A policeman in a red beret hit a woman during Friday protest action near Victory Bridge in Yerevan.
The procession led by Ishkhan Saghatelyan, deputy speaker of the opposition parliament, reached the Victory Bridge.
They decided to block this section of the road, but police officers in red berets appeared and used brute force to free the roadway, apprehending several citizens.
Surp Giragos, the largest Armenian Church in the Middle East, Diyarbakır, Turkey, May 6, 2015. (DHA Photo)
After seven years, the bell will ring again at Surp Giragos, the largest Armenian Church in the Middle East, in Turkey’s Diyarbakır. With restoration works now complete, the church will reopen its doors to worshippers in May.
The restoration of the Armenian Surp Giragos Church in the Sur district of Diyarbakır has been completed. The first service will be held at the church on May 8 with the participation of the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey Sahak Mashalyan. The church’s foundation also submitted a request to the government to appoint a permanent clergyman to the church.
The interior and exterior restoration of the church, right behind the four minarets where lawyer and former Diyarbakır Bar Association Chairperson Tahir Elçi was killed, has been restored to its original state.
The 600-year-old church was abandoned to its fate in the early 1990s after villages in the southeast were evacuated due to terrorist activity. An intense migration flow started to the cities, and in parallel, many non-Muslims immigrated to European countries.
Anton Zor, who ran an antique shop in Sur, did not abandon the church and claimed to “have a memory of every stone.” Zor guarded the church until the end of his life, living in two chambers whose columns were badly damaged, and walls and ceiling had collapsed. When he died in the Surp Pırgiç Hospital in Istanbul, the church was left completely derelict.
In 2008, the decision was made to restore the church, which was by then riddled with holes made by thieves hunting for gold.
The church’s restoration was launched through a project carried out by the Armenian Foundation and the Metropolitan Municipality. It was restored over three years and opened its doors to the Armenian community from all over the world in 2011.
The original of the 100-kilogram (220-pound) onion-head bell in its collapsed tower was specially made in Moscow and brought to Diyarbakır. After 35 years of deep silence, the sound of bells rang through the streets every Sunday. However, the chiming stopped again after four years.
Surp Giragos Church was heavily damaged again in 2015 due to terrorist attacks. Some 24 security guards were killed in the neighborhood where the church is located. The church was again left in ruins over the course of three months.
Terrorists positioned in the church attacked security forces with rockets and bombs. They created escape tunnels in the church, where the wounded terrorists were treated and the walls were riddled with holes from heavy weapons. After peace was restored, a tender was made for the church’s restoration by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization.
Archbishop Aram Ateşyan, former deputy patriarch of the Armenians of Turkey, who visited the church right after the incidents, said: “This is the Christian Quarter. Churches and mosques, which were God’s houses of prayer, were destroyed. We cannot call those who do this human. I saw that they broke it all over with sledgehammers. Those hand-carved features and the places we call Horan were shattered,” he said.
Surp Giragos Armenian Church, which was the headquarters of the German armies during World War I and with a closed area of 3,000 square meters, was also used as a cotton warehouse of Sümerbank for a while.
ArmInfo.In recent days, the pro-government media, telegram channels and some members of the ruling party, citing the database of the Stockholm Institute (SIPRI), have been spreading the thesis that allegedly more weapons were bought during the four years of the current government, than during the 10 years of the rule of the second and third presidents.
In the message received by ArmInfo from the Luys Foundation, was the analysis of the data published on the SIPRI portal carried out.
“It should be noted that the ‘Trend Indicator Value’ (TIV) of arms imports and exports is represented by a unit developed according to the SIPRI methodology, which reflects not the price of weapons, but their value. Therefore, it cannot be unequivocally stated that in terms of price it coincides with the dollar value of weapons. Even if we assume that these units correspond to the dollar value of weapons, a very interesting picture will emerge. According to SIPRI, in 2009-2018 Armenia imported $247 million worth of weapons, of which only $110 million was in 2016. It turns out that Armenia in 2011-2015 imported weapons for only $21 million, which is ridiculous, given that according to the same SIPRI, in 2018, compared to 2007, Armenia’s defense spending increased by about 83%, from $280 million to $513 million.
Based on SIPRI data, it turns out that before the 44-day war, in 2018-2020, out of the $248 million spent, 141-211 million or 57-85% turned out to be ineffective (120-190 million were allocated for to known “SU” systems, 21 million for “OSA-AK” systems). In general, out of 280 million dollars spent in 2018-2021, 120-190 million dollars or 43-68% were spent on “Su” systems.
It is also clear that the bulk of the $248 million deliveries in 2019 are those provided under the $200+$100 million arms loan signed with Russia in 2015-2017, part of which was simply delivered in 2019.
