60% OF LEADING POSITIONS HELD BY WOMEN IN ARMENIA
news.am
March 8 2011
Armenia
At present, women hold only 20% of leading positions in companies
worldwide. Only 8% of women hold the posts of president or general
manager, ITAR-TASS reports, referring to a survey conducted by the
Grant Thornton company in 39 countries.
Among the leaders are Georgia (40%), Russia (36%) and Philippines
(35%).
In 2009, 60% of leading positions were held by women in Armenia.
From: A. Papazian
OTTOMAN-ERA ARMENIANS ADDED TO LIST OF SLAIN TURKISH JOURNALISTS
Hurriyet
March 8 2011
Turkey
The Contemporary Journalists Association, or CGD, adds 10 journalists
of Armenian origin killed in 1915 to its list of slain journalists
in Turkey. The association will hold a ceremony April 24, the date
when some countries commemorate the alleged Armenian genocide in
Ottoman lands
Ten journalists of Armenian origin who were killed in the waning days
of the Ottoman Empire will be added to a list of slain journalists in
Turkey by the Ankara-based Contemporary Journalists Association, or
CGD. The association will hold a ceremony April 24, the date when some
countries commemorate the alleged Armenian genocide in Ottoman lands.
The newly added names include Krikor Zohrab, a lawyer, author
and three-time deputy in the Ottoman Parliament; Taniel Varujan, a
renowned Armenian writer; Rupen Zartaryan, Siamento (Atom Yarjanian)
and six others, all also pioneers of western Armenian literature.
Though the CGD was late in making the move, it did not have the
necessary documents to add the journalists to the list before,
association head Ahmet Abakay told the Hurriyet Daily News & Economic
Review. “We realized it when the list prepared by the Arrested
Journalists Solidarity Platform reached us. Journalist Ali Bayramoglu
wrote on April 24 about the Armenian-origin journalists killed and
we realized the list we had was incomplete. We expect assistance to
add more names to it,” Abakay said.
The 76-name list of journalists killed in Turkey before and after the
foundation of the Turkish Republic includes well-known figures such
as Abdi Ä°pekci, Cetin Emec and Ugur Mumcu, but previously contained
only one Armenian name: Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian
descent who was assassinated in Istanbul in 2007.
When asked whether the CGD is worried about the potential response to
adding the Armenian journalists to the list, Abakay said: “I wish we
had the information before and has taken this radical step before. We,
the Turkish people, unfortunately do not know anything but what the
official history has told us. The truth was hidden from us.”
Mistakes made in the past must be discussed if the country believes
wholeheartedly in democracy, the CGD head said. “It is a crime to
hide from the people those names that have made contributions to the
Turkish press,” Abakay said. “They are all people of this country.
They have been slain just like Abdi Ä°pekci, Ugur Mumcu and others.”
He added that the association seeks to add more names to the list
and raise awareness about it.
Armenia claims up to 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed
in 1915 under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies this,
saying that any deaths were the result of civil strife that erupted
when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia.
Photo: These photos show 10 journalists of Armenian origin who were
killed in waning days of the Ottoman Empire.
From: A. Papazian
TURKISH COURT STAYS DEMOLITION OF KARS STATUE
Hurriyet
March 8 2011
Turkey
The Erzurum 1st Administrative Court has granted a stay of execution
of the Kars Municipal Assembly’s decision to demolish the ‘Monument
to Humanity.’ DHA photo
An administrative court in the eastern province of Erzurum has
granted a stay of execution against the demolition of Kars’ Monument
to Humanity, a peace sculpture described as “freakish” by the prime
minister in January.
“The Erzurum 1st Administrative Court granted a motion for a stay of
execution of the Kars Municipal Assembly’s decision to demolish the
‘Monument to Humanity’ in order to avoid any [possible] irrevocable
damage that could be done to the statue,” said lawyer Aslı Kazan,
who is acting on behalf of the sculpture’s creator, Mehmet Aksoy.
The sculpture cannot be demolished until the court case is finalized,
Kazan told Anatolia news agency on Monday.
Aksoy brought court action against a decision by the eastern province
of Kars to demolish the sculpture after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan said the monument looked “freakish” and vowed to take it down.
The court decision came on the same day an auction was to be held
in the eastern province to select the company that would demolish
the statue. Six companies presented their proposals to the tendering
authority Monday.
If the Erzurum court eventually chooses to permit the demolition of
the sculpture, the company that wins the auction will be given 60
days by the local municipality to remove the Monument to Humanity. The
sculpture will reportedly be dismantled before being carted away.
