Author: Babajanian Karo

Direct Democracy The Kobani Riddle

By Pepe Escobar

October 24, 2014 “ICH ” – “Asia
Times ” – The
brave women of Kobani – where Syrian Kurds are desperately fighting
ISIS/ISIL/Daesh – are about to be betrayed by the “international
community”. These women warriors, apart from Caliph Ibrahim’s goons, are
also fighting treacherous agendas by the US, Turkey and the administration
of Iraqi Kurdistan. So what’s the real deal in Kobani?

Let’s start by talking about Rojava. The full meaning of Rojava – the three
mostly Kurdish provinces of northern Syria – is conveyed in this editorial

(in
Turkish) published by jailed activist Kenan Kirkaya. He argues that Rojava
is the home of a “revolutionary model” that no less than challenges “the
hegemony of the capitalist, nation-state system” – way beyond its regional
“meaning for Kurds, or for Syrians or Kurdistan.”

Kobani – an agricultural region – happens to be at the epicenter of this
non-violent experiment in democracy, made possible by an arrangement early
on during the Syrian tragedy between Damascus and Rojava (you don’t go for
regime change against us, we leave you alone). Here
, for instance, it’s argued that “even if
only a single aspect of true socialism were able to survive there, millions
of discontented people would be drawn to Kobani.”

In Rojava, decision-making is via popular assemblies – multicultural and
multi-religious. The top three officers in each municipality are a Kurd, an
Arab and an Assyrian or Armenian Christian; and at least one of these three
must be a woman. Non-Kurd minorities have their own institutions and speak
their own languages.

Among a myriad of women’s and youth councils, there is also an increasingly
famous feminist army, the YJA Star militia

(“Union
of Free Women”, with the “star” symbolizing Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar).

The symbolism could not be more graphic; think of the forces of Ishtar
(Mesopotamia) fighting the forces of ISIS (originally an Egyptian goddess),
now transmogrified into an intolerant Caliphate. In the young 21st century,
it’s the female barricades of Kobani that are in the forefront fighting
fascism.

Inevitably there should be quite a few points of intersection between the
International Brigades fighting fascism in Spain in 1936 and what is
happening in Rojava, as stressed by one of the very few articles

about
it published in Western mainstream media.

If these components were not enough to drive crazy deeply intolerant
Wahhabis and Takfiris (and their powerful Gulf petrodollar backers) then
there’s the overall political set up.

The fight in Rojava is essentially led by the PYD, which is the Syrian
branch of the Turkish PKK, the Marxist guerrillas at war against Ankara
since the 1970s. Washington, Brussels and NATO – under relentless Turkish
pressure – have always officially ranked both PYD and PKK as “terrorists”.

Careful examination of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s must-read book Democratic
Confederalism

reveals
this terrorist/Stalinist equation as bogus (Ocalan has been confined to the
island-prison of Imrali since 1999.)

What the PKK – and the PYD – are striving for is “libertarian
municipalism”. In fact that’s exactly what Rojava has been attempting;
self-governing communities applying direct democracy, using as pillars
councils, popular assemblies, cooperatives managed by workers – and
defended by popular militias. Thus the positioning of Rojava in the
vanguard of a worldwide cooperative economics/democracy movement whose
ultimate target would be to bypass the concept of a nation-state.

Not only this experiment is taking place politically across northern Syria;
in military terms, it was the PKK and the PYD who actually managed to
rescue those tens of thousands of Yazidis corralled by ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in
Mount Sinjar, and not American bombs, as the spin went. And now, as PYD
co-president Asya Abdullah details
,
what’s needed is a “corridor” to break the encirclement of Kobani by Caliph
Ibrahim’s goons.

Sultan Erdogan’s power play
Ankara, meanwhile, seems intent to prolong a policy of “lots of problems
with our neighbors.”

For Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz, “the main cause of ISIS is the
Syrian regime”. And Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu – who invented the now
defunct “zero problems with our neighbors” doctrine in the first place –
has repeatedly stressed Ankara will only intervene with boots on the ground
in Kobani to defend the Kurds if Washington presents a “post-Assad plan”.

