ANDRANIK MARGARYAN WOULD BE 61 TODAY
armradio.am
12.06.2012 14:54
President Serzh Sargsyan accompanied by the top leadership of the
republic visited the Komitas Pantheon today On the occasion of the
birthday of the late Prime Minister Andranik Margaryan to pay tribute
to the memory of the statesman and politician, President’s Press
Office reported.
From: A. Papazian
FM SAYS ARMENIA COMMITTED TO AGREEMENTS REACHED, UNLIKE AZERBAIJAN
PanARMENIAN.Net
June 12, 2012 – 14:02 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Ireland’s Deputy
Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore expressed hope
for progress to be achieved at the upcoming ministerial meeting in
devising a mechanism for investigating incidents at the contact line
between Armenian and Azerbaijani armed forces.
“There must be such a mechanism, and as current OSCE
Chairperson-in-Office I will support its development,” he said.
Mr. Gilmore stressed the need for the conflicting parties to remove
snipers from the line of contact and devise mechanisms to prevent
and investigate border incidents.
Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, in turn, noted that
Armenia stands for development of such a mechanism.
“In contrast to Azerbaijan, Armenian side upholds commitment to the
agreements reached,” Minister Nalbandian said, blaming the Azeri side
for foiling implementation of the agreements reached at Sochi meeting.
As Defence.az website reported citing military sources, numerous
sniper groups have been deployed at contact line and Armenia-Azerbaijan
border.
Increased number of ceasefire violations on Azeri side has been
reported recently. Sources say that up to 25 Azerbaijani soldiers
were killed in Azeri attacks in recent days in Tavush- Kazakh zone
of Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Azerbaijani authorities try hard to concoct reasons behind the deaths
and injuries on its side. In fact, these are saboteurs, killed or
wounded by Armenian armed forces who were trying to hinder Azeri
attacks. Thus, according to Azerbaijani authorities, Azeri soldiers
commit mass suicides, get blown up by mines, and die in accidents.
From: A. Papazian
ARMENIA MOST PEACEFUL COUNTRY IN REGION, GLOBAL PEACE INDEX REVEALS
tert.am
12.06.12
Armenia ranks as the 115th country in the 2012 Global Peace Index
(GPI), showing better results than its neighboring states in the
region.
The index reveals that Armenia has climbed down by 150 points
compared to last year when it ranked the 110th in the list of 153
world countries.
Armenia’s South Caucasus neighbors – Georgia and Azerbaijan – rank
the 141st and 132nd countries, respectively. Turkey is the 130th,
with Iran being the 128th.
GPI has ranked countries, using 23 qualitative and quantitative
indicators from highly respected sources, which gauge three broad
themes: the level of safety and security in society; the extent of
domestic or international conflict; and the degree of militarization.
According to the index, the world has improved in peacefulness for
the first time since 2009. “All regions excluding the Middle East and
North Africa saw an improvement. Sub-Saharan Africa does not occupy
the bottom spot for the first time since the GPI was launched in 2007,”
reads the document.
The ranking records progress in Latin America which, as the authors
say, experienced an overall gain in peacefulness, with 16 of the 23
nations seeing improvements to their GPI scores since 2011.
The most peaceful region is Western Europe for the sixth consecutive
year, with the majority of its countries ranking in the top 20. As
for the Asia Pacific, its overall score is said to have improved by
the largest margin over the 2011-2012 period.
From: A. Papazian
ARMENIA SUPPORTS REMOVAL OF SNIPERS FROM LINE OF CONTACT
news.am
June 12, 2012 | 12:50
YEREVAN.- Armenia repeatedly stated it stands for removal of snipers
from the line of contact, Armenian Foreign Minister said on Tuesday.
During a joint press conference with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Eamon
Gilmore, Edward Nalbandian said Armenia’s position is reflected in the
trilateral statements approved in Sochi in March 2011 and this January.
The Minister stressed that Armenia, unlike Azerbaijan, respects the
achieved arrangements and supports creating mechanisms to investigate
the incidents in frontline.
From: A. Papazian
EX-JUDGE ON CHARGES AGAINST ARMENIA’S EX-FM
tert.am
12.06.12
In an interview with Tert.am, Pargev Ohanian, former judge at the
Kentron-Nork-Marash minor court, said that “everything is possible
in Armenia, both practically and theoretically.”
“With due respect to presumption of innocence, I would like to note
that, if they seek, they will certainly do something,” Ohanian said.
In an interview with the Yerkir Media TV channel, the MP Vartan
Oskanian, who is founder of the Civilitas Foundation, which is involved
in a money-laundering case, stated his intention to exercise his
constitutional right not to appear before investigators.
According to law, an Armenian MP cannot be arrested or charged without
the Armenian parliament’s consent.
From: A. Papazian
ARMENIA TO PARTICIPATE IN MISS WORLD BEAUTY CONTEST
news.am
June 13, 2012 | 00:01
YEREVAN. – Miss Armenia Anna Arakelyan, 20, will participate in Miss
World 2012 beauty contest, Karen Aristakesyan, director of the Miss
Armenia National Agency told Armenian News-NEWS.am. He told that
currently Anna is preparing photo sessions which will be sent to
the contest.
