CONTEST FOR PASSENGER TRANSPORTATION COMPANIES DUE IN YEREVAN IN FEBRUARY
16:38 07/01/2014 ” SOCIETY
Yerevan Municipality is announcing a new contest for passenger
transportation companies in the capital, to operate in around
three dozen bus (microbus) routes, the official website of Yerevan
Municipality reports.
The contest is due to take place on February 14. The deadline for
applications is February 6, 18:00.
Source: Panorama.am
From: Baghdasarian
President Sargsyan attends Christmas liturgy at the Mother See
14:01 06.01.2014
Today, President Serzh Sargsyan and Mrs. Rita Sargsyan attended the
liturgy at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin dedicated to the Feast
of the Holy Nativity and Theophany of Our Lord Jesus Christ,
President’s Press Office reported.
From: Baghdasarian
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 6 2014
Being an Armenian in the capital of the bureaucracy (2)
A view of a pre-1915 Ulus, Ankara
6 January 2014 /EMÝNE DOLMACI, ANKARA
Picking up where I left off yesterday, I will share information on a
new book by the Hrant Dink Foundation titled, “Sessizliðin Sesi 3,
Ankaralý Ermeniler Konuþuyor” (Sounds of Silence 3, Armenians of
Ankara Speak), which sheds light on Turkish-Armenians’ socio-cultural
lives in Ankara.
The book comprises interviews conducted with Turkish- Armenians living
in Ankara. Ferda Balancar, who directed the group conducting these
interviews with Turkish-Armenians in Ankara, answers some questions.
What do they [Armenians] demand in order to confront the past?
First of all, they demand a sincere and heartfelt apology. They want
Turkish people to understand the sorrows Armenians have gone through
not only during the 1915 incidents, but also during the nation-state
process, without blaming each other.
What are their expectations of the future compared to other Turkish citizens?
In fact, they do not have different demands. They want to live in a
democratic country that respects human rights. They think they would
have a more comfortable and happy life in such a country.
Considering the current development level in the country in terms of
human rights and freedoms, do they feel secure?
They are also aware of the fact that Turkey has made great progress in
terms of fundamental rights and freedoms in recent years, but they do
not feel secure. Because they are concerned that everything may be
reversed.
One of the Armenians you interviewed indicated the declining
population of Armenians in Turkey and said, “We are only a few people.
What will happen 70 years later?” Do you have an answer for this
question?
The Armenian population in Turkey is about 70,000 or 80,000. If they
continue to have mixed marriages and migrate abroad, there will not be
an Armenian community in 50 years.
Some of the witnesses interviewed for the book share their sentiments
on being an Armenian in Turkey’s capital.
Witness 1: ‘I never liked the sense of belonging’
I would have gone both to the Political Science Faculty and the School
of Press and Broadcasting at Ankara University. But I did not want to
go into political science because I thought that I would never be an
ambassador, governor or bureaucrat because of my Armenian identity. If
you are an Armenian, the system allocates a very small space for you.
In 1968, when the street skirmishes between rightist and leftist
groups were fueled, I went to the School of Press and Broadcasting at
Ankara University. I never got involved in the clashes between
rightist and leftist groups, because for both sides, I was irrelevant.
And no one wanted to lure me to their sides. I have never liked the
sense of belonging. I have never developed a sense of belonging to any
group.
Witness 2: ‘Hrant Dink was expressing my feelings’
Hrant Dink wanted to live as a Turkish-Armenian and serve his country.
He was expressing my feelings as well. Hrant Dink had a huge influence
on me. On the day when I learned that he died, I was devastated. Will
I be a Turk when I say I am a Turk? A person cannot change their
ethnicity, but I am a good person from Turkey. I carried the Turkish
flag and read the right poem on Turkish national days. I get emotional
when I hear our national anthem or see our flag. But I do not want to
see flags and Atatürk posters everywhere. I am ready and already doing
my best to unite the common denominators of being from Turkey and
working the for the sake of this country.
Witness 3: ‘I want to live like a first-class citizen of this country’
My uncle fell in love with a Greek girl. They ran away together and
settled in the US. They had five daughters. He opened a tailor’s shop
and he was earning good money. They had a good life. Both my uncle and
his wife passed away five or six years ago. Although he had good life,
he always used to say: “I wish hadn’t left my country.” He went to the
US, and had a more comfortable life, but he always longed for these
lands. I do not want to be like my uncle. I want to live in this
country as a first-class and equal citizen.
