Author: Babajanian Karo

Court Ends Armenian Genocide Museum Challenge in Washington

NATIONAL NEWS | JULY 24, 2014 12:52 PM
By Michael Doyle

WASHINGTON (Fresno Bee) — A federal appeals court may have ended, once
and for all, an extraordinarily protracted legal fight over a proposed
Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial.

In a 37-page decision, on July 15, the US Court of Appeals for the DC
Circuit unanimously upheld a 2011 trial judge’s order awarding the
property intended for the museum to the Cafesjian Family Foundation.

The three-judge panel’s decision rejected competing claims by the
Armenian Assembly of America, which had sought a new trial. Most
poignantly, though, the appeals court voiced dismay over what it
called the “morass of litigation” that has entangled museum plans.

“More than seven years and millions of dollars in legal fees later,
much of the parties’ work to achieve their dream of a museum appears
to have been for naught, which is regrettable,” Judge Robert L.
Wilkins wrote. “Whatever happens next, hopefully our decision today
can at least serve as the last word on this dispute’s protracted
journey through the courts.”

Hirair Hovnanian, chairman of the Armenian Genocide Museum and
Memorial, said in a statement following release of the ruling Tuesday
that “we hope the Cafesjian heirs keep the promise Gerry [Cafesjian]
made to the courts, which was to use this property to build a museum.”

At one time, the late Cafesjian Family Foundation founder Gerald
Cafesjian was a benefactor of the Armenian Assembly. Together, they
planned the museum and memorial marking the period from 1915 to 1923,
when by some estimates upward of 1.5 million Armenians died at the
hands of the Ottoman Empire.

In downtown Washington, project supporters bought a four-story
National Bank of Washington building in 2000. Cafesjian provided
funding and bought adjacent properties, with a clause that the
properties would revert to his control if the project was not finished
by December 31, 2010.

Cafesjian and the Armenian Assembly subsequently had a falling out,
leading to the seemingly endless court battles over control of the
property.

“With the benefit of hindsight, [the Armenian Assembly] may now think
this deal improvident, but no sense of buyer’s remorse can empower us
to rewrite the plain terms of the contract to which they agreed,”
Wilkins wrote.

– See more at:

Karabakh Negotiations Reach Deadlock, Says Armenian Opposition

Armenia –HAK member Vladimir Karapetian at the Friday press club,
Yerevan, 09Apr2012

Nane Sahakian
24.07.2014

The internationally mediated talks aimed at finding a solution to the
protracted Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have reached an impasse, an
opposition party representative in Armenia argued on Thursday,
reacting to the latest meetings of diplomats and statements made by
the peace brokers.

In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service (Azatutyun.am),
Vladimir Karapetian, a chief foreign-policy spokesman for the
opposition Armenian National Congress (HAK), also suggested that
French President Francois Hollande’s proposal on holding an
Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Paris in the near future may no longer
be on the agenda as well after the parties reported no progress
following their foreign ministers’ meetings with the mediators in
Brussels earlier this week.

Commenting on the July 23 statement of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Minsk Group co-chairs on the
results of their meetings with Edward Nalbandian and Elmar
Mammadyarov, Karapetian, who served as an Armenian Foreign Ministry
spokesman in 2006-2008, observed that Yerevan has again failed to
persuade the mediators to blame specifically Baku for the latest surge
in violence in the Karabakh conflict zone and along the
Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

In the statement published late on Wednesday, the United States,
Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Ambassadors
James Warlick, Igor Popov and Pierre Andrieu, voiced their ‘serious
concern’ over the increase in tensions and violence in the region,
including “the targeted killings of civilians.”

They said that during the meetings they urged the parties “to commit
themselves to avoiding casualties” and “rejected the deliberate
targeting of villages and the civilian population.”

During his meeting with the mediators on Tuesday, Armenian Minister
Nalbandian reportedly raised the issue of ‘intensified subversive
activities’ by Azerbaijan. He highlighted what he called the
increasingly ‘militaristic rhetoric’ of Baku, as well as what he said
were numerous violations of the ceasefire regime along the border with
Armenia.

