 21, 2015 Saturday

“Nobody Talks about the Armenians Nowadays”

Washington

INSTITUTE OF WORLD POLITICS has issued the following news release:

Staunton, February 18 – On August 22, 1939, Adolf Hitler explained to
his entourage why he thought he could get away with mass murder by
saying that “nobody talks about the Armenians nowadays,” despite the
fact that they had been the victims of a mass murder only 24 years
earlier.

Hitler’s sweeping cynicism in this regard is increasingly relevant to
an evaluation of what is going on in the world today with its ever
shorter news cycles and even shorter attention spans. Now, to give but
one horrific example, although it has been less than a year, almost no
one speaks anymore about Crimea and Russia’s brutal occupation of that
Ukrainian peninsula.

And in this brave new world, some leaders have concluded that whatever
they say or do will be forgotten in the press of events, with some
insisting that it must be in order to move forward, others saying that
it is at least partially true, and still others using the tried-and-
true argument that “everybody does it” as if that is a justification.

No current leader has exploited this reality more often than Vladimir
Putin and nowhere has he made statements of such cynical fraudulence
as with regard to Ukraine. The latest of these came yesterday in
Budapest, and it deserves to be remembered, like the Armenians, like
Crimea, and like so much else, although it will be subsumed by the
onrush of events.

The Times (London)
February 21, 2015 Saturday

Last days of the great caliphate

Was the Ottoman Empire really so bad after all, asks Lawrence James

by Lawrence James

On November 13, 1918, the dreadnought HMS Agamemnon (they knew how to
name ships in those days) led an armada of Allied warships into the
harbour at Constantinople. A dismayed Turkish boatman watched and
lamented: “Who would have believed that a foreign fleet would enter
Constantinople so illustriously and that we Muslims would be simple
spectators.” His passenger consoled him: “These black days will pass
too.” But they did not pass.

As in Europe, the end of one war prepared the way for another. The
surrender of the Ottoman Empire marked the beginning of what has been
called “The War of the Ottoman Succession”, an intermittent struggle
for mastery of the Middle Eastern lands once ruled by the Sultan.
First Britain and France attempted to dominate the region and were
evicted, now the US, Israel, Iran and Saudi Arabia contend for
supremacy, and, lately, they have been joined by the ferocious
fanatics of Isis who want a caliphate and the restoration of a Dark
Age Islamic state. Slavery, reluctantly abolished by theTurkish
sultans in the 19th century, has returned to the Middle East. So too
has another Ottoman vice, the systematic massacre of Christians. A
hundred years of turmoil and bloodshed raises the question whether the
Ottononfiction man Empire, for all its faults, was not a bad thing.
After all, as Eugene Rogan reminds us, in the years just before the
outbreak of war, the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (“The
Young Turks”) were endeavouring to modernise the empire.

They were too late: Turkey lacked the industrial base, communications
systems and administrative structure to fight a modern war on several
fronts. German credit and weaponry kept the show going, but only just.
“What kind of war are we fighting?” asked one soldier in the trenches
during the first battle of Gaza in 1917. “Our army has no working
artillery, no functioning machineguns, no aircraft, no commanding
officers, no defensive lines, no reserves, no telephone.”

Material deficiencies were, however, offset by the pluck and tenacity
of theTurkish soldier and a handful of good generals, most famously
Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the future Kemal Atatürk. During 1915 and 1916,
the Turks defeated the Allies at Gallipoli and in Iraq, where an
Anglo-Indian army surrendered at Kut Al Amara. An Oxford historian,
Rogan’s account of these campaigns fits well into a comprehensive,
lucid and revealing history of a war, which has always been seen
though British eyes focused on Gallipoli and TE Lawrence rallying the
Bedouin and posing for photographers. This book will surely become the
definitive history of the war, for there is much that is new. Rogan
has used Turkish and Arab sources and recent research in the Ottoman
archives. Rooting out the truth is, however, a fraught business, since
theTurkish government is cagey about access to wartime military
papers. Official furtiveness is understandable given how prickly
modern Turkey is about the Armenian genocide. At least 850,000
Armenians and Assyrian Christians were murdered between 1915 and 1918,
but successive Turkish governments have denied any complicity by the
Ottoman government and its servants. Anyone who challenges official
orthodoxy is liable to be charged with “insulting Turkishness” and
faces prison. Visit the otherwise impressive military museum in
Istanbul and all you will find are grisly photos of Turks allegedly
slain by Armenian terrorists at the behest of Russia. This repeats
baseless contemporary propaganda that the Armenians were a vast fifth
column, ready to assist invaders.