“There are no questions of negotiations as we are participating for
the first time. They will be sent our documents and can get acquainted
with them,” K. Aristakesyan announced.
Miss World Beauty Contest will take place on August 18 in Ordos,
Mongolia.
From: A. Papazian
REPORT: CHAKHALYAN AGAINST GEORGIA
05:45 pm | Today | Social
On June 14, international expert on human rights, Dr. Fernan de
Varen will present his report on “Risks of being an Ethnic Minority:
Human Rights and Chakhalyan against Georgia”, which is devoted to the
legal and political aspects of the arrest and criminal procedure of
Javakhk-Armenian political figure Vahagn Chakhalyan.
The presentation of the report will be followed by a discussion,
which will be moderated by Head of the Center for Regional Studies
Richard Giragossian. Among the participants will be Deputy Director
of the Caucasus Institute Sergey Minasyan and Head of the Center for
Strategic Planning Hrant Melik-Shahnazaryan.
The event will be held at Congress Hotel’s Picasso Hall at 11:00. The
report will be presented in English and Armenian with simultaneous
translation.
From: A. Papazian
VIRTUOUS VICTIMS? IMAGINING ARMENIANS IN THE WEST
Matthias Bjornlund
The Armenian Weekly Magazine
April 2012
During the winter of 1902-03, small groups of Armenian refugees began
arriving in Sweden, survivors of the 1890’s Abdulhamid massacres,1
and according to newspaper reports some even made it all the way to
Norway.2But it was claimed by an alleged authoritative source that
such groups were not, or not necessarily, actual Armenians at all. In
the summer of 1903, a party of “fake Armenians” arrived in Copenhagen,
ostensibly collecting funds for victims of the massacres. As a Danish
popular periodical wrote in a rather sarcastic tone that speaks
volumes of widespread perceptions of the Oriental Other:
Bjornlund 1 287×300 Bjørnlund: Virtuous Victims? Imagining Armenians
in the West
A German handcolored depiction of Armenians from J. A. C. Löhr,
Die Länder und Völker der Erde; oder vollständige Beschreibung
aller funf Erdtheile und deren Bewohner [The Countries and Peoples
of the World; or a complete description of all five continents and
their inhabitants , Vol. II, Leipzig 1818, p. 55. The accompanying
text acknowledges that there are conflicting views on Armenians–some
say they are devious, some that they are honest–but the emphasis is
on Armenians as basically cowardly merchants.
A few days ago, Copenhagen had the honor of receiving a strange
visit. It was said that a group of unfortunate Armenians had arrived
from Riga to collect money for the victims of the cruelties perpetrated
by the wild Kurds, and the noble feelings already began to stir in
the soft Danish hearts. Later the feelings took another direction. It
so happens that the Asiatic party, consisting of six men, one woman,
and four children, had not counted on the fact that at the moment
there lives a man in Copenhagen who could check them thoroughly: The
former Turkish consul general, Ali Nouri, whose name will be familiar
to the readers of this journal as a regular contributor. … Police
Inspector Petersen then summoned the Swedish Turk, and he quickly
informed the police about the true nature of these ‘Armenians.’ It has
become a large and profitable industry among industrious inhabitants
of Asia Minor to journey around Europe begging, falsely claiming to
be refugee Armenians. …
It is no wonder that such swindlers quickly inspire others. They
come home, buy a house, and live off their money–and they are not
unwilling to share this business secret with family and friends for
a fee. At the moment Europe is being flooded with hundreds of these
charlatans, and they have even extended their business to America.3
How Ali Nouri Bey (a.k.a. Swedish convert, Ottoman dissident, and
Young Turk sympathizer Gustaf Noring) managed to determine that the
members of the “Asiatic party” were not Armenians but, as he claimed,
Chaldeans, is unclear. In any event, as a result of instant taxonomy,
they were shipped off to Lubeck, Germany. Whatever their claim to
“true” Armenianness and victimhood, the apparent fact that this and
many similar groups made a living traveling through Europe, reaching
as far as Scandinavia on a wave of sympathy in the wake of the 1890’s
massacres, shows that the “Armenian Question” was a matter of serious
concern way beyond the Ottoman borders.
Who, then, were the Armenians suddenly mentioned so often in
newspapers, petitions, public speeches, academic publications,
even police reports? How should they be classified, what was
their “essence”? This became a hot topic, a battleground between
realpolitik and humanitarianism, between more or less scientific world
views, political ideologies, religious affiliations, and economic
interests. As seen in the example above, human taxonomy is rarely
an innocent occupation: How Ottoman Armenians were classified in the
West–in Europe and North America–could have direct and far-reaching
consequences when linked to discussions of the Armenian Question,
in general, and to issues of intervention, proselytizing, and relief
work, in particular. Did Armenians deserve aid? Were they worthy
of the money and time spent by good Western citizens? The question
of how to define the “true nature” of various Ottoman groups even
became a topic when discussions of whether any given group deserved,
or were capable of managing, a national home when the empire was
carved up in the wake of World War I.4 In this article a small
but representative sample of mainly Scandinavian sources is used
to analyze and categorize–classify, as it were–Western attitudes
towards Armenians in the wake of the 1890’s Abdulhamid massacres in
the Ottoman Empire in an attempt to address these questions.