Last week, authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh said a group of
Azerbaijanis had been arrested in the region on suspicion of espionage
and subversive activities. The unrecognized republic’s police force
said the group members had killed one military serviceman and severely
wounded a civilian. Another Karabakh teenager, it said, had been
kidnapped and then brutally murdered by the alleged Azerbaijani
saboteurs.

“It is noticeable that the co-chairs try to keep the balance in their
statement. Another major circumstance is that it seems that an
Azerbaijani-Armenian summit is again delayed… and the French
president’s invitation for a meeting in Paris appears to have been
removed from the agenda,” Karapetian said.

In their statement issued from Vienna, the mediators also said that
they “continue to review possible security confidence building
measures and people-to-people programs with the parties” and believe
that such programs “build the trust and confidence necessary for a
lasting peace.”

According to the HAK representative, while being important, these
programs still have no major influence on the negotiation process.

“The negotiation process that should bring the parties to the conflict
closer to a solution has reached a deadlock, no meetings are held,
even the co-chairs met with the foreign ministers separately. This
means that even the foreign ministers do not meet any longer, and in
this sense confidence building measures are hard to implement,” he
said.

Karapetian also contended that the mediators’ statements have no
influence on the border situation. “Moreover, I can say that the role
of the co-chairs in the recent period has considerably decreased,” the
Armenian oppositionist said.

Iraq’s Long-Lost Mythical Temple [Urartian Musasir] Has Been Found¦and
Is In Danger of Disappearing Again
By Nina Strochlic
07.24.14

For years, scientists have been searching for an ancient temple
dedicated to a winged warrior. Now, one archeologist thinks he may
have found it. Only problem: It’s in the middle of a war zone.

In an ancient stone carving, warriors brandishing shields and swords
swarm over the columned facade of a grand temple. On one side, a
palace stands with three women perched on top; on the other, above
private homes, a ruler on a throne dictates to royal scribes. In the
foreground, the peaks of northern Iraq soar.

For centuries, scholars and archaeologists have speculated about the
whereabouts of this near-mythical temple and the powerful city where
it resided. While they know its history, the storied city’s exact
location has long been lost to time, until a recent report by a local
archaeologist claimed to have hit upon the temple’s remains. Using
clues pulled from surviving records and descriptions, Dlshad Marf
Zamua believes that, after seven years of research, he’s found the
last traces of Musasir in what is now a village called Mdjeser in
Iraqi Kurdistan.

More than 2,500 years ago, the holy structure was the shining glory of
the ancient capital city of Musarir, also known as Ardini, in
modern-day Iraqi Kurdistan. For hundreds of years, around the first
millennium BC, the house of worship and its home city were renowned as
holy sites. Scholars believe that the temple was built in the late
ninth century BC to honor the god Haldi’a winged warrior standing on a
lion’and the goddess Bagbartu in the Iron Age kingdom of Urartu, which
considered Haldi its national deity.

This ancient metropolis separated Urartu, a cross-section of Armenia,
Iraq, eastern Turkey, and northwestern Iran, from the powerful empire
of Assyria. The capital city had long been written about, first by an
Assyrian king who said it was `the holy city founded in bedrock,’ then
by a later king who referred to the city’s ruler as a `mountain
dweller,’ and its own seal called it `the city of the raven.’

The adorned temple of Haldi was described as having multiple gates,
where large numbers of animals were sacrificed. There was supposedly a
courtyard, and scholars believe regional kings were crowned on its
grounds, where they would later erect bronze statues in their own
honor.

The region was a constant battleground for political powers in the
Middle East, and in 714 B.C., the armies of Sargon II of Assyria
captured and plundered the holy Musasir. Within the temple, they found
a cache of treasure hoarded for centuries. The crusading king’s loot
totaled an estimated one ton of gold and 10 tons of silver.