Rogan blows away the fog of obfuscation and denials. Talaat Pasha, the
Young Turk Minister of the Interior, the Ottoman Intelligence Service,
sundry provincial governors and policemen were actively engaged in
what was intended to be an extermination of the entire Armenian
population of the Near East. “The orders came from the Central
Committee and the Interior Ministry,” one officer told an Armenian.
They were conveyed orally and one governor who sought written
instructions was sacked and later murdered. Rogan’s evidence about the
official origins and enforcement of the massacres augments and
confirms that from German sources.

Killing the Armenians achieved nothing for Turkey’s war effort. The
successes of the first half of the war were not repeated during the
second, when Allied forces pushed steadily through Iraq, Palestine and
Syria. Numerical and technical superiority had tipped the balance in
favour of the Allies, although the Turkish soldier fought doggedly on.
During the fighting at Gaza, Turkish infantrymen stood their ground,
firing their rifles in a futile attempt to repel tanks at close range.

There are some surprises for those who take their history from
Lawrence of Arabia. The repeated demolition of the Damascus to Medina
railway by Lawrence and his Bedouin irregulars had a limited effect,
since the Turks quickly relaid the track and the line stayed open
until the spring of 1918, when it was permanently severed by Allied
forces. The Arab Revolt was also an Arab civil war: some tribes chose
Turkish gold and arms rather than British.

One of the trains that reached Medina from Damascus in November 1917
contained Turkish newspapers with details of the secret Sykes-Picot
Agreement by which Britain, France and Tsarist Russia had agreed the
future partition of the Ottoman Empire. The documents had just been
released by Trotsky to remind the Arab world that it was being duped
by Allied promises of postwar liberation.

This may not have been too much of shock, for French and British
imperial ambitions were in character and over the past 80 years, the
two powers had stripped the Ottomans of Egypt, Algeria, Tunis and
that as it may, the alleged duplicity of Britain and
France continues to have political resonances today in the Middle East
where state boundaries follow lines first sketched on a map by greedy
foreigners. The repercussions of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire will
not go away. Lawrence James’s latest book is Churchill and Empire:
Portrait of an Imperialist The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in
the Middle East, 1914-1920 by Eugene Rogan Allen Lane, 445pp £25 * £20

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
February 21, 2015 Saturday
First Edition

A monumental stoush

by Rick Feneley

A row over monuments to historical atrocities is testing some of the
assumptions of a harmonious, multicultural state, writes Rick Feneley.

Japanese Australians worry their children will be bullied, as they say
youngsters have been in the US. Turkish Australians say they will
become the targets of racial hatred.

The provocation, they say, will be the erection of monuments to
commemorate war crimes or atrocities attributed to their Turkish and
Japanese forebears. Dredging up these events, which they say are
highly contentious and even fabricated, will serve only the agendas of
anti-Turkish and anti-Japanese propaganda and jeopardise the racial
harmony achieved in NSW, where 45 per cent of the population was
either born overseas or has at least one parent born overseas.

Last October the Australian Turkish Advocacy Alliance and the Japan
Community Network united in their own lobbying exercise: a letter to
Hakan Harman, a Turkish Australian who has become the new chief
executive of Multicultural NSW, the state body dedicated to
maintaining racial harmony. They urged Harman to adopt guidelines
advising councils and other authorities not to take sides in debates
when considering recognition of historical events.

