Author: Badalian Vardan

INVENTING MY FATHER: DIANA MARKOSIAN’S LONG JOURNEY HOME

TIME Magazine
June 11 2014

Diana Markosian–Reportage by Getty Images

The following captions were written by Diana Markosian. Those in
italics are translations of her father’s writing.

Photo: This is the closet thing I had to an image of my father. A
cut out of him in my mother’s photo album.

When Diana Markosian was 7 years old, her mother left her father
and took Markosian and her brother from their home in Moscow to
start a new life in California. “We hardly ever spoke of my father,”
Markosian says. “I had no pictures of him, and over time forgot what he
looked like.” Fifteen years later Markosian traveled back to Armenia –
where the family had briefly lived and where her father had settled –
to reconnect with the man with whom she’d had no contact for so long.

Over the past two years, Markosian and her father have been learning
to know one another again, taking photographs together and rebuilding
their relationship. To mark Father’s Day, TIME presents pictures from
their poignant collaboration and Markosian’s account, in her own words,
of how it came about.

The picture in my mind didn’t match the man in front of me. My father
was someone I had created to make up for what I missed.

I have few childhood memories of him.

In one, we are dancing together in our tiny apartment in Moscow. In
another, he is leaving. My father would disappear for months at a
time. Then, unexpectedly, he would come home.

What he didn’t expect was what happened next.

At seven years old, I was taken away from him, far away. It was
October 1996. The Soviet Union had long collapsed, and by then so had
my family. We had become desperate overnight: avoiding landlords and
collecting bottles in exchange for food. One morning, my mom woke me
and my brother to say we were going on a trip.

We never said goodbye to my father. The next day, we arrived in our
new home in southern California. We had spent years watching the
American soap opera, Santa Barbara. And now we were there.

For my mom, the solution to forget him was simple. She cut his image
out of every photograph in our family album. But those holes made it
harder for me to forget him. I would stare at airplanes flying over
in the blue Californian sky, waiting for him to come and find me.

He never did.

I had no real memories of him, just basic details my mom reluctantly
shared. That he was a writer and liked to read Nabokov. That he would
have wanted me to become a dancer. My mom took me to my first ballet
class when I was 8. I trained until I was 16. I wanted him to see me
perform. I wanted him to be proud of me.

But my mom told me I would be disappointed in him. I never believed
her.

It took me 15 years to be standing where I am. Outside the courtyard
of the same gray, decaying Soviet building I remember as a child in
Armenia. He shows me into his house. He has changed almost nothing
inside. He has not added any furniture; he has not removed any
furniture. The walls are covered with my grandfather’s oil paintings
and family pictures — even my brother’s childhood toys are there,
stored in an attic closet. It is familiar at first, even reassuring.

He shows me photos of us together, tells me about the time we got
lost in the woods. He plays audio recordings he made in my childhood.

In one, he asks me if I know what divorce is.

“Yes,” my 7-year-old voice says, confidently.

“Is divorce a good thing?” he asks.

I cry and tell him I don’t know.

“Do you want your mom and dad to get divorced?”

I cry harder.

“How many times do you want me to repeat myself?” I ask. “No, I don’t.”

Hearing this I am brought back to arguments he used to have with my
mom. That’s what I remember the most. But when he shows me pictures
of them together, I see something else. A family.

But that was the past. For so long I was determined to have a father,
so I had invented one out of a man I thought existed. But the man
standing across from me didn’t recognize me. I didn’t recognize him,
either. I felt out of place. A part of me still wanted to get to know
him. There had been a life before he had me, before he met my mother.

I moved in with him six months later. We would often spend the morning
together, running. It was our way of being together without the past
intruding. My father would move beside me, his arms and legs strong
from years of weight lifting. He would try to pour a lifetime into
each outing. He would share with me the revelations he experienced,
emotions he had felt and things he had written about. It took time,
but as our feet pounded the sidewalk, I learned so much about this
distant man.

There were other moments, as well — times outside of our runs. The
night he shared his poetry with me. The evening at the symphony when
he snuck in chocolates for us. We ate them in the dark.

But then, all at once, he was not there, as if those moments had
never even existed.

He wasn’t the only one who was distant. I often didn’t know how to
behave around my father. Sometimes he would watch me brush my hair
or reach to embrace me. When he did, I would pull away. I still don’t
know what he is to me or what I am to him.

I keep looking for him. I think I always will.

Diana Markosian is a photographer based in Chechnya. Inventing My
Father will be exhibited at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland in January
2015. See more of her work here

ARMENIA TO CONTINUE DEVELOPING PARTNERSHIP WITH NATO

CISTran Finance
June 11 2014

June 11, 2014 8:30 AM
By Ryan Barnett

Koryun Nahapetyan, the head of the Armenian delegation to NATO’s
assembly, announced on Monday that Armenia will be continuing to
develop its partnership with NATO in line with the repeatedly modified
Individual Partnership Action Plan (IPAP).

Nahapetyan is also the head of an Armenian parliamentary committee
on defense, internal affairs and national security, ARKA reports.

Armenia said it has confidence that the approval of a new Individual
Partnership Action Plan will lead to strong bilateral relations
with NATO in coming years. The new plan lays out joint activities
through 2017.

The Armenian delegation also intends to actively participate in the
activities of the NATO Parliament Assembly, according to ARKA.