And then there’s that larger than life character; Turkish President Tayyip
Erdogan, aka Sultan Erdogan.

Sultan Erdogan’s edicts are well known. Syrian Kurds should fight against
Damascus under the command of that lousy fiction, the reconstituted (and to
be trained, of all places, in Saudi Arabia) Free Syrian Army; they should
forget about any sort of autonomy; they should meekly accept Turkey’s
request for Washington to create a no-fly zone over Syria and also a
“secured” border on Syrian territory. No wonder both the PYD and Washington
have rejected these demands.

Sultan Erdogan has his eyes set on rebooting the peace process with the
PKK; and he wants to lead it in a position of force. So far his only
concession has been to allow Iraqi Kurd peshmergas to enter northern Syria
to counter-balance the PYD-PKK militias, and thus prevent the strengthening
of an anti-Turkish Kurdish axis.

At the same time Sultan Erdogan knows ISIS/ISIL/Daesh has already recruited
up to 1,000 Turkish passport holders – and counting. His supplemental
nightmare is that the toxic brew laying waste to “Syraq” will sooner rather
than later mightily overspill inside Turkish borders.

Watch those barbarians at the gates
Caliph Ibrahim’s goons have already telegraphed their intention to massacre
and/or enslave the entire civilian population of Kobani. And yet Kobani,
per se, has no strategic value for ISIS/ISIL/Daesh (that’s what US
Secretary of State John Kerry himself said last week; but then,
predictably, he reversed himself). This very persuasive PYD commander

though
is very much aware of the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh threat.

Kobani is not essential compared to Deir ez-Zor (which has an airport
supplying the Syrian Arab Army) or Hasakah (which has oil fields controlled
by Kurds helped by the Syrian Arab Army). Kobani boasts no airport and no
oil fields.

On the other hand, the fall of Kobani would generate immensely positive
extra PR for the already very slick Caliph enterprise

–
widening the perception of a winning army especially among new, potential,
EU passport holder recruits, as well as establishing a solid base very
close to the Turkish border.

Essentially, what Sultan Erdogan is doing is to fight both Damascus
(long-term) and the Kurds (medium term) while actually giving a free pass
(short-term) to ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. And yet, further on down the road, Turkish
journalist Fehim Tastekin is right; training non-existent “moderate” Syrian
rebels

in
oh-so-democratic Saudi Arabia will only lead to the Pakistanization of
Turkey. A remix – once again – of the scenario played out during the 1980s
Afghan jihad.

As if this was not muddled enough, in a game changer – and reversing its
“terrorist” dogma – Washington is now maintaining an entente cordiale with
the PYD. And that poses an extra headache for Sultan Erdogan.

This give-and-take between Washington and the PYD is still up for grabs.
Yet some facts on the ground spell it all out; more US bombing, more US air
drops (including major fail air drops, where the freshly weaponized
end up being
The Caliph’s goons).

A key fact should not be overlooked. As soon as the PYD was more or less
“recognized” by Washington, PYD head Saleh Muslim went to meet the wily
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) leader Masoud Barzani. That’s when the
PYD promised a “power sharing” with Barzani’s peshmergas on running Rojava.

Syrian Kurds who were forced to abandon Kobani and exile themselves in
Turkey, and who support the PYD, cannot return to Syria; but Iraqi Kurds
can go back and forth. This dodgy deal was brokered by the KRG’s intel
chief, Lahur Talabani. The KRG, crucially, gets along very well with
Ankara.

That sheds further light on Erdogan’s game; he wants the peshmerga – who
are fierce enemies of the PKK – to become the vanguard against
ISIS/ISIL/Daesh and thus undermine the PYD/PKK alliance. Once again, Turkey
is pitting Kurds against Kurds.

Washington for its part is manipulating Kobani to completely legitimize –
on a “humanitarian”, R2P vein – its crusade against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. It’s
never enough to remember this whole thing started with a barrage of
Washington spin about the bogus, ghostly Khorasan group preparing a new
9-11. Khorasan, predictably, entirely vanished from the news cycle.

