Author: Badalian Vardan

Turkish Government News
January 16, 2015 Friday

`We will further improve our military, political, commercial, cultural
and educational relations with Azerbaijan’

Ankara

The Turkish Government has issued the following press release:

President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an held a joint press conference with
President Ä°lham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, who is paying a visit to Turkey,
at the Presidential Palace.

Following the 4th Meeting of Turkey-Azerbaijan High Level Strategic
Cooperation Council (YDSK), document signing ceremony and joint press
conference were held.

In his statement at the press conference, President ErdoÄ?an said that
the current state of the relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey and
regional issues were reviewed and possible future steps between the
two countries were discussed during the tete a tete and the meeting
between delegations.

Stating that President Aliyev of Azerbaijan paid an official visit to
Turkey in November, 2013 and he was hosted during the Turkic Council
Summit, held in Bodrum, in June, 2014, President ErdoÄ?an reminded that
he paid one of his first Presidential visits to Azerbaijan after his
election and expressed his gratitude to President Aliyev for paying
the first official visit of 2015 to Turkey.

$15 BILLION TRADE VOLUME GOAL FOR 2023

Expressing that the YDSK meeting will further improve our military,
political, commercial, cultural and educational relations with
Azerbaijan, President ErdoÄ?an said: “The successful performance of
this mechanism shows that the steps we will take will be much more
stronger. There is no political problem between Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Our military cooperation continues to improve. Regarding the economic
and commercial relations, our trade volume reached $5 billion this
year. However, our real goal is to increase the trade volume up to $15
billion by 2023. I believe that both countries have the political
will, resolve and determination. We will achieve our goals.”

Noting that they comprehensively and productively exchanged views
during their meeting, President ErdoÄ?an said that they reviewed the
bilateral relations, national security matters within the frame of
regional and global developments.

`THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH PROBLEM MUST BE SOLVED THROUGH PEACEFUL MEANS
WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF AZERBAIJAN’

Stating that he listened to the latest news regarding the negotiation
process to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh problem from President Aliyev,
President ErdoÄ?an said: “Apparently, the OSCE Minsk Group is stalling
the process by abstaining from taking any decisive step. It is
saddening to see that delaying tactics are still employed despite the
international decisions on the issue. I would like to remind once
again that our support to Azerbaijan, regarding the solution of the
Nagorno-Karabakh problem through peaceful means within the framework
of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, will continue with the
same determination. Our stance on this issue, which is very sensitive
for us, is clear. We reviewed this issue during our talks and it is
not possible for us to step back.”

`AFTER THE TANAP PROJECT IS COMPLETED, THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF
AZERBAIJAN AND TURKEY WILL FURTHER INCREASE’

Pointing out that defense is of great significance to the strategic
cooperation, President ErdoÄ?an stated that energy has a very important
place between the two countries. Reminding that the TANAP project,
which has become a world-class project now, has been started,
President ErdoÄ?an said: “The Turkish companies have a great share in
this project in the production and supply of pipes and construction.
After the TANAP project is completed, the strategic importance of
Azerbaijan and Turkey will further increase. We have taken the
necessary steps. 2015 is of great importance to this project.”

`BAKU-TBILISI-KARS RAILWAY WILL BE READY FOR OPENING BY THE END OF THE YEAR’

Pointing out that Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railway is expected to be ready
for opening by the end of the year, President ErdoÄ?an said: “This also
means the opening of Pekin-Istanbul Rail Line. After the completion of
Marmaray, this rail line became almost operational. This line will
reach from Istanbul to Baku and then to Pekin. These are such
investments. That’s why, these investments are so important. We will
proudly carry on this process. The natural gas pipelines of
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum maintain their strategic
importance for us. I would like to clearly express that another
important step regarding this issue is a train leaving from West
Europe can reach Pekin via Caspian shores, Aktau and Turkmenbashi
ports.”

Reminding that Turkey assumed the Presidency of G20 this year and will
host the summit, President ErdoÄ?an said: “As the host of the summit,
we used our right to invite a guest for Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan will
attend to the G20 summit as our guest. Until the G20 summit,
Azerbaijan will be with us from the preparations to the negotiations.”

`WE WILL BE TOGETHER WITH MY BROTHER Ä°LHAM ALÄ°YEV ON APRIL, 24 IN ÇANAKKALE’

Pointing out that another important aspect of this year is the
centennial anniversary of the Çanakkale Naval War on April, 24,
President ErdoÄ?an said: “We sent invitations to many heads of states
and governments for April, 24. We will be together with my brother
Ä°lham Aliyev on April, 24 in Çanakkale.”

President ErdoÄ?an completed his speech by wishing that this visit may
lead to prosperity for the two countries.

