Author: Babajanian Karo

FORMER ARMENIA’S PRESIDENT DOES NOT RULE OUT RETURN TO POLITICS

news.am, Armenia
Sept 30 2011

YEREVAN.- Former Armenia’s President Robert Kocharyan does not rule
out possibility that he would return to big politics.

In an interview with Armenian Mediamax agency he commented on recent
speculations about possibility of his return in the context of
Putin-Medvedev swap of power.

“I am amazed that my possible return is linked to political processes
in Russia. And this happens immediately after the celebration of
the 21st anniversary of Armenia’s independence? I am sure political
processes should ripen here in Armenia, and not be directly projected
from outside.

I don’t rule out the possibility of my return to big politics.

However, only three major factors may force me to return and not the
events going on in other country which is very close and important
for Armenia. These three factors are:

1. the absence of a tangible and stable improvement of the situation
in country’s economy and people’s welfare, and consequently the growth
of hopeless moods and migration;

2. the demand for my return to big politics by various layers of
the society;

3. my inner belief that I can radically improve the situation.

The ways of return to active politics may vary given these three
factors.

Other circumstances only add a political resource but are not
fundamental,” he said.

S. Ohanyan receives members of Defense Ministry’s Public Council

Aysor.am
Wednesday,September 28

Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan received members of the Ministry’s
Public Council on September 28.

Head of the Council, Gegham Harutyunyan presented the activities of
the Public Council and made proposals on strengthening discipline and
preventing incidents in the armed forces.

Seyran Ohanyan noted that the mission of the Public Council is to
create a platform to boost dialogue between the army and society in
order to reveal and resolve current problems in the army and to
contribute to conveyance of healthy ideas and proposals to the army by
society, the Defense Ministry press office said.

NKR President meets member of Californian Senate

armradio.am
01.10.2011 15:51

On October 1st President Bako Sahakyan received member of the
Californian Senate Joseph Simityan and executive director of the
`Paros’ foundation Peter Abajian.

Issues related to regional developments, domestic and foreign policy
of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, Artsakh-US bilateral relations were
discussed at the meeting.

The parties stressed the necessity of maintaining peace and stability
in the South Caucasian region, and the peaceful settlement of the
existing problems between Azerbaijan and Artsakh through a direct
dialogue.

President Sahakyan rated high the role of the US in the above
mentioned processes, at the same time noting that in Artsakh special
attention is paid to deepening ties with California considering it
among pivotal directions of developing bilateral relations, Central
Information Department of the Office of the NKR President reported.

Towards a genuine eastern partnership
Editorial

October 2, 2011 10:33 pm

For understandable reasons, most European Union governments tend not
to regard relations with the six former Soviet republics that lie
between the EU’s eastern borders and Russia as their highest economic
and foreign policy priority. Rather than looking east, the EU has
spent two years looking inwards, thanks to the debt crisis, or south
at the Arab spring.

This inattention was noticeable in Warsaw last week at a summit of the
Eastern Partnership, which groups the EU’s 27 member-states with
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Angela
Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, was the only high-level EU leader who
bothered to attend the event. The UK sent Nick Clegg, deputy prime
minister.

Mr Clegg made the right noises by arguing that the EU should offer
closer integration, up to and including full membership, to any
Eastern Partnership state that aspires to join the bloc and meets the
relevant criteria. Holding out the prospect of EU entry generates
momentum for domestic reform, raises economic standards and increases
a sense of responsibility on the international stage. From the
Mediterranean and Nordic region to central Europe, enlargement has
proved to be a most successful EU foreign policy tool.

But the plain truth is that the six Eastern Partnership countries
cannot put all their eggs in the EU’s basket, because Russia’s
geographical proximity, military power and economic weight limit their
options. Moreover, democracy and the rule of law are not sufficiently
entrenched in most eastern neighbours to justify talk of EU accession
– a point that was made strongly at the Warsaw summit with the EU’s
condemnation of political repression in Belarus.

EU membership is a very distant prospect even for those neighbours,
such as Ukraine, which claim to view it as desirable. The EU should
therefore focus the Eastern Partnership on practical, deliverable
goals. It can start by helping its neighbours to develop a strong
private business culture and regulatory regimes compatible with
European rules on trade and investment.