In addition to credit funds, arms imports continued at the expense of defense spending. As a result, it turns out that, in fact, the RA Armed Forces began to acquire an unprecedented amount of weapons in 2015-2017 within the framework of a loan signed with Russia and by increasing defense spending.
According to SIPRI, in 1991-2021, Armenia imported only $948 million worth of weapons, while Azerbaijani President Aliyev says in almost every speech that they destroyed $4-5 billion worth of weapons during the war, and according to expert estimates, armaments losses of the Armenian side are estimated at 2-3 billion dollars.
According to SIPRI, after the 44-day war, Azerbaijan increased its military spending to $2.7 billion in 2021, about 21% more than $2.2 billion in 2020 and about 46% more than in 2019. At the same time, Armenia reduced military spending to $619 million in 2021, which is about 2% less than in 2020 and 5% less than in 2019.
This is an illogical picture, since it turns out that after a devastating war, Armenia reduces the burden of its military spending, and Azerbaijan, being the winner, having captured a huge amount of Armenian military equipment, nevertheless increases its spending,” the Foundation’s publication says.
It should be noted that the expenditures of the state budget of Armenia in January-February 2022 amounted to 231.2 billion drams, which is 47.6% of the adjusted figure for the first quarter. At the same time, 16.4% or 38 billion drams out of the indicated 231.2 billion drams was directed to cover the costs of the defense sector, which is 45.1% of the adjusted figure for the first quarter. It should be noted that according to the RA Law “On the State Budget for 2022”, Armenia’s GDP will amount to 7% by the end of the year (the other day, the Central Bank and the IMF adjusted their forecast to 1.6%, Fitch Ratings – to 1.3% – ed. note). Budget revenues in 2022 will amount to 1 trillion 947.8 billion drams (24.7% of GDP) or 17.5% (289 billion drams) more than in 2021, expenditures – 2 trillion 184 billion drams or 27.7% GDP (184 billion drams more than the figure adjusted for the current year and 334 billion drams more than the approved figure for 2021), and the state budget deficit is 236.2 billion drams. At the same time, current expenditures will amount to 23.2% of GDP or 1 trillion 843 billion drams (81 billion drams (4.6%) more than the indicator set for 2021), and capital expenditures will amount to 352 billion drams or 4.5% of GDP. At the same time, the expenditures of the defense sector of Armenia this year will increase by about 11%, or by 33 billion drams, amounting to more than 345.4 billion drams (about 15.8% of the expenditure part of the state budget).
13:05, 29 April, 2022
YEREVAN, APRIL 29, ARMENPRESS. The Armenians of Artsakh accept the agenda of peace, but on the other hand they do not see any direction of deviating from the right to self-determination, President of Artsakh Arayik Harutyunyan said during the meeting with Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan.
“Therefore, I want to thank for the view that any topic, any document will be discussed with the Artsakh leadership and will be within the logic of the people. Of course, I want to fix that no other way is possible. We have a long political fight to run. The security component is the most important today”, he said, adding that the stability created by the direct mediation of the Russian peacekeepers today allows to discuss the socio-economic programs.
The President of Artsakh said that the socio-economic programs are important because if there are no people in Artsakh, the political fight and talking about security become nonsense. “That’s why demographics and socio-economic programs today are again relevant. The programs, which have started after the war, continue”, he said.
In his turn Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan considered the fact of infiltration of Azerbaijani units into the area under the responsibility of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno Karabakh worrying. “We hope that the representatives of the Russian peacekeeping contingent will consistently ensure the withdrawal of Azerbaijani units from the responsibility zone of the peacekeeping forces”, he said.
15:41, 29 April, 2022
YEREVAN, APRIL 29, ARMENPRESS. Due to an increasing flow of investors, the State Registry Office is overloaded and the authorities are enabling law firms to conduct some of the registry’s functions.
The Deputy Minister of Justice Grigor Minasyan chaired a meeting with representatives of several law firms on April 29 where they were briefed on the regulations and proceedings.
The functions include the approval of the standard charter and registration of private entrepreneurships.
“Our discussion is on time in order for the lawyers and law firms to be able to further improve their rendered services given the investments flow. I am convinced that the law firms are the most important and primary circle where investors apply,” Minasyan said.
10:45,
YEREVAN, APRIL 22, ARMENPRESS. The Italian S.S. Lazio is interesting in signing Armenian football star Henrikh Mkhitaryan, whose contract with Roma is set to expire in the end of June, according to Tuttomercatoweb.
Playing for Roma in the current season, Mkhitaryan made 41 appearances and scored 4 goals and made 9 assists.