Erdogan sparked controversy on the monument during his visit earlier
this year when he said the monument, which is placed on a high
hill overlooking the city, was both “freakish” and threatened to
overshadow historical locations such as the Seyyid Hasal El Harakani
tomb and mosque.
After the prime minister ordered the sculpture’s demolition, Kars’
municipal assembly passed a motion to tear down the monument, saying
it had been illegally erected in a protected area.
The unfinished monument, which depicts two figures meeting, is 35
meters tall, weighs 300 tons and is meant to represent efforts to
foster friendship between the Turkish and Armenian peoples. Aksoy
has planned for one of the figures to shed a tear in regret while
the other extends its hand in reconciliation if permission is granted
for the completion of the monument.
From: A. Papazian
ARMENIA: A WOMAN’S WORLD IN ONE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE
EurasiaNet
March 8 2011
NY
March 7, 2011 – 10:16am, by Gayane Abrahamyan and Justyna Mielnikiewicz
Each year, International Women’s Day arrives on March 8 in the Armenian
village of Dzoragyugh amid a dark cloud of irony.
Ninety-eight percent of the village’s male population –nearly half
of its population of 5,000 people — has migrated abroad in search
of work. Those residents left behind jokingly call their village
“a women’s club,” a place where women do everything – plough fields,
raise children, officiate at funerals and somehow, through sheer grit,
try to hold their fragmented families together.
Labor migration’s impact on Armenia’s economy has long been the subject
of international studies, but its impact on the families left behind
has largely escaped study. In Dzoragyugh, though, and other villages in
the eastern region of Gegharkunik, that impact is difficult to ignore.
With an estimated 17,000 to 20,000 of the region’s residents migrating
abroad each year to find work, Gegharkunik boasts Armenia’s highest
rate of labor migration – up to 8 percent of its total population of
243,000, according to the National Statistical Service.
Most of these migrants, overwhelmingly men, return each autumn,
but some simply vanish.
“Every time I close the door behind him, I feel like the house walls
are collapsing,” said school principal Heriknaz Khachatrian, a mother
of four, who, on her own, ploughs and sows fields, and tends cows
and pigs when her husband leaves for Moscow each spring. “The whole
burden of the household falls on my shoulders, and the worst thing
is that you never know whether your husband will return or not.”
Accidents, often at construction sites, frequently claim lives;
Russian women pose another threat, assert some of Dzoragyugh’s
left-behind wives.
Thirty-two-year-old Zabel Hovanian, a mother of five girls, was 16
years old and pregnant when her husband left to find work in Moscow.
She has as many children as her husband’s visits home. The youngest,
a three-year-old, has never seen her father.
In the 16 years since he left Dzoragyugh for Russia, Hovanian’s husband
has found another “wife,” a term used for a man’s girlfriend who lives
with him outside of marriage. Hovanian recalled how her enraged husband
reacted when she called his Russian girlfriend to talk with her. “He
said ‘I told her that you are my sister. If you dare call one more
time, I’ll come and kill both you and the children,'” claimed Hovanian.
Despite such threats and her husband’s ongoing absence, Hovanian,
whose sole income comes from 50,000-dram (about $130) monthly
welfare payments, says that she still will take her husband back if
he ever returns home. “I will accept him for my children’s sake,” she
explained. “If I don’t, the whole village will blame me; and I have
four daughters to marry off. My disgrace would become their disgrace.”
Hovanian’s case is not unique. While many such men bring their
Russia-born children to meet their Armenian half-siblings, and
attempt to support both families, many others simply disappear,
related Russian language teacher Laura Hovhannisian.
“It’s hard to stay a woman in a village,” Hovhannisian continued. “We
till the land here, work like men, and our husbands often feel
enchanted by Russian women’s beauty and carefree spirits, and are
unable to return to village life.”
Breaking their legal ties with vanished husbands is not an option for
the women of Gegharkunik, one of the most conservative and traditional
regions in Armenia.
While Armenians generally frown on a second marriage for a divorced
woman or widow, “in Gegharkunik, it’s simply prohibited by an unwritten
law,” commented sociologist and pollster Aharon Adibekian.
“Especially if the husband is alive, but has abandoned his family.”
The economically viable options for these men to stay in Gegharkunik,
though, are not many. Farming is not profitable in the region’s 49
highland villages; winter can last for up to six months. Soviet-built
industrial plants that once offered area residents an opportunity to
earn an alternative living have long since closed.
Faced by dire unemployment, about 1.1 million people are believed
to have left Armenia since 1991, according to the United Nations
Development Programme. Labor migration remittances on average now
surpass Armenia’s annual government budget by 10 percent.