Armenia recently worked with NATO on missions to Afghanistan and
Kosovo. The country has 120 soldiers in Afghanistan.

Nahapetyan also said Armenia intends to send two people from Armenia
to participate in NATO’s Rose Roth workshop in Baku.

LAVROV TO VISIT ARMENIA TO DISCUSS IMPLEMENTATION OF TOP-LEVEL AGREEMENTS

The Voice of Russia
June 11 2014

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is to make an official visit
to Armenia on June 22-23.

During the visit, Lavrov is scheduled to hold talks with the top
leadership of the country and his counterpart Edward Nalbandian. The
sides will continue “the substantive bilateral dialogue on further
development of allied cooperation and strategic partnership between
our countries”, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, June 11.

Special attention will be paid to the implementation of agreements
reached at the top and high levels, primarily during Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s state visit to Armenia on December 2, 2013.

The ministry said that Lavrov’s visit would give a new impetus to
mutually advantageous cooperation between the two countries.

Trade turnover between Russia and Armenia is growing steadily. “Last
year, trade turnover increased by 10.6% from the previous year and
keeps growing this year too. And Russia remains the leading investor
in Armenia,” President Vladimir Putin said during a meeting with
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in May.

Putin pointed put that during his latest visit to Armenia they had
reached the important agreements and invited Sargsyan to “synchronize
watches” and see “what else needs to be done and where we should
speed up our work”.

Sargsyan said that Russian-Armenian relations were developing
dynamically and assured Putin that Yerevan would seek to intensify
them, reported ITAR-TASS

“We are ready for active work. This is consistent with the historical
tradition of friendship between our nations,” he said.

FINLANDIZATION OF THE POST-SOVIET SPACE

Russia in Global Affairs (English)
June 10, 2014 Tuesday 5:00 AM EST

Jun 07, 2014
Russia in Global Affairs (English):

The Ukrainian crisis created a new political situation drawing a
line under not just post-Soviet history but probably world politics
after the Cold War. Armenia, as other former Soviet republics,
will have to reconfigure its relations with leading geopolitical
actors. As geopolitics returns to the post-Soviet space, we might
expect an increased demand for new, or, to be precise, well-forgotten
Realpolitik concepts and approaches.

THE CRIMEAN PRECEDENT AND ARMENIA: A CHOICELESS CHOICE

Armenia, like all its neighbors in the post-Soviet space, appeared to
be absolutely unprepared for a spate of Ukrainian events, as shown by a
long absence of the official position on the issue. Ukraine is home to
more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians and Armenian citizens (unofficial
statistics put their number at some 300,000) who found themselves on
different sides of the conflict. A large Armenian community numbering
12,000 to 15,000 has lived in Crimea for centuries, and Russia’s
Armenian diaspora numbers some two million people. Consequently,
any false move in public or premature demonstration of Yerevan’s
position would have created a danger to ethnic Armenians and Armenian
citizens. That is why it was only after a month-long silence that
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan supported the Crimean referendum,
during a telephone conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin
on March 19, 2014.

At the March 27 session of the UN General Assembly, Armenia was among
11 countries that voted against the resolution upholding Ukraine’s
territorial integrity and declaring the Crimean referendum invalid.

The UN voted 100-11, with 58 abstentions. Another 24 countries did not
take part in the vote refusing to support the anti-Russian document.

The reaction of Armenian political forces to the UN vote was more
positive than negative. A majority of parliamentary opposition parties
supported Yerevan’s position. Meanwhile, the consolidation of Armenia’s
authorities and the opposition had nothing to do with the feelings
toward Ukraine, although Kiev has been a key arms supplier to Baku
since the Karabakh war of the first half of the 1990s.

Furthermore, as a GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova)
member, Ukraine voted for the anti-Armenian resolutions on
Nagorno-Karabakh at the UN General Assembly in 2008 and 2012. And
yet Yerevan’s present-day position is not revenge for the past
wrongs: after all, Armenia and Ukraine have always been very close,
historically and culturally. ‘Nothing personal,’ as they say.

Pro-Western students and non-governmental organizations criticized
Armenia’s UN vote, thinking that Armenia had sided with Russia to come
out against Western countries at the UN General Assembly. Explaining
their decision, the Armenian authorities and political forces said
the provisions in the UN resolution declaring the Crimean referendum
invalid and stating that it had not been sanctioned by Ukraine could
have a negative impact on Yerevan’s position on the Karabakh issue.

Proceeding from this standpoint, the Armenian authorities made
a conscious decision to support Russia, instead of abstaining or
refusing to participate in the vote, because in that case their
positions in the Karabakh conflict would have become more vulnerable.

The case points to a connection with Nagorno-Karabakh’s referendum
on independence held in 1991, as well as with the Madrid principles,
the only negotiable peace settlement document on Nagorno-Karabakh. The
principles, drawn by the countries co-chairing the Minsk Group of
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (the United
States, France, and Russia) view a referendum in Nagorno-Karabakh as
the key mechanism for settling the conflict and legalizing the final
status of the enclave.