07:35,
YEREVAN, APRIL 24, ARMENPRESS. Today, on April 24th, Armenians around the world commemorate the 107th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
The Armenian Genocide – the systematic and premeditated killings of over 1,5 million Armenians, was perpetrated by the government of Young Turks in various regions of the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915 during WWI.
The term Genocide was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, whose family was one of the victims of the Holocaust. By defining this term, Prof. Lemkin sought to describe Nazi politics of systematic murder, violence and cruelty and atrocities committed against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 as well.
The first international reaction to the violence resulted in a joint statement by France, Russia and Great Britain, in May 1915, where the Turkish atrocities directed against the Armenian people was defined as “new crime against humanity and civilization” agreeing that the Turkish government must be punished for committing such crimes.
When WWI erupted, the Young Turks government, hoping to save the remains of the weakened Ottoman Empire, adopted a policy of Pan Turkism – the establishment of a mega Turkish empire comprising of all Turkic-speaking peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia extending to China, intending also to Turkify all ethnic minorities of the empire. The Armenian population became the main obstacle standing in the way of the realization of this policy.
Although the decision for the deportation of all Armenians from the Western Armenia (Eastern Anatolya) was adopted in late 1911, the Young Turks used WWI as a suitable opportunity for its implementation.
There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire before the WWI. Over one and a half million Armenians were killed from 1915-1923. Those who survived were either Islamized or exiled, or found shelters in different parts of the world.
The first phase of the Armenian Genocide started on April 24, 1915 with the arrest of several hundred Armenian intellectuals and representatives of national elite (mainly in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople) and their subsequent elimination. Hereinafter, Armenians worldwide started to commemorate the Armenian genocide on April 24.
The second phase was the forced conscription of around 60,000 Armenian men into the Turkish military, who were later disarmed and murdered.
The third phase of the genocide was the exile and the massacres of women, children, and elderly people into the Syrian desert. Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered by Turkish soldiers, police officers, Kurdish and Circassian gangs during the deportation. Others died of disease. Thousands of women and children were subjected to violence. Tens of thousands were forcibly Islamized.
Finally, the last phase of the Armenian genocide appeared with the total and utter denial by Turkish government of the mass killings and elimination of the Armenian nation on its homeland. Despite the ongoing international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey has consistently fought the acceptance of the Armenian Genocide by any means, including falsification of historical facts, propaganda campaigns, lobbying, etc. On December 9, 1948 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, according to which, genocide is defined as an international crime and the signing states are obliged to prevent, as well as punish the perpetrators of the genocide.
The fact of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman government has been documented, recognized, and affirmed in the form of media and eyewitness reports, laws, resolutions, and statements by many states and international organizations. The complete catalogue of all documents categorizing the 1915-23 widespread massacre of the Armenian population in Ottoman Empire as a premeditated and thoroughly executed act of Genocide, is extensive.
Below is a brief list of those states and organizations, provincial governments and city councils which have acknowledged the Armenian Genocide
Parliamentary Resolutions, Laws and Declarations
International Organizations
Provincial legislative bodies, governments, city councils
US states
Australia
Argentina
Canada
Switzerland
Great Britain
Italy
Spain
Belgium
Austria
Ukraine
Mexico
On April 16, a solemn opening ceremony of an Armenian khachkar, and a square dedicated to the memory of the Armenian Genocide victims, took place in the center of the French city of Nimes.
The Mayor of Nimes Jean-Paul Fournier, the Ambassador of Armenia to France, Hasmik Tolmajyan and the President of the Armenian Association of Nimes (Amicale Franco-Armenienne de Nimes et du Gard) Armen Martirosyan made speeches during the event. The ceremony was also attended by the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Defense, Armed Forces of the French National Assembly, François Dumas, as well as the Armenia’s Consul in Marseilles Samvel Lalayan.
In her speech, the Armenian Ambassador recalled the important role that France played in sheltering Armenian refugees who survived the genocide. The importance of France recognizing the Armenian Genocide in 2001 by law, as well as the inclusion of April 24 in the list of French State Remembrance Days from 2019 was stressed.
The Ambassador thanked the Mayor of Nimes, the City Council, for approving the initiative to name a square after the Armenian Genocide and immortalize the khachkar. The Ambassador also expressed gratitude to the relatively newly formed French-Armenian community in Nimes, in the person of the Armenian Association of the city, its President Armen Martirosyan, for the implementation of this important initiative. The speeches were followed by a khachkar blessing ceremony.
On the same day, Ambassador Tolmajyan met with representatives of the French-Armenian community of Nimes to discuss issues of concern to the community. The Ambassador thanked the community for the donation of more than 60,000 euros to the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund during the war in Artsakh in 2020.