Before the press conference, President ErdoÄ?an and President Aliyev
signed the joint statement on the results of the 4th Meeting of
Turkey-Azerbaijan High Level Strategic Cooperation Council.

“The Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment of the Joint
Committee on Customs Issues between the State Customs Committee of the
Republic of Azerbaijan and the Ministry of Customs and Trade of the
Republic of Turkey” and “The Memorandum of Understanding on
Cooperation between the Financial Monitoring Service under the Central
Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Financial Crimes
Investigation Board of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of
Turkey in Exchanging Financial Information Related to the Legalization
of Illegally Obtained Money or Other Properties and the Financing of
Terrorism.” were signed during the ceremony.

PRESIDENT ERDOGAN HOSTS PRESIDENT ALIYEV AT A LUNCHEON GIVEN IN HIS HONOR

After the joint press conference, President ErdoÄ?an gave a luncheon in
the honor of his guest President Aliyev at the Presidential Palace.

APA, Azerbaijan
Jan 17 2015

Deputy Head of Presidential Administration: “Armenia can be a puppet
of another great state tomorrow”

[ 17 January 2015 14:57 ]

Baku. Ramiz Mikayiloglu – APA. “The Armenian government has conducted
negotiations with the European Union for three years. Once, Serzh
Sargsyan woke up and said we join the European Union”, said Deputy
Head of the Presidential Administration of the Republic of Azerbaijan,
Director of the Administration’s Foreign Relations Department Novruz
Mammadov, APA reports.

He said that Armenia can be a puppet of another great state tomorrow.
“The tensions and crisis in the world are affecting Armenia by four or
five times. Armenia needs money. Neither the West nor others give
money to Armenia. When God intends to bring a disaster on people, He
blows their minds away. Armenia is in such a situation now. I have
such information that middle-aged and older generation in Armenia have
positive attitude toward Azerbaijan. Serzh Sargsyan and Edward
Nalbandian try to bring up young generation differently”, Mammadov
said.

Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
Jan 17 2015

Armenia’s Sargsyan rejects invitation to Gallipoli centenary

ANKARA

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has rebuffed an invitation by
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan to ceremonies marking the
centenary of the Battle of Gallipoli in Çanakkale in late April, which
coincides with the Armenian remembrance day.

With plans to hold massive ceremonies to mark the centenary of the
Battle of Gallipoli on April 23 and 24, Erdoðan had sent out
invitations to the leaders of 102 countries, including Armenian
President Sargsyan and U.S. President Barack Obama.

In a letter addressed to Erdoðan, Sargsyan recalled an invitation
handed to Erdoðan for the events to be held to mark the 100th
anniversary of the 1915 mass killing of Armenians, considered as
“genocide” by Armenia.

“Your Excellency, a few months ago, I invited you to visit Yerevan on
April 24, 2015 to honor memory of the innocent victims of the Armenian
Genocide together,” Sargsyan said in the letter. “We have no tradition
of visiting a guest without receiving a response to our own
invitation.”

Sargsyan also ciriticized Turkey’s “traditional policy of denial,”
while also questioning the timing of the Gallipoli event.

“The 100th anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli for the first time
this year falls on 24 April, in the case when it started on March 18,
1915 and continued till the end of January 1916,” wrote the Armenian
president.

“Meanwhile, the operation of the Allies started on 25 April. What
purpose is pursued, if not to divert world attention from the
activities marking centennial of the Armenian Genocide? Prior to
initiating commemoration events, Turkey had much more important
responsibility towards their people and all mankind – recognition and
condemnation of the Armenian Genocide,” he said.

The ANZAC Troops (Australia-New Zealand Army Corps) disembarked onto
the shores of Çanakkkale on April 25, 1915 in a bid to destroy Turkish
artillery units, but were defeated in bloody combat that continued
until December 1915. Ever since, Australians and New Zealanders have
commemorated the Battle of Gallipoli on April 25, on the date of the
first landing, and on Aug 6 to Aug 10, the second landing of the ANZAC
troops.

Marking the 100th anniversary of the battle for Turkey, Australia and
New Zealand, the Turkish government is set to organize ceremonies with
the participation of 8,500 Australians and 2,000 New Zealanders. The
U.K.’s Prince Charles and his two sons, and the prime ministers of
Australia and New Zealand, are expected to take part in
commemorations.

A day before the April 24 ceremonies in Çanakkale, the government is
planning to host a reception and a “Summit of Peace” in Istanbul on
April 23, the day when Turkey marks the 95th anniversary of the
foundation of the Turkish Parliament.