This was the eighth campaign for Sargo II, and one of the last major
conquests led by a series of kings who would unite the Middle East
under the rule of Assyria. Sargo II used claims of treachery by local
rulers to justify the invasion, but it became clear that the vast
wealth of the city was the real goal. He pledged the newfound riches
to fund construction of `Sargon’s Fortress’ the next year, with plans
of making it the new center of Assyria, one of the great ancient
empires. It was on the walls of Sargon II’s massive new palace that
workers engraved scenes of the sacking of Masasir.

In the carving, the temple is depicted with a classical pediment front
and a colonnade of columns supporting the structure. If accurate,
historians believe it could be the first known temple to use both
those styles.

For the last 40 years, since they were unearthed during a military
upheaval, local villagers in Mdjeser have been using these column
bases in their homes and buildings, incorporating them into stairs,
seats, or courtyard additions.`But there’s no telling whether the
remnants of a mythic temple built to honor a winged man on a lion’s
back will survive its resurrection.”

Marf Zamua, who teaches at Salahaddin University in Erbil, the capital
of Iraqi Kurdistan, and is working on his PhD in Assyriology in the
Netherlands, began collecting these recently exposed pieces. The 17
column fragments he’s found so far have led him to believe he’s
discovered the long-lost temple. Along with these major finds are a
collection of relics, seven stone statues, pottery, and a bronze
depiction of a wild goat found in the area.

It hasn’t been an easy task. Four decades of turmoil have devastated
archaeological sites, but the chaos has also resurfaced previously
buried treasures. Beginning in 2005, Marf Zamua began to document Late
Bronze Age and Iron Age sites that were revealed during a period of
unrest. He went from village to village looking for what had been
uncovered. `Most of the objects [were] re-used for their daily life,
such as using column bases as stairs and seats,’ he remembers, `and
statues as column stones in their houses.’

He also made a connection between architectural similarities between
the modern village and the ancient city’idiosyncrasies in building
styles that are uncommon elsewhere in the region, like the lack of
outer compound walls and stacked houses. These findings were presented
in June at the International Congress on the Archaeology of the
Ancient Near East in Basel, Switzerland.

Uncovering these treasures in Iraq has posed a special set of
challenges for excavators. The area saw the suspension of digs after
the 1981 Gulf War, Marf Zamua says, when the Iranian and Iraqi armies
sowed the earth with thousands of landmines. Later, Kurdish fighters
clashed with Iran and Turkey, and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages, including Mdjeser.

As it goes, history is bound to repeat itself. Just as Sargon II
plundered Urartu to fund his war chest, antiquities across Syria and
Iraq have been bombed flat and looted by rebels and government forces
alike. In Iraq, invading militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and al
Sham have torn through Mosul’s museum and are destroying ancient
treasures at an alarming rate.

Marf Zamua denounces the pillaging, but says the rebels have been
targeting Islamic architecture and relics more than pre-Islamic sites.
Luckily, the Kurdish army has been successfully protecting the border
since the surge, and Marf Zamua says he’s unconcerned about the
interference with his work’he and the local antiquities department are
moving ahead with plans to launch fuller excavations into locations
where the objects were found

But there’s no telling whether the remnants of a mythic temple built
to honor a winged man on a lion’s back will survive its resurrection.
`They destroy anything they do not like,’ Marf Zamua says of the
modern-day invaders.

7th Annual Armenian Identity Festival in Pasadena

By MassisPost
Updated: July 23, 2014

By Kevork Keushkerian

The 7th annual Identity Festival organized by the Armenian Community
Coalition of Pasadena was a smashing success on Sunday, July 20, 2015.
Victory Park that day was transformed into a bee hive with more than
4,000 people, Armenians and non-Armenians alike, from all walks of
life were in and out through out the day from 12:00 noon to 7:00 p.m.
in the evening. This event was cosponsored by Congresswoman Judy Chu,
The City of Pasadena and the Pasadena Library.

