Author: Babajanian Karo

‘DOWNING’ OF HELICOPTER INCREASES TENSIONS BETWEEN AZERBAIJAN AND ARMENIA

Journal of Turkish Weekly
Nov 19 2014

19 November 2014

JTW News Analysis, Nigar Shiralizade

The downing of an Armenian military helicopter by Azerbaijani forces
has ignited a flare-up in the longstanding conflict between the two
neighboring states over Nagorno-Karabakh.

According to an official statement on the incident issued by
Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense: “On November 12 Mi-24 combat
helicopters attempted to attack positions of the Azerbaijani army
near Karabakh’s Agdam district. The helicopter has been shot down by
the Azerbaijani army.”

The separatist government of Nagorno-Karabakh confirmed the downing
and announced the deaths of the 3 crew members onboard the helicopter.

It also stated that the helicopter was ‘conducting training’ and
that it had no offensive military mission. Spokesman of the Armenian
Ministry of Defense Artsrun Hovhannisyan exhibited a threatening
tone, warning Azerbaijan that “Consequences for this unprecedented
aggravation of the situation will be very painful for the Azeri side.”

According to Interfax News Agency, Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign
Affairs published a report on November 13, 2014 stating: “Azerbaijan
has declared a no-fly zone throughout the occupied territories
and issued a standard notice for all members of the International
Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The illegal penetration of
Azerbaijan’s airspace by Armenian military helicopters is an act of
ongoing occupation and aggression against Azerbaijan and a policy of
encroachment on territorial integrity and sovereignty of the republic.”

Reactions from the outside

International reactions appeared in the media immediately after the
accident, mostly basing their information on scarce data taken from
various sources, thus the messages mostly expressed anxiety over
intensification of the conflict. U.S. State Department Spokeswoman
Jen Psaki said that the incident is a reminder of the need to reduce
tensions and respect a cease-fire in the region, adding that the U.S.

deems military solution to the conflict unacceptable.

In a meeting with journalists on 17 November, 2014, Turkey’s Ambassador
to Azerbaijan Ismail Alper Joshgun commented that “We should question
firstly why Azerbaijani lands are still under occupation. Thus this
accident reminds us about the necessity to reach a peaceful solution to
the conflict as soon as possible. Moreover, it should not be forgotten
that Turkey will always support Azerbaijan.”

Russia’s attitude was expressed by the Russian Foreign Ministry’s
Spokesman Alexander Lukashevich, who stated on November 13, 2014,
that “Russia calls on Armenia and Azerbaijan to curtail moves which
could lead to the escalation of tensions.”

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said it was essential that
the parties exercise restraint and avoid any actions or statements
that could worsen the circumstances in the region, while also stressing
the importance of an inquiry into the incident.

NATO Liaison Officer for the South Caucasus William Lahue told
reporters: “NATO would like to see the parties engaged in peaceful
negotiations and discussions to resolve this conflict within the OSCE
Minsk Group format.”

Co-chairs of the OSCE also released statements expressing
their concerns about the incident on the border and stressed the
undesirability of another conflict in the region: “Today’s events
remind us of the volatility of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and
the urgency to intensify efforts to find a lasting settlement. We
remain resolved to assist the sides in any way possible.” Moreover,
they called on the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia to work within
the framework of commitments laid out in the Sochi, Newport and Paris
meetings held 3 months ago after increasing tensions on the front
line in the summer of 2014.

What happened in Nagorno-Karabakh?

The conflict started in 1988, lasted 6 years and a ceasefire
established in 1994 ended the bloody war over Nagorno-Karabakh region
which cost 30,000 lives.

Azerbaijan, which suffered the consequences of the war more than
Armenia with 1.2 million refugees and internally displaced persons,
the loss of 17 thousand sq. km of land and approximately 22,000
casualties, proclaimed its desire to resolve the problem in a peaceful
way on several occasions. Here, it has stressed the maintenance of
territorial integrity and the liberation of Nagorno-Karabakh and 7
surrounding regions from occupation as of the utmost importance.