On February 3, the Turkish alliance issued a press release
congratulating Multicultural NSW for having distributed such
guidelines. This, however, was the first that most ethnic leaders had
heard about it. Nobody had consulted them. Nor had Harman told the
Minister for Citizenship and Communities, Victor Dominello, about his
guidelines, the preamble to which urged authorities not to “assign
blame” when acknowledging historical grievances.

This week, all hell broke loose. The Armenian, Assyrian, Greek,
Cypriot and Korean communities demanded that Harman resign or he be
sacked. Dominello refused but ordered Harman to withdraw the
guidelines and to work to “restore community harmony”. Harman
apologised, pledged wider consultation and said he had not intended to
“inflame concerns or upset anyone”.

But he did. The agitators say his position is untenable because, they
claim, he pushed the barrow of Turkey and its denial of Ottoman-Turk
genocides against Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks during World War I.

Harman’s guidelines did not mention Turkey or Japan, but his critics
believe they were clearly aimed at memorials in the making: a statue
the Korean and Chinese communities plan for Strathfield to honour
“comfort women” used as sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during World
War II; a monument to be unveiled in Willoughby on April 24, when
Armenians will mark the 100th anniversary of a genocide in which they
say 1.5 million people died.

“These monuments are not an attack on the Turkish or Japanese people
of today,” says Vache Kahramanian, executive director of the Armenian
National Committee of Australia, “just as Holocaust monuments are not
an attack on current-day Germans. They are recognition of historical
facts.”

Tesshu Yamaoka, president of the Japan Community Network, along with
the Turkish alliance, takes umbrage at the Holocaust analogy and the
suggestion they were attempting to “airbrush” atrocities from history.
While Japan apologised to and compensated some comfort women, Yamaoka
says, claims that 200,000 were forced into sexual slavery have been
“highly fabricated for political purposes”. He blames such monuments
for the bullying of Japanese children in north America.

The Turkish alliance says no international court has found the Ottoman
Turks guilty of “genocide”. The Turkish ambassador to Australia, Reha
Keskintepe, tells Fairfax Media there were many Armenian casualties
when the Ottoman Empire decided to “relocate” them while it was under
invasion in 1915. But there was never a plot to eradicate Armenians,
he says.

Only last year, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop reassured Turkey
that Australia does not use the word genocide to describe these
“tragic events”. Nor does Britain. Barack Obama called it genocide in
2008 but avoids the word now he is US President and Turkey is
strategically critical.

Turkey will play host to thousands of Australians at Gallipoli when
they commemorate the 100th anniversary of that tragic battle on April
25 – the day after the centenary of the Armenian tragedy. But the NSW
Parliament recognised it as genocide in 1997, and the next year it
erected its own monument bearing a bipartisan resolve to reject
“attempts to deny or distort the historical truth”. In 2013, it
extended its recognition to the Ottoman genocide of Assyrians and
Greeks.

Among Harman’s withdrawn guidelines is maintaining consistency with
Australia’s foreign policy, as determined by the Commonwealth. This
alone would have put the State Parliament, and its memorial, at odds
with the guidelines.

Ambassador Keskintepe says they would have been constructive, but he
denies Turkey provides financial backing to the Turkish alliance,
although the group’s own newsletter last year declared its reliance on
consulate funding. Rather, Keskintepe says, the embassy lends
practical support to the alliance’s efforts to “counter the false
Armenian claims that are damaging to the Australian-Turkish
friendship”. This extended to sending baklava, Turkish pastry, to an
event the alliance arranged at Federal Parliament.

Stepan Kerkyasharian is an Armenian who spent almost 25 years at the
head of the predecessors to Multicultural NSW, including the Community
Relations Commission. “Just because an event is described by one party
and denied by another is not, of itself, sufficient to say that the
event should not be remembered,” Kerkyasharian says. “Some in
Australia would object strenuously to the concept of the stolen
generation. Does that mean we should not put up a monument to the
stolen generation?”

In any case, the guidelines are dead and buried. Asked if they might
be modified and re-issued following consultation, Dominello told
Fairfax Media: “These guidelines compounded the difficulties
surrounding the commemoration of historical events and they will not
be revisited by Multicultural NSW.”