April 24, 1915 is also the date of the Ottoman government’s signing
the Deportation Law that led to the deaths of up to a million
Armenians in their long march south from eastern Anatolia. Armenia and
the Armenian diaspora mark the day as the “anniversary of genocide”
committed by the Ottoman Empire, and are planning to hold massive
ceremonies on the centenary of the mass killings of their ancestors.
Sargsyan has invited world leaders to Yerevan on the same day.

Wall Street Journal, NY
Jan 16 2015

Why Hitler Wished He Was Muslim

The Führer admired Atatürk’s subordination of religion to the
state–and his ruthless treatment of minorities.

Holy Warriors

Muslim recruits of the SS Handzar Division pray in 1943. Harvard
University Press; German Archives
By Dominic Green
Jan. 16, 2015 3:55 p.m. ET

‘It’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion,” Hitler
complained to his pet architect Albert Speer. “Why did it have to be
Christianity, with its meekness and flabbiness?” Islam was a
Männerreligion–a “religion of men”–and hygienic too. The “soldiers of
Islam” received a warrior’s heaven, “a real earthly paradise” with
“houris” and “wine flowing.” This, Hitler argued, was much more suited
to the “Germanic temperament” than the “Jewish filth and priestly
twaddle” of Christianity.

Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination

By Stefan Ihrig
Harvard, 311 pages, $29.95

For decades, historians have seen Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 as
emulating Mussolini ‘s 1922 March on Rome. Not so, says Stefan Ihrig
in “Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination.” Hitler also had Turkey in
mind–and not just the 1908 march of the Young Turks on Constantinople,
which brought down a government. After 1917, the bankrupt, defeated
and cosmopolitan Ottoman Empire contracted into a vigorous “Turanic”
nation-state. In the early 1920s, the new Turkey was the first
“revisionist” power to opt out of the postwar system, retaking lost
lands on the Syrian coast and control over the Strait of the
Dardanelles. Hitler, Mr. Ihrig writes, saw Turkey as the model of a
“prosperous and völkisch modern state.”

Through the 1920s and 1930s, Nazi publications lauded Turkey as a
friend and forerunner. In 1922, for example, the Völkischer
Beobachter, the Nazi Party’s weekly paper, praised Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk, the “Father of the Turks,” as a “real man,” embodying the
“heroic spirit” and the Führerprinzip, or führer principle, that
demanded absolute obedience. Atatürk’s subordination of Islam to the
state anticipated Hitler’s strategy toward Christianity. The Nazis
presented Turkey as stronger for having massacred its Armenians and
expelling its Greeks. “Who,” Hitler asked in August 1939, “speaks
today of the extermination of the Armenians?”

Islam and Nazi Germany’s War

By David Motadel
Harvard, 500 pages, $35

This was not Germany’s first case of Türkenfieber, or Turk fever.
Turkey had slid into World War I not by accident but because Germany
had greased the tracks: training officers, supplying weapons, and
drawing the country away from Britain and France. Hitler wanted to
repeat the Kaiser ‘s experiment in search of a better result. By 1936,
Germany supplied half of Turkey’s imports and bought half of Turkey’s
exports, notably chromite, vital for steel production. But Atatürk,
Mr. Ihrig writes, hedged his bets and dodged a “decisive friendship.”
After Atatürk’s death in 1938, his successor, Ismet Inönü, tacked
between the powers. In 1939, Turkey signed a treaty of mutual defense
with Britain, but in 1941 Turkey agreed to a Treaty of Friendship with
Germany, securing Hitler’s southern flank before he invaded Russia.
Inönü hinted that Turkey would join the fight if Germany could conquer
the Caucasus.

As David Motadel writes in “Islam and Nazi Germany’s War,” Muslims
fought on both sides in World War II. But only Nazis and Islamists had
a political-spiritual romance. Both groups hated Jews, Bolsheviks and
liberal democracy. Both sought what Michel Foucault, praising the
Iranian Revolution in 1979, would later call the spiritual-political
“transfiguration of the world” by “combat.” The caliph, the Islamist
Zaki Ali explained, was the “führer of the believers.” “Made by Jews,
led by Jews–therewith Bolshevism is the natural enemy of Islam,” wrote
Mahomed Sabry, a Berlin-based propagandist for the Muslim Brotherhood
in “Islam, Judaism, Bolshevism,” a book that the Reich’s propaganda
ministry recommended to journalists.

By late 1941, Germany controlled large Muslim populations in
southeastern Europe and North Africa. Nazi policy extended the grand
schemes of imperial Germany toward madly modern ends. To aid the
“liberation struggle of Islam,” the propaganda ministry told
journalists to praise “the Islamic world as a cultural factor,” avoid
criticism of Islam, and substitute “anti-Jewish” for “anti-Semitic.”
In April 1942, Hitler became the first European leader to declare that
Islam was “incapable of terrorism.” As usual, it is hard to tell if
the Führer set the tone or merely amplified his people’s obsessions.

