Author: Andres-Papazian

The Putin-Erdogan Effect: Blue Stream’s Gas Will Not Reach Israel

12:45 – 09.06.10

One of the most interesting meetings in the framework of the third
summit of the Conference for Strengthening Trust and Cooperation in
Asia taking place in Istanbul was that between the Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip
Erdogan.

With an outright criticism of Israel Putin said an international
investigation must be conducted into what happened to the Flotilla of
Freedom, namely the circumstances of the seizure of the Turkish ship
Mavi Marmara. Though at the same time he said that the tension in the
Middle East must be eased in an attempt to avoid any new outbreak.

Further Russia’s Premier spoke about the Blue Stream-2 gas projects,
saying the pipeline will probably not reach Israel.

`Israel has discovered a field rich in gas at its shelf. Therefore
there is no need to direct the second branch of the Blue Stream to
that state even in terms of economic considerations,’ said he.

Recep Erdogan, in turn, said that Turkey and Russian are planning to
raise their goods circulation four-fold up to an annual $100 billion.

Tert.am

From: A. Papazian

Personnel Changes in Askeran Regional Administration

NKR Government Information and
Public Relations Department

June 09, 2010

According to the resolution of the NKR Government adopted on June 9,
2010, Vahram Baghdassarian was relieved of the post of Askeran
Regional Administration Head according to the submitted application.

According to one another government resolution Sergey Grigoryan was
appointed Head of Askeran Regional Administration.

From: A. Papazian

New head of Kashatagh Regional Administration is Appointed

NKR Government Information and
Public Relations Department

June 09, 2010

According to the NKR Government resolution, adopted on June 9, 2010,
Suren Khachatryan was appointed the new head of Kashatagh regional
administration.

From: A. Papazian

Slovakian deputy: Europe must protect Christian Artsakh from intrusion
of other civilization

2010-06-09 17:59:00

ArmInfo. Europe must protect Christian Artsakh from intrusion of other
civilization, deputy of Slovakian parliament Frantishek Mikloshko said
in an articled published in ‘Tyzden’.

To recall, Mikloshko among other foreign observers was called persona
non-grata by Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry for participation in the
parliamentary election in Nagornyy Karabakh in 23 May of the current
year. ‘When staying in Artsakh I have got an impression that the
problem of the NKR is the problem of the EU. The total of 138 thsd
people are protecting their Christian civilization, history, spiritual
and physical essence. The NKR exists thanks to the people ready to
protect it from Azerbaijan, which exceeds the territory of Nagornyy
Karabakh mush, but lags behind it in the military sense’, – the
article says.

From: A. Papazian

French MP’s Visit Artsakh

[ 2010/06/09 | 12:25 ]
Nagorno Karabakh politics

A delegation of members of France’s National Assembly have arrived in
the NKR for a three day exploratory tour of the country. Ashot
Ghulyan, President of the NKR parliament welcomed the guests yesterday
in Stepanakert.

An invitation to visit the NKR had been extended to the French MP’s
last October, when an NKR presidential delegation was visiting France.
Hovhannes Gevorgyan, the NKR’s Permanent Representative to France, is
escorting the delegation while in Karabakh.

From: A. Papazian

A shoe so old it’s 5,500 years out of fashion
Chris Smyth

The Times
June 10, 2010

The world’s oldest shoe may have suffered the fate of cutting-edge
design down the ages – falling out of fashion.

A 5,500-year-old soft-soled plain leather moccasin with laces found in
a cave in Armenia is from a previously unknown culture that flourished
with the first farmers. It is 1,000 years older than the Great Pyramid
of Giza. The right shoe – the left has not been discovered – is in
good condition, with no sign of why it was discarded.

Ron Pinhasi, of University College Cork, believes that it may simply
have gone out of style. `In societies that are no longer egalitarian
you have the wealthier showing they can afford things,’ he said.

The shoe was preserved by the cool, dry cave and a layer of sheep dung
that sealed it from the air. It was stuffed with grass, probably to
maintain its shape, researchers say in the Public Library of Science
One.