In the long run, the American power play is a serious threat to the direct
democracy experiment in Rojava, which Washington cannot but interpret as –
God forbid! – a return of communism.

So Kobani is now a crucial pawn in a pitiless game manipulated by
Washington, Ankara and Irbil. None of these actors want the direct
democracy experiment in Kobani and Rojava to bloom, expand and start to be
noticed all across the Global South. The women of Kobani are in mortal
danger of being, if not enslaved, bitterly betrayed.

And it gets even more ominous when the ISIS/ISIL/Daesh play on Kobani is
seen essentially for what it is; a diversionary tactic, a trap for the
Obama administration. What The Caliph’s goons are really aiming at is Anbar
province in Iraq – which they already largely control – and the crucial
Baghdad belt. The barbarians are at the gates – not only Kobani’s but also
Baghdad’s.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is
Dissolving into Liquid War

(Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the
surge
(Nimble
Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan

(Nimble
Books, 2009). – He may be reached at [email protected]
.

Syrie

Aravot: Will new authorities change freedom of speech level?

10:00 * 25.10.14

Below is an excerpt from the paper’s editorial

Very few in Armenia – probably 20-30 people – do not want any changes
at all, and there are far more less who would wish the [ruling]
Republican Party to reproduce itself.

Many are probably so dissatisfied with their social life that it is
all the same to them who and how will reign our country; they just
want this government to step down. This is an extremely emotional
approach that fails to not only to bring about a government change but
leads to a general apathy.

The rest of the people have questions to the opposition or
non-governing figures bidding for power: namely, what is it that you
are going to do?

Different groups of people are naturally interested in different
questions. I will begin with my narrow professional interests which
are, of course, not that important on the national scale. But as an
example, at least, it is worth posing that question. Will freedom of
speech – on its current unsatisfactory level – be maintained under the
new government or will the situation deteriorate?

Those backing the [opposition] Armenian National Congress and [Second
President Robert] Kocharyan, their attitude to any – be it though the
slightest – dissidence does not inspire any confidence at all that the
situation will remain the same in this respect or – what’s even more
desirable – improve.

First President [and current ANC leader Levon Ter-Petrosyan’s] irate
hints at the “marginals”, the [Armenian Revolutionary Federation-]
Dashnaksutyun and even [opposition Heritage party’s leader] Raffi
[Hovhannisian] do not, frankly speaking, inspire any optimism in me.

Armenian News – Tert.am

BIAnet, Turkey
Oct 17 2014

The Legacy of Turkish in the Armenian Diaspora

The association of the Turkish language with the Turkish state and its
politics makes many wary of acknowledging the indelible place of
Turkish in the lives of Ottoman Armenians and their diasporan
descendants.

Jennifer Manoukian
Ä°stanbul – BIA News Desk

There we sat, the proverbial Turk and Armenian, at neighboring tables
in a university student center in New Jersey. My back to his, I drew
my eyes out of the book I was reading to concentrate on the voice
behind me. The gliding vowels of Turkish always sound familiar in the
split second it takes for my brain to mark the language as unknown. As
the man shouted into his cellphone, unaware of the aspiring
eavesdropper nearby, a surge of recognition startled me each time I
managed to catch a hiç or a hemen. These words were, after all, part
of my language too.

That was the microcosmic encounter between two nations notoriously
divided: a non-conversation through a handful of words that belong to
us both. It was an encounter rooted in another time, another world
away’a time before ethno-linguistic nationalism led Armenians and
Turks to retreat into their languages and fortify them against each
other, a time before the Turkish people held exclusive rights to the
Turkish language, and a time before the Armenian people felt a
visceral unease towards most things Turkish.

This scene recalls the intimate relationship that Ottoman Armenians
once had with the Turkish language. Although this relationship grew
strained nearly a century ago when most of the community was pushed
into the diaspora, among many of the descendants of this community
there remains a quiet, reticent affection for the language that still
echoes today in far-flung corners of the Armenian diaspora.