Witness 4: ‘I teach Turkish to my grandchildren in Austria’
When I was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, the
secretary-general of the party asked me if I had been oppressed while
living in Turkey because of my Armenian ethnicity. This was the first
time I understood discrimination. I told her I had never been
discriminated against, which was the truth. I am an Armenian, but I am
from Turkey. I love our country. Although I have now lived in Austria
since 1979, I follow every development in Turkey, and I teach Turkish
to my grandchildren in Austria.
Witness 5: ‘An era has ended and a new era has started’
What has changed so that we can discuss the Armenian issue more
freely? I believe the coup cases have put an end to an era and have
started a new one. Negotiation is required while trying to do
something. For example, while talking about the reopening of the Halki
Seminary on the island of Heybeliada near Ýstanbul, the issue of
reopening Turkish mosques in Greece should not be ignored. Allowing
worship once a year at the Cathedral Church of the Holy Cross, on the
Akdamar island in Lake Van, is a symbolic but very important and
positive move. There are very positive developments, and you cannot
ignore them.
Witness 6: ‘Since the Armenians have gone, prosperity has been gone too’
In the recent years, the 1915 incidents and the sorrows Armenians have
gone through are being discussed. Unlike in the past, the media also
extensively covers this issue. However, extensively discussing these
issues has both positive and negative impacts. It is not a good thing
to twist a knife in that wound. I am cautious about this issue. Look
at what happened to Hrant Dink. He was working for the sake of this
country. He wanted to introduce peace between Turks and Armenians. I
do not understand why the people of this country have gone through
great pains. Both sides have suffered. There is a saying in Anatolia
that says, “Since the Armenians have gone, prosperity has gone too.”
But the number of people who think killing Armenians or forcing them
to migrate was a good thing is not small.
From: Baghdasarian
Miley Ray Cyrus wished Armenia a Happy Christmas
15:07 – 06.01.14
American singer Miley Ray Cyrus has wished Armenia a Happy Christmas.
`HAPPY ARMENIAN CHRISTMAS,’ she tweeted.
More than 10,000 Twitter users re-tweeted.
Armenian News – Tert.am
From: Baghdasarian
Le Monde, France
3 janvier 2014 vendredi
Le citoyen et les lois mémorielles
LE MONDE DES LIVRES; Pg. 8
C’EST PRÉVU POUR 2015. Le président de la République a fait savoir
qu’il présenterait un projet de loi permettant de réprimer la négation
du génocide des Arméniens. La date est évidemment d’une grande portée
symbolique : le centenaire du génocide dans l’Empire turc, pendant la
Grande Guerre, en 1915. François Hollande s’inscrit ici dans un débat
déjà ancien. Depuis les années 2000, il y a eu plusieurs tentatives
parlementaires pour faire aboutir une telle mesure. La loi votée en ce
sens en 2011 a finalement été rejetée par le Conseil constitutionnel.
Ces enjeux s’apparentent à un feuilletage de questions qui dépassent
cette chronique, mais il y a fort à parier que le processus législatif
évoqué par la présidence relancera les discussions sur les lois dites
” mémorielles “.
C’est que, pour tout un ensemble d’historiens (René Rémond, Pierre
Nora ), la loi n’a pas à interférer avec leur discipline ; il faut
défendre la ” liberté pour l’histoire “. L’expression ” lois
mémorielles “, qui s’est ainsi largement répandue, comporte donc
souvent une connotation négative. Elle recouvre notamment la loi
Gayssot (1990, qui permet de sanctionner ceux qui nient l’existence de
la Shoah), la loi Taubira (2001, sur la traite et l’esclavage) et
celle, seulement déclarative, qui stipule : ” La France reconnaît
publiquement le génocide arménien de 1915 ” (2001). Elle vise aussi la
loi de 2005, d’une tout autre orientation : ” portant reconnaissance
de la Nation et contribution nationale en faveur des Français
rapatriés ” ; son article 4 disait : ” Les programmes scolaires
reconnaissent en particulier le rôle positif de la présence française
outre-mer, notamment en Afrique du Nord ( ) “. L’espace public s’était
enflammé sur ce passage, véritable injonction ” colonialiste ” aux
professeurs, tant et si bien qu’il avait été retiré. Pour se rappeler
comment, dans les débats d’alors, s’entremêlent mémoires, stratégies
politiques et lutte des historiens, on relira avec intérêt le livre
d’histoire ” à chaud ” qu’écrivit Romain Bertrand (Mémoires d’Empire,
Le Croquant, 2006). Il reste une analyse fine dont on tire profit pour
comprendre ce qui ne cesse de se rejouer. Une mission d’information de
l’Assemblée nationale avait, après cette affaire, préconisé la retenue
du Parlement en matière de ” lois mémorielles “.