The theme of the day was to celebrate the 125th anniversary of the
first Armenian settlement in the city of Pasadena, which was
incorporated into cityhood just three years earlier. I was pleasantly
impressed that the Mistresses of the Ceremony were young and talented
Armenian Ladies from our community, namely Nayri Krouzian and Serah
Chahinian, who masterfully conducted the program in English and
Armenian respectively. Another young artist, Sevag Chahinian, was the
D.J. for the day.

The festivities of the day began with an acapela rendition of the
American and Armenian National Anthems by Maral Kurdian, a junior at
the Armenian General Benevolent Union’s Vatche and Tamar Manougian
High School in Pasadena. She mesmerized the audience by her beautiful
voice.

Among the dignitaries attending the festival was Congresswoman Judy
Chu, who reflected upon the contributions of some the famous Armenian
scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs, who had helped advance the
technology, which made America a better place to live and prosper. She
then presented several Certificates of Congressional Recognition to
some of the hard working members of the Armenian Community Coalition
of Pasadena.

Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard, addressing the audience said that “This
festival demonstrates how deep the roots are for the Armenian
community. We welcome and celebrate different cultures and learn from
one another. That makes Pasadena a more enjoyable and a more
stimulating city.”

Pasadena Police Chief Phillip Sanchez congratulated the Armenian
Community Coalition on the occasion of the 7th annual Identity
Festival and said that “We have a great city and a great police
department and many of the lessons learned come from our Armenian
brothers and sisters. The influence you have in Pasadena is
extraordinary, in medicine, engineering, and entrepreneurship.” He
then continued saying, “I’m proud to announce that in the great
history of the Pasadena Police Department, about six months ago, we
hired our first Armenian woman.”

Assemblyman Chris Holden and Glendale City Councilwoman Lorry Friedman
also addressed the audience, congratulating the Armenian Community
Coalition and reiterating the important role of the Armenians in their
respective district and city.

Dr. Hovhannes Ahmaranian and Kevork Keushkerian spoke on behalf of the
Armenian Community Coalition of Pasadena in Armenian and English,
respectively. They both dwelled upon the fact that Armenians had
settled in Pasadena 125 years ago and that now the Armenian population
in Pasadena had grown to have 4 schools, 6 churches, 4 cultural
organizations and 2 weekly newspapers.

They also mentioned that the first settler, Mr. Movses Pashgian, had
become the Grand Marshall in the Tournament of Roses Parade in 1915.
Coincidentally, 100 years later, the first Armenian Rose Float will
parade along the 5.5 mile route on Colorado Blvd. on January 1, 2015.
This will be a unique opportunity for Armenians to share their 7000
year old rich cultural heritage with the whole world, making them
proud and resolute to pass the torch on to the next generation.

Entertainment was provided throughout the day by a selected host of
singers and dancers; such as Nshan Tchaghatsbanian, Kevork Chakmayan,
Gantegh (Lantern) choir, Pateel (Snow Flake) and Nor Serount (New
Generation) Dance Groups and Vartan & Seranoush Kevorkian Dance
Ensemble. The audience was elated by their performances and gave them
loud applauses and constantly shouted words of praise.

Finally, it was time for cutting the 125th anniversary cake.
Congresswoman Chu, Mayor Bogaard and Police Chief Sanchez, along with
Chris Chahinian, Chairman of the Armenian Community Coalition of
Pasadena participated in the cake cutting ceremony. The cake was
donated by Sarkis Pastry of Pasadena. The cake was big enough to
satisfy all the children and the adults of the community who happened
to be there at around 4:30 p.m.

Saakashvili creates Georgia liberation headquarters

13:08 * 24.07.14

Ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili, almost all the time
conducting in Ukraine, created in Kiev Headquarters of the liberation
of Georgia, News.rin.ru reports, citing media sources.