Like Atatürk, Hitler saw the Turkish renaissance as racial, not
religious. Germans of Turkish and Iranian descent were exempt from the
Nuremberg Laws, but the racial status of German Arabs remained
creatively indefinite, even after September 1943, when Muslims became
eligible for membership in the Nazi Party. As the war went on, Balkan
Muslims were added to the “racially valuable peoples of Europe.” The
Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem, recruited thousands of these “Musligermanics” as the first
non-Germanic volunteers for the SS. Soviet prisoners of Turkic origin
volunteered too. In November 1944, Himmler and the Mufti created an
SS-run school for military imams at Dresden.

Haj Amin al-Husseini, the founder of Palestinian nationalism, is
notorious for his efforts to persuade the Nazis to extend their
genocide of the Jews to the Palestine Mandate. The Mufti met Hitler
and Himmler in Berlin in 1941 and asked the Nazis to guarantee that
when the Wehrmacht drove the British from Palestine, Germany would
establish an Arab regime and assist in the “removal” of its Jews.
Hitler replied that the Reich would not intervene in the Mufti’s
kingdom, other than to pursue their shared goal: “the annihilation of
Jewry living in Arab space.” The Mufti settled in Berlin, befriended
Adolf Eichmann, and lobbied the governments of Romania, Hungary and
Bulgaria to cancel a plan to transfer Jews to Palestine. Subsequently,
some 400,000 Jews from these countries were sent to death camps.

Mr. Motadel describes the Mufti’s Nazi dealings vividly, but he also
excels in unearthing other odious and fascinating characters. Among
them: Zeki Kiram, the Ottoman officer turned disciple of Rashid Rida,
founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; and Johann von Leers, a Nazi
professor who converted to Islam and became Omar Amin, an anti-Semitic
publicist for Nasser ‘s Egypt.

Some of the Muslim Nazis ended badly. Others stayed at their desks,
then consulted for Saudi Arabia in retirement. The major Muslim
collaborators escaped. Fearing Muslim uprisings, the Allies did not
try the Mufti as a war criminal; he died in Beirut in 1974,
politically eclipsed by his young cousin, Mohammed Abdul Raouf
al-Qudwa al-Husseini, better known as Yasser Arafat. Meanwhile, at
Munich, the surviving SS volunteers, joined by refugees from the
Soviet Union, formed postwar Germany’s first Islamic community, its
leaders an ex-Wehrmacht imam and the erstwhile chief imam of the
Eastern Muslim SS Division. In the 1950s, some of Munich’s Muslim
ex-Nazis worked for the intelligence services of the U.S., tightening
the “green belt against Communism.”

A revolutionary idea must be seeded before, in Heidegger ‘s words,
“suddenly the unbound powers of being come forth and are accomplished
as history.” Seven decades passed between Europe’s revolutionary
spring of 1848 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. The effects of
Germany’s ideological seeding of Muslim societies in the 1930s and
’40s are only now becoming apparent.

Impeccably researched and clearly written, Messrs. Motadel and Ihrig’s
books will transform our understanding of the Nazi policies that were,
Mr. Motadel writes, some “of the most vigorous attempts to politicize
and instrumentalize Islam in modern history.”

–Mr. Green is the author of “The Double Life of Dr. Lopez” and “Three
Empires on the Nile.”

MyArkLaMiss
Jan 16 2015

AgCenter Project Teaches Food Safety in Armenia

BATON ROUGE, La. – An LSU AgCenter project that teaches Armenians
about food safety could help more producers and processors in the
Eurasian country get certifications that will help them expand global
trade.

David Picha, director of AgCenter International Programs, said the
AgCenter has been involved in the project for several years. Armenian
agriculture has great potential but needs significant improvement, he
told attendees at the Global Agriculture Hour on Jan. 13.

Aging infrastructure and a low level of education mean most food
processors in Armenia, a former republic of the Soviet Union, do not
comply with international food safety standards, Picha said. That
confines most of Armenia’s trade of agricultural products to Russia.

About a dozen AgCenter faculty members have traveled to Armenia in the
past decade to provide training in two major food safety certification
programs: GlobalGAP, which the European Union requires, and Hazard
Analysis and Critical Control Points. They also are teaching Armenian
producers and processors about rules in the forthcoming U.S. Food
Safety Modernization Act, which imposes new requirements for imported
foods.

The National Center for Biomedical Research and Training at LSU and
the Southern University Ag Center also participate in the project.

The AgCenter’s work in Armenia is done through the Center for
Agribusiness and Rural Development, an Armenian foundation mostly
funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. CARD is a farm service
center, Picha said, that provides farmers with much-needed technical
information, financing, supplies and equipment.