To Artsvik Haroutiunian, a 51-year-old resident of Dzoragyugh, the word
“migration” is synonymous with loss. When her husband left 20 years
ago for Russia to find a job, she believed his support would mean
she would live without want. In the end, Haroutiunian lost to labor
migration not only her husband, who dropped contact with the family,
but her 23-year-old son, who died in an accident.
Now Haroutiunian focuses on trying to convince her remaining
16-year-old son not to follow his father and brother to Russia.
“Every time I hear the word migration, I feel like dying of pain and
anguish,” she said with a sigh. “If only our country provided jobs,
my husband wouldn’t have left, nor would have my son.”
Editor’s Note: Gayane Abrahamyan is a reporter for ArmeniaNow.com in
Yerevan. Justyna Mielnikiewicz is a freelance photojournalist based
in Tbilisi.
From: A. Papazian
RENOWNED POET, AUTHOR TO LECTURE AT MTSU
The Daily News Journal
March 8 2011
Award-winning poet and author Peter Balakian will bring his expertise
on the Armenian genocide to MTSU on Friday, March 18, as part of the
university’s ongoing Distinguished Lecture Series.
Balakian’s free public lecture, “The Armenian Genocide and Modernity,”
is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. March 18 in the State Farm Lecture
Hall, Room S102, of the MTSU Business and Aerospace Building.
Balakian is the Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the Department
of English at Colgate University, where he also runs the Creative
Writing Program and was the first director of the university’s Center
For Ethics and World Societies.
He is a well-known advocate for greater recognition of one of the
20th century’s worst episodes of mass violence, in which some 1.5
million Armenians, including members of his own family, were killed
by the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
The professor has appeared on “60 Minutes,” “Fresh Air,” “The Charlie
Rose Show” and numerous other national programs discussing the killings
and the struggle to obtain Turkish recognition of the genocide.
In addition to his Pen/Albrand Prize-winning memoir, Black Dog
of Fate, and the first English translation of Armenian Golgotha:
A Memoir Of The Armenian Genocide, 1915-1918 by his great-uncle,
Grigoris Balakian, Balakian is also the author of six books of
poems, most recently Ziggurat, published in September 2010 by the
University of Chicago Press. His essays on poetry, culture, art, and
social thought have appeared in many respected publications, and he
is co-founder and co-editor with the poet Bruce Smith of the poetry
magazine Graham House Review, which was published from 1976 to 1996,
and is the co-translator with Nevart Yaghlian of the book of poems
Bloody News >>From My Friend by the Armenian poet Siamanto.
The lecture is sponsored by the MTSU History Department, Department
of English, the Holocaust Studies Committee and the MTSU Distinguished
Lecture Fund.
Visitors planning to attend Balakian’s free lecture should park in
the large MTSU parking lot east of Rutherford Boulevard and ride the
Raider Xpress shuttle to the Business and Aerospace Building to avoid
traffic congestion caused by construction in the area.
For more information on the Balakian lecture, contact MTSU history
professor Mark Doyle at [email protected] or the College of Liberal
Arts at 615-494-7628.
From: A. Papazian
POLL: US, ISRAEL TURKEY’S MAIN ENEMIES
Press TV
March 8 2011
Iran
The people of Turkey regard the United States and Israel as their
main enemies, the results of an opinion poll suggest.
A total of 2,000 Turkish people took part in the opinion poll conducted
by Ankara-based MetroPOLL Strategic and Social Research Center.
The results were published on February 28, 2011, the IRIB’s Research
Center reported.
Forty-two percent of the respondents saw the United States as Turkey’s
number one enemy, and 23 percent of them singled out Israel as the
main enemy of the Eurasian nation.
Six percent of those polled said Greece was their country’s main
enemy. Four percent singled out Iraq’s Kurdistan, and a tiny three
percent picked Armenia.
Eight percent of the respondents chose other countries as Turkey’s
number one enemy, while 14 percent had no opinion about their country’s
worst enemy.
Turkey’s differences with Greece are mainly over the ownership of a
few islands in the Mediterranean Sea as well as the issue of Cyprus.
Both countries are members of NATO alliance.
The Turkish people also regard Iraq’s Kurdistan as a threat because
it can set a precedent for Turkish Kurds, the research center said.
Armenia also has age-old difference with Turkey because of the alleged
“Armenian Genocide” during World War I.
From: A. Papazian
AZERBAIJAN SHOULD ASSUME A REALLY CONSTRUCTIVE POSITION, ARMENIAN DEPUTY FM SAYS
news.am
March 8 2011
Armenia
It is time for Baku to change it “constructive” position a really
constructive one, Armenian Deputy FM Shavarsh Kocharyan stated as
he commented on Azerbaijan’s statements on the results of the Sochi
meeting on March 5.