The Headquarters has entered people’s deputies from the party
Saakashvili’s United national movement ” Giorgi Vashadze, Giorgi
Baramidze, David Sakvarelidze, George (Givi Targamadze – defendant in
the trial about “, and ex-Secretary of the NSC George (Giga) Bokeria,
reports the newspaper’s journalist opinion in Georgia, referring to
the newspaper ” alia “. Saakashvili and these individuals, according
to the publication, regularly conduct the training for dismissed from
the defense Ministry and the interior Ministry by the present
authorities of Georgia of persons and to members of the pre-existing
in Georgia ” zonder-brigades “.

The “Headquarters” reportedly seeks to organize unrest in Georgia in
the autumn. Print Edition writes, that it is time for the Ukrainian
government to pay attention to this, because what is happening may
cause harm to the traditions of friendship Tbilisi and Kiev. However,
the Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Garibashvili said the recent
Visit to Tbilisi assistant to the President of Ukraine, ex-Minister of
internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko.

Armenian News – Tert.am

KURDISTAN
Les Kurdes irakiens pompent du brut d’un champ de pétrole disputé
(responsable pétrolier)

La région autonome du Kurdistan irakien a commencé jeudi à pomper
20.000 barils du brut à titre expérimental d’un champ de pétrole
disputé dont elle s’est emparée il y a une semaine dans la province de
Kirkouk (nord), a annoncé un responsable pétrolier.

C’est la première fois que les Kurdes pompent du pétrole du champ de
Bai Hassan, situé à 55 km au nord-ouest de la ville de Kirkouk qui
avait une capacité de 190.000 barils par jour, a indiqué à l’AFP un
responsable de la compagnie du pétrole du Nord.

Les Kurdes avaient annoncé le 11 juillet avoir pris le contrôle de
deux champs de pétrole disputés dans la région de Kirkouk, provoquant
la colère des autorités centrales de Bagdad.

Il s’agit des champs de pétrole des zones de Bai Hassan et de la zone
de Makhmour. Selon Erbil, la production des nouveaux champs sous
contrôle kurde va servir d’abord à faire face à la pénurie de produits
raffinés sur le marché intérieur.

Les Kurdes, qui se sont déjà emparés il y a un mois de la ville
disputée de Kirkouk à la faveur de la crise provoquée par l’offensive
fulgurante des insurgés sunnites, ont expliqué avoir pris cette
initiative en réaction à la volonté du ministère du Pétrole de saboter
un oléoduc de la zone.

Leur initiative marque une nouvelle escalade dans les tensions entre
Erbil et Bagdad, qui ont contribué au retard pris dans la formation
d’un gouvernement.

Les autorités kurdes ont demandé le 10 juillet au Premier ministre
Nouri al-Maliki de quitter le pouvoir, le qualifiant d'”hystérique”
après ses déclarations accusant la province autonome d’être le
quartier général des insurgés.

jeudi 24 juillet 2014,
Stéphane (c)armenews.com

Liberté de la presse
L’OSCE préoccupé par une décision de la Cour arménienne

La représentante de la liberté de la presse au sein de l’Organisation
pour la sécurité et la coopération en Europe (OSCE, Dunja Mijatovic, a
exprimé sa préoccupation au sujet d’une décision judiciaire en Arménie
qui oblige les médias à divulguer leurs sources d’information.

Le 26 Juin, la Cour administrative des districts de Kentron et Nork
Marash-à Erevan ont jugé que deux organes de presse, le journal
Hraparak et le portail de nouvelles Ilur.am, devraient révéler leurs
sources dans le cadre de l’enquête criminelle impliquant un agent de
police de haut niveau de la région de Shirak.

“Je crains que cette décision puisse avoir un effet dissuasif sur les
médias car il pourrait contrecarrer des questions d’intérêt public”, a
déclaré Mijatovic hier. “La nécessité du secret professionnel des
journalistes sur leurs sources de l’information doit être reconnu.”

Elle a noté que le droit des journalistes à protéger l’identité des
sources est un principe fondamental du journalisme d’investigation et
a maintes fois été déclaré comme une exigence fondamentale pour la
liberté d’expression par l’OSCE.