Intellectual Armenophobia
In general, knowledge about Armenians (and all other Ottoman groups)
before the Abdulhamid massacres was marked by racism, religious
prejudice, or superficial research. It has been said that “in its
narratives of cross-cultural contact, the Western form of the travel
book continually sees otherness as inferiority.”5 While this is
not necessarily true, the information about Armenians that reached
Western countries was in fact mainly provided by popular travelogues
or ethnographic accounts that often portrayed Armenians as greedy,
devious, and cowardly–in short, like Jews were supposed to be.6 One
early example will suffice to illustrate this point: In a detailed
and otherwise rather nuanced account of encounters with Armenians,
Greeks, Turks, and Jews in Constantinople in 1831, Danish theologian
J. F. Fenger could only compare Armenians to Jews, “God’s chosen people
wandering the earth, worshipping material goods and a dead religion.”7
LB nr 92 01 08 194×300 Bjørnlund: Virtuous Victims? Imagining
Armenians in the West
A postcard from the archives of the Danish Women Missionary Workers,
c. 1910, one of a series sold to raise money for missionary work among
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The caption reads: ‘Young Armenian
women in national costumes’ These Armenian women, probably from the
Kharpert region where the Danish organization was based, would have
looked exotic in the West at the time, but they do not look weak or
passive as ‘Oriental’ women often do in Western imagery. It is rather
an image of strong, assertive women, an image which women missionaries
would not have picked at random to put on a postcard. Virtuous victims,
perhaps, living proof that missionary work mattered?
But it took a human catastrophe, the Abdulhamid massacres, to truly
put a distant, “exotic” people like the Ottoman Armenians on the
map in the Western world. These events happened to more or less
coincide with the rise of certain vital aspects of the modern
age: scientific classification; nationalism; racial thinking;
public opinion; improved means of transportation and communication
increasing the speed, quality, and quantity of travel and news reports;
professionalized grassroots movements; debates on human rights and
humanitarian intervention, etc. Thus, the nature and timing of the
massacres made the Armenian Question an issue among populations, not
just elites. Nor was it an issue only for major countries like Great
Britain, France, or Germany with significant political and economical
interests in the Near East. Scandinavian and other “peripheral”
sources suggest that Armenophobia and Armenophilia in fact became
truly widespread transnational cultural phenomena during and after the
1890’s massacres. Indeed, this quote by famed Norwegian author Knut
Hamsun (later to become a Nobel laureate in literature and a staunch
supporter of the Nazi regime in Germany) is quite representative of a
certain type of Western reaction to the resurfacing Armenian Question:
Armenians are the trade Jews of the East. They penetrate everywhere,
from the Balkans to China, in every city you go to the Armenians are
up to their old tricks. While the papers of the West are overflowing
with tears over the misfortune of this people it is not rare to
hear in the East that they deserve their fate, they are remarkably
unanimously represented as a people of scoundrels. In Turkey proper
they push the country’s own children out of one position after the
other and take their places themselves. Trade falls into their hands,
pawn-broking and money. And the extortion.8
With apparent ease intellectuals such as Hamsun extended
their “classic” (ethno-religious) and/or “modern” (racialized)
anti-Semitism to include Armenians and other “similar peoples,” like
Greeks. Especially those with no nation state–Jews and Armenians–were
viewed with contempt. In an age of nationalism, persons without a
national home were cosmopolitan, city people, rootless; they were
“modern,” removed from the soil in body and soul and thus unclean,
suspicious, and possibly or even inherently subversive. Often, Jews
were the prism, their alleged traits were the traits of the negative
other par excellence. Any person or people, Semitic or not, deemed
to possess some or all of these traits were considered unreliable
at best. At worst they were considered deserving of persecution
or destruction.
Edward Said wrote that Islamophobia is a “secret sharer”
of anti-Semitism.9 Armenophobia was certainly also a “sharer”
of anti-Semitism, and it was hardly a secret: Anti-Semitism and
Armenophobia went hand in hand in the media and popular culture around
the turn of the century and for decades to come, often contrasted
with other, “nobler” peoples.10 For every villain there is a hero in
the classification game.