The Crimean events undermined the hallowed idea of the inviolability
of post-Soviet borders. This is the result of a deep crisis of
international law which was unable to adapt to world politics after the
end of the Cold War. In the wake of the Crimean case, the political
practice of self-determination – at least in the post-Soviet space –
will obviously prevail over the scholastic idea of the inviolability
of erstwhile administrative borders which by now have become state
borders. Consequently, the new precedent in the post-Soviet space,
regardless of the reaction to it from part of the international
community, might be added to Armenia’s array of diplomatic and
political tools.

Armenia, an outspoken Russian military and strategic partner during
the UN vote on the Crimean referendum (and at PACE in April) hopes
for more substantial political support from Moscow on the Karabakh
and other issues. In this connection, Moscow’s sharp response in late
March to the attack by Islamic militants on the Armenian settlement
of Kessab in northern Syria was noteworthy. The tragedy caused en
masse deportation of the small Armenian community of the descendants
of Armenian refugees who had fled Turkey’s genocide during World War I.

In the new conditions, Armenia will find it much more difficult to
keep balance in its foreign policy between the West and Russia,
without causing fits of jealousy from all sides. In other words,
it will be a test for its policy of balanced complementarism, the
calling card of Armenia’s diplomacy in the post-Soviet period. Some
groups in Armenia and other former Soviet republics fear that further
strengthening of Moscow and its tougher rivalry with the West will make
problems for the independence of Russia’s neighbors threatening the
loss of their sovereignty. Hence, Armenia needs balanced involvement
of the European Union and the United States, but not to the extent
where it might again face the threat of unsafe geopolitical choice.

In the foreseeable future, the European Union is unlikely to offer
Armenia security guarantees comparable to Russian guarantees in
the Karabakh issue or in relations with Turkey. But if Yerevan
and the EU somehow manage to take the edge off the geopolitical
confrontation in their relations, turning to pure technical measures
towards intensifying economic and political interaction, Armenia
might succeed in combining European integration with military and
strategic partnership with Russia.

In any case, Armenia will refuse to become a place of geopolitical
confrontation, such as Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and partly
Azerbaijan. Unlike these countries – participants in the Eastern
Partnership program –

Armenia might face the price of not just secession of several areas
but geopolitical and humanitarian catastrophe and even loss of
statehood. After Russia brought in Crimea, Armenia has remained the
only Eastern Partnership member (except Belarus, an Eastern Partnership
participant in name only) in full control of its territory.

During the Five-Day War in August 2008, Armenia managed to keep
neutrality between Russia, its key military and political ally, and
Georgia, its close neighbor and key transportation links partner. In
the Ukrainian crisis however, Moscow, aside from direct pressure,
can use other arguments, while Armenia’s room for maneuver is quite
limited. In terms of scale and possible consequences for Russia’s
relations with the West, the Ukrainian crisis cannot be compared with
the Russian-Georgian war. Upcoming events will show if the world is
facing the threat of backtracking to a new Cold War, but the process
will have far-reaching consequences anyway. Russia and the West will
be locked in an increasingly tougher struggle for the spheres of
influence in the post-Soviet space, including in the South Caucasus.

If the case turns as a comeback of the Cold War (in the post-Soviet
space and adjacent territories at best) – even if in a fuzzy form –
the participants in the process will have to react accordingly. For
example, they might adopt political approaches and concepts which
proved their effectiveness during the classical period of bipolar
confrontation.

Finlandization of the foreign policy of some former Soviet republics
could be one of such approaches, which is particularly obvious in
Armenia’s case.

FINLANDIZATION OF ARMENIA: EXAMPLE OR EXCEPTION?

Finlandization of Armenia became obvious in the spring of 2014. This
approach, rooted in the period of Armenia’s gaining independence,
became to be known as ‘complementarism’ when Vardan Oskanyan was
foreign minister (1998-2008). Back at the height of the Karabakh war,
Yerevan, using a unique foreign policy situation, received weapons and
military equipment from Russia, the funding for economic development
from Americans and food and humanitarian assistance from Europeans
(even Turkey had been one of the supply routes until March 1993). The
fuel for its army that was fighting at the time came from Iran.

Later, Armenia turned complementarism into a refined technique of
‘sitting on two chairs at the same time.’ It would help Yerevan in
balancing Moscow’s influence at one time and deterring the U.S. or
Europeans at another, for example at certain stages of the Karabakh
talks.

Conceptually, Armenia’s foreign policy had much in common with
the course pursued by post-war Finland. Helsinki actively followed
the Paasikivi-Kekkonen line from the 1950s till the breakup of the
Communist bloc and the USSR, balancing between NATO and the Warsaw
Treaty Organization, which enabled it to not only preserve its
independence and sovereignty but also receive considerable economic
dividends.

Finland, which avoided ‘sovietization’ and involvement in the
confrontation between the antagonistic blocs, played a special role in
European policy largely because of trusting relations it simultaneously
had with the USSR/Warsaw Pact and NATO countries. It was Helsinki
that hosted the negotiations in 1973-1975 and the signing of the
Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe,
symbolizing detente between the USSR and the West and codifying the
principles of effective international law.

Finlandization does not imply a calculated or perfect balance between
foreign policy partners. Depending on political expediency, it is
a demonstration of preferences and support for one of the poles of
power in this or that period. This is precisely what Armenia did
at the height of the Ukrainian crisis. Conceptually, nothing new
has happened. Yerevan’s policy line merely swung to one side due to
obvious military and political prevalence of one of the key elements
(Russia in this particular case) of the system of political balancing.