Armenia is a poor country, with about 36 percent of its population
living below the poverty line. Three million people live in Armenia;
one million live in the capital, Yerevan.

Armenia became independent in 1991, but the transition from being part
of the Soviet Union to being an independent country was difficult. The
gross domestic product fell 60 percent between 1989 and 1992, Picha
said.

There was an “overnight shock” in the agriculture sector when the
Soviet Union collapsed, Picha said. The Soviets grew fruits and
vegetables on large collective farms in Armenia, processed them in
local factories, sent them to Moscow and distributed them throughout
the Eastern Bloc. When the USSR ceased to exist, so did Armenia’s
markets for agricultural products.

Agriculture is still important in Armenia, however, making up 19.2
percent of its GDP. About 40 percent of jobs are in agriculture. But
the sector is not globally competitive.

“Much of the agricultural production in Armenia is still for
consumption at home,” Picha said. “It’s not processed or exported.
It’s much like our country was 60 or 70 years ago on rural family
farms.”

In Armenia, about 340,000 family farms average around one acre in
size, Picha said. Potatoes, other vegetables and tree fruits are key
crops. Families often also raise chickens for eggs and a couple of
cows for meat and milk.

Wine, cognac and cheeses are Armenia’s major agricultural exports,
which mostly go to Russia. Armenia’s borders with Turkey and
Azerbaijan are closed, which restricts trade even further. Gradually,
however, Armenia is exporting to more countries, including the U.S.,
Picha said.

Armenia faces a challenging future. Agriculture is mostly done using
old machinery and outdated production practices, and food processing
plants rarely meet certification requirements for international trade.

For example, apricots are an important crop in Armenia, but yields
there can be one-half to one-third lower than other countries produce,
Picha said. No breeding program provides farmers with new varieties to
replace Soviet-era planting stock. Armenia also has only one
agricultural research university that conducts limited outreach work,
so farmers are often unaware of modern cultural and pest management
practices.

The aging Soviet-era factories where foods are processed have outdated
equipment and technology, lack cold storage and are energy
inefficient, Picha said. Those problems prevent most Armenian
processors from exporting their products to the EU and U.S.

The Armenian government has made a strategic plan for agriculture that
prioritizes improvements to food processing, Picha said.

“Armenia was a leader in that area in the Soviet days,” he said. “They
want to try to recapture that in today’s global market.”

Full-Time Whistle
Jan 16 2015

Erdogan invites Armenia leader to Gallipoli service

Editor : David JACKMAN

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Friday warned of a “clash
of civilisations” following the wake of the Islamist militant attacks
in Paris and he also appeared to criticise France for allowing the
wife of one of the gunmen to travel via Turkey to Syria.

Erdogan, a devout Sunni Muslim, has already accused the West of
hypocrisy after the attacks last week in which the gunmen killed 17,
including 12 at the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
The three gunmen were also killed.

Speaking at a businessmen’s meeting in the capital Ankara, Erdogan
said Charlie Hebdo was known for its provocative publications.

“We are following with great concern the attacks against Islam hidden
behind the attack on the satirical magazine in France,” said Erdogan,
who has become an increasingly vocal critic of what he sees as
mounting Islamaphobia in the West.

“Despite all our efforts to prevent it, the clash of civilisations
thesis is being brought to life.”

Charlie Hebdo has published numerous cartoons mocking religious.

Erdogan said the decision to print millions of copies of the magazine
had nothing to do with freedom of expression and was instead
“terrorising the freedom of others”.

A Turkish newspaper which reproduced part of the magazine is currently
being investigated by prosecutors.

Without giving names, Erdogan also appeared to take aim at the French
authorities for allowing Hayat Boumeddiene, the wife of one of the
gunmen, to travel to Turkey in the days before the attacks. She is now
thought to be in Syria. “They are talking about people who go through
Turkey, but they should first learn how to check passports when these
people are leaving their own country,” Erdogan said.

Turkey has tightened its border security after facing criticism for
allowing hundreds of European would-be militants transit into
neighbouring Syria to join up with radical groups, including Islamic
State.

A French official said this week that intelligence co-operation
between Paris and Ankara was strong and emphasised that Turkey was not
at fault for not picking up Boumeddiene.

“This is not and should not become an issue, because there’s lots
still to do, there’s other people that we need to track. We’re not
blaming Turkey at all,” the official told Reuters.

SCVNEWS.com
Jan 16 2015

Jan. 31: CSUN Conference on Armenian Genocide

California State University, Northridge | Friday, Jan 16, 2015

California State University, Northridge’s Armenian Studies Program
will host a one-day conference from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on
Saturday, Jan. 31, in the Grand Salon at the University Student Union.