Examples of Western intellectual Armenophobia are legion and can be
found in major newspapers, periodicals, authoritative encyclopedias,
and publications from large, respected publishing houses. In 1900,
a major, authoritative Danish ethnographical volume briefly defined
Armenians as “an intelligent race,” but–paraphrasing the classic
proverb, “One Greek cons two Jews, one Armenian cons two Greeks”
11–more greedy, cunning, and ruthless than Greeks and Jews,
“races” that, it is implied, were already plenty greedy, cunning,
and ruthless.12 Danish reporter Frantz von Jessen wrote during the
1903 uprising in Ottoman Macedonia that “all connoisseurs praise the
Turks at the expense of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews.”13 Yet another
variation of the stereotype can be found in a book by Swedish officer
and war correspondent Spada (Johan Christian Janzon), Incursions
into the Orient. Here, Spada also contrasts in a typical fashion
what is described as the loud and cunning behavior of Greek, Jewish,
and Armenian merchants at a Constantinople bazaar with the dignified,
calm, and stoic composure of the Turkish merchants.14
Such views spread into educational materials, including a geography
textbook endorsed by the Danish Ministry of Culture,15 and they were
indeed quite common in the press as well from early on. In 1895,
in a leading Danish journal, it was stated that though there was no
excuse for the ongoing Abdulhamid massacres, and though the Western
Powers and Russia could reasonably demand that the empire avoided such
incidents in the future, it was equally reasonable and understandable
that “strict measures” were applied to suppress the Armenians:
A rebellious Armenian in the Ottoman Empire is quite the same as a
rebellious Hindu in British India; the Sultan cannot tolerate that
the orders of his officials are being challenged by such an ignorant
and restive people as the Armenians who are subjects in his Empire,
and when the Mohammedans are defending themselves in their own country
they are only exercising their right.16
This was a defense of empire and imperialism, wherever and
with few restrictions; a defense of Turks/Muslims as perhaps
brutal masters, but rightful masters nonetheless, pitted against
Armenians/Christians. They, in turn, were lowly, rebellious, cunning,
intelligent and/or primitive subjects (logical consistency is rarely
a hallmark of racist beliefs), a miserable people who brought their
misery upon themselves through protests or provocations; they were
alien usurpers with no rightful claim to influence or equality,
let alone power or land.
Armenophobia could also be an expression of a “scientific” racist
negative stereotype influenced by a certain branch of Marxist
thinking–the widespread variant of the comprador or “middleman” thesis
that brands groups like Jews, Greeks, and Armenians as parasitic,
bourgeois agents of international capitalism and imperialism,
preventing a certain “progressive” economic development in, for
example, the Ottoman Empire.17 For sure, very many merchants, etc.,
in the Ottoman Empire were Armenians, Jews, and Greeks, but this
fact alone hardly explains the outright hatred directed at these
groups. On April 30, 1909, on the front page of the official organ for
the Danish Social Democratic Party, Social-Demokraten, a background
article on Turkey, the Motley Empire, was printed following the Adana
massacres. The reality of the massacres was readily acknowledged,
but rather than seeing Armenians and other Ottoman Christians
as “virtuous victims,” they were once again designated as cold,
calculating, dishonest business-minded people that belonged to an
economic class exploiting the “honest” and “easygoing” Turks.
There were variations of Armenophobia based on the primacy of the
environment, not biology, in determining human behavior. According to
such explanatory models, Armenians were not born, say, bloodsuckers
or “vagabond, ransacking, plundering invaders” as Mustafa Kemal
(Ataturk) characterized them in 1920.18 (They were in fact usually
not associated with such martial traits in the West until during
and after World War I, when actual or invented armed resistance and
“cultural machismo” became assets in the competition between would-be
nation states.) Armenians had rather developed their alleged negative
traits after centuries of oppression by the Turkish invaders,
but were now exploiting their proud but indolent masters.19 As
a former Serbian ambassador to the Ottoman Empire put it, “It is
said that in cunning and astuteness the Jews are innocent babes when
compared with the Armenians. Personally, I do not believe that that
has anything to do with the race, and probably it is the result of
the peculiar circumstances in which they live. Give them liberty,
give them the responsibility of a self-governing nation, give them
possibilities of higher culture, and the Armenians, in a couple of
generations, would prove to be a noble and generous, as well as a
highly intelligent race.”20 Finally, some claimed that while the
Armenians encountered in the ports and bazaars of Constantinople and
Smyrna (Izmir) were notorious cheats and liars, Armenian peasants
were honest and laborious, uncorrupted by city life.21
U.S. historian and publisher William M. Sloane neatly summed up
some important basic assumptions shared by all the above Orientalist
persuasions in 1914:
It is no exaggeration to say that the passing generation had in its
youth little conception but that the homogeneity of nationality
with which they were familiar at home was to be found within the
territories represented by each of these dividing lines. If it was
England for the English and France for the French and so on, why not
Turkey for the Turks? Starting from this deep-seated conviction, a
few of the better educated and more intelligent read such delightful
books of travel in Turkey and the Orient as Byron and Kinglake had
rendered attractive and fashionable. Even from the perusal of them,
there survived a general impression that within the Ottoman Empire
there were ruling Turks who were Mohammedans and gentlemen; that
the aristocracy was fairly refined and likewise Mohammedan; and that
there was otherwise a huge plebeian mob separated in refinement and
culture from the rest by an impassable chasm.22
The beginnings of Armenophilia
While Armenophobia was arguably widespread among intellectuals,
it was hardly the “natural” unchallenged position in the West.