From: A. Papazian

Archaeologists kicking up their heels at finding what may be world’s
oldest leather shoe

RANDOLPH E. SCHMID AP Science Writer

June 9, 2010 | 2:12 p.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) – About 5,500 years ago someone in the mountains of
Armenia put his best foot forward in what is now the oldest leather
shoe ever found.

It’ll never be confused with a penny loafer or a track shoe, but the
well-preserved footwear was made of a single piece of leather, laced
up the front and back, researchers reported Wednesday in PLoS One, a
journal of the Public Library of Science.

Worn and shaped by the wearer’s right foot, the shoe was found in a
cave along with other evidence of human occupation. The shoe had been
stuffed with grass, which dated to the same time as the leather of the
shoe – between 5,637 and 5,387 years ago.

“This is great luck,” enthused archaeologist Ron Pinhasi of University
College Cork in Cork, Ireland, who led the research team.

“We normally only find broken pots, but we have very little
information about the day-to-day activity” of these ancient people.
“What did they eat? What did they do? What did they wear? This is a
chance to see this … it gives us a real glimpse into society,” he
said in a telephone interview.

Previously the oldest leather shoe discovered in Europe or Asia was on
the famous Otzi, the “Iceman” found frozen in the Alps a few years ago
and now preserved in Italy. Otzi has been dated to 5,375 and 5,128
years ago, a few hundred years more recent than the Armenian shoe.

Otzi’s shoes were made of deer and bear leather held together by a
leather strap. The Armenian shoe appears to be made of cowhide,
Pinhasi said.

Older sandals have been found in a cave in Missouri, but those were
made of fiber rather than leather.

The shoe found in what is now Armenia was found in a pit, along with a
broken pot and some wild goat horns.

But Pinhasi doesn’t think it was thrown away. There was discarded
material that had been tossed outside the cave, while this pit was
inside in the living area. And while the shoe had been worn, it wasn’t
worn out.

It’s not clear if the grass that filled the shoe was intended as a
lining or insulation, or to maintain the shape of the shoe when it was
stored, according to the researchers.

The Armenian shoe was small by current standards – European size 37 or
U.S. women’s size 7 – but might have fit a man of that era, according
to Pinhasi.

He described the shoe as a single piece of leather cut to fit the
foot. The back of the shoe was closed by a lace passing through four
sets of eyelets. In the front, 15 pairs of eyelets were used to lace
from toe to top.

There was no reinforcement in the sole, just the one layer of soft
leather. “I don’t know how long it would last in rocky terrain,”
Pinhasi said.

He noted that the shoe is similar to a type of footwear common in the
Aran Islands, west of Ireland, up until the 1950s. The Irish version,
known as “pampooties” reportedly didn’t last long, he said.

“In fact, enormous similarities exist between the manufacturing
technique and style of this (Armenian) shoe and those found across
Europe at later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn
for thousands of years across a large and environmentally diverse
region,” Pinhasi said.

While the Armenian shoe was soft when unearthed, the leather has begun
to harden now that it is exposed to air, Pinhasi said.

Oh, and unlike a lot of very old shoes, it didn’t smell.

Pinhasi said the shoe is currently at the Institute of Archaeology in
Yerevan, but he hopes it will be sent to laboratories in either
Switzerland or Germany where it can be treated for preservation and
then returned to Armenia for display in a museum.

Pinhasi, meanwhile, is heading back to Armenia this week, hoping the
other shoe will drop.

The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, the
Chitjian Foundation, the Gfoeller Foundation, the Steinmetz Family
Foundation, the Boochever Foundation and the Cotsen Institute of
Archaeology at UCLA.

___

On the Net:

PLoS One:

University College Cork:

Institute of Archaeology, Yerevan:

,0,3202415.story

From: A. Papazian

Huffington Post
June 9 2010

Talking Turkey About Turkey

Leon T. Hadar.Journalist and foreign affairs analyst
Posted: June 9, 2010 01:18 PM

The international crisis over the Israeli raid on the on the Gaza
“Peace Flotilla” was not yet over, but the usual suspects were already
sending me emails with horrific pictures of the Armenian Genocide –
and it was a Genocide – by the Turkish army in 1915 as well as other
Turkey-bashing stuff providing details about the Turkish illegal
occupation and colonization (150,000 settlers) of (northern) Cyprus
and the government’s brutal suppression of the Kurdish insurgency.