Four UN Security Council Resolutions (822, 853, 874, 884) which have
required the immediate withdrawal of Armenian forces from Azerbaijani
lands have never been implemented. The OSCE Minsk group could not
efficiently assist in settling the conflict, and accordingly, 20 years
after the cease fire, tit for tat diplomacy has increasingly gained
prominence between the two states, thus necessitating the need for
a solution to the conflict as soon as possible.

19 November 2014

PLAYWRIGHTS CENSORING THEIR PLAYS, PROMINENT TURKISH ACTOR SAYS

Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
Nov 19 2014

ISTANBUL

Turkish theater legend Genco Erkal, speaking to Ahmet Hakan of daily
Hurriyet, has claimed that many playwrights censor their plays to
receive support from local municipalities.

“Many playwrights agree to meet the requirements of municipalities
in order to receive financial support. They change the text of their
plays; they change costumes and remove parts from the play. They make
the plays reasonable enough,” Erkal said.

Upon a question about the withdrawal of state support for private
theaters, Erkal said his theater had not received support for a year
because of its support for the Gezi events, and claimed the situation
is also the same for theaters staging political plays.

“For example, one night the actors posted a tweet, saying ‘we are
canceling the play tonight; we will all go to Gezi together.’ But
in reality the audience number was too low – about 15-20 – in the
theater that night and they posted it to save face,” he said.

“Censorship was excessive in the era following the Sept. 12, 1980
coup. We wanted to perform YaÃ…~_ar Kemal’s ‘The Legend of Mount
Ararat.’ The play did not have an element to bother the government,
but the words ‘Kurdish landlords’ were used in a few sentences. The
censorship committee examined the play’s text and highlighted this
term in red, saying ‘the words Kurdish landlords cannot be used in
this play,'” he added.

No ministry support

During budget talks in Parliament on Nov. 18, Culture and Tourism
Minister Omer Celik said his ministry would not support “plays that
have hate crimes or scenes of sexual violence,” following criticism
from opposition deputies.

“If a privately owned theater’s play [which requests the ministry’s
support] has a hate crime, scene of sexual violence or any statement
that depicts Turks as having committed genocide, insults Kurds,
marginalizes Alevis or has any statement that rules out the [presence
of] Armenians, then my stance is clear. I will not spend the financial
sources accumulated by our citizens’ taxes on these plays,” said Celik.

November/19/2014

ALEPPO’S OLDEST HOTEL, LOVED BY PRESIDENTS AND INTELLECTUALS, HAS SEEN ITS BEST YEARS

Your Middle East
Nov 19 2014

War in Syria Indifferent to the sniper fire and shelling around him,
the owner of the oldest hotel in Syria’s Aleppo sits gloomily in the
storied property he has been forced to close.

Just a few metres from the front line separating government and rebel
forces in the city, Armen Mazloumian smokes a cigarette on the terrace
of the Baron Hotel.

The hotel was founded in 1911 by Mazloumian’s grandfather, whose
name it bears, and was once the fanciest in Aleppo, Syria’s former
commercial hub.

In 1958, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser delivered a speech
here. It was also at the Baron that Agatha Christie wrote parts of
“Murder on the Orient Express”.

But since fighting arrived in the city in 2012, paying clients have
dwindled to zero and the once-glamourous building is falling into
disrepair.

“It’s been nearly four years since the war began and I see nothing
that inspires any optimism in me, quite the contrary,” says 63-year-old
Mazloumian, unshaven and wearing a blue woollen hat.

Aleppo has been divided between government control in the west,
and rebel control in the east since shortly after fighting began.

The conflict, which started with anti-government protests in March
2011 and has since spiralled into a brutal civil war, has ravaged
large parts of the historic second city.

Mazloumian is the last of four generations of Armenian hoteliers in
Aleppo in his family.