Specifically, it is a statement by Novruz Mamedov, Head of the Foreign
Relations Department, who accused Armenia of holding a “permanently
destructive” position and said that the Armenian side’s position
allegedly changed to an extent.
“We do not need to change our position. As the Armenian Foreign
Minister stated at the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, March 3,
Armenia said ‘yes’ to the revised Madrid principles submitted last
June, October and December.
“A couple of weeks ago the Co-Chairs, speaking at the OSCE Political
Council, called on the sides to say a clear ‘yes’ to the latest
proposals, without any reservations or amendments. Since Armenia
had said ‘yes’ to the proposals, the Co-Chairs had obviously been
expecting Azerbaijan to change its position and say a clear ‘yes’,”
Sh. Kocharyan said.
If Azerbaijan had said “yes” at the latest meeting, without any new
reservations, that would have been a clear step forward in the peace
process. “A relevant statement would have been made in addition to
the most positive statements by the three presidents in Sochi, on
further implementation of the Astrakhan declaration of October 27,
2011,” Sh. Kocharyan said.
“If, according to Azerbaijan, sabre-rattling and provocations on the
line of contact are ‘most sincere efforts’ to peaceful settle the
conflict’, it is then clear why, after the Mayendorf declaration,
the Azeri leaders stated that a peace settlement did not mean nonuse
of force. After the Sochi statement, which clearly says that the
sides must settle all the disputable issues peacefully, Azerbaijan’s
interpretation says it is not guarantee of peace. No comments,” Sh.
Kocharyan said.
Armenian News-NEWS.am reminds readers that, after considering the
implementation of the Astrakhan statement of October 27, 2010,
at their March 5 meeting in Sochi, the Presidents also agreed on
additional steps.
The first step is completing the POW exchange process as soon as
possible. However, no Azeri POWs are in the Armenian territory now,
whereas Azerbaijan is still keeping Armenian POWs.
The second point envisages settling all the disputable issues in
a peaceful way and investigating possible incidents on the line
of contact with the parties` participation, under the OSCE Minsk
Group Co-Chairs` auspices and with the assistance of the Special
Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office. According to diplomatic
sources, the Azeri leader reluctantly agreed to this point.
From: A. Papazian
NKR PRESIDENT MEETS REPRESENTATIVES OF ARMENIAN ORGANIZATIONS OF FRANCE
news.am
March 8 2011
Armenia
President of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Bako Sahakyan met in Paris
with members of the coordinating board of the Armenian organizations
of France.
The sides discussed strengthening of the Artsakh-Diaspora relations,
the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict settlement, as well developments
in the Artsakh Republic.
President highly assessed active participation of the French Armenian
organizations in assisting both the development of Artsakh and solving
issues of Pan-Armenian importance.
He stressed the republic is interested in continuous deepening and
widening relations with the Armenian organizations of France.
Primate of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church
Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, Armenian Ambassador to France Vigen
Chitechyan, NKR minister of culture and youth affairs Narine Aghabalyan
and other officials participated in the meeting.
From: A. Papazian
ARMENIA AND THE TURKS IN THE TIME OF LAWRENCE
Benny Morris
The National Interest Online
March 8 2011
While Colonel T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) sympathized with
Armenian aspirations for sovereignty and, indeed, in a map he drew up
after the Great War of a desirable Middle Eastern share-out of the
Ottoman Empire he provided for an independent Armenia (in Cilicia),
he was also party to the prevalent anti-Armenian prejudices of his day.
Lawrence was a member of the British delegation to the 1919 postwar
Paris peace conference. On November 3 he told Frank Polk, the American
“Commissioner” in Paris, that the Armenians were prone to lend “money
at exorbitant rates of interest” and took “the Turks’ land or horses
in security for payment,” and this at least in part explained the
Turkish atrocities against them during World War I.
But there was another factor. “Armenians,” he told Polk, as related in
Polk’s report on their conversation, “have a passion for martyrdom,
which they find they can best satisfy by quarrelling with their
neighbors . . . They can be relied upon to provoke trouble for
themselves in the near future.”
In general, Lawrence felt, “it would be most undesirable to attempt
to establish an Armenian state.” Except in a specific territory,
where they would be overwhelmingly preponderant. “The idea of an
Armenian State infuriates all the other races, and it would require
5 divisions of troops (100,000 troops) to maintain it.”
According to Lawrence, the Turks had been exhausted by the Great War
and their “army is rotten with venereal disease and unnatural vice.”