Turkish: A Language of the Ottoman Armenians

How can the relationship between a people and their imperial language
be framed as a transnational, multigenerational love affair in good
faith? Other imperial contexts point to the striking implausibility of
this scenario. The tendency of imperial powers to use language to sink
their claws deeper into the minds of the colonized, strip them of
their cultural identities, and tighten their grip on the territory
they aim to pillage might prompt a raised eyebrow at the metaphor. But
there is a distinction to be made between an Algerian’s relationship
to French, an Indian’s relationship to English, and an Ottoman
Armenian’s relationship to Turkish.

The first distinction concerns the widespread exposure of the Armenian
community to Turkish during the Ottoman period. Ottoman
Armenians’urban and rural, elite and non-elite’existed in a society
where Turkish was the lingua franca in their cities and towns. The
language was not, as was the case in other imperial contexts, spoken
solely by the ruling minority and their collaborators; on the
contrary, Turkish was the dominant language, from the palace to the
marketplace, and permeated all aspects of public life. The Armenian
community was, therefore, compelled, to varying degrees, to assimilate
Turkish in order to function in the society around them.

The Ottoman Armenian relationship to Turkish was also deepened by the
length of time it had to develop. The presence of the imperial
language was not a blip on the timeline of a nation, nor did it
permeate just an elite tier of society. Turkish was pervasive for four
centuries, not only formally in the bureaucracy, but also informally
in cross-confessional interactions in the multilingual towns and
villages of Anatolia.

But it is one distinct outcome of the centuries-long predominance of
Turkish that sets the Ottoman Armenian relationship with the Turkish
language apart from cases of other colonized peoples. Naturally, the
enduring presence of Turkish and its centrality in public life led
many Ottoman Armenians to slip Turkish words into their Armenian
conversations, but by the nineteenth century, there were large
communities of Armenians across Anatolia with little knowledge of the
Armenian language. Centered largely in Cilicia, Yozgat, and Ankara,
these Ottoman Armenians spoke Turkish exclusively and had learned it
as their mother tongue.

The Turkish language might have initially been perceived as the
language of imperial domination, but over the course of generations,
it became the only one many Ottoman Armenians knew. It was the
language they loved in, grieved in, joked in, fought in. In other
words, Turkish became a language that belonged as much to the
Armenians as it did to anyone else.

Turkish in Other Alphabets

In the late Ottoman period, religion was the supreme determinant of
national belonging. If religion took precedence over language, it
meant that, as long as Turkish-speaking Armenians identified as
Christian, they were still considered part of the Armenian community.

This phenomenon was certainly not unique to Ottoman Armenians. Until
the triumphant rise of ethno-linguistic nationalism in the first
decades of the twentieth century, Turkish was a language largely
unburdened by the constraints of religion and ethnicity. Turkish as an
Ottoman language can be seen most vividly in the print cultures of
non-Muslim communities in the Empire.

These were groups who knew the letters, but not the language, of their
liturgies. For the Greek Orthodox Karamanli community, there are
examples of Turkish written in the Greek alphabet. For a certain
subset of the Jewish community, there are texts in Turkish written in
the Hebrew alphabet, as well as Turkish-language materials written in
the Syriac alphabet for the Turkish-speaking Assyrian community.

But by far the most imposing is the corpus of Turkish-language novels,
translations, newspapers, religious texts, dictionaries, and textbooks
written in the Armenian alphabet for the Turkish-speaking Armenian
community of the Ottoman Empire. In a span of two hundred years, over
one hundred periodicals and two thousand books were published in what
became known as Armeno-Turkish.

The bulk of these Armeno-Turkish materials were published in the final
decades of the Ottoman Empire, which suggests a particularly robust
Turkish-speaking Armenian community on the eve of the Armenian
genocide. Knowing that the vast majority of survivors from this
period, regardless of the language they spoke, fled into exile, a
thorny question emerges: What became of the Turkish language in the
early years of the Armenian diaspora once the Turkish-speaking
Armenian communities of Anatolia were expected to dissolve into the
larger Armenian-speaking community? How was the use of Turkish by
Armenians in the post-genocide diaspora understood once it took on a
new dimension as the language of the perpetrator?

