Month: October 2019

                                        Thursday, 
Armenia Condemns ‘Illegal’ Turkish Offensive In Syria
        • Astghik Bedevian
        • Ruzanna Stepanian
SYRIA -- Syrians flee shelling by Turkish forces in Ras al Ayn, northeast 
Syria, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2019.
Armenia’s government on Thursday condemned Turkey’s military offensive in 
northeastern Syria as “illegal” and discussed it at an emergency meeting 
chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
“We are concerned about the situation because we believe that action will 
further deepen the humanitarian crisis in Syria,” Pashinian said at the start 
of the cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
“We are calling on the international community to take meaningful measures to 
stop that illegal action and protect Syrian citizens, including ethnic 
minorities, along the Turkish border,” he added before discussing the matter 
with government members in closed session.
Pashinian also made clear that the Armenian military will continue its 
small-scale “humanitarian mission” in Syria closely coordinated with Russia. 
Yerevan deployed more than 80 demining experts, army medics and other 
non-combat military personnel in and around the northern Syrian city of Aleppo 
in February.
Syria -- Civilians flee with their belongings during Turkish bombardment on 
Syria's northeastern town of Ras al-Ain in the Hasakeh province along the 
Turkish border
In a statement issued earlier in the day, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said 
the Turkish “invasion” will further destabilize the region and result in 
civilian casualties. It called on the international community to stop the 
offensive and “prevent mass atrocities.”
“The situation is becoming particularly alarming for ethnic and religious 
minorities,” said the statement.
Those minorities include several thousand ethnic Armenians who are thought to 
live in northeastern Syrian regions largely controlled by Kurdish-led forces. 
They are part of Syria’s broader Armenian community that has shrunk 
dramatically since the start of the bloody conflict in the Middle Eastern 
nation.
According to a senior Armenian Foreign Ministry official, Armen Melkonian, 
around 3,000 Syrian Armenians currently live in the northeastern city of 
Qamishli close to the Turkish border.
“Qamishli was shelled yesterday but most of the city is under Syrian government 
control,” Melkonian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). “I don’t 
think that the Turkish invasion will reach areas controlled by the Syrian 
authorities.”
“Our embassy in Damascus is in constant touch with the leadership of the [local 
Armenian] community and they do not want to be evacuated yet because they don’t 
see a danger at the moment,” said Melkonian. Nevertheless, he added, the 
embassy and the Armenian consulate in Aleppo are making contingency plans for a 
mass evacuation of local Syrian Armenians.
In Melkonian’s words, on Thursday morning 13 Armenian families fled their homes 
in the town of Tel Abyad, one of the reportedly four points of Turkish troops’ 
entry into Syria. Tel Abyad had 16 Armenian families before the Turkish 
incursion, said the diplomat.
SYRIA -- Smoke rises from the Syrian town of Tel Abyad after Turkish bombings, 
in a picture taken from the Turkish side of the border near Akcakale in the 
Sanliurfa province on October 9, 2019.
Armenia has no diplomatic relations with Turkey and the land border between the 
two countries has long been closed. Yerevan maintains a far more cordial 
relationship with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Turkey's ground offensive began on Wednesday after hours of shelling by 
warplanes and artillery over territory held by the Kurdish-led Syrian 
Democratic Forces (SDF). Ankara had long threatened an attack on the Kurdish 
fighters whom it considers terrorists.
World governments have reacted to the Turkish operation with concern. U.S. 
President Donald Trump, who three days earlier said he will not interfere with 
the offensive, called Turkey's actions a "bad idea," while France, Germany and 
Britain were due issue a joint statement condemning them. Earlier this week, 
Russian President Vladimir Putin urged his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip 
Erdogan to "think carefully" before launching the assault.
Former Head Of Diaspora-Funded Charity Arrested Again
        • Artak Khulian
Armenia - A screenshot of an official video of the arrest of Ara Vartanian, 
executive director of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, Yerevan, 2 July 2018.
The former executive director of a pan-Armenian charity headquartered in 
Yerevan was arrested late on Wednesday on fresh corruption charges rejected by 
his lawyers as politically motivated.
A court in Yerevan allowed the National Security Service (NSS) to hold Ara 
Vartanian in detention pending investigation into an alleged embezzlement of 
money donated to the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund. The NSS did not publicize 
details of the criminal case.
One of Vartanian’s lawyers, Lusine Sahakian, described called the accusation 
“very odd” on Thursday. “He could not have had anything to do with that 
embezzlement because it is connected with supplies from one of the fund’s 
contractors,” she told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
The NSS already detained Vartanian in July 2018, saying that he used large 
amounts of money mostly donated by the Armenian Diaspora for online gambling 
and other “personal purposes.” He was released on bail and resigned as 
Hayastan’s director a few days later.