And then there was the Grand Narrative. Turkey has become the New
Iran, joining forces with Iran and Syria in an anti-American and
anti-Israeli — if not an anti-Semitic — Islamofascist Axis of Evil
that seeks to destroy the Jewish State as part of a long-term strategy
of re-establishing the Ottoman Empire and a Global Caliphate.

Mirror imaging these nightmare scenarios on the other side” “were
predictions about the emergence of Turkey as a Middle Eastern
“hegemon” or superpower that was challenging and counterbalancing the
power of the pro-Israeli and anti-Muslim American Empire and helping
create the foundations of a New Middle East and the Post-American
World.

Take it easy, guys. Chill out! Say “No!” to Broad Brushing.

Indeed, there was a time when the ambitious academic or journalist
would take his or her time before unleashing a new grand narrative
that made sense of the changing global realities. But it seems that
that in our 24/7 media environment any pseudo or real event tends to
encourage bloggers and pundits to come up with “instant narratives”
according to which this surprising electoral outcome or that
unexpected violent encounter is a sign that The Stars Are Aligning,
the Tectonic Plates Are Shifting and that The World As We Know It Is
Coming To An End.

The latest example of this kind of media’s rush into instantaneous
narrating has been the constant attempts to put the Gaza Flotilla
crisis in some strategic and historical context, either on a
micro-level (the Israeli blockade of Gaza; the Israeli military
operation; the Turkish Islamist charity organization) or the macro one
(the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the Turkish-Israeli relationship;
U.S. ties with Israel and Turkey).

The problem is that some of these analyses have been painted with
broad brush strokes, producing on all sides striking narratives —
that happen to be wrong.

Hence some American and Israeli commentators have suggested that under
the leadership of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP)
Turkey has been setting aside the secular and pro-Western orientation
of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and is being
transformed into a radical Islamist state . Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his aides are supposedly pursuing a
Neo-Ottomaniststrategy based on establishing close ties with the Arab
World and de-legitimizing the Jewish State.

The policy implication of such an account is that the U.S. and Israel
have therefore no other choice but to regard Turkey — like Iran — as
an assertive strategic and ideological power posing a direct threat to
Western interests and the survival of Israel, which is quite different
from the other narrative we have been exposed to until recently. That
old narrative suggested that Turkey was led by a democratic Islamist
political party – a Muslim version of Europe’s Christian-Democratic
parties — and that the AKP and Erdogan were actually committed to the
political and economic liberalization of Turkey (according to this
story line the old secular and military elites were the
anti-democrats) as well as to the winning a membership in the European
Union (EU) while continuing to maintain close ties with Washington and
Israel. In fact, not so long ago many of the neoconservative pundits
who are now portraying Turkey as the New Iran were arguing that the
electoral victories of the AKP and its moderate Western oriented
policies at home and abroad demonstrated once again that promoting
democracy and free elections in the Middle East would end-up advancing
American values and interests.

But if anything, the outcome of the process of political and economic
liberalization in Turkey highlighted once again the fallacy behind the
thinking that the American-led export of democracy will help bring the
“good guys” into power. That neoconservative axiom helped drive the
Bush Administration’s Freedom Agenda the Middle East, including the
ousting of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and the electoral victories of the
religious Shiite parties as well as the election of Hamas in
Palestine.

In the case of Turkey, the election of the AKP, like that of its
predecessor, the (now outlawed) Virtue Party, helped bring to power
representatives of the formerly politically marginalized segments of
Turkish society – including members of the rural population of
Anatolia that have migrated to the large urban centers — that tended
to be more traditional in their political-cultural orientation while
supportive not only of free election but also of some of the free
market reforms pursued by the AKP governments that challenged the
statist economic policies of the past and empowered a new generation
of entrepreneurs while accelerating Turkish economic growth.