Valeur universelle
Les partisans de ” la liberté pour l’histoire ” avaient ainsi prouvé
une influence médiatique et politique certaine. Avaient-ils, pour
autant, bien posé le problème ? Un numéro récent de la Revue
arménienne des questions contemporaines (” Légiférer sur la
contestation des génocides : débats et enjeux “, décembre 2012) permet
de se faire un avis informé. L’historien Boris Adjemian y interroge à
juste titre la notion même de ” lois mémorielles ” qui unifie des
textes à visée et à portée différentes. Dans le même numéro, Gérard
Noiriel remarque aussi que, lors des discussions de 2005, ” en mettant
sur le même plan des lois qui condamnent le racisme, l’esclavage, les
génocides et une loi qui fait l’apologie de la colonisation, cette
offensive a permis au gouvernement de désamorcer la polémique “. Bref,
on saisit bien que la notion de ” lois mémorielles ” est un concept de
combat, qui ne va pas de soi. Il est souvent brandi par ceux qui
considèrent que les mémoires ” particulières ” (juives, arméniennes,
etc.), soutenues par la loi, fragmentent l’unité nationale et le ”
pacte républicain “. Derrière la noble cause de l’histoire-science,
les dénonciations systématiques des ” lois mémorielles ” minimisent
ainsi la valeur universelle de ces politiques de mémoire et
affaiblissent l’espace public démocratique dans sa capacité à parler
d’histoire.
From: Baghdasarian
EU could become neutral mediator and honest broker on Karabakh issue – expert
January 05, 2014 | 15:11
YEREVAN. – The term that describes best the prospects of the
Nagorno-Karabakh issue in 2014 might be that of cautious pessimism,
political analyst Gunter Walzenbach told Armenian News-NEWS.am.
A senior lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol,
Gunter Walzenbach noted that the events around the Vilnius summit and
the continuing uncertainty around the future shape of the Eastern
Partnership will have raised awareness among EU decision makers not
just for the security concerns of individual countries, but also for
the strategic foreign policy orientations of Russia.
`In this context further progress or deterioration of EU-Russia
relations will also have repercussions for `frozen conflicts’ such as
the one in Nagorno-Karabakh. While measures for successful conflict
resolution were also part of the drafting and negotiation process of
the new association agreements, it remains doubtful whether the EU
foreign policy process can now produce an approach towards conflict
resolution that is more coherent and consistent than previous
efforts’, he said.
Walzenbach added that the instruments in the hand of the newly
established European External Action Service (EEAS) are limited and
the EU motto of `more for more’ is no convincing replacement for
stronger forms of economic and political conditionality.
However, from the expert’s point of view, this is not to say that
previous efforts and EU involvement in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue did
not proceed on the right track.
`In principle, the EU’s soft power image, concrete action in terms of
civil society engagement on both sides and a strengthened role for the
Union’s Special Representative can surely help in the long run to
build credibility as well as the necessary expertise to become the
neutral mediator and honest broker so much needed in the Southern
Caucasus’, Gunter Walzenbach emphasized. Yet, formally, he noted, all
the main responsibility still rests with the OSCE Minsk Group, and
disagreement will continue as to whether France is an adequate proxy
for the EU as a whole within this forum.
The expert believes that whatever type of specific solution might
eventually be championed by the negotiating parties in the case of
Nagorno-Karabakh, it will have profound repercussion for other
`frozen’ conflicts in the same or related regional settings.