Curiously, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
adopted a resolution on Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire,
urging the president to pursue an appropriate policy with respect
to Armenia and Turkey on April 10, 2014, the day when the Armenian
delegation at PACE voted against the resolution limiting the powers
of the Russian delegation. Chairman of a dedicated Senate committee
Robert Menendez, a severe critic of Russia, was one of the advocates
of the pro-Armenian resolution.

Finlandization is not the ideal or most advantageous foreign policy
line, yet it is the safest method at the very least. As Finland refused
to participate in the Marshall Plan under pressure from Moscow during
the Cold War, so will Armenia have to give more regard to Russia’s
opinion now and then, facing a sharper reaction from the United States
and the European Union.

Can other former Soviet republics view Armenia’s Finlandization as
an example or a foreign policy model, or is it some kind of special
exception? As was already mentioned, a single-line foreign policy was
pursued in different periods of post-Soviet history by the Baltic
States, Azerbaijan (in the first half of 1990s), Georgia, Ukraine
(under Yushchenko and after Yanukovich), and Moldova. Pro-Russian
sentiment was noticeable until the beginning of the 2000s in Central
Asia countries and Belarus. At present, pro-Russian feelings in
their pure form only exist in three of the four de-facto states in
the post-Soviet space (Transdniestria, Abkhazia and South Ossetia),
except Nagorno-Karabakh, and also in Belarus, because the West
rejects Lukashenko’s regime. Multivectorism is another type of foreign
policy, quite similar to Armenia’s complementarism with elements of
Finlandization. Ukraine has largely stuck to this policy since the
late 1990s (except for the period of Yushchenko’s presidency and after
the Euromaidan), as has Azerbaijan and some Central Asia countries.

Azerbaijan (especially under Abulfaz Elchibey and in the early
period of Heydar Aliyev’s rule until the mid-1990s) was absolutely
pro-Western, emphasizing relations with Turkey. The brief membership
in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (1994-1999) coinciding
with the beginning of implementation of oil projects together with
Western companies made Baku balance the trend.

In Central Asia, the West did not have much influence, the resources
of Turkey and Iran trying to be active in the region were insufficient
while China caused too much apprehension and fear to be considered
a reliable foreign policy partner. It was only because of indistinct
Russian foreign policy in the 1990s that Central Asia did not become
irrevocably pro-Russian.

The term ‘multivectorism’ (especially in Kazakhstan’s case) was coined
as a euphemism, meant to disguise alienation from Russia. More likely,
foreign policy diversification occurred under the influence of the
September 11, 2001 events and the beginning of the U.S.-led operation
in Afghanistan, than as a result of a conscious foreign policy choice.

That is why the multivectorism parameters might change in Central Asia
after the United States completes the withdrawal of its troops from
Afghanistan, with countries in the region finding it more difficult
to maintain this approach. Hence, elements of Finlandization in case
of Azerbaijan and Central Asia can be implemented while accounting
for their special eastern specifics.

Until the 2014 crisis, the Ukrainian policy had been conceptually very
close to Armenia’s (despite the difference in the size of territory
and geographic location).

A considerable advantage of Armenia’s complementarism is the presence
of numerous Armenian communities in Russia, America and Europe, as
well as quite influential diasporas in Iran and some Middle East
countries. This factor enables Yerevan to adjust from within the
policy of the above states towards Armenia and the region. In turn,
these countries can influence Yerevan’s approaches through the
Armenian diaspora.

Ukrainian communities in Eastern Europe, the United States and Canada
on the one hand, and the profound sub-ethnic and ‘family’ integration
of the populations of Russia and Ukraine on the other helped balance
the Ukrainian foreign policy for a long time. Ukraine’s division into
the west, the center and the southeast seemed to fix multivectorism
as a model without alternative. Lastly, the historical roots of
such policy (since approximately the 17th century in Ukraine and at
least since the 19th century in Armenia) were to have produced the
practicalities of foreign policy and firmed a stable tradition of
its acknowledgement in the society and political elites.

However, in the autumn of 2013 through the spring of 2014, Yerevan and
Kiev, facing similar prospects of signing association agreements with
the European Union, chose different options. In September 2013, Armenia
refused to initial the economic part of the document and expressed
readiness to join the Customs Union which Russia was creating. Yerevan
said it agreed to sign the political part, but Brussels rejected
the proposal. Victor Yanukovich’s government also refused to sign
the association agreement in late November 2013, which prompted an
acute political crisis in the country. The officials who replaced
the deposed Yanukovich, made haste to accept the political part of
the agreement and allegedly are preparing to sign the economic part.

Like Armenia, Ukraine tried not to make the final choice throughout
most of the post-Soviet period. When a considerable segment of the
political class and public – through the efforts of the new elites that
seized power in late February 2014 – could not avoid the temptation
to choose, it turned the country into an arena of global political
confrontation.

The bitter irony is that the opinion of such hardline practitioners
and theorists of political realism as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew
Brzezinski and John Mearsheimer were not heard. For decades, they
had been trying to win Finland over to the West, but now called for
restraint and projecting Finlandization onto Ukraine. The warnings
by the ‘knights of the Cold War’ were not wanted precisely at the
moment when the very logic and practice of that time seemed to have
returned to Europe and Eurasia.