One objective that is within reach is a free trade agreement with
Ukraine. Some EU governments want to block it because of the trial of
Yulia Tymoshenko, the opposition leader. Unquestionably, the trial is
a deplorable example of political intimidation. But if the Kiev
authorities halt it, as they should, the EU should respond by keeping
open the prospect of the free trade accord.

ARF-D MP Minasyan sees serious debt danger

September 30, 2011

In an interview with 1in.am, ARF-D Member of Parliament, Deputy
Chairman of the Standing Committee on Financial, Credit and Budgetary
Affairs of the Parliament, Artsvik Minasyan said that a second
economic crisis is possible and will emerge not in the real estate
sector, such as previously, but in the financial one and in particular
in the foreign debt area. As a result, national economies will face
new challenges in the markets. Armenia’s economy, due to this
government’s policy is highly sensitive when it comes to international
changes and that will probably have its negative, major impact on the
Armenian economy as well.

The government has to address this issue by rapidly including the
foreign debt in the economy. Minasyan stressed out that Armenia’s
foreign debt has grown 3 times more, yet it did not show in the real
economy because the majority of the capital is accumulated in the
banks, while no investments have been made in the real economy. This
means that the procedure of financing the economy must be facilitated
starting from the taxation all the way to concrete state
interventions.

Answering a question on the Prime Minister’s statements about economic
growth, the ARF-D MP underscored that if one takes a look at the
current economic structure and the government’s forecasts, they will
see that even in 2014 the construction sector will be replaced by the
not less risky sector of services, which according to the government’s
plan will be 40% bigger. According to Minasyan, this is a sign of how
much exposed the Armenian economy is to international changes.

Azerbaijani fans ‘throw stones on Armenian Boxers’ in Baku

16:51 =95 02.10.11

World Boxing Championship 2011 in Baku has bee marred by an incident as
some Azerbaijani nationalists hurled stones at the Armenian delegation,
according to the Azerbaijani news website Azerisport.com.

The members of an organization called `Karabakh Liberation Organization’
rushed into the Heydar Aliyev Stadium, where the championship was taking
place and started throwing stones at the Armenian delegation before the
police intervened.

Akif Nagi, one of the nationalists, did not even hide that the move was
planned in advance.

`We learned that the Armenian boxers were coming to the ring. When we saw
them, we started to throw stones, after which we faced resistance by the
police’ said he.

Nagi also said the goal of their action was to hinder the Armenia boxers.

Azerbaijan nationalists also addressed offensive expressions to Armenian
boxers who decided to participate in this championship only after they
received official security guarantees from Baku.

At least three Armenian boxers have yet to enter the boxing ring within this
championship.

Tert.am

FAITS DIVERS
Arthur Abraham contrôlé à 230 km/h à bord d’une Ferrari à Berlin

Le champion du monde de boxe, l’Arménien Arthur Abraham désire-t-il
également devenir champion automobile ? Dans les rues de Berlin,
Arthur Abraham fut arrêté par la police alors qu’il était à bord d’une
superbe Ferrari…qui venait d’être contrôlé à 230 km heure dans une
zone limitée à 80 km. Arthur Abraham a justifié cet excès de vitesse
au fait qu’il était en retard sur un rendez-vous de remise de prix.
Les forces de l’ordre l’ont alors accompagné jusqu’à son lieu de
rendez-vous. Mais il sera poursuivi et peut-être même privé de permis.

En Allemagne, Arthru Abraham est au-delà de la boxe, une véritable
star faisant souvent la une des médias pour ses fêtes et ses
rencontres avec d’autres étoiles.

Krikor Amirzayan

dimanche 2 octobre 2011,
Krikor [email protected]

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Oct 1 2011

A growing front of enemies

by ABDÃ`LHAMÄ°T BÄ°LÄ°CÄ°

Until recently, Turkey captured a style of foreign policy that
exceeded Ankara’s dreams. As Turkey developed relations with both the
East and the West, it also turned into a country applauded by both
sides.