Attempts to achieve national cohesion in the aftermath of the genocide
centered largely on language. In Armenian schools and orphanages in
the Near East, there was a particular focus on shedding Turkish and
mastering Armenian as a way to foster a national renaissance among the
fraction of the Armenian community that survived. Whereas the language
attitudes of the children could be cultivated in favor of Armenian, a
lifetime of brushing up against Turkish was not so easily forgotten in
their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. As language and ethnicity
became more and more intimately intertwined in the Armenian diaspora,
the children became part of a national system that had trouble making
sense of their older Turkish-speaking relatives.

The exclusion of Turkish from the national system created two spheres
governed by two languages; it is this public/private division that is
at the heart of the Armenian diaspora’s relationship to Turkish today.
In the early years of the diaspora in the Near East, Europe, and the
Americas, three languages were in constant contact: the standard
Armenian of school and community life; the Turkish or Armenian dialect
of home life; and the language of the host country. Leaving this last
complicating layer aside, Armenian was privileged as the language of
the diaspora, while Turkish was pushed behind closed doors and
maintained in private. The continuation of Armeno-Turkish publications
in places like New York, Boston, and Buenos Aires well into the 1960s
illustrates that, despite the push for linguistic homogeneity, there
was an unwillingness to abandon Turkish in favor of Armenian among the
last generation of Armenians born in the Ottoman Empire.

This continued use of Turkish in the early years of the diaspora helps
explain the seemingly paradoxical way the Armenian diaspora relates to
Turkish today. The transmission of Turkish from the survivor
generation to the first generation born in the diaspora produced
children who straddled the two languages. In this generation, there
are Armenians who are hiding an excellent command of Turkish, thanks
to the conversations they overheard between parents who would use
Turkish to try to speak privately in front of their children, thanks
to the Nasrettin Hoca stories they were told, and thanks to the
practice they got transcribing Turkish messages into Armenian letters
on behalf of Turkish-speaking relatives who never learned to write.

Fossilized Turkish

After nearly a century, the Armenian diaspora still lives with the
linguistic fragments of its Ottoman past. Turkish was certainly at its
strongest among Armenians in the early years of the diaspora, but by
no means have the second, third, or fourth generations completely lost
touch with the language. Turkish is firmly implanted in the colloquial
Western Armenian spoken among descendants of Ottoman Armenians from
both Turkish- and Armenian-speaking families. Mixing in Turkish is
still so commonplace in conversation that it is a great compliment to
be known to speak makour [clean] Armenian.

So deeply are Turkish words and expressions embedded in the daily
language of family life that it often takes an Armenian language class
to reveal the Turkish origins of some of the most frequently used
words. In classrooms across the diaspora, students are learning that
they are not the only ones who call their grandfathers dede, or say
haydi to get their friends moving or sus to get them to be quiet. They
are not the only ones calling eggplant patlıcan, pouring coffee into a
fincan, or expressing their disbelief with a sighing babam. Certainly
Armenian equivalents of these words exist, but for many, they feel
stilted or artificially engineered when compared to the Turkish words
associated with the warmth of childhood.

Feelings about Turkish in the Armenian diaspora do, however, vary
greatly. Anger at the Turkish government’s continued denial of the
Armenian genocide has led some to be wary of all things Turkish,
including the language. This attitude, however, is a reaction to the
injustice that the Turkish language has come to represent over the
past century. The relationship between Turkish and Armenian people
long predates the Armenian genocide. To see Turkish as a pollutant and
to try to eliminate all traces of the language from colloquial
Armenian is to ignore the historical lineage of the Armenian people.

Centuries of proximity to the Turkish language cannot be easily
undone. Many Armenians in the diaspora bear these historical ties in
their names, ranging from the practical (Boyaciyan [son of a painter],
Terziyan [son of a tailor], Kuyumciyan [son of a jeweler]) to the
perplexing (Altıparmakyan [son of someone with six fingers], Dilsizyan
[son of someone without a tongue], and Deveciyan [son of a camel
driver]).