Sahakian and the other defense lawyer, Yervand Varosian, said that Vartanian 
was arrested again because of his increasingly harsh criticism of the current 
Armenian government voiced in recent months. The court’s refusal to grant him 
bail this time around is further proof that the case is politically motivated, 
Varosian wrote on his Facebook page. According to Sahakian, the court also 
ignored the former Hayastan chief’s “very serious” health problems.
The NSS did not immediately comment on the lawyers’ claims.
Hayastan has implemented over $350 million worth of projects in Armenia and 
Nagorno-Karabakh since being set up in 1992. The fund’s current Board of 
Trustees is headed by President Armen Sarkissian and comprises Prime Minister 
Nikol Pashinian, other senior Armenian state officials, Catholicos Garegin II 
as well as prominent members of Armenian communities around the world.
In recent years the fund has partly financed, among other things, the 
construction of a second highway connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
Government Plans To Amend Armenian Constitution
        • Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- A cabinet meeting in Yerevan, .
The government officially announced plans to amend Armenia’s constitution as 
part of its strategy of reforming the national judicial and electoral systems 
approved on Thursday.
The strategy drafted by the Armenian Justice Ministry calls for constitutional 
amendments relating to the work of judicial bodies and conduct of elections.
“The constitution contains a number of contentious provisions which we believe 
the constitutional commission should examine,” Deputy Justice Minister Rafik 
Grigorian said during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
In particular, Grigorian said, the constitution does not allow judges to appeal 
against decisions made by the Supreme Judicial Council, a state body overseeing 
courts. He said the government also wants to lower the vote threshold for 
winning seats in Armenia’s parliament and to make sure that Armenians vote only 
for parties and blocs, rather than individual candidates, in future general 
elections.
The constitutional amendments will be drafted by an ad hoc government 
commission that will be set up in the first quarter of next year. Members of 
the opposition parties represented in the National Assembly will be invited to 
join it.
The current Armenian constitution underwent sweeping changes as a result of a 
disputed referendum held in 2015. They led to the country’s transition from a 
presidential to parliamentary system of government.
Former President Serzh Sarkisian engineered that constitutional reform in an 
effort to hold on to power after completing his second and final presidential 
term in April 2018. He was toppled in the ensuing “Velvet Revolution.”
Government officials gave no indications that the planned commission could 
propose a return to the presidential system.
The government strategy also envisages the creation of a “fact-finding 
commission” that will document electoral fraud and human rights abuses 
committed since Armenia’s won independence in 1991 and recommend ways of 
redressing them. The commission is due to present its “advisory conclusions” to 
the government and the parliament.
“The fact-finding commission will collect cases of systematic and mass human 
rights violations in at least the following areas: electoral processes that 
have taken place since 1991, political persecutions during post-election 
processes that have taken place since 1991, forced confiscations of property 
for public or state needs and other manifestations of dispossession, and 
soldiers killed in non-combat conditions,” explained Grigorian.
Press Review
“Haykakan Zhamanak” dismisses “aggressive” reactions from members and 
supporters of Armenia’s former leadership to law-enforcement authorities’ 
efforts to “solve crimes committed in the past.” The pro-government paper says 
those who now accuse the current authorities of plotting conspiracies against 
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh are the ones who had caused many Armenians to 
emigrate from their country and helped to “concentrate the national wealth in 
the hands of several dozen families.” “Why is that all current ‘defenders’ of 
Artsakh are millionaires?” it says.
“Aravot” says that Nagorno-Karabakh’s forthcoming presidential and 
parliamentary elections “promise to be dramatic” because it is now practically 
impossible for the current authorities in Stepanakert to “reproduce 
themselves.” “Whatever we say about non-interference in Artsakh’s internal 
affairs the government to be formed there in 2020 will have to closely and 
effectively cooperate with Armenia’s leadership,” editorializes the paper. 
“Generals Samvel Babayan and Vitaly Balasanian can hardly be in harmony with 
our current [Armenian] authorities. [Foreign Minister] Masis Mayilian’s 
nomination has left many people happy. He is not a field commander or 
businessman but is at the same time from the state apparatus, a diplomat, a 
foreign minister. That is a guarantee that Mr. Mayilian will not blurt out 
unnecessary, so to speak, things during the pre-election tumult, unlike those 
generals.”
“Zhamanak” comments on Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian’s assurances that 
Armenian and Russian officials are not considering ending Russian management of 
Armenia’s railway network. The paper is critical of that management, saying 
that the Russians have not made substantial investments in the network promised 
by them in 2008. It says they promised additional investments in 2013 when 
Armenia agreed to join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.
(Lilit Harutiunian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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