Turkey was one of the few countries in the world able to form
dialogues simultaneously with nations which were not only each other’s
opposites, but also often engaged in direct conflict with one another.
It was capable of talking not only to Shiites in Iraq, but also having
warm relations with the Sunnis there. And just as it was able to talk
to a Saudi Arabia nervous about Tehran’s nuclear machinations, it was
also able to maintain a dialogue with Iran. Its good relations with
Hezbollah did not prevent the establishment of a relationship of trust
with the Lebanese Sunnis. And as normal relations with Israel
continued, liaisons with Syria rose to a level of strategic
partnership; in fact, Turkey did everything it could to see peace
flourish between these two countries.

2004, the year that Turkish relations with the European Union were at
its peak, was also the year that for the first time ever, a Turkish
citizen was elected as the General Secretary, through democratic
selection, of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The same year that Ankara began efforts to see relations with Armenia
normalize (in order to transcend the genocide allegations constantly
placed in front of Turkey by the West), was also the year that the
Turkish Cooperation Council was formed at a summit held in Nakhchivan,
hosted by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

And during a time when Turkish-US relations developed positively under
the definition of `model partnership’ (despite the many crises
occurring between Ankara and Washington during the Bush
administration), Russia was on its way to becoming Turkey’s biggest
foreign trade partner.

Those with the greatest parts in this stunning tableau of
accomplishments were President Abdullah Gül, Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip ErdoÄ?an and the foreign ministers during those periods, Ali
Babacan and Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu — in other words, the Justice and
Development Party (AK Party) leaders. In order to realize a foreign
policy which appeared impossible, they worked day and night.

After all, in order to carry out these initiatives in an atmosphere
dominated by the mentalities like `Turks have no friends outside of
other Turks,’ and `We are surrounded by enemies’ took enormous
theoretical and physical efforts. Some of the concepts which came into
play in the literature of diplomacy at this time were ideas such as
`multi-dimensional foreign policy,’ `zero problems with neighbors’ and
`central country.’ And Turkey turned from an inactive country, where
government planes would be rusting on the ground in Ankara, to a
country whose foreign ministers are spending most of the month abroad.
in the political sense where names associated with foreign policy were
spending the majority of the month outside of the country.

Concepts that had once dominated Turkey’s security-focused stance on
foreign policy, such as `casus belli’ and `red lines,’ were replaced
concepts based more on cooperation and alliance, such as `reciprocal
dependence,’ `winning friends,’ `standing straight and strong without
glowering,’ and `win-win.’ The goal at hand became solving seemingly
intractable problems and maximizing relationships by getting rid of
hostilities as much as possible, as well as becoming a leader in
solving not just the problems in which we held a side, but all the
problems plaguing the region.

news.am, Armenia
Oct 1 2011

Marmarik reservoir of Armenia to be commissioned

October 01, 2011 | 23:06

YEREVAN. – Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Armen Gevorgyan visited
Marmarik reservoir construction site in Kotayk region of Armenia on
Saturday.

Construction works are drawing to the end and in the event of
favorable weather conditions the reservoir will be commissioned by the
end of this year.

The reservoir will allow easier and more effective irrigation of
around 1,200 hectares in Kotayk region and Ararat valley. It will
accumulate around 24 million cubic meters of water.

The Kurdish Question

By Alexander Weinstock

SATURDAY OCTOBER 01, 2011

Photographer: Dan Phiffer

In Istanbul, a crowd demonstrating in support of the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK), facing a police line.

Settled in the Middle East since ancient times, the Kurds remain the
largest ethnic group without a state of their own in the region. About
35 million are split between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, with small
diaspora groups primarily in Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Kurds’
present situation is rooted in the decision to partition areas of the
former Ottoman Empire by Great Britain and France after World War I.
Today, the Kurdish people struggle for self-determination and the
recognition of their ethnic identity within nations where they have
significant populations. For example, it is illegal for them to speak
their language in Turkey, and the country’s constitution provides for
only one ethnic designation, Turkish, thus disavowing the very concept
of Kurdish ethnicity. There is little consensus between the many
Kurdish groups as to how best to achieve their goals. Overall, Kurdish
history in all four states with native Kurdish populations over the
last hundred years has been mostly marked by cultural discrimination
from ruling regimes, spotted with frequent rebellious uprisings that
were violently suppressed.