“The Armenian Genocide: Accounting and Accountability” is dedicated to
the generations of 1915 and 2015 as a part of the United Armenian
Council of Los Angeles’ Armenian Genocide Centennial Commemorative
Events.

“The significance of hosting the conference at CSUN is three-fold,”
said Vahram Shemmassian, director of CSUN’s Armenian Studies program
within the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and
Literatures. “CSUN has the largest number of students of Armenian
background outside of Armenia, as far as four-year universities are
concerned. The greater Los Angeles area is home to the second-largest
community of the worldwide Armenian diaspora. Lastly, the conference
also aims to further expose CSUN to the Armenian community at large,
hopefully attracting more friends and supporters as a result.”

The morning session will include two panels. The first panel,
“Language as a Victim,” will be moderated by Hagop Gulludjian and will
feature the following speakers and topics: Vartan Matiossian,
“Pleading no Context: On Uses and Abuses of the Word Yeghern;”
professor Barlow Der Mugrdechian, “Western Armenian Language and
Literature in Exile: Genocide and Its Consequences;” and Shushan
Karapetian, “The Burden of Language as a Moral Obligation.”

The second panel will explore “Teaching Genocide,” with Rubina
Peroomian moderating. Hasmig Baran will talk about “Content and
Pedagogy of Genocide Education in the 21st Century: The Armenian
Case”; Roxanne Makasdjian will talk about “Armenian Genocide Education
in Secondary Schools Today;” and Kori Street will talk about
“Educating for Change: Using Testimonies in Teaching about Genocide.”

Third and fourth panels will be held in the afternoon session.

Levon Marashlian will moderate the third panel, “Those Who Were Forced
to Assimilate.” It will feature the following speakers and subjects:
Khatchig Mouradian on “Un-Hiding the Past: Myth-Making and the ‘Hidden
Armenians’ of Turkey;” Elyse Semerdjian on “‘The Girl with the Cross
Tattoo:’ Field Notes on Crypto-Armenians;” and Vahram Shemmassian on
“The Fate of Captive Armenian Genocide Survivors in Syria.”

The Armenian Bar Association will conduct the fourth panel, titled
“Legal Responses to Genocide-Related Liabilities.” Garo Ghazarian will
introduce the panelists. Armen K. Hovannisian will moderate the panel.
The speakers and their topics include: Saro Kerkonian on “Justice for
Genocide: Opportunities and Challenges in United States Courts;” Edvin
Minassian on “Justice for Genocide: Opportunities and Challenges in
Turkey’s Courts;” and Karnig Kerkonian on “Justice for Genocide:
Opportunities and Challenges in International Courts.” The conference
will conclude with a commentary by Richard G. Hovannisian.

The Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at
CSUN is co-sponsoring the event, along with the United Armenian
Council of Los Angeles, the National Association for Armenian Studies
and Research, The Knights of Vartan – Los Angeles County Chapters, the
Armenian Bar Association and the Armenian General Benevolent Union.
The Ararat-Eskijian Museum of Mission Hills will exhibit American Near
East Relief posters during the conference.

The nearest parking lot to the University Student Union is G3 on
Prairie Street (on campus) at Zelzah Avenue, near Nordhoff Street.
Parking permits ($6) can be obtained at the information booth or via
machines. For further information, please contact Vahram Shemmassian
at [email protected] or (818) 677-3456.

Interfax, Russia
Jan 16 2015

Child injured by Russian soldier successfully operated by Russian
doctors in Yerevan

YEREVAN. Jan 16

Six-month-old Sergei Avetisian, who was injured by the Russian
military serviceman Valery Permyakov in Gyumri, has undergone a
successful neurosurgical operation in Yerevan, the Armenian Health
Ministry said.

“The operation was a success. The child remains stable but critical,”
a ministry spokesperson told Interfax.

Earlier on Friday Armenian specialists held extensive telephone
consultations with specialists from clinics in Cleveland, Israel,
Fribourg, Moscow and St. Petersburg, the spokesperson said.

“It was decided to conduct a neurosurgical operation to prevent the
threat of further profound disability,” the spokesperson said.

The operation was conducted jointly with specialists from Armenia by
William Khachatryan, Director of the Children’s Clinic at the Polenov
Research Institute of Neurosurgery in St. Petersburg, the spokesperson
said.

The child suffered multiple penetrating stab injuries, some of them in
the abdomen, Armenian Health Minister Armen Muradian said earlier. The
first surgery was conducted on January 12.

On January 12 six members of one family, including a two-year-old
child, were killed in the city of Gyumri in northern Armenia. The
six-month Seryozha Avetisian survived the stab injuries and was
hospitalized in a critical condition.

Permyakov, a soldier from the Russian military base N102 in Gyumri,
was arrested shortly afterwards and is currently being held at his
base. On January 14 he was formally charged both in Russia and
Armenia.