Armenia, opting for self-restraint of its own accord, minimized its
risks and losses. As to whether the Armenian-style Finlandization can
be an example for other former Soviet republics would depend not only
on their own choice. Almost everything now depends on the results
of the Ukrainian crisis and on how adequately national elites can
evaluate the new geopolitical reality.

CITY OF BUENOS AIRES ALLOCATES PROPERTY FOR GENOCIDE MUSEUM

Wednesday, June 11th, 2014

Chief of Staff of the Buenos Aires City Government Horacio Rodriguez Larreta

BUENOS AIRES (Agencia Prensa Armenia)–Buenos Aires city authorities
officially transfered a property for the construction of an Armenian
Genocide museum on Tuesday, June 10, in a ceremony attended by the
City’s Chief of Staff Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, Undersecretary
for Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism Claudio Avruj and various
representatives of the Armenian community in the country, as well as
the Armenian Ambassador Vahagn Melikian.

Rodriguez Larreta stressed that this museum is “a way to ensure that
humanity will not commit atrocities like those committed almost 100
years ago in Armenia” and highlighted the “pride” that Armenians had to
“emerge with such force” after having suffered the Genocide.

Avruj said that “the Armenian Genocide, as well as the Holocaust
or the genocide in Rwanda represents absolute evil” and stated that
“the recognition of those facts allow us and the next generations to
have a better society.”

The property for the Armenian Genocide Museum was transfered to the
Memory of the Armenian Genocide Foundation, an organization led by
Professor Nelida Boulgourdjian and architect Juan Carlos Toufeksian,
the same institution that organized the International Congress on
Armenian Genocide in Buenos Aires last April.

Toufeksian gave some details of the project: the Museum will have
a memorial on the ground floor and a screen with testimonies of the
survivors. The first floor there would have the Museum of Genocide
itself, while the second floor will be devoted to the cultural heritage
of the Armenians in Argentina and temporary exhibitions. The third
floor will contain a library.

“The laws and judgments of justice, along with the recent decisions
to build museums in Montevideo and Buenos Aires are an example of
the conviction to overcome the discourse and the pressures of the
states that continue to deny the existence of the Armenian Genocide,
like Turkey and Azerbaijan,” said Alfonso Tabakian, director of the
Armenian National Committee of South America.

CLINTON’S VERSION OF THE TURKEY-ARMENIA PROTOCOLS PROCESS

Wednesday, June 11th, 2014

BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN

In reading Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book “Hard Choices,” which hit
bookstores Tuesday, one is led to believe that she was the architect
of the dangerous Turkey-Armenia Protocols, elevating the US’s role in
the doomed process, to which both Armenia and Turkey have laid claim.

In her book, Clinton claims that Turkey’s “Zero Problems With
Neighbors” policy was a window through which the US could negotiate
a thaw in Turkey-Armenia relations, with hopes of opening the border
and initiating diplomatic relations between the two countries.

She claimed that “Hard-liners in both countries were implacably opposed
to compromise and put considerable pressure on each government not to
make a deal,” without mentioning that her own American constituents
were vocally opposed to this sham, which was concocted by her
predecessors in the Bush Administration and behind which the Obama
Administration rabidly threw its support.

Clinton also called the Armenian Genocide issue, the recognition
of which she advocated during her failed presidential campaign, an
“emotionally charged conflict” between Turkey and Armenia.

Did Clinton Throw Nalbandian Under the Bus?

Throughout the years, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian
has prided himself on building solid relationship with the US and has
touted the close-knit relationship he developed with Clinton during
the protocol process.

Yet the short reference to Armenia in her book, which also excludes any
mention of her “personal visit” to Dzidzernagepert Genocide Memorial,
Clinton weaves a different tale of what happened in Zurich on October
10, 2009 during the official signing of the Turkey-Armenia protocols.

It emerges, and has been mentioned several times by Armenian officials,
that the contentious issue at the Zurich signing was the possibility
that Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu would make remarks after
the signing that would counter the spirit of the Protocols. Clinton
asserts that it was due to her efforts that at the end–after a
three-hour delay–the protocols were signed without statements by
any of the parties.

“On October 9, I flew to Zurich to witness the accord signing
alongside the Foreign Ministers of France, Russia, and Switzerland
and the EU High Representative. The next afternoon I left my hotel
and headed to the University of Zurich for the ceremony. But there
was a problem. Nalbandian, the Armenian Minister, was balking. He
was worried about what Davutoglu planned to say at the signing and
suddenly was refusing to leave the hotel. It seemed as if months of
careful negotiations might fall apart. My motorcade turned around and
raced back to Zurich’s Dolder Grand Hotel. While I waited in the car,
Phil Gordon went upstairs along with the lead Swiss negotiator to
find Nalbandian and take him to the signing ceremony. But he wouldn’t
budge. Phil came back downstairs to report and joined me in the car,
which was now parked behind the hotel. I started working the phones.

On one cell I dialled Nalbandian, and I got Davutoglu on a second
line. We went back and forth for an hour, trying to bridge the
gap and coax Nalbandian out of his room. ‘This is too important,
this has to be seen through, we have come too far,’ I told them,”
Clinton recounts in her book.