The different roots of Kurdish nationalism

The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group of Iranian origin with their own
language and culture. In modern history, they are also united by a
desire for greater autonomy, and, ideally, a state of their own, as
well as a shared history of discrimination and oppression from each
regime in question. “Self-determination is the right of the Kurdish
people,” said Iraq’s president Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, in an
interview with Le Figaro, published on October 31, 2006.

The causes of clashes between Kurdish minorities and central
governments have been different in each country. Kurdish nationalism
in Turkey was primarily a reaction to Turkish nationalism in the
newly-founded republic. The country’s course toward secularization
under the Kemalist ideology (a movement developed by the Turkish
national movement leader,Mustafa Kemal Ataturk), which emphasized the
absence of religious influence from all public institutions,
conflicted with the devout Muslim Kurds’ world view and was a major
reason for the rise of the nationalist movement.

Iranian Kurds always bore some discrimination, according to Amnesty
International, such as inability to register newborns with certain
Kurdish names and difficulty obtaining employment or adequate housing.
Such policies reached their zenith in 1979 with the Islamic
Revolution. The desire of nearly 2.5 million Sunni Kurds for regional
autonomy caused Ayatollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of predominantly
Shia Iran, to declare jihad (holy war) against them. Shia Kurds, on
the other hand, were untouched by the Ayatollah’s decree and did not
face discrimination from the Iranian government. Neither have they
ever really desired autonomy or independence from Iran due to
religious homogeneity with the rest of the population. Shia Kurds have
held or currently hold key positions in the Iranian political
hierarchy, such as First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi and
former Foreign Minister Karim Sanjabi. In fact, in recent history, the
Sunni denomination of Islam has traditionally been discriminated
against in Iran regardless of the ethnic group involved. For example,
according to Sunni-News, in March of this year, Iranian authorities
have forbidden the annual forum of Sunni students set to be held in
the town of Zehan.

Ethnic, rather than religious, differences were the cause of the
Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq, according to the analysis of
Denise Natali, a lecturer at the Center for Law and Politics at
Salahaddin University in Iraqi Kurdistan, in her book The Kurds and
the State. She cites a forceful “Aribization” campaign, which started
in 1963 with the rise of the Ba’ath party to power. The initiative
involved the ban of the Kurdish language, deportation and ethnic
cleansing. The government did propose a plan, which provided for a
degree of Kurdish autonomy in 1970. However, according to George
Harris, a Near East history scholar at the Middle East Institute, this
was combined with a forceful resettlement program, in which the
government tried to settle traditionally Kurdish areas with citizens
of Arab ethnicity. The Kurds comprise a lesser percentage of the
population in Syria than in the other countries as most of them
emigrated from neighboring Turkey. It is for this reason that Syrian
Kurds have long been regarded as foreigners by the ruling Ba’ath
regime, and thus, were not allowed to participate in elections or
travel abroad as Syrian citizens. They were extended some civil
liberties as a result of the protests last winter, but some, like the
Syrian Kurdish opposition activist Shirzad Al-Yazidi in an interview
with Asharq Alawsat newspaper, call to “look to the recent declaration
of democratic autonomy in the Kurdish region of Turkey” as a model for
attaining a greater degree of independence for Syrian Kurds. Unlike
their Turkish or Iraqi counterparts, however, Syrian Kurds do not seek
independence, but rather a wider spectrum of civil rights within the
country, such as equal employment opportunities. Fawzi Shingar, a
Syrian Kurdish leader, remarked to Rudaw in English that despite the
lack of a common agenda between the many Kurdish groups, “no Kurdish
party wants independence from Syria because the Kurds are an
inseparable part of the country.”