To apply terms from the context of American politics, political and
economic power in Turkey started shifting to its own variety of
America’s “red states” — less secular and statist and wiht a more
nationalist and populist electorate, a mixed bag of ideological
positions and political agendas that were neither “pro” nor “anti”
Western, but reflected the evolving values of a new empowered Turkish
majority that include eroding the power of the military; modifying the
secular Kemalist policy; and integrating the Kurds into society.

These and other domestic political changes created in turn the
foundations for a more independent foreign policy that was neither
“pro” or “anti” American (or “anti” Israeli) but displayed both the
new sources of Turkish power, symbolized by its membership in the
G-20, as well the constraints operating on it: continuing the drive to
join the EU, Turkey’s largest market (a process that also provided
incentives for domestic reforms); maintaining the membership in the
U.S.-led NATO, including taking part in the mission in Afghanistan (a
clear reflection of the commitment to strong ties with the Americans);
strengthening economic and diplomatic ties with the Arab neighbors (as
well as with Iran and the Caucus) as part of a strategy aimed at
stressing the Turkish regional leadership role while pursuing military
cooperation with Israel.

>From that perspective, Turkish policies were very pragmatic,
recognizing the limits — pressure from the military and the secular
middle class and concerns over national interests — on the ability of
the AKP to advance a more Islamist agenda at home and abroad. In fact,
much of the government’s foreign policy seem to be based less on
Islamist ideology and more on Realpolitik considerations and economic
interests. Ankara refused to permit the U.S to use its territory to
deploy troops into Iraq but has worked closely with the current
government in Baghdad and improved relations with Iran and Syria as
part of a strategy to deny Kurdish guerrillas safe havens in these
countries. Moreover, Turkish effort to exert more influence in the
Middle East was in itself a response to the mess created by American
policy in Iraq, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine and the rest of the
Middle East.

And contrary to spin in Washington that portrayed Turkey (and Brazil,
another close U.S. ally) as trying to sabotage attempts by the U.S.
and its allies to end Iran’s nuclear military program, the accord
reached with Tehran — under which the Iranians agreed to deposit 1200
kg of low grade uranium in Turkey to be exchanged for 120 kg of higher
grade uranium in nuclear fuel rods — was very much in line with
earlier UN proposals and seemed to complement American diplomacy.

Nor was the general direction of the Turkish policy towards Israel a
demonstration of a new anti-Israeli approach. The serious diplomacy on
the part of Erdogan that centered on the idea that Turkey could serve
as a mediator between Syria and Israelmade a lot of strategic sense,
especially at a time when Washington’s power in the region has been
eroding in the aftermath of the Iraq War, and offered long-term
benefits to all those involved in the process, including the Israelis.
At the same time, the 2008 Israeli military operation in Gaza, which
led to the collapse of the Israeli-Syrian talks under Turkish
auspices, ran contrary to the interests of Turkey which was trying to
co-opt the Islamist movement of Hamas and persuade it to moderate its
positions. The television images of Palestinian civilian casualties in
Gaza helped ignite anti-Israeli sentiments on the government to
condemn the Israeli operation that gained more traction following
infantile Israeli responses. In a way, the current tensions over the
Israeli raid on the Gaza “Peace Flotilla” are a continuation of the
disagreements between Ankara and Jerusalem over the policy towards
Hamas.

But the current crisis also demonstrated the need on the part of the
Israelis and the Turks to refrain from turning these policy
disagreements into a wide-ranging “civilizational” conflict. Israel
needs to recognize and support Turkey’s determination to play a more
activist diplomatic role and take advantage of it and refrain from
trying to demonize Turkey as an Islamofascist entity. At the end of
the day, Israel has more at stake than Turkey in repairing the
bilateral relations between Ankara and Jerusalem.

At the same time, Erdogan and the AKP should understand that that
Turkey does not have the capability to serve as an all powerful
regional hegemon, and that any attempt to move in that direction will
ignite anti-Turkey backlash from regional and global players. In any
case, trying to serve as a mediator between the Israelis and the Arabs
could prove to be a difficult and thankless job — if not a mission
impossible — as the Americans and other powers have already
discovered, and that trying to compensate for their diplomatic
weakness by displaying Islamist bravado could backfire against the
Turks and will certainly not accelerate the establishment of a New
Middle East anytime soon. In short, Turkey is not as threatening as
its detractors warn nor as powerful as many Turks and their new fans
believe.