“Finally I went upstairs to talk to Nalbandian in person. What if we
simply canceled the speaking portion of the event? Sign the document,
make no statements, and leave. Both sides agreed, and Nalbandian at
last emerged. We walked downstairs, and he got in my sedan to drive to
the university. It took another hour and a half of hand-holding and
arm-twisting at the site to get them to actually walk onstage. We
were three hours late, but at least we were there. We held the
expedited signing ceremony, and then, with a huge sense of relief,
everyone left as fast as they could. To date, neither country has
ratified the protocols, and the process remains stalled; however,
at a December 2013 conference, the Turkish and Armenian Foreign
Ministers met for two hours to discuss how to move forward, and I
still hope for a breakthrough,” explained Clinton in “Hard Choices.”

On Wednesday I asked Armenia’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Tigran
Balayan during an online conversation about Clinton’s assertions and
he pointed me to remarks Nalbandian made on April 26 of this year
when he touched upon a claim made by Davutoglu that his intended
remarks in Zurich were to be similar to the now infamous “condolence”
speech made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 23.

In his remarks this past April, Nalbandian, who was hosting a
delegation of the Foreign Policy Society of Finland explained that
“According to the reached agreement everyone who was to make a
statement during the signing ceremony of Protocols in Zurich should
have provided their texts of speeches beforehand. Turkey breached
this arrangement. This is the reason why the signing ceremony was
postponed so long until the Turkish side felt obliged to provide the
statement text.”

“All the representatives of states participating in the signing
ceremony considered the statement text of the Turkish side as
unacceptable and suggested to hold the ceremony without any speeches
and the Turkish Foreign Minister was obliged to accept that. That
was the reason why the ceremony took place with nearly a three-hours
delay. Moreover, right after the signing ceremony the participating
Foreign Ministers made public comments, underlining that any statement
made following the signing could not have an impact on the reached
agreements enshrined in the Protocols. If the Turkish side considers
that it could reanimate today what was rejected by all four and a
half years ago, it is in vain and without perspectives,” explained
Nalbandian, who added that he expressed the same sentiments to
Davutoglu when he visited Yerevan in December.

“Nobody rejects her [Clinton’s] crucial role in the negotiations. She
was really very effective in mediating the signing without statements,”
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Balayan told me on Wednesday.

ARMENIA LEFT OUT OF CSTO

Hakob Badalyan, Political Commentator
Comments – Wednesday, 11 June 2014, 17:24

On June 10 the CSTO ministers of defense met in Moscow, chaired by the
Russian minister of defense Shoygu. His deputy, General Arkady Bakhin
briefed reporters on what had been discussed during the meeting. He
noted that they discussed the situation in the area of responsibility
of CSTO, the situation in Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, as well as
discussed further development of the CSTO military component.

Bakhin did not mention the name of Armenia while there is every reason
to mention Armenia in the current situation. Azerbaijan has intensified
subversive acts, as well as snipers against CSTO member Armenia. A
few days ago unprecedented escalation was noticed on the border with
Nakhidjevan, the Armenian side had two victims and the ministry of
defense of Armenia stated bluntly its doubts on Turkish involvement.

It is at least strange when two-three days after the escalation it
is not discussed in the CSTO meeting, and CSTO does not comment on it.

However, it is strange for a normal example of partnership. In the
case of CSTO, it is strange to consider this silence strange. CSTO
is always silent. Not only is it silent, but also its members supply
weapons to Azerbaijan, Russia being supplier number one.

Instead, the meeting of the CSTO ministers of defense discussed color
revolutions. Arkady Bakhin has announced that they could not miss
this issue because color revolutions are carried out under the name
of democratization.

Armenia remains CSTO area only in regard to this issue. For the rest,
Armenia has been outside CSTO, and the organization called security
alliance is in close partnership with Azerbaijan which is not a
CSTO member.

Armenia is in the area of responsibility of CSTO in terms of a “color
revolution”. In other words, CSTO will make sure no democratic
processes take place in Armenia which may change the quality of
Armenia.

The necessary internal and external mechanisms for keeping everything
unchanged are in place. Inside it is the systemic opposition which
derives from the ruling system and has formed a so-called bipolar
setting which has not opposed any initiative of handing the sovereignty
of Armenia to Russia. On the very same day, June 10, this opposition
submitted to the government 12 recommendations which do not address
any of external challenges to Armenia, unacceptability of handing
sovereignty to a supranational body, and outside the CSTO gendarmes,
the quick response forces have been formed which are entitled to
intervene in member states to protect law and order.

In this situation, it is not a surprise that domestic life in Armenia
is Á dummy, and the competition is for who will ensure more long-term
and less tense dominance of the empire in Armenia, preventing color
revolutions inside and reason for waste of resource on or need for
intervention for the center.

– See more at:

CIVIC CAMPAIGNS TO CONTINUE DESPITE POLITICIZATION OF THEIR DEMANDS BY OPPOSITION

POLITICS | 11.06.14 | 15:59

By SARA KHOJOYAN
ArmeniaNow reporter

The struggle of two civil movements that attracted broad section
of the population in the past few months will continue regardless
of the 12-point demand list presented to the government by the four
parliamentary minority parties.

Two of the demands of the opposition regard the elimination of the
mandatory component of the pension reform and reconsidering the system
of speed and traffic cameras and parking rules in Yerevan. The four
parties expect the government to address the issues by autumn.