NCR-Iran.org
Feb 22 2015

Prominent Iranian musician Andranic Asatourian passed away

Andranic Asatourian, the great Iranian composer and musician and a
valuable asset to the contemporary Iranian art and music, and a member
of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) passed away early
hours of Sunday in a hospital in Los Angeles, California after a
difficult battle with cancer. He was 73.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the Iranian Resistance
offered her deepest condolences to Asatourain family, particularly his
wife Ayda, the Iranian people, members of NCRI, and the PMOI members
at Camp Liberty.

Assatourian, who was Iranian Armenian, joined the National council of
Resistance of Iran in 1990s. He had a deep and profound affection for
members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK),
residents of camp Ashraf and Liberty, and defended them vigorously
over the years.

He was the embodiment of contemporary Iranian music of the past half a century.

Mrs. Rajavi described Andranic Asatourian as a great asset of Persian
art and music that the Iranian Armenians have presented to the Iranian
nation.

“Asatourian will also be remembered as another great Iranian Christian
of the contemporary Iranian history,” she said.

Assatourian, who had composed and conducted some of the most memorable
hits of Iranian contemporary music, left Iran in protest to the
mullahs’ tyranny and did not allow his art to be misused by the
clerical dictatorship.

Ando, as he was called by his friends and fans rejected the artists
who allowed to be manipulated and exploited by the clerical regime.

According to Asatourian, the first mandate for an artist is to be
patriotic and having affection for his people and this begins with
rejection of the clerical regime.

In years in exile he continued his struggle for freedom and democracy in Iran.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Iran Daily
Feb 20 2015

Armenian artists stage duet in Tehran

Two Armenian musicians, Arpineh Israyelian and Astghik Vardanyan,
staged a duet featuring piano and violin at Roudaki Hall on February
19.

The performance received a very enthusiastic welcome from the Iranian
audience, ISNA reported.

The duet was performed during the closing ceremonies of the 30th Fajr
International Music Festival making the night memorable for the
audience.

In the first part of the performance, the two artists staged works
composed by two German musicians and composers, Johann Sebastian Bach
and Ludwig van Beethoven. In the second part Israyelian played a solo.

Their performance also featured pieces from French and Iranian
composers, Achille-Claude Debussy and Rafi Khachatourian, and Spanish
violinist Pablo de Sarasate.

Welcomed by standing ovation of the audience, the Armenian musicians
performed two other extra pieces.

Born in Yerevan in 1971, Israyelian grew up in a musician family. He
began learning the piano in Tchaikovsky music school in 1977 and
graduated from the school in 1989. He succeeded to pass the entrance
examination of the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory in the same year
and pursued his higher educations in the same field.

He received his M.A. in piano studies from the Conservatory.

Vardanyan was born in 1983 in Armenia. When she was only 13, she
staged her first performance as a member of the Armenian Philharmonic
Orchestra.

In 2005, she began teaching violin at London College of Music.

Emirates News Agency, UAE
February 20, 2015 Friday 8:08 PM EST

UAE Ambassador presents his credentials to Armenia

YEREVAN, 20th February, 2015 (WAM) — The UAE’s Ambassador to Armenia,
Jassim Mohammed Al Qasimi, today presented his credentials to
President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan.

During the ceremony, held at the Presidential Palace, Al Qasimi
conveyed the greetings of President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin
Zayed Al Nahyan and Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of
Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to the
Armenian President, along with their wishes for further progress and
prosperity to the people of Armenia.

The UAE diplomat also affirmed that he will spare no efforts to
enhance ties of friendship and cooperation between the two countries
in all domains.

For his part, Sargsyan expressed his appreciation to President His
Highness Sheikh Khalifa and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, praising the
legacy and noble values of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

He also extended thanks to the UAE for establishing an Embassy in
Yerevan, stressing that the UAE Ambassador will receive comprehensive
support while carrying out his duties in Armenia.