His great-grandfather Krikor opened the family’s first hotel, named
Ararat after the mountain revered by Armenians, in the second half
of the 19th century.

THE ONLY FIRST-CLASS HOTEL

In the Baron’s lobby, on a yellowing wall, an advert from the 1930s
can still be seen. “Hotel Baron, the only first-class hotel in Aleppo,”
it proclaims.

“Central heating throughout, complete comfort, uniquely situated. The
only one recommended by travel agencies.”

Nowadays, it’s a different story. Everything inside seems outdated
and dusty — the reception hall, the telephones, the polished wooden
bar with empty liquor bottles.

The roof has been perforated by incoming shell fire, with water
leaking inside when it rains.

Rooms that once hosted celebrities and political leaders are empty,
or home to a handful of displaced families who have been allowed to
take refuge in the hotel.

The hotel is not far from the Aleppo Museum, which has been closed
since the war began, and near the rebel-held Bustan al-Qasr district.

“You think all this will stop? It will take years,” Mazloumian says
over the sound of gunfire.

It’s a world away from the hotel’s glory days of glitterati.

Many of the hotel’s rooms are forever linked to the famous guests who
once stayed in them – Room 201 was that of Kemal Ataturk, the founder
of modern Turkey, while Room 215 was where King Faisal I of Iraq and
Syria stayed.

Lawrence of Arabia stayed in Room 202 and Christie preferred Room
203 for her visits.

“I met her in 1959, but I was too young to know why she was important,
I only learned that later,” said Mazloumian.

“She came every year with her husband, the archeologist Max Mallowan,
who did excavations at Chagar Bazar and Tell Brak” in northeastern
Syria.

Every Syrian president except Nureddin al-Atassi has stayed at
the hotel.

Hafez al-Assad, father of Syria’s current President Bashar al-Assad,
visited the Baron shortly after the coup that brought him to power
in 1970.

“There were so many famous people who came here that if I started
listing them all for you I wouldn’t finish before tomorrow morning,”
he said, ticking off names like billionaire David Rockefeller, former
French leader Charles de Gaulle and aviator Charles Lindburgh.

“But this is all in the past now. Honestly, the hotel will never go
back to how it was,” Mazloumian sighed, stroking Sasha, his black
terrier.

“The best years are behind us now.”

LONG CAMPAIGN FINALLY YIELDS RESULTS WITH WHITE HOUSE DISPLAY OF RUG MADE BY ARMENIAN ORPHANS

Westman Journal
Nov 19 2014

By Kevin Freking / The Associated Press
November 18, 2014 02:34 PM

WASHINGTON – To Armenian-Americans, the display Tuesday of a hand-woven
rug at the White House Visitor’s Center represented a hard-fought
victory in their push for official recognition of the killings of
their ancestors experienced nearly a century ago.

“It’s a silent, beautiful rebuttal to those who deny the murder of
a million-and-a-half people,” said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

Schiff was one of several members of Congress at the event. The
lawmakers represent districts with thousands of Armenian-Americans.

The rug, hand-woven by orphans and delivered to President Calvin
Coolidge in 1925, has mostly sat in storage since the Coolidge family
returned it to the White House in 1982 as a gift. It measures 11.5
feet by 19 feet (3 by 6 metres), took 18 months to complete and
contains more than 4 million knots.

Armenian-Americans want the U.S. government to acknowledge that
the deaths of their ancestors constituted a genocide, a term used
to describe violence intended to destroy an entire group based on
ethnicity, race or religion.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by
scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however,
denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been
inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

The United States does not call the deaths genocide; doing so could
risk U.S. relations with Turkey, an important ally. Turkey withdrew
its U.S. ambassador four years ago when a House panel approved
a resolution branding the killing of Armenians as genocide. The
resolution eventually stalled.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to recognize the
deaths as genocide. But in a 2012 event, as president, he stopped
short of using that term, calling it “one of the worst atrocities of
the 20th century.”