From: A. Papazian

Kurdish Aspect
June 9 2010

Look Who’s Talking: Turkey!

Huffington Post – By Hussain Abdul-HussainAlrai

A country that has been occupying part of a neighbor state for
decades, that often sends its air force to bomb anti-government
militants, that refuses to give civil rights to its biggest minority
and that twists arms of world governments in order to impose its
version of history… well, you guessed it, it is Turkey.

In 1974, Turkey invaded the northern part of Cyprus presumably to
rescue Turkish Cypriots amid growing tensions with their compatriot
Greek Cypriots. Since then, Turkey has maintained its occupation over
Northern Cyprus that proclaimed its independence in 1983. Going
against the will of the United Nations, Turkey was the only one to
recognize Northern Cyprus, while the world stood in support of
Nicosia’s sovereignty over the occupied land. Turkish military
bullying in the Middle East did not stop in 1974 as the Turkish army
often launches punitive air and ground campaigns against Kurdish
rebels in southern Turkey. Turkey’s Kurds have long been deprived of
their political, cultural and economic rights, often forced to
relinquish the teaching of their language in their schools, and never
allowed to create any political groups.

The unlucky Kurds repeatedly revolted against Ankara. Some of them
went as far as demanding autonomy or independence, thus inviting
further brutality from the Turkish majority dominating the government.

The rebellious Kurds formed armed groups and launched their own war of
independence. In retribution, the Turkish army has repeatedly pursued
them in the mountainous southeastern part of the country. Whenever
squeezed, Kurdish militiamen take refuge in the predominantly Kurdish
northern Iraq. In their footsteps, the Turkish army has – several
times – crossed the border into Iraq. When it did not, like a week
ago, it only shelled Kurdish positions on the border.

Until a few years ago, Turkey had been preoccupied with its own
affairs, whether in Cyprus or southeastern Turkey. But recently,
Ankara has become an outspoken player in one of the world’s toughest
and most volatile regions. The Turkish government has taken sides and
entered into alliances with rogue states such as Iran and Syria.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has leveled criticism
against Middle Eastern and world governments, sometimes accusing them
of being unfair when dealing with Iran, at other times blaming this or
that government for its domestic policies.

But when it comes to civil liberties, look who’s talking. True,
Erdogan eased some restrictions on the Kurds as he recently allowed
them to use their language in the broadcast of private satellite
stations or in recording songs. However, until today, the Kurds were
not allowed to give their children Kurdish names, or form political
parties.

It has long been known that a government repressive of Kurdish rights
sits in Ankara. Despite the lifting of a few restrictions on the Kurds
— under pressure from the EU which Turkey aspires to join for
economic benefits — Erdogan and his cabinet pretend to be champions
of human rights around the world.

Bad blood has also long existed between Turkey and Armenia over what
many Armenians believe to be Turkish mass killings of Armenians in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Since an influential community of Armenian stock lives in California,
home state of Congressman and Chairperson of Foreign Relations
Committee Howard Berman, the Armenians lobbied for the committee to
approve a bill that describes the Turkish massacres as genocide.

Erdogan and his cabinet went ballistic. They recalled their Ambassador
to Washington, even though President Barak Obama’s Whitehouse had
remained silent on the issue. After some American cozying up, the
Turks resent their ambassador.

The genocide debacle between Washington and Ankara has a parallel in
history that only a few might remember. When former President George
Bush asked Turkey to open its Angerlik base for American troops
preparing to launch Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, Turkish
parliament convened and voted against the American request. The
Turkish government, a long time ally of the US and a NATO member,
declined Washington’s request on the grounds that it couldn’t have
possibly forced such a decision down the throats of the elected
representatives of the people of Turkey.

But when a Congressional committee voted on the Armenian Genocide, the
Turks punished the US government for a bill that had only passed one
stage of its long journey to become law.

The Turkish arrogance continues.