Kk ap

Capitalism Run Amok Is Just Plain Capitalism

16:37, January 17, 2015

By Markar Melkonian

The source of Armenia’s misery and humiliation, we often hear, is not
capitalism per se, but rather “gangster capitalism,” “a broken
system,” “capitalism run amok.”

The goal for the future, then, is to “fix the system,” to reform
capitalism, to make it more like regular, pure, genuine Free
Enterprise, the kind of capitalism that works. But what if Armenia’s
actually existing capitalism already is genuine capitalism?

An economist once observed that the only existential meaning of
“enterprise” in the term free enterprise is “whatever capitalists
happen to be doing at the time”–and “free” is the accompanying demand
that they be allowed to do it.

In Armenia, successive presidents, legislators, ministers, and
mayorshave certainly allowed them to “do it.”Post-Soviet cliques have
privatized public land, seized factories, and plundered resources.
They have shredded the social safety net,unleashed the “job creators”
on child labor; eliminated overtime pay; dispensed with job safety
standards, trashed even the most minimal environmentalregulations, and
generally done everything they can toenrich themselves and their
cronies, seemingly without a thought to the welfare of the
vastmajority. Over the years, Hetq.am has done a truly admirable job
of reporting the daily pillage.

Armenia’s plutocrats justify their actions in the name of free
enterprise, and their point is well taken. After all, a law
prohibitingthe exploitation of child labor or the poisoning of
drinking water is nothing if it is not state regulation of the market.
Building public schools and enacting laws that protect forestsmake
markets less free.So if Free Enterprise really were as important as
the IMF and the advisors from Chicago say it is, then Armenia’s
oligarchs really are the national heroes they think they are.

One of the Ronald Reagan admirers who led Armenia’s charge down the
road to ruinexemplified the wisdom of Yerevan’s Free Marketeers: “free
market reform,” he wrote, is the path “which has been traveled by many
other nations and which leads to happiness.”(Vazgen Manukian, quoted
in Jirair Libaridian (ed.), Armenia at the Crossroads, 1991, p. 52.)
In the years since he made this announcement, we have beheld the
happiness that free market reform has wrought in many other nations,
from Mexico to Greece, and from Iceland to India, where in recent
yearsa quarter of a million farmers have committed suicide.

The oligarchs and their IMF advisors, of course,are willing to pay
this price for the sake of their Free Market utopia. Or rather, they
are willing to make the poor pay this price. For decades, sensitive
commentatorsin the West excoriated Joseph Stalin for his
“blood-curdling” suggestion that the end justifies the means. These
days, those same commentatorsdo not give a passing thought to the
hundreds of millions of lives consigned to displacement,drudgery,
fear,and early death in the name of free market reform.

A quarter century ago, the Ter Petrosyan administration set Armenia
off on the path to happiness by doling out state property to cronies
and racketeers,guttingthe industrial infrastructure, and shredding the
social safety net. Hundreds of thousands of workers lost their jobs,
anduntold thousands of Armenians, especially the elderly and the very
young, have died of exposure, food poisoning, preventable accidents,
and lack of access to basic healthcare.

Since then, aparade of alternating opposition figures and national
saviors have come into office, enriched themselves and their cronies,
and then left the scene with the loot, one after another. Despite the
personnel changes, though, economic policy has continued to benefit
the rich few, at the expense of the poor majority.

Armenia has undergone twenty-five years of foreign-directed reform:
privatization, shock therapy, conditionalities, and so on. Every time
we turn around, it seems that more “reform” is needed. And the reform
always seems to require further wage cuts, further cuts to social
programs, further deregulation, and ever more sacrifice from the
have-nots. Consider the much-ballyhooed Structural Adjustment
Policies (SAPs) of earlier years: for Armenia, as for other poor
debtor countries, SAPs required:

selling off state enterprises to the private sector;
eliminating price controls and producer and consumer subsidies for
agricultural goods;
devaluing the local currency;
cutting consumer subsidies and charging user fees for social services
such as health care and education;
dropping protectionist measures and reducing regulation of the private sector;
providing guarantees, state-funded infrastructure, tax breaks, and
wage restraints as incentives for investment;
dismantling foreign exchange restrictions (which has allowed wealthy
locals to export funds overseas, as capital flight, worsening
balance-of-payment deficits).

As a result of these policies, Armenia today can boast of Enterprise
that is as Free as anywhere on Earth. Readers of Hetq.am are aware of
the consequences: sky-high unemployment; proliferating poverty; the
depopulation of the countryside; deforestation; plummeting birth
rates; falling life expectancies, and, of course, the catastrophic
outmigration of one third of Armenia’s population. Successive
plutocrats have lengthened the work week, lowered the legal work age,
evicted families from their homes in order to build “elite homes for
elite guys,” demanded ever-higher bus fares for a privatized transport
system; raised university fees far beyond the means of most families,
attempted to privatize social security, and so on and so forth, ad
nauseam.