The struggle for Kurdish independence has often been violent. In the
interwar period, Turkey saw an average of three revolts per year. The
most well-known of the militant groups, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK), has been in existence for 33 years and has been leading an
armed struggle against the Turks for 27 years. Their official agenda
is independence from Turkey and possible unification with other
Kurdish-populated areas in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The PKK is labeled a
terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union for
its violent actions such as the suicide bombing in Ankara in 2007. In
her 2007 book Blood and Belief, Reuters political analyst Aliza Marcus
contends that the PKK guerillas would stop fighting if offered amnesty
and certain liberties for Turkey’s Kurdish population. Marcus also
notes that any legitimacy to their demands is countered by their
fervent devotion to PKK’s recently retired leader Abdullah Ocalan, who
stressed armed struggle as a means for complete secession of Northern
Kurdistan from Turkey.

Other militant groups include the Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK),
which has been in regular confrontations with the Iranian government.
The most recent incident, as reported by Reuters, occurred last July,
involving the assassination of General Abbas Kasemi of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite division in the Iranian army. Iran
responded with an armed incursion of 5,000 men into northeastern
Iraq’s Kurdish region, accusing the head of Iraqi Kurdistan of
illegally sponsoring PJAK activity. Several towns were shelled by
Iranian artillery. Despite constant assurances of a victory made by
either side, the conflict went on until complete PJAK surrender on
September 29.

The statehood question

What is to be done about this situation? Some, like British journalist
David Osler of Lloyd’s List, compare the Kurdish problem to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Naturally, such a comparison brings to
mind the familiar one-state vs. two-state solutions. Daniel
Greenfield, a journalist for The Kurdistan Tribune, strongly advocates
a completely independent Kurdistan, stating that it would be otherwise
impossible for Turkey to enter the EU. “Only by allowing an autonomous
Kurdish state within the borders of occupied Northern Kurdistan, will
Turkey gain stability and peace,” writes Greenfield in a blog post
from June 20, 2011. He asserts that Turkey’s acceptance into the EU
without resolving the Kurdish question will exacerbate ethnic
conflicts and undermine the EU’s credibility. However, there are
matters other than the Kurdish question that bar Turkey’s entrance
into the EU, such as the issues of Cyprus and foreign relations with
Greece.

The Kurds find themselves in a complicated situation, at least
geopolitically speaking, considering the sheer number of nations and
potential negotiations involved. Taken within the greater scope of all
of Kurdistan, a two-state solution entails carving out sizable
portions of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. This means that each Kurdish
minority will have to negotiate with its respective government, and
none of these states are inclined to simply give up territory. Iraqi
Kurds are in constant contest with the central government for the
oil-rich region of Kirkuk. The Kurds inhabit a large portion of
Turkey. Syria, with the partition of the country under the French
Mandate still fresh in the nation’s consciousness, will most likely
not agree to give a piece of its land to its Kurdish residents,
despite recent advances such as President Bashar Al-Assad’s granting
of Syrian citizenship to the country’s large Kurdish population.

As such, more moderate solutions have been proposed. Michael Gunter, a
professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University,
in his 2007 book The Kurds Ascending, sees the solution in an
education system that provides a belief “in democracy for all people
regardless of ethnic affinity.” Dr. Gunes Tezcur, who teaches
political science at Loyola University, points to more serious issues
that must first be resolved. In particular, he recommends the cutting
of funding from Iraqi Kurds to militant groups such as the Kurdish
Freedom Falcons and PKK in Turkey and an acknowledgement of the
Turkish government’s civil rights violations by the EU. Some experts,
like Yale University’s political science lecturer Matthew Kocher,
believe more moderate solutions have a better chance of success in
satisfying all sides involved to some degree than four separate and
costly two-state solutions. “The median Kurdish voter probably
supported center-right Turkish political parties,” writes Kocher in
his 2002 paper “The Decline of PKK and the Viability of a One-State
Solution in Turkey,” which was published in the MOST Journal on
Multicultural Studies. He describes the position of Turkish Kurds
regarding integration into the state. In light of the Syrian Kurds’
attitude of remaining within Syria voiced by Shingar and the autonomy
granted to Iraqi Kurds by Iraq’s new constitution, it is possible that
one-state solutions are gaining popularity. This is indeed a step
toward settlement, even though more remains to be done for
reconciliation.