Erdogan recently canceled a trip to Buenos Aires after the Argentinean
government had moved a bust of Turkey’s founder Kamal Ataturk,
formerly on display. He blamed the Armenian lobby and said that his
move “suited Turkey’s honor.”

Turkey should either practice what it preaches about world justice and
civil rights, or it should stop its trip of arrogance and go back to
minding its own business. With its new behavior, Turkey is not welcome
back into regional and world politics.

From: A. Papazian

Colorado Springs Gazette
June 9 2010

5,500-year-old leather shoe found in Armenia

WASHINGTON (AP) ‘ About 5,500 years ago someone in the mountains of
Armenia put his best foot forward in what is now the oldest leather
shoe ever found.

It’ll never be confused with a penny loafer or a track shoe, but the
well-preserved footwear was made of a single piece of leather, laced
up the front and back, researchers reported Wednesday in PLoS One, a
journal of the Public Library of Science.

Worn and shaped by the wearer’s right foot, the shoe was found in a
cave along with other evidence of human occupation. The shoe had been
stuffed with grass, which dated to the same time as the leather of the
shoe ‘ between 5,637 and 5,387 years ago.

“This is great luck,” enthused archaeologist Ron Pinhasi of University
College Cork in Cork, Ireland, who led the research team.

“We normally only find broken pots, but we have very little
information about the day-to-day activity” of these ancient people.
“What did they eat? What did they do? What did they wear? This is a
chance to see this … it gives us a real glimpse into society,” he
said in a telephone interview.

Previously the oldest leather shoe discovered in Europe or Asia was on
the famous Otzi, the “Iceman” found frozen in the Alps a few years ago
and now preserved in Italy. Otzi has been dated to 5,375 and 5,128
years ago, a few hundred years more recent than the Armenian shoe.

Otzi’s shoes were made of deer and bear leather held together by a
leather strap. The Armenian shoe appears to be made of cowhide,
Pinhasi said.

Older sandals have been found in a cave in Missouri, but those were
made of fiber rather than leather.

The shoe found in what is now Armenia was found in a pit, along with a
broken pot and some wild goat horns.

But Pinhasi doesn’t think it was thrown away. There was discarded
material that had been tossed outside the cave, while this pit was
inside in the living area. And while the shoe had been worn, it wasn’t
worn out.

It’s not clear if the grass that filled the shoe was intended as a
lining or insulation, or to maintain the shape of the shoe when it was
stored, according to the researchers.

The Armenian shoe was small by current standards ‘ European size 37 or
U.S. women’s size 7 ‘ but might have fit a man of that era, according
to Pinhasi.

He described the shoe as a single piece of leather cut to fit the
foot. The back of the shoe was closed by a lace passing through four
sets of eyelets. In the front, 15 pairs of eyelets were used to lace
from toe to top.

There was no reinforcement in the sole, just the one layer of soft
leather. “I don’t know how long it would last in rocky terrain,”
Pinhasi said.

He noted that the shoe is similar to a type of footwear common in the
Aran Islands, west of Ireland, up until the 1950s. The Irish version,
known as “pampooties” reportedly didn’t last long, he said.

“In fact, enormous similarities exist between the manufacturing
technique and style of this (Armenian) shoe and those found across
Europe at later periods, suggesting that this type of shoe was worn
for thousands of years across a large and environmentally diverse
region,” Pinhasi said.

While the Armenian shoe was soft when unearthed, the leather has begun
to harden now that it is exposed to air, Pinhasi said.

Oh, and unlike a lot of very old shoes, it didn’t smell.

Pinhasi said the shoe is currently at the Institute of Archaeology in
Yerevan, but he hopes it will be sent to laboratories in either
Switzerland or Germany where it can be treated for preservation and
then returned to Armenia for display in a museum.

Pinhasi, meanwhile, is heading back to Armenia this week, hoping the
other shoe will drop.

The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, the
Chitjian Foundation, the Gfoeller Foundation, the Steinmetz Family
Foundation, the Boochever Foundation and the Cotsen Institute of
Archaeology at UCLA.

From: A. Papazian