Nevertheless, the two civic campaigns, Dem.am, campaigning against
the unpopular pension reform, and Out of Our Pockets, demanding the
reconsideration of the system of speed and traffic cameras as well
as controversial “red lines” parking rules, say they will continue
their struggle despite this “politicization”.

Tonight Dem.am plans to hold a “support march” in central Yerevan
trying to provide unified support for those who are under pressure
from their employers not to withdraw from the pension system. “Out
of Our Pockets”, meanwhile, also plans a “disobedience march” to show
to the government their determination in the campaign.

Members of the civil initiatives realize that no matter how hard
they try not to politicize their movements because their goal is
not entering politics, they cannot prevent that from happening,
as political parties also campaign against the same things and
same errors.

“The struggle of any force or unit against the pension reform can be
viewed as positive only. Every single demand for the elimination of
the mandatory component exhilarates our struggle, however, we will
try not to politicize the actions of our team,” Dem.am member Gevorg
Hayrapetyan told ArmeniaNow.

“Out of Our Pockets” campaign member Vardan Hakobyan mentioned that
they will continue their fight “on the ground”.

“If something is impossible to change on the ground, with thousands
of bills, nothing will change; it is possible to achieve change on
the ground with the help of struggle. Regardless of others’ demands,
our demands will remain in force,” he said.

Another member of the team, Arsen Petrosyan, emphasized that even
if the political “Quartet’s” demands are heard, the government will
demand more time.

“But we do not have that time. During that time hundreds of thousands
of people will be penalized, this question must be solved as soon
as possible.”

THE CORLEONES OF THE CASPIAN. HOW AZERBAIJAN’S DICTATOR WOOS THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE

12:06, 11 June, 2014

On Oct. 9, 2012, the American subsidiary of the State Oil Company
of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) purchased a five-story,
23,232-square-foot mansion in the heart of Washington, D.C., for
the purposes of “expand[ing] its operations in the United States,”
as theWashington Business Journal put it. Oil is the one thing
Azerbaijan has plenty of, and it’s the one thing the United States is
most interested in, so SOCAR’s “operations” are bound to be extensive.

Given the money at stake, the mansion’s sale price was a pittance:
$12 million. The exact address is 1319 18th St. NW, which ought to be
familiar to many an old Cold War hand as the former office of Jeane
Kirkpatrick, a onetime U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and one
of the most influential officials in Ronald Reagan’s administration.

This mansion is where Demokratizatsiya, the journal of post-Soviet
democratization, founded in 1992, used to be published. And, for a
time, its most famous lessee was Freedom House, the respected human
rights monitor, which today counts Azerbaijan among the “not free”
countries.

“I’m speechless,” said Jennifer Windsor, the executive director of
Freedom House when it was based at the Kirkpatrick address and now the
associate dean for programs and outreach at Georgetown University’s
School of Foreign Service. “I find it the highest form of irony that
one of the world’s least free countries is now occupying what was
the house of freedom.”

It’s as much a sign of the times as it is an irony. Barack Obama’s
administration has cut the U.S. budget for democracy promotion and has
struck all manner of cynical bargains with kleptocratic authoritarian
regimes. Realpolitik and isolationism are trading at high premiums
again, as whole swaths of Congress, beholden to a libertarian or Tea
Party ideology, view human rights as, at best, an afterthought of the
national interest or, at worst, as an inconvenience that America can
ill afford in the 21st century.

But SOCAR USA’s tony new address also underscores the quiet success
of one of the most energetic and free-spending foreign lobbies
in American and European politics — that of the regime headed by
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Over the past decade, a South
Caucasian country the size of Ireland but with possibly twice the oil
reserves of Texas has managed to win friends and influence people
who include past and present members of the U.S. Congress, British
Parliament, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
which was once known for pressuring dictatorships, not embracing them.

Where it hasn’t resorted to all-expenses-paid vacations to Azerbaijan’s
capital, Baku — a form of what one European think tank witheringly
describes as “caviar diplomacy” — it has poured millions of dollars
into top-drawer U.S. lobbying, consultancy, and PR firms to whitewash
its image in the American media.

But it’s a bit more subtle than that: The Aliyev regime has quietly
made inroads into transatlantic establishments by recapitulating a
hat trick of persuasive arguments.

The first is that Azerbaijan is the only secular Muslim-majority
state that is an ally of the United States and NATO in the war on
terror as well as a happy commercial and diplomatic ally of Israel,
which imports around a third of its energy from the Caucasian state.

Azerbaijani infrastructure is set to help facilitate NATO and U.S.

troop withdrawal from Afghanistan later this year.