Mark Stroh, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security
Council, said the president and other senior administration officials
have repeatedly acknowledged as historical fact that 1.5 million
Armenians were massacred or marched to their deaths in the final days
of the Ottoman Empire

“(They have) stated that a full, frank and just acknowledgement of
the facts is in our all interests, including Turkey’s, Armenia’s and
America’s,” Stroh said.

The rug was previously displayed in nonpublic settings as a result of
extraordinary requests, Stroh said. In one instance, in the 1980s,
for a member of Congress, and in the other, in the 1990s, to allow
it to be seen in the White House by a woman involved in its making.

Among the first visitors to view the rug Tuesday was John Marshall
Evans, who served as ambassador to Armenia for two years under
President George W. Bush. Evans said he was replaced as ambassador 18
months after he described the Armenian deaths as genocide and that
the U.S. needs to recognize the facts. He’s not satisfied with the
Obama administration’s approach, either.

Lawmakers began a letter-writing campaign to the White House last
year after reports that the display of the rug at the Smithsonian
Castle had been cancelled. Stroh said the rug was not lent to the
Smithsonian in that instance because its display for an afternoon
would have been in support of a book launch, which he said would not
have been appropriate.

Aram Hamparin, executive director of the Armenian National Committee
of America, said the display of the rug was progress but added,
“We’ve let a foreign country impose a gag rule on what Americans can
and cannot say on the Armenian genocide.”

Armenian National Committee of Canada
130 Albert St., Suite 1007
Ottawa, ON KIP 5G4
Tel: 613-235-2622
Fax: 613-238-2622
E-mail: [email protected]

Criminal Hacking of Canadian websites

November 19, 2014

Early in the morning of November 16, 2014 the websites of several
Armenian Canadian organizations were hacked and Azerbaijani propaganda
was placed on the sites. The ANCC deplores such despicable attacks on
Horizon Weekly and Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC)
Canadian websites and calls on Canadian, provincial and regional
governments to strongly condemn such a heinous and racist act.

?We need the Canadian governmental actors to publicly condemn these
acts as they are becoming more and more frequent. This is not the
first time that Armenian Canadian websites have been violated by Azeri
and Turkish hackers,? said Dr. Girair Basmajian, President of the
ANCC. ?Other similar violent incidents took place in 2008, where
members of Armenian youth organizations were threatened with a sword
and blood by Turkish and Turkic ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves.?

This latest attack is all the more troubling as it took place only
days after the November 12th brutal shooting of an unarmed helicopter
in Nagorno Karabakh Republic, killing all three Armenians on board. ?
This is yet another example of Azerbaijan violating the peace treaty
of 1994,? added Dr. Basmajian. ? On the eve of the Centennial of the
Genocide of the Armenians, it is appalling that more violence is being
directed against Armenians. We seem to be witnessing an escalation of
violence here on Canadian soil as well.?

With recent outbreaks of hate-speech against Armenian Canadians and on
the eve of the 100th anniversary commemorations of the Armenian
Genocide on April 24 in Ottawa, we are hoping that governmental and
police bodies will take these actions directly targeting the Armenian
community seriously and protect our community members, including
youth, from such violent incidents.

After last spring?s dangerous action by Ottawa police in allowing
provocative Turkish protestors to confront and disrupt the Armenian
community?s annual Genocide commemoration events by celebrating and
dancing with loud music, we are particularly concerned that Canada be
proactive in not be tolerating or encouraging confrontation. Armenian
Genocide deniers should not be given permission by Ottawa Police to
silence a peaceful commemoration event.

As a country advocating peace and human rights Canada should step up,
take action and prevent any escalation of future violence.

-30-

Contact: R. Roupen Kouyoumdjian (514) 265-4602

******
The ANCC is the largest and the most influential Canadian-Armenian
grassroots human rights organization. Working in coordination with a
network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout Canada and
affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCC actively advances
the concerns of the Canadian-Armenian community on a broad range of
issues.