Pro-Armenian sentiments appear, in fact, to have been more common,
perhaps because support for the persecuted Armenians was not “negative”
or speculative like Armenophobia. It was a tangible “good cause” with
larger potential for mobilization, as many found it easy to sympathize
or even identify with the victim group, and it had broad appeal, as it
commonly transgressed otherwise rigid boundaries of religion, politics,
class, and gender. Whether based on notions of Christian solidarity,
human rights, or plain outrage, condemnation of the massacres was an
issue for feminists, conservatives, liberals, and school children,
Christians, Jews, pacifists, atheists, and military men, evolving into
a virtual counter-discourse to Armenophobia. Detailed information
on the massacres quickly became available and helped create this
situation, as in 1895 when a popular Norwegian journal with readers
and contributors from Denmark as well as Norway published a serialized
treatment of the massacres, their background, the Armenian Question
in general, and Europe’s responsibility to protect the Ottoman
Armenians.23
“Europe” felt otherwise, but despite political inaction, the Ottoman
Armenians were not quickly forgotten. Papers and public figures raised
awareness of the atrocities, thereby laying part of the foundation
for the substantial missionary and relief work that lasted through
the Armenian Genocide and beyond. Missionaries and relief workers
were sent to the Ottoman Empire, thousands of “ordinary citizens” in
Scandinavia alone donated money for the cause or sponsored Armenian
orphans, while articles, pamphlets, and books on the subject kept
being published, including in Scandinavia: Swiss theologian Georges
Godet’s Les souffrances de l’Arménie was translated for a Danish and
Norwegian audience in 1897, with the proceeds of the sale going to
“the miserable Armenians,” and Edouard (Edward) Bernstein’s speech on
the sufferings of the Armenians was published in several countries.24
In 1904, Johannes V. Jensen, a Danish author who received the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1944, had an encounter with an Armenian massacre
survivor as one of the central scenes in his popular novel Madame
D’Ora, which was published simultaneously in Denmark and Norway.25
The Suffering Armenian had become a literary figure.
Partly as a reaction to Armenophobe stereotypes, pro-Armenians began
at the turn of the century to introduce what became a recurring
theme of depicting Armenians as a persecuted people that not only
deserved sympathy, but respect for their virtues and accomplishments,
whether acquired or “natural.” In missionary circles there was much
Armenophobia, especially early on, but it was often stated outright
that, by sticking to their faith through centuries of oppression and
persecution, culminating with the genocide, Armenians had become
virtuous by redeeming themselves and their “petrified” Apostolic
Christianity. They had become the “martyred people,” a people to
be admired and respected as “keepers of the faith,” even if they
remained alien, “Oriental,” in the eyes of the Western beholder. Danish
relief worker Karen Jeppe, on the other hand, believed Armenians were
“naturally virtuous,” and she consistently underlined in public what
she believed to be either Western or generally positive qualities
of Armenians–Christianity, work ethic, honesty, moral conduct,
willingness to sacrifice.26
In 1903, a Danish periodical published Armenian poems introduced
and translated by writer and feminist activist Inga Collin (from
1904 Inga Nalbandian, after her marriage to an Armenian scholar),
who later became an important figure in the international Armenophile
movement as well as the International Woman Suffrage Alliance well
into the 1920’s. In her introduction, she stated that “awareness of
the limitless sufferings of the Armenian people has eventually been
thoroughly raised, it has in a manner of speaking become part of
today’s culture; but awareness of the great spiritual value of this
mistreated people is completely lacking in this country.”27 There
was an implicit, sometimes explicit, message from Collin, Jeppe,
and others to domestic and international audiences where many were
exposed to anti-Armenian articles, etc., and where many (but far
from all) believed that freedom from foreign rule or oppression was a
Western or white prerogative anyway. The message was that Armenians as
virtuous victims had the same rights to peace, prosperity, security,
self-rule, or independence as other “civilized peoples.”
In the end, the Ottoman Armenians were destroyed by the Young Turk
dictatorship, partly to avoid giving Armenians exactly such rights,
while the survivors were persecuted by the Kemalists and abandoned
by Western governments. And in that sense Armenophobia, realpolitik,
or just plain indifference prevailed over pro-Armenian sentiments.
Furthermore, as the Armenian Question ceased being a media issue
in the 1920’s, most intellectuals and ordinary citizens found new
worthy causes to fight for or donate money to. But while other
causes célèbres came and went, the most dedicated of the Western
missionaries, relief workers, and activists carried on their work
among the remnants of the Ottoman Armenians in exile–some, like
Danish missionary nurse Maria Jacobsen, almost until the Armenian
Question resurfaced once more in the 1960’s.
Endnotes
1. Tomas Hammar, Sverige åt svenskarna. Invandringspolitik,
utlänningskontrol och asylrätt 1900-1932, Stockholm: Caslon Press
1964, p. 70.
2. Nordlands Avis, June 30, 1904; Ranens Tidende, July 12, 1911.
3. Hver 8. Dag, No. 41, 1902-1903, July 12, 1903, pp. 643-644.
4. See, e.g., G. W. Prothero, ed., Armenia and Kurdistan, no. 62 in the
series Handbooks Prepared under the Direction of the Historical Section
of the Foreign Office, London: H.M. Stationery Office 1920, p. 4.
5. Howard J. Booth, “Making the Case for Cross-Cultural Exchange:
Robert Byron’s The Road to Oxiana,” in Charles Burdett and Derek
Duncan, eds., Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the
1930s, Berghahn Books 2002, p. 163.