Many Armenians also bear these ties in the pronunciation of the
Turkish words they have retained. Having been estranged from the
language during the linguistic reforms of the early Turkish Republic,
there is a fossilized form of Ottoman-era Turkish that exists not in
Turkey, but in homes throughout the Armenian diaspora. Since contact
with Turkish broke after the genocide, the language was frozen in 1915
and has been transmitted in this outdated form to subsequent
generations. As a result, Armenians across the diaspora, who have
inherited Turkish rather than studied it, tend to pronounce words like
lokhum or çocukh like Anatolian peasants from another age.

The ties can also be seen in the way Armenians in the diaspora have
appropriated Turkish and created with it. For instance, in the case of
the Turkish zevzek, the word is taken and subjected to the rules of
Armenian noun formation to emerge in a hybrid form as zevzekutiun.
This phenomenon can also be seen with the Armenian diminutive suffix
`ig – , creating words like canig from the word can. Conversely,
Armenian words can also be subjected to the rules of Turkish grammar
to invent hybrid expressions. For example, in the colloquial Armenian
expression çe mı [isn’t it?], the Turkish interrogative participle mı
is added to the Armenian word to create a question with a grammatical
form that only exists in Turkish.

A Momentary Suspension of Politics

The Armenian genocide dispossessed Ottoman Armenians of nearly
everything but their language. In the years immediately following the
genocide, efforts to stomp out Turkish words and expressions from
everyday language did not triumph over the domestic sphere where
Turkish has endured in colloquial Western Armenian.

The politics that Turkish came to represent after the fall of the
Ottoman Empire, however, have added a certain ambivalence to the use
of the language since the early years of the Armenian diaspora. While
certain Turkish words and expressions may awaken happy family
memories, the towering position of Armenian genocide denial in
diasporan Armenian culture affects the way the Turkish language is
perceived in the Armenian diaspora. In other words, the association of
the Turkish language with the Turkish state and its politics makes
many wary of acknowledging the indelible place of Turkish in the lives
of Ottoman Armenians and their diasporan descendants.

Amid the ambivalence that Turkish generates, there are flashes of a
momentary disconnect between language and politics where pre-1915
Armenian attitudes towards Turkish’ones shaped more by ease of
expression than by the pain that the language has grown to symbolize
today’can be seen. These dueling attitudes can exist even within a
single individual: within an Armenian-American who boycotts Turkish
hazelnuts and soothes himself with Turkish proverbs his grandmother
would recite to him as a child; within a French-Armenian who
demonstrates against genocide denial every 24 April and coos yavrum
(or yavrus, replacing the Turkish suffix with the Armenian one) to her
children; within a Lebanese-Armenian who rails against the destruction
of Ottoman Armenian cultural heritage sites in Anatolia with the
colorful Turkish curses always on the tip of his tongue.

The private dimension of the legacy of Turkish in the Armenian
diaspora makes it almost invisible to those outside the Armenian
community, particularly to those in Turkey who may have little idea
that the Ottoman past continues to breathe through the language of the
Armenians.

* This article originally appeared on Jadaliyya.

The Fresno Bee, CA
Oct 24 2014

Charlie Keyan Armenian Community School will host program on priest
Gomidas Vartabed

By Ron Orozco

A program on the life of Armenian priest/musicologist Gomidas Vartabed
will be presented at 1 p.m. Oct. 29 at the Charlie Keyan Armenian
Community School Hovanissian Hall in Clovis, 108 N. Villa Ave.

The program, presented by the students at the school, is among a
series of activities promoted by the Fresno Armenian Genocide
Centennial Committee, an umbrella organization established to
commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

Details: (559) 323-1955.

US Official News
October 23, 2014 Thursday

Press Rights With Visiting Azerbaijani President

Washington

The Human Rights Watch has issued the following news release:

President Francois Hollande of France should urge President Ilham
Aliyev of Azerbaijan to free four human rights defenders jailed
unjustly in Azerbaijan. The four are among dozens thrown behind bars
in the government’s escalating crackdown on its critics.

Hollande will meet with Aliyev in Paris on October 27, 2014, for a
summit convened by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE) on the unresolved conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, a
primarily ethnic Armenian-populated autonomous enclave in Azerbaijan.