It is a sad commentary on the state of intellectuals in Armenia today
that few of them are even aware of the work of the great social
geographer David Harvey, who has so accurately described the process
of “capital accumulation by dispossession” that characterizes scores
of countries like Armenia. When is someone going to translate
Harvey’s book, The New Imperialism, into Armenian?

In Armenia, as we know, “free market reform” has taken place against
the background of official impunity, the jailing of dissidents,
electoral manipulation, and fraud so pervasive that it would have
astonished even the most cynical Armenians of the Soviet period.

Let us remind ourselves that these measures were undertaken under the
tutelage of the IMF and the World Bank, in strict adherence to Free
Market doctrines. All the while, Western agencies and bureaucracies
have heartily congratulated their Armenian followersfor rapidly
privatizing state property, “making hard choices,” and faithfully
carrying out Washington’s directives.

David Brooks, one of the more thoughtful American Free Market
columnists, recently acknowledged that, curiously, post-Soviet success
stories are rare. (“The Legacy of Fear,” New York Times, November 10,
2014.) Despite the generalized “wreckage,” however, he was able to
identify several success stories, including none other than Azerbaijan
and Armenia! That’s right: according to Brooks, Armenia today counts
as one of “only five countries that have emerged as successful
capitalist economies” from the former Soviet bloc.

This should surprise the Free Market faithful in Yerevan, who were
hoping that ultimate success lay in the bright future, not in the dark
present. If this is what a successful capitalist economy looks like,
then the question naturally arises: What was the point of letting
capitalists take over the country in the first place?

The Free Market coercion and rhetoric has come full circle:
right-wing politicians in the USA, exemplified by Scott Walker, the
governor of the state of Wisconsin, have tried to enact many of the
same policies in the USA that the IMF, the CIA, and the economists
from Chicago have foisted on vulnerable countries like Pinochet’s
Chile and today’s Armenia. In their arguments for, say, privatization
of social security, the Scott Walkers have pointed to policies in
Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet republics as
examples of an irresistible global trend that America must follow.

When the Scott Walkers have failed to achieve their maximal demands,
it is because traditional constituencies in the United States with
independent organizational presence–notably labor unions–have fought
against free market “solutions.” Here, ironically, America does
provide a valuable lesson to Armenia: resistance to Free Market
reform must be organized, sustained, and based in the working class.

The tide of misery rises ever higher, and there is no good reason to
hope that further reforms along the same lines will change the
trajectory. And yet capitalism still escapes blame for the disasters
it has created. Instead, we are told that “capitalism run amok” is to
blame, and that the only antidote is–more capitalism! This has
happened over and over again.

At what point will skepticism kick in?

Free Marketeers love to sermonize about accountability and the
responsiveness of the market. But the Free Marketeers escape all
responsibility for their policies and get to prescribe more of the
same poison to the patient.

As long as we are unable to describe the problem accurately, we will
not even begin to address it in an effective manner. The first step is
to start calling the thing by its name: the main source of Armenia’s
devastation in the past twenty-five years is not “capitalism gone
amok”; rather, it is capitalist rule.

(MarkarMelkonian is a nonfiction writer and a philosophy instructor.
His books include Richard Rorty’s Politics: Liberalism at the End of
the American Century (Humanities Press, 1999), Marxism: A Post-Cold
War Primer (Westview Press, 1996), and My Brother’s Road (I.B. Tauris,
2005, 2007), a memoir/biography about Monte Melkonian, co-written with
Seta Melkonian)

“Zhoghovurd” newspaper: Baghdasarov promising to sell property to cover debts

by Alexandr Avanesov
ARMINFO
Saturday, January 17, 13:55

Armavia Company owes not only to its former staff, but also to many
companies and banks, a Yerevan-based “Zhoghovurd” Company writes.

Talking to the newspaper, Mikhail Baghdasarov, the owner of the
company, said he plans to cover all the debts. “Part of the debts has
been redeemed. I have set to auction two apartments. When they are
sold, I will cover the debts. I will sell everything to cover the
debts,” Baghdasarov said.

As it was reported earlier, Armavia owes 24.2 billion AMD (about 58
million US dollars) to the Armenian state budget, including 6.9 bln
AMD in taxes and 17.3 bln in fines. Besides, the company’s debt to VTB
Bank has reached $12 million, inclusive of interests and fines. The
company was established in 1996 and belongs to Mikhail Bagdasarov, who
owned several enterprises, including Armavia and Mika Stadium.