6. See, e.g., Alexander von Humboldt, A. v. Humboldts Reiser i
det Europæiske og Asiatiske Rusland, transl. by Hans Sødring,
Copenhagen: F. H. Eibes Forlag 1856, p. 231; Pierre Loti, Tyrkiske
Kvinder: Nutidsroman fra de tyrkiske Haremmer, transl. By Elisabeth
Gad, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1908, p. 15. For an early, relatively
positive appraisal of Ottoman Armenians, see P. Blom, Fra Ã~Xsterland,
Christiania: Alb. Cammermeyer 1875, pp. 71ff.
7. J. F. Fenger, “Erindringer fra et Ophold i Constantinopel i Aaret
1831,” part II, Nordisk Kirke-Tidende, vol. 4, no. 37, Sept. 11,
1836, pp. 576-591.
8. Knut Hamsun, “Under Halvmaanen,” in Stridende Liv: Skildringer
fra Vesten og Ã~Xsten, Gyldendal: Copenhagen and Kristiania [Oslo]
1905, pp. 204-206.
9. Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books 1978, pp. 27-28.
10. See, e.g., J. E. Rosberg, Bland alla slags Nationer under Himmelen
den Blå, Helsingfors: Söderström & Co. 1923, p. 197; Dr.
L. Sofer, “Armenier und Juden,” Zeitschrift fur Demographie und
Statistik der Juden, no. 5, 1905, p. 65.
11. Stephen H. Astourian, “Modern Turkish Identity and the
Armenian Genocide: From Prejudice to Racist Nationalism,” in Richard
G. Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian
Genocide, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press 1998, p.
30.
12. Kristian Bahnson, Etnografien fremstillet i dens Hovedtræk, vol.
II, Copenhagen: Det Nordiske Forlag 1900, pp. 357-358.
13. Frantz von Jessen, Mennesker Jeg Mødte, Gyldendal 1909, p. 84.
14. Spada, Ströftåg i Orienten, Stockholm: Oscar L. Lamms Förlag
1881, pp. 212-213. See also Vahagn Avedian, The Armenian Genocide
1915. From a Neutral Small State’s Perspective: Sweden, unpublished
MA Thesis, Uppsala University 2008, p. 29.
15. Johannes Holst, Geografi med Billeder, 17. ed., 296,000-320,000
copies, Copenhagen 1914, p. 92.
16. Illustreret Tidende, no. 3, Oct 20, 1895, p. 34.
17. See Hilmar Kaiser, Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories:
The Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians,
Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute 1997; Margaret Lavinia Anderson,
“‘Down in Turkey, Far Away’: Human Rights, the Armenian Massacres,
and Orientalism in Wilhelmine Germany,” The Journal of Modern History,
vol. 79, March 2007, pp. 80-111; Mark Levene, “Port Jewry of Salonika:
Between Neo-colonialism and Nation-state,” in David Cesarani, ed., Port
Jews: Jewish Communities in Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres,
1550-1950, London and Portland, OR.: Frank Cass 2002, pp. 135-36;
Ingrid Leyer Seeman, “A Turkish Proverb and Its Tradition,” Haigazian
Armenological Review, vol. 28, 2008, pp. 391-405.
17. Fatma Ulgen, “Reading Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on the Armenian
genocide of 1915,” Patterns of Prejudice, vol. 44, no. 4, 2010, p. 380.
18. Fra alle Lande, no. 2, 1876, pp. 47-49.
19. Chedo Mijatovich [Ä~Ledomilj MijatoviÄ~G], “The Problem of the
Near East. I. Sultan Abdul-Hamid. A Character Sketch,” The Forthnightly
Review, no. CCCCLXXVIII, New Series, Oct. 1, 1906, p.
577.
20. Vatche Ghazarian, ed., Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: An
Anthology of Transformation, 13th-19th Centuries, Waltham, MA:
Mayreni Publishing, p. xxi; J. E. Rosberg: Jordens Länder och Folk:
Geografisk Handbok, vol. II, Stockholm: Bokförlaget Natur och Kultur
1926, p. 165.
21. William M. Sloane, The Balkans: A Laboratory of History, New York:
Eaton and Mains 1914, p. 23.
22. Mac Coll Malcom, “Til belysning af det armeniske spørgsmaal,”
in Gerhard Gran, publ., Samtiden. Populært tidsskrift for litteratur
og samfundsspørgsmaal, vol. 6, Bergen: John Griegs Forlag 1895,
pp. 318-336, 384-395.
23. E. Bernstein, Det Armeniske Folks Lidelser, Tale holdt i Berlin
d. 28 Juni 1902, Copenhagen: Jul. Gjellerups Boghandel 1902. German
version: Die Leiden des armenischen Volkes und die Pflichten Europas,
Berlin 1902. On Bernstein, see also Yair Auron, The Banality of
Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide, Transaction Publishers
2000, pp. 110-111.
24. Johannes V. Jensen, Madame D’Ora, Copenhagen and Kristiania
[Oslo]: Gyldendal 1904, pp. 28-29.
25. Matthias Bjørnlund, “Karen Jeppe, Aage Meyer Benedictsen and
the Ottoman Armenians: National Survival in Imperial and Colonial
Settings,” Haigazian Armenological Review, vol. 28, 2008, pp.
9-44.