“Hollande has a crucial opportunity he should not miss to raise human
rights issues with Azerbaijan’s president,” said Jean-Marie Fardeau,
Paris director at Human Rights Watch. “The charges against these
activists in Azerbaijan are politically motivated, and Hollande’s
voice is badly needed to help secure their freedom.”

The four activists – Leyla Yunus and her husband, Arif; Intigam
Aliyev; and Rasul Jafarov – are among the country’s most prominent
human rights defenders.

In an October 17 letter, Human Rights Watch urged Hollande to call on
Aliyev to release the four before his visit to France.

In the past two-and-a-half years the Azerbaijani authorities brought
or threatened blatantly bogus criminal charges against dozens of
independent and opposition political activists, journalists, bloggers,
and human rights defenders, most of whom are now behind bars. Before
their arrest, Leyla Yunus, Jafarov, and Aliyev had been working
together on an annotated list of political prisoners to present to the
Council of Europe and other intergovernmental institutions.

“Even as they risked arrest themselves, these human rights defenders
were working for justice,” Fardeau said. “Hollande should make clear
to Aliyev that Azerbaijan’s relationship with France can’t be business
as usual as long as these four people remain behind bars and the
crackdown against independent voices continues.”

President Hollande and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met with Leyla
Yunus during their visit to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, in May. Yunus
is also a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. The European
Parliament included Yunus as one of three shortlisted candidates for
the 2014 Sakharov Prize, which goes to the world’s top human rights
defenders, in recognition of her outstanding activism. Although the
prize was awarded on October 21 to a Congolese doctor, the European
Parliament decided to send a special delegation to Baku with
representatives from all political groups to “meet and to support
Leyla Yunus in her fight for democracy in her country.”

Yunus is the founding director of the Institute for Peace and
Democracy (IPD), an independent group that sought to improve
people-to-people dialogue between people in Azerbaijan and Armenia
against the background of the unresolved conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh,
and also focused on combating corruption, violence against women, and
unlawful evictions. Arif Yunus, a prominent historian, was active in
some of these projects. Both have been charged with economic crimes
and treason, for which they could face up to 20 years in prison.

Intigam Aliyev, a lawyer and head of Legal Education Society, an
independent group, has litigated human rights cases in domestic courts
and represented over 100 victims who filed cases before the European
Court of Human Rights. On August 8, authorities sent him to pretrial
detention on charges of tax evasion, abuse of power, and illegal
business activities.

Jafarov, head of Human Rights Club, a group the authorities
persistently refused to register, had carried out several campaigns
against politically motivated imprisonment, including the Sing for
Democracy campaign (later renamed Art for Democracy) in the period
before the Eurovision Song Contest in Baku in May 2012. He was
planning a Sports for Rights campaign in the period before the
European Olympic Games, which Azerbaijan will host in the summer of
2015. Authorities arrested him on August 2, 2014, and charged him with
operating an illegal enterprise, tax evasion, and abuse of office.

“Azerbaijani officials say that the charges against these four human
rights leaders are not politically motivated, but these claims don’t
stand up to scrutiny,” Fardeau said. “It takes extraordinary courage
to stand up for human rights principles in Azerbaijan, and Hollande
needs to speak out on behalf of these brave human rights defenders.”

SCHIFF DISCUSSES ORPHAN RUG, ISIS WITH ASBAREZ – VIDEO

[ Part 2.2: “Attached Text” ]

Friday, October 24th, 2014

by Ara Khachatourian

Rep. Adam Schiff, in an interview with Asbarez Editor Ara Khachatourian
discussed the recent development surrounding the Armenian Orphan
Rug exhibit at the White House visitor center next month, as well
as Turkey’s efforts to thwart US-led operation to combat the
Islamic State-ISIS

IN ARMENIA, MP CAN MEAN “MILLIONAIRE IN PARLIAMENT”

EurasiaNet.org
Oct 24 2014

October 24, 2014 – 11:14am, by Giorgi Lomsadze

Armenia’s parliament is something of a millionaire-hangout, according
to local media reports. Nineteen members of the 131-seat assembly
have incomes of over $1 million, the reports say, citing the most
recent official income declarations.