The second is that its oil boom, which caused Azerbaijan’s GDP to
grow tenfold from 2001 to 2011, is a necessary counterweight for
diversifying Europe’s energy consumption and putting an end to Russia’s
monopolistic and bullying tactics, the nadir of which were its “gas
wars” with Ukraine and Belarus. Almost all of Azerbaijan’s exports
in 2011 were in oil and petroleum products. The so-called Southern
Gas Corridor, a pipeline rival to Russia’s Nord Stream, advanced
dramatically last December when a BP-led consortium began laying the
groundwork for Shah Deniz 2, a $28 billion natural gas exploration
project in the Azerbaijani-controlled part of the Caspian Sea. British
Foreign Secretary William Hague and EU Energy Commissioner Gunther
Oettinger were both in Baku for the signing of this landmark deal,
which will ship gas through two pipelines: the Trans Anatolian Natural
Gas Pipeline, running through Turkey, and the Trans Adriatic Pipeline,
running through Greece and Italy. Even though Azerbaijani gas going to
the European Union represents just 2 percent of the 500 billion cubic
meters per year that the continent imports, Europe wants to lower its
energy dependence on Russia. Moscow’s state-owned gas giant, Gazprom,
is now under antitrust investigation by the European Commission. And
the continuing Western standoff with the Kremlin over Russia’s invasion
and destabilization of Ukraine will mean that Azerbaijani gas becomes
more important to Brussels in the coming months and years.

Finally, situated at the gateway between Asia and Europe, Azerbaijan
is a strategic partner for the West in resisting Iran’s nuclear
threat as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempts to
“re-Sovietize the region,” as then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton memorably characterized the Russian-conceived customs union,
entry into which has sparked a political crisis in Ukraine. So as
the United States goes looking for as many friends as it can find in
the post-Soviet world — especially those with energy resources —
Baku’s influence in Washington is only poised to grow.

And if the West is ever ungrateful or unreceptive to these overtures,
the Azerbaijani lobby passive-aggressively intimates, then the Aliyev
regime always has the option of turning toward Moscow or Tehran,
both of which are eagerly knocking at its door.

The immediate aim of this three-tiered charm offensive is to “Johnny
Mercerize” an otherwise ugly domestic political reality, as one veteran
Azerbaijan specialist, who spoke to Foreign Policy on the condition
of anonymity, termed it. That is, accentuate the positive and ignore,
downplay, or just plain lie about the negative. But there’s another
encoded agenda. “The Aliyev lobby’s true purpose is to send a message
back home that there is nothing that can be done to remove this family
from power,” said Elmar Chakhtakhtinski, chair of Azerbaijani-Americans
for Democracy (AZAD), an opposition-linked diaspora group. “When
a U.S. congressman or former congressman congratulates Aliyev on
victory, it doesn’t necessarily give the regime any better position
in the West, but to the regime’s own domestic population, it sends
a powerful signal that even the West is behind it, that the world
outside of Azerbaijan isn’t that much different.” The demoralizing
effect such signaling can have on embattled dissidents or civil
society groups in Azerbaijan is profound.

ARA PAPYAN. “MIKOYAN IS A CRIMINAL, AND NEITHER SAROYAN, NOR BAGHRAMYAN HAD SEND PEOPLE TO DEATH.”

June 11 2014

“If Baghramyan and Saroyan had done nothing, they cannot be compared
to Mikoyan, because Mikoyan is a criminal, while neither Saroyan nor
Baghramyan had sent any individual or persons to direct death by their
signature,” such opinion was expressed by the Head of “Modus Vivendi”
Center, Ara Papyan, in the conversation with Aravot.am, in response to
Mikoyan’s grandson, Vladimir Mikoyan’s observations about what William
Saroyan and Hovhannes Baghramyan had done for Armenia that their
statues are installed, whereas there is a big noise around Mikoyan’s
statue. He mentioned that it appears that if this man is a criminal,
but has had a high position, he can be justified. According to Mr.

Papyan, followed by this logic, Hitler and Talaat may also be
justified. With regard to Saroyan, Ara Papyan said, “Saroyan is a
cultural activist and a writer, and many people in the United States
were in touch with Armenian thanks to Saroyan’s works.

There is no sign of blood on Saroyan.” Mr. Papyan has some
reservations with regard to installation of the statue to Hovhannes
Baghramyan. “Once, people got offended of me when I said that we
should not place the state to the Marshall of somebody’s army in
the street of Yerevan. Neither Isakov, nor Baghramyan are Armenian
marshals, they are Armenians by origin. It is sad that the statues to
Baghramyan and Isakov were placed during the years of independence. It
is the result of Soviet upbringing of our leadership. We often
confuse ethnic Armenian with Armenian by origin.” With regard to
ordering additional executions, in response to Mikoyan’s grandson’s
reassurance, “That was not Mikoyan asking rather than Yezhov, referring
to Mikoyan,” Mr. Papyan said, “Mikoyan’s signature is on thousands of
documents. Even if no document is preserved with Mikoyan’s signature,
anyway, Mikoyan is a criminal, as he is a part of the system that
has sent millions of people to death. Generally, no document on
death penalty with Hitler’s signature is preserved. Hitler was not
involved in any of such things, but he had created a system that had
taken the life of millions of people.” To our question of why the
RA authorities are interested in it since we understand the interest
of Mikoyan’s family for installing his statue, Ara Papyan responded,
“One is the matter of pleasing. They think that if there is a factory
of sausage in Moscow, it would be also good to have Mikoyan’s statue
here. Or, they do not know who Mikoyan is. They have not gone further
beyond the Soviet school. Anyway, by installing Mikoyan’s statue,
they are also violating our international commitments. The communism
has recognized the Council of Europe as a totalitarian and condemnable
idea. And we are a member of the Council of Europe, and its decisions
are superior to our Constitution.”

Tatev HARUTYUNYAN

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