26. Dansk Tidsskrift, 1903, p. 764. Italics in original.
From: A. Papazian
ARMENIA TO FACE FOREIGN CHALLENGES AND POLITICAL TREMOR – OPPOSITION MP
news.am
June 11, 2012 | 19:24
YEREVAN. – Armenia is to face foreign challenges and domestic-political
tremor, opposition Armenian National Congress (ANC) parliament group
head Levon Zurabyan said.
“The recent military attacks by the Azerbaijani side on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border claimed human losses and jeopardized
life of people living along the border. It is obvious that the
military diversion is a special political message to Armenia and world
community about Azerbaijani readiness to settle the conflict by force,”
Zurabyan’s statement reads.
In addition, the statement stresses that “despite state-organized
wide-range election frauds, distribution of bribe and threatening
voters in Armenia, ANC has 7 MPs in the Parliament.”
“Resignation of the incumbent President Serzh Sargsyan, anti-monopoly
legislature and development of competitive economy, disclosure of
corruption deals by the authorities, return of deposits, granting
amnesty to agricultural credits and securing human rights, democratic
freedoms and social justice, these are issue the ANC will further
deal with in the Parliament. Besides, the opposition bloc invites all
the citizens to the Liberty Square on June 26 for a national rally,”
Zurabyan’s statement reads.
From: A. Papazian
IT IS TIME THAT AZERBAIJAN CEASE ITS OCCUPATION
Story from Lragir.am News:
Published: 17:16:58 – 11/06/2012
Various ways have been proposed to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict over the years. Lately, on the 5th of June, 2012,
a discussion was held at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington
with the participation of four experts entitled, “Nagorno-Karabagh:
Will the Frozen Conflict Turn Hot?”. It is worth noting, by the way,
the coincidence of the event’s date and content with the attacks
carried out by Azerbaijan on the Republic of Armenia on the night of
the 4th-5th of June. However, let us turn to the actual matter at hand.
Unfortunately, I was not present at that discussion and am not familiar
with its details. Regardless, one point in particular among the issues
raised drew my attention, and I would like to turn to it.
Wayne Merry, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council,
Washington, spoke of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through
forceful arbitration. According to news sources, he said, “Mediators
don’t negotiate: both sides – Azerbaijan and Armenia don’t let
their job work. Now, in this case, it’s time to move from mediation
to forceful arbitration”.[1]
This idea differs in essence from other ones that have been expressed
with regards to resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict until now.
Whereas the basic principle till today was that the parties to the
conflict must themselves arrive at a mutually-acceptable conclusion,
and the mediator states – in this case, the Minks Group and its three
co-chairs – would assist in that process and serve as the guarantors
of the implementation of any agreement, now for the first time the
idea has been expressed of a resolution without the agreement of the
parties, and perhaps even one that could go against their will.
Considering the fact that American foreign policy is customarily
developed first at the level of experts who express the ideas and
get them into circulation, after which, given some circumstances,
they get carried out as real policy, this idea is worth analysing
in some detail, even more so given that the organisation Wayne Merry
represents, the American Foreign Policy Council, has great influence
on new approaches being developed in US policy. Wayne Merry himself
is a seasoned diplomat, with a decades-long career spanning the
State Department and the Department of Defense. It is important to
emphasise that any enforcement – and, in this case, that applies to the
implementation of a forceful arbitration in a war zone – will require
the presence of a large number of “peacekeepers”. It is also clear
that many states would have interest in placing a large number of
“peacekeepers” in Nagorno-Karabakh, that is, on the northern border
of Iran.
Now let us take a look at just how new this innovative-sounding
idea by Wayne Merry is. When it comes down to it, this idea is not
new at all. In principle, the arbitration as a resolution to this
conflict was first adopted by the Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920),
and then by the League of Nations that arose from it and followed it
(1920-1946), and, naturally, it was passed on to the legal successor
of the latter, the United Nations.
Diplomats, politicians and other public figures, and experts often
refer to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue as a “frozen conflict”. This
is an absolutely accurate characterisation, but the main mistake is
that many of them measure the “freezing” from the 1990s. That is not
the case at all in reality. The conflict arose from that time when,
in 1918, the Azerbaijani Republic, such an entity being established
for the first time in history, claimed the entirety of the Baku and
Elizavetpol administrative units of the former Russian Empire without
any legal or other basis and without considering the demographics of
either of those territories. Of course, this approach was unacceptable
for the Great Powers at the Paris Peace Conference – the United States,
the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan, as the creation of new
states and their frontiers were not to be based on the administrative
divisions of former states, but on the principle of self-determination
of peoples as brought forth by US President Woodrow Wilson.
And so, when during the first London conference of the Paris Peace
Conference (12 February to 10 April, 1920), the issue of the borders
of the Republic of Armenia was once again taken up in detail on the
16th of February,[2] it was decided to create a commission “on the
boundaries of a new independent State of Armenia” comprised of one
member each of the Great Powers.[3] Accordingly, the commission was
established on the 21st of February, 1920, with representatives of
the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan,[4] which prepared the
“Report and Proposals of the Commission for the Delimitation of the
Boundaries of Armenia”[5] dated the 24th of February, 1920, put on
the agenda for discussion on the 27th of February.[6]
The president of that session, the Foreign Secretary of the British
Empire, Lord Curzon, in speaking of the territorial issues between
the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, said that, “the regions of
Karabagh, Zangezur and Nakhitchevan were in dispute. The population
there was chiefly Armenian, except for a part which was almost
wholly Tartar”.[7] I find it necessary to stress that this part
does not refer to Nagorno-Karabakh (Mountainous Karabakh), nor even
to that territory created out of a part of it later, known as the
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, but to Karabakh itself, which
includes the Karabakh Plains.