Tamada Tales could not immediately double-check the reports since
the English-language version of the income-disclosure website is not
fully functional. But if the reports are true, then one influential
opposition party, Prosperous Armenia, certainly lives up to its name.

The populist party and its boss, tycoon Gagik Tsarukian , rank as the
richest party and lawmaker, respectively. For good measure, Prosperous
Armenia allegedly boasts another eight millionaires as well, with the
grand total of the MPs’ net worth coming to $163.6 million, reported
the newspaper 168 Zham (168 Hours), which came up with the original
report on the millionaire-lawmakers.

Another nine millionaires in the legislature belong to the ruling
Republican Party of Armenia, while one independent MP, Araik Grigorian,
who doubles as president of the board of a wine-factory, ranks as
the legislature’s millionaire-maverick.

In grand total, Armenian lawmakers are worth $235 million, 168 Zham
said. By comparison, average monthly salaries in Armenia rank the
dram-equivalent of just $424.

Local critics long have argued that the country’s legislature largely
functions as a good ol’ boys’ club, with business and political
interests mingling seamlessly, and members essentially seeking seats
only to further their business interests.

Judging by these income disclosures, looks like some have been
particularly successful in such a quest.

HOLY CHRISTIAN ECUMENICAL FOUNDATION FORGES COALITION TO HELP HOLY LAND CHRISTIANS

The Arab Daily News
Oct 24 2014

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 10/23/14) – A group of American Muslim and Christian
organizations today announced the formation of an interfaith coalition
to protect Christians and other religious minorities in Arab countries
and to promote peaceful coexistence.

Leaders of major Muslim and Christian organizations, religious
leaders and activists met earlier this week in Washington, D.C.,
at the invitation of theHoly Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation
whose mission is to maintain and support the presence of Christians
in the Holy Land.

Discussions at that meeting resulted in the creation of the coalition
to achieve the long-term goal of defending and protecting indigenous
Christians and other religious minorities in Arab countries by
restoring the historical coexistence of Muslim and Christians and
preserving the presence of Christians and other religious groups as
part of the fabric of Arab and Muslim civilization.

The coalition will work with all concerned organizations and
individuals around the world to challenge stereotypes of Arabs of
all backgrounds and to show that Christians and Muslims are united
in working toward the common goals of peace and justice.

Coalition members say they will hold two conferences; one in early
2015 in Washington, D.C., followed by a second conference in an
Arab country.

The coalition’s leadership committee includes the Very Reverend
Joseph Rahal, pastor of the St. George Orthodox Church, the
Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese; Syed Moktadir, president, All
Dulles Area Muslim Society; Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, national director
of the Office of Interfaith & Community Alliances, Islamic Society
of North America (ISNA), Nihad Awad, national executive director,
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Bassel Korkor, Esq.,
legal officer, Syrian Christians for Peace; Haris Tarin, director of
the Washington, D.C., office, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC);
Salam Al Marayati, president, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC);
and Kamal Nawash, Esq., president, Free Muslims Coalition.

The committee elected Sir Rateb Y. Rabie, president/CEO of the Holy
Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, as chair.

The coalition is open to any organizations, leaders and religious
institutions committed to its mission.

Also in attendance at the formation of the coalition were His
Excellency Archbishop Atallah Hanna, Archbishop of Sebastia, Greek
Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem; His Eminence Archbishop Vicken
Aykazian, Legate of the Eastern Diocese, the Armenian Church of
America (Eastern); Aram Suren Hamparian, executive director, the
Armenian National Committee of America; Majd Akkawi, Youth Director,
Saints Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church; Khaled Elgindy;
and Samer Anabtawi.

The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation is very excited to be
given the honor of leading the effort to have Christians and Muslims
work for peace, justice and the common good.

For more information please contact Sir Rateb Rabie at [email protected]
or by phone at 301-951-9400 extension 212.

SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE NY TIMES

The New York Times distributed this special supplement with today’s
paper:

ARMENIA: AN ANCIENT NATION, A MODERN REPUBLIC