Hence, their birth rate was falling. He thought that if the Turks were
“confined to their own territories, in thirty years’ time [Turkey]
would once more be bounding with health and, incidentally, lusting
for conquest.” (Perhaps Lawrence’s use of the words “vice” and “lust”
were influenced by his personal experiences during the war years.)
About his friend the Emir Faisal, the military leader of the Arab
Revolt and the de facto ruler at the time in Damascus, Lawrence
said that he was “cautious, moderate, usually honest but capable of
treachery if it suited him.”
Surprisingly, Lawrence told Polk that “the Jews get on well with
the Arabs ” and added that, contrary to prevailing opinion at the
time among British officials, “the Jew is a good cultivator both in
Palestine and Mesopotamia [he was speaking here of Iraqi Jews].” The
problem was that “the conditions [in the Middle East] preclude
enterprise in the shape of improvements and [the Jew] requires five
shillings a day to live on against the Arab’s or Syrian’s sixpence
[i.e., half a shilling: there were twenty shillings to the pound
sterling].”
Lawrence concluded by saying that “the Zionist movement has ‘many
prophets but no politicians’ [had he lived into the 21st century he
would have thought otherwise] . . . The movement has been mismanaged
in the last nine months,” he thought.
He offered Polk one general, final reflection about the Middle Eastern
peoples: “No nation must expect gratitude from the East or anything
but the ‘Order of the Boot’ as soon as they can manage it [meaning
that the Arabs or the Turks would boot out foreign powers as soon as
they could affect it, no matter how beneficial these powers had been
to the locals in previous years].”
From: A. Papazian
REPRESENTATIVES OF ARMENIAN EVANGELICAL CHURCHES SEE BENEFIT OF IWPR-SPONSORED DEBATES ON RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting IWPR
March 8 2011
UK
Representatives of minority faiths in Armenia have urged IWPR to stage
more round tables on the problems they face following a wide-ranging
discussion on the subject.
The January 27 event – attended by clerics, rights activists,
journalists, government officials and concerned citizens – focused on
reported violations of the rights of minority faiths; discrimination
against them; and, more generally, their role in Armenian society.
Armenia ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 2002,
committing itself to respecting citizens’ religious freedom.
Nonetheless, many religious minorities say they are discriminated
against, and that the Apostolic Church – which is followed by almost
all Armenians – has an unfair advantage.
Stepan Danielyan, head of the Cooperation for Democracy Centre,
said that attempts by parliament to restrict the rights of smaller
Christian groups were very worrying.
In March 2009, parliament passed a first reading of a bill which would
have banned “proselytising” and attempted to define Christianity as
a belief in the Holy Trinity, which would have excluded Jehovah’s
Witnesses being registered as Christians. The project was dropped
after a wave of opposition.
Avetik Ishkhanyan, chairman of the Armenian Helsinki Committee,
opened the IWPR discussion by setting out the problems faced by
religious organisations in Armenia. He said the Armenian authorities,
media and society have an intolerant attitude towards minority faiths.
“They are vulnerable, there is no tolerance of them. The media use
the word sect to describe them, which has an insulting connotation in
Armenia,” he said. “The ruling political parties and opposition have a
negative attitude towards representatives of religious organisations,
except for atheists and followers of Armenian Apostolic Church.”
Yerevan Evangelical Church pastor Levon Partakchyan spoke about the
unfair advantage the Armenian Apostolic Church had over other religious
groups. “For instance, they forbid us from preaching in prisons,
but representatives of Armenian Apostolic Church can do so,” he said.
Vardan Astsatryan, head of the government’s department for ethnic
minorities and religious affairs, admitted that problems raised by
experts and representatives of religious groups do exist.
“Of course, there should be legislative amendments – however one
cannot speak of the total absence of tolerance. Here, we should speak
of the level and extent of tolerance,” Astsatryan said.
Leaders of evangelical churches felt the round table assisted them
in their bid to bring to the fore concerns over intolerance and
discrimination.
Samvel Navoyan, secretary of the Armenian evangelical churches
cooperation group, said, “The discussion was extremely necessary. It
raised questions that urgently need to be discussed. In my opinion,
the most useful part was the discussion about freedom of conscience
legislation. I expect further discussions organised by the Institute
for War and Peace Reporting on this specific problem.”
Rubik Pahlevanyan of the Armenian Evangelical-Baptist Church said,
“Discussion of any problem is welcomed and useful in Armenia. The
church-to-church discussion was very useful. I suggest organising
smaller discussions on specific problems in the future.”
From: A. Papazian