This document that expressed the joint view of Britain, France,
Italy, and Japan on the borders in the southern Caucasus, called for
a period of waiting so that the parties would themselves come to an
agreement, only arbitrating on the bondaries in case of a failure of
the parties to do so. “As regards the boundary between the State of
Armenia and Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Commission considers that,
it is advisable for the present to await the results of the agreement,
provided for in the treaties existing between the three Republics,
in regard to the delimitation of their respective frontiers by the
States themselves. In the event of these Republics not arriving at an
agreement respecting their frontiers, resort must be had to arbitration
by the League of Nations, which would appoint an interallied Commission
to settle on the spot the frontiers referred to above, taking into
account, in principle, ethnographical data.”
As is clear from the above, the principle of resolving by
arbitration the issue of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, as well as the
Armenia-Georgia on, was proposed and adopted as early as the 24th of
February, 1920, by this joint document of the Great Powers. Moreover
and most importantly, the principle of delimitation was made clear:
“taking into account, in principle, ethnographical data”.
Accordingly, then, the report had a map annexed to it.[8] According to
that document, taking the demographic make-up of the South Caucasus of
1920 into account, not only was Nagorno-Karabakh (Mountainous Karabakh)
considered part of the Republic of Armenia, but so was also a large
part of the Karabakh Plains.
It is also of great importance that this document was included as well
in the Full Report of the Arbitral Award of US President Woodrow Wilson
of the 22nd of November, 1920, as document No. 2 in Annex I, indicating
that the United States accepted the arbitration, the arbitral nature
and legality of this document. Those clauses were also included in the
Treaty of Sèvres (of the 10th of August, 1920), as Article 92: “The
frontiers between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Georgia respectively will
be determined by direct agreement between the states concerned. In the
either case the States concerned have failed to determine the frontier
by agreement at the date of the decision referred to in Article 89,
the frontier line in question will be determined by the Principal
Allied Powers, who will also provide for its being traced on the spot”.
In sum, one can draw the following conclusion. The proposal by Wayne
Merry to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by arbitration is
completely acceptable and realistic, as it not only expresses the
decision already codified by Britain, France, Italy, and Japan,
but also, which is more important, it is based on as democratic
a principle as “ethnographical data”. Naturally, a basis for the
arbitration can only be found on the ethnographic data of 1920,
because whatever happened since 1920 – the forcible occupation of the
independent republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia by the armed forces
of a foreign state, the 11th Red Army, followed by their annexation
to Soviet Russia in its new veneer of the Soviet Union – was in utter
violation of international law, and, as goes the maxim in international
law, exinjuria jus non oritur – law does not arise from injustice.
Consequently, I believe that the international community and, first
and foremost, the United States must follow up on the proposal by
the American expert Wayne Merry and implement the decision of the
international document that already exists based on the principle of
arbitration; that is, they must compel the Republic of Azerbaijan to
withdraw its forces from the territory that belongs to the Republic of
Armenia – the Karabakh Plains and Nakhichevan (by my rough estimation,
14 thousand square kilometres and 5.4 square kilometres respectively).
As long as the Republic of Azerbaijan maintains its occupation of not
just 19.4 thousand square kilometres of territory of the Republic of
Armenia, but also continues to demonstrate claims towards territory
of the Republic of Armenia currently liberated from Azerbaijani
occupation, there will not be stability in the region.
Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, as well as the United States
of America, must not spare any efforts in implementing their very
decision as soon as possible.
Ara Papian
Head of the Modus Vivendi Centre
8 June 2012
[1]
7C
[2] Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939, (ed. by R. Butler
and J. Bury) First Series, v. VII, London, 1958, pp. 81-86. Document
# 10: Consideration of the future boundaries of Armenia: decision to
appoint an Allied commission to report thereupon, Feb. 16, 1920.
[hereafter, DBFP]
[3] Ibid, p. 86.
[4] Ibid, Document #20: Decisions of parts III and IV of the draft
synopsis of the Turkish treaty (political clauses), p. 178.
[5] The entire document is available in Arbitral Award of the President
of the United States of America Woodrow Wilson: Full Report of the
Committee upon the Arbitration of the Boundary between Turkey and
Armenia, Washington, November 22, 1920, (prepared by Ara Papian).
Yerevan, 2011, pp. 98-112.
[6] DBFP, Document # 34, p. 280.
[7] Ibid, p. 281.
[8] The map is kept in the National Archives and Records Administration
and is published in Arbitral Award of the President of the United
States of America Woodrow Wilson: Full Report of the Committee upon
the Arbitration of the Boundary between Turkey and Armenia, Washington,
November 22, 1920, (prepared by Ara Papian).
From: A. Papazian