Plus tôt ce mois-ci, Hraparak et Ilur.am ont refusé de se conformer à
la décision du tribunal qui leur ordonnait de divulguer les sources de
leurs récents rapports accusant Vartan Nadarian, le chef de la police
de la province du nord-ouest de Shirak, d’avoir attaqué deux jeunes
hommes. L’un d’eux s’est avéré être Artur Alexanian, célèbre lutteur
arménien et trois fois champion d’Europe.

Citant ces rapports, le Service Spécial d’Investigation (SIS) a lancé
une enquête criminelle sur la violence présumée. L’agence
d’application de la loi subordonnée aux procureurs de l’État a déclaré
aux deux médias de divulguer les sources de l’information, en disant
que c’était nécessaire pour résoudre l’affaire. Les deux publications
ont refusé de le faire, c’est pourquoi le SIS les ont emmené au
tribunal.

Les deux médias ont dit qu’ils allaient faire appel de la décision et
ne révéleront pas leurs sources dans tous les cas. Ils ont accusé les
autorités d’utiliser le cas pour intimider les organisations de presse
qui critiquent le gouvernement arménien.

Selon la loi arménienne, les tribunaux peuvent ordonner aux médias de
divulguer leurs sources si elles le jugent nécessaire pour résoudre
des crimes graves. Les éditeurs et les journalistes qui défient les
ordres risquent jusqu’à deux mois de prison. Cette disposition légale
n’a jamais été appliquée jusqu’à présent.

jeudi 24 juillet 2014,
Claire (c)armenews.com

Rostelecom expanding network of its outlets in Armenia

YEREVAN, July 24. /ARKA/. Rostelecom has opened its outlets – a new
way for selling services, which has been approved by customers through
a survey, the press office of the company reported on Wednesday.

The company’s clients will make contracts and receive information
about the company’s services and new outlets located in the most
populous districts of cities.

The outlets have been opened in Martuni, Dilijan, Ararat and Metsamor
in June and July. Roistelecom is going to open new outlets also in
Armenia’s other cities.

The company says that detailed information about summer offers
HyperAcceleration and WiFi for 1 Dram is available on its official
website.

GNC-Alfa, trading as Rostelecom (www. rtarmenia.am), is one of the
largest telecommunication operators in Armenia.

In December 2012, the company started providing broadband access to
Internet and telephony services, and in September 2013 a television
service. Its network embraces Armenia’s entire territory, including
Yerevan.

The company provides its television service jointly with HYBRID SOLUTIONS.
Rostelecom’s clients are corporations, banks, the government, state
establishments, telecommunication operators and international
organizations.
The company’s services are available in 47 cities. —0—–

– See more at:

Journal of Turkish Weekly
July 23 2014

Women from Turkey, Armenia come together to reduce conflict

23 July 2014

Volunteers in Turkey and Armenia are building relationships in the
hope that person-to-person diplomacy will help set a foundation for
the restoration of relations between the neighbouring nations.

For two years, Beyond Borders: Linking Our Stories has brought
together Turkish and Armenian women to tell their personal stories and
redefine their feelings. The project is operated by the volunteers at
the Women’s Resource Centre of Armenia and Turkey’s feminist
collective Amargi Istanbul.

The result has been workshops and performance art designed to promote
peace and understanding.

“I wanted to be a part of the project because in my opinion there was
no barrier before the solidarity between women in both countries who
are facing similar problems. Although the countries remain ignorant of
each other, I can very well understand an Armenian woman from her
womanhood experience,” Tuba Keles, an actress living in Istanbul, told
SES Türkiye.

“We have listened to each other, we came together to tell our stories.
We have experienced that the most efficient cure for the pains and for
building communication is to establish eye-to-eye contact with each
other,” she said.

These shared experiences last year formed the basis for a performance
about womanhood, presented in Turkish and in Armenian, in the village
of Sirince in western Turkey. It drew an audience of young people from
nearby villages.