——

Le CNAC est l’organisation canado-arménienne des droits humains la
plus large et influentielle. Collaborant avec une série de bureaux,
chapitres et souteneurs à travers le Canada et des organisations
affiliées à travers le monde, le CNAC s’occupe activement des
inquiétudes de la communauté canadienne-arménienne.

GALUST SAHAKYAN: CREW OF DOWNED HELICOPTER WILL BE RETURNED

Wednesday,
November
19

It is one thing when killers commit a crime in your territory and quite
another when innocent people are killed during training exercises,
the speaker of the Armenian parliament Galust Sahakyan told Aysor.am.

The head of Azerbaijani working group on POWs, hostages and missing
persons Firudin Sadygov said earlier that Azerbaijan will permit to
collect the bodies of the crew members of Karabakh Air Force’s downed
helicopter if Azerbaijan considers it necessary.

The Armenian parliamentary speaker stressed that the helicopter did
not take any unlawful actions – unlike the Azerbaijani saboteurs who
infiltrated into the territory of Nagorno Karabakh.

“I don’t think that the killers’ ideas should make us come to an
agreement. If our guys died, their bodies will be handed over, if
they are wounded, they will also return. In any event, Azerbaijan
will receive a response in one form or another,” G. Sahakyan said.

TODAY, 13:00

Aysor.am

ARMENIAN DEPUTY FM: RAMIL SAFAROV IS AZERBAIJAN’S SYMBOL

12:23 19/11/2014 >> POLITICS

“The concept of “ordinary neighbor” is unacceptable when it comes to
Azerbaijan. We are dealing with a terrorist state,” Armenian Deputy
Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan told reporters on Tuesday, while
commenting on the downing of an Artsakh Mi-24 helicopter by Azerbaijani
forces and the statements of Azerbaijan following the incident.

“Ramil Safarov is the symbol of Azerbaijan,” he said.

A MI-24 helicopter of the NKR Air Force was shot down on Wednesday
in the airspace in the eastern direction of the Karabakh-Azerbaijani
border due to a ceasefire violation by the Azerbaijani armed forces.

The area where the helicopter was shot down was at a very short
distance from the Line of Contact. The enemy opened heavy fire from
guns of various calibers at the incident site.

TURKISH GOVERNMENT BANS ISTANBUL ARMENIAN STUDENTS FROM VISITING ARTSAKH

14:06, 18 Nov 2014

Armenian students from all over the world will participate in Olympics
to be held in Yerevan next year. Students from Armenian educational
establishments of Istanbul are also expected to participate in
the event.

Ermenihaber.am reports quoting Daily Sabah that the Turkish Ministry
of Education has sent a “secret” order to all regional structures
not to allow the Armenian students of Istanbul to participate in any
events to be organized in Nagorno Karabakh.

168 HOURS: AZERBAIJAN LACKS STRATEGIC VISION, SAYS ANALYST

11:56 18/11/2014 >> DAILY PRESS

The downing of Artsakh’s Mi-24 helicopter by Azerbaijani forces
aimed to remind the world of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Laurence
Broers, Caucasus Projects Manager, Conciliation Resources, told 168
Hours newspaper.

In his words, although Azerbaijan considers the downing of the
helicopter a success, actually, this is evidence of the lack of
strategic vision in that country. With such actions Azerbaijan may
paint itself into a corner, the analyst said.

Source: Panorama.am

CHORRORD ISHKHANUTYUN: ECHR NOT TO APPROVE ARMENIAN JUDGE?

09:46 * 18.11.14

European organizations are not reportedly willing to approve the
Armenian judge representative to the Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

The paper notes that in the contest announced this autumn, three
applicants – Armen Harutyunyan, Arayik Ghazaryan and Nelly Harutyunyan
– were declared winners.

Armenian News – Tert.am