Illustration by Shutterstock – edited by Büşra Öztürk.
U.S. President Joe Biden has been stressing the importance of a “rules-based international order” since he assumed the presidency. Yet, in many instances, he saw no harm in disregarding the “rules” himself. This is particularly the case in matters related to Turkey, including his ungrounded statement labeling the 1915 events as “genocide.”
Biden apparently prefers not to take counsel from competent people with the necessary legal expertise before delving into historical and legal matters. Since 1948, norms of international law, specifically the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, necessitate a decision by a competent court when referring to a case as genocide. An electoral campaign promise made to paid lobbyists does not justify such a statement in any way. What’s more, according to general principles of criminal law, non-retroactivity is a rule. Last year, the U.S. president did not mind openly contradicting these universally recognized norms and rules.
We will see whether Biden will insist on repeating the same mistake of using unfounded allegations for the 1915 events against Turkey this year. One would hope that this time he’d be informed about not only the necessary legal requirements to use the term, but also of the report written in 1919 by his fellow American Lieutenant General James Harbord, which exposed the fabrications later to be used by radicals to construct an “Armenian genocide” narrative. He may also want to look at the Tsarist Russian and Armenian sources to better understand the facts. For instance, the report of Hovhannes Kajaznuni, the first prime minister of the independent First Republic of Armenia, should serve as an eye-opener. He may also want to ask what is hidden in the Armenian archives that are still kept sealed, while the Turkish archives are open and accessible to historians.
Moreover, as far as the ongoing normalization efforts between Ankara and Yerevan are concerned, Biden should know that politicizing history once again in a prejudicial fashion will embolden none other than fanatical Armenian circles and their advocates, who oppose the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations. This is even more concerning now, since these radicals, encouraged by the unobjective approach of a U.S. president, are now trying to have a biased act passed by the U.S. Congress. Obviously, they are aiming to draw enmity from history, nothing else.
Massachusetts State Trooper Tamar Anoush Bucci (March 2, 1988 – March 4, 2022)
The family of Massachusetts State Police Trooper Tamar Anoush Bucci is mourning her loss on the one-month anniversary of her tragic death.
Trooper Bucci was killed in the line of duty on March 4 when her cruiser was struck by a tanker truck going north on Interstate 93 in Stoneham. She was trying to pull over to help a disabled vehicle. Bucci died just two days after her 34th birthday.
Upon her untimely passing, many learned about Bucci’s passion for fitness and achieving her dream of becoming a Massachusetts State Police Trooper, but very few knew about her Armenian roots.
A granddaughter of Aroussiak Dakessian, Trooper Bucci grew up in a large, loving family.
“We were always together. Our weekends were always spent together, enjoying Sunday dinners,” said her cousin Nina Vosbigian during an emotional interview with the Weekly.
Though she didn’t formally grow up in the Armenian community, Bucci was enrolled for some time in weeknight Armenian language courses in Watertown to help improve her communication with her maternal grandmother.
Trooper Bucci loved her family. She is a hero to Vosbigian, who described her cousin as a free spirit. “She always had a huge smile. She was always happy. I felt like I could go to her for anything,” she sighed, reflecting on childhood memories with her role model.
Vosbigian says she learned persistence and determination from her cousin as she pursued her dream career. “She’s a strong one. She was very focused. She knew what she wanted.” Bucci, who voluntarily cut 15 inches of her hair at the start of this journey, would come home after a demanding week at the State Police Academy in New Braintree to a supportive family with whom she would share her experiences. “We all felt like we went through the academy with her,” recalled Vosbigian.
When graduation day finally arrived for the 85th Recruit Training Troop in May of 2020 at the height of the pandemic, Vosbigian and her family gathered at her aunt’s house to watch the live-stream from an empty Gillette Stadium. Moments later, Trooper Bucci would pull into the driveway of her parents’ home to cheers and celebration. “I was honestly so proud of her after everything she went through because we knew that’s what she wanted.”
Massachusetts State Trooper Tamar Anoush Bucci pictured with her cousin Nina Vosbigian
Bucci would don badge number 4440—an angel number— for 20 months until the end of her watch on March 4.
Her loss has devastated her family members, including Vosbigian, who would look forward to waking up to Bucci’s Snapchats and entertaining text messages from her overnight shifts.
Trooper Bucci was baptized as an infant at St. Stephen’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Watertown, Massachusetts. On the eve of her funeral at Saint Anthony of Padua Church in Revere, Rev. Archpriest Antranig Baljian and Rev. Samuel Ajemian presided over her wake, which was carried out according to the traditions of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Late last month, Der Antranig offered his deepest sympathies during a requiem service. “We pray for Tamar and her family, and we commit her to God’s hands.”