During a recent meeting in Istanbul, project staff members invited
women to bring messages of peace and friendship, such as writings on
paper, audio recordings, photographs or souvenirs that they valued.
These items were then delivered to their peers in Armenia.

A month later, in the Armenian city of Aghdzq, the items were shared
and discussed. The experiences were documented and posted on a blog in
both Armenian and Turkish each day.

For 12 days, participants also practiced using body movements and
other types of non-verbal communication to create links and
understanding between one another.

According to the project’s website, the non-verbal communication was
used as “alternatives to speech in a closed-border situation where
speech has not contributed much in healing old wounds.”

In the end, a new work of performance art focusing on broader topics
relating to the body, borders and collaboration was held by the group.

“Being inspired by the sealed borders for years, the women from these
two so-called enemy countries started to lay down the roads of peace.
And it became an inspiring step for peace establishment both for those
who are following the project and the performance,” Keles said.

According to Keles, when the “impossible” in the minds has been
realised, the two communities have increased their trust on
establishing dialogue and mutual understanding.

“The project participants discussed the stereotypes they have received
so far about Armenian people, while the Armenian women did the same
thing about their prejudices about Turkish people,” she added.

Milena Abrahamyan, co-ordinator of the project in Armenia, said that
usually women are not in powerful positions of decision-making about
their countries, so the women in the project are not actually
responsible for the sealed borders.

“At the same time, we are women who are active politically and
socially and we do not agree with the patriarchal structure of
nation-states and their borders. By understanding this, we meet to
create alternative possibilities for relating to one another — the
other, the enemy we have been taught to hate — outside of the
accepted rationalism of current day politics and diplomacy,”
Abrahamyan told SES Türkiye.

Abrahamyan said the project promotes conflict transformation.

“Currently, our project is focusing on non-verbal communication and
body-movement techniques in order to achieve inner peace with
ourselves as well as outer peace with each other. In the process of
achieving this kind of dynamic peace, we work with each other and
ourselves to transform conflicts that may arise between us because of
our differences,” she added.

“By documenting our process of working with each other, we aim to
provide a manual of how to do this and transform conflicts into
collaboration, mutual understanding and art.”

The impact on bilateral relations between the two countries remains to
be seen. The project is set to continue each year and staff members
are regularly in contact to prepare joint documents.

“Each person who is involved is part of a network that we are building
among Armenian and Turkish women,” Abrahamyan said.

“To be sustainable, this project takes the approach of using creative
and innovative methods to build together. As a result, a solid
sisterhood is created and people become inspired, because the work we
do is quite intense and personal. Each person is affected, even if
differently from each other,” she added.

According to Dr. Senem Cevik, a political communication expert at
Ankara University, both Turkey and Armenia’s societies have an absence
of interaction that has resulted in a deficiency of knowledge about
one another.

“Both represent an unknown, and maintain a mystery. Although the
borders are sealed and countries have no diplomatic relations,
initiating such a social project signifies the power of
non-governmental networks and civic engagement that can serve as
venues to establish long-term relationship building,” Cevik told SES
Türkiye. “Groups in conflict occasionally have difficulty in finding a
common ground to talk besides the issue of conflict,” Cevik added.

Cevik said that this project can be a tool of citizen diplomacy
tackling shared societal issues, such as female empowerment.

She also underlined that citizen diplomacy efforts can be far more
productive and lay the groundwork for future political relations,
while the substantial effects of such efforts will be visible in both
societies and lead to more initiatives.

“More importantly, with each initiative Turks and Armenians have a
chance to interact with the other, therefore the participants of the
projects will be likely to have a broader sense of looking beyond the
other side of the border and looking past the conflict without
necessarily forgetting or fixating on it,” she said. “Persistent
efforts will eventually ease the grip on stereotypical images and
women as the stronghold of both societies … [and] bear the hope to
pass on their experiences of interacting with the other to next
generations,” Cevik added.

23 July 2014

SES Türkiye

Oil Price
July 23 2014

Are Civilian Flights Over War Zones Safe?

By Claude Salhani | Wed, 23 July 2014 21:39

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In the aftermath of the shoot-down over Ukraine of Malaysian Airways
Flight 17 last week, and the deaths of its 298 passengers and crew,
the question that many travelers are asking is: just how safe is
international air travel these days?

It’s a reasonable question given that 41 wars or armed conflicts are
currently going on across the world at the moment.

Most people would be hard pressed to name more than the major
conflicts, the ones making headlines on CNN, Al-Jazeera and the BBC:
Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sad to say, but there are many more: Somalia; Nigeria (where an
Islamist insurgency has killed at least 10,700 people since 1999);
Pakistan’s Northwest Province (at least 52,000 killed since 2004);
Nagorno-Karabakh, where since 1988 more than 30,000 have been killed
in fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan; in Darfur, some 462,000
people have died; the insurgency in Yemen has claimed 25,000 lives.

And the list goes on.

If the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine were able to procure
anti-aircraft missiles capable of reaching an airliner flying at
35,000 feet, can’t others do the same?

Related Article: The Islamic State: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

And if they can, does this mean that civilian aircrafts will have to
avoid the skies of every conflict-ridden country? With dozens of
countries in a state of belligerency at any given moment, that kind of
restriction would make flights to many countries much more time
consuming not to mention expensive; more flying time means more fuel,
which means pricier tickets.

The airline industry will generate about $24 billion in profit for oil
producers this year, spending an estimated $212 billion on jet fuel –
or almost 30 percent of their total operating costs, according to the
International Air Transport Association.

The good news to the above questions are yes, for the most part,
international air travel over warring regions is safe; and no, most
rebel groups around the world are unable to obtain similar weapons for
a wide range of reasons.

The first is that this is very expensive equipment; a set of four
missiles costs anywhere from $30 million to $120 million. And the
countries that manufacture them aren’t in the business of selling them
cheaply or handing them over to any group with a grudge.

Second, these are large weapons, usually requiring two or three
vehicles to move them. These are not shoulder-held rockets that
someone can literally hide under their bed.

Third, the weapons systems require specialized training. Not every
rebel group can recruit such talent.

Fourth, it’s highly unlikely that rebel groups believe shooting
international civilian plans out of the sky is part of a winning
strategy. Most observers believe the Malaysian flight was shot down
accidentally.

The type of weapon used to shoot down Malaysian Flight 17 crash is
still being investigated, but evidence so far points to the use of
either the SA-11 (NATO codenamed Gadfly 1979) or SA-17 “Buk Mk. 2”
anti-aircraft missile (NATO designation Grizzly 2007).

That assumes that the weapon was Russian-made. The Ukrainian
government said it doesn’t have a weapon capable of bringing down a
commercial airliner. The missile was fired from pro-Moscow
separatist-held territory.

The Russians also have the more sophisticated SA-20, (S0-300) though
it would be highly unlikely that they would have given those to the
Ukrainian rebels, U.S. experts say.

The SA-20 are extremely sophisticated and need to be operated by
experienced crews with excellent ability to characterize flight paths
and read out IIF (Identification friend or foe) and transponder data.

Human error from a SA-20 unit is possible, but very unlikely, says
Anthony H. Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

“There have been no suggestions that these are in rebel hands or they
could use them,” Cordesman wrote in a special report on the downing of
the Malaysian plane.

We know that at the altitude the plane was flying – 32,000 feet — it
is impossible that it was hit by a portable, shoulder-launched
heat-seeking missile of the sort the CIA handed out to Afghan rebels
during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Cordesman confirms that
those are unable to reach civilian airliners at cruising altitude.
Variants of the SA-11 and SA-12 easily can.

General Philip Breedlove, NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe,
warned in June that the Russian government had been training
pro-Russian separatists inside Russia to have an “anti-aircraft
capability,” Cordesman noted.

By Claude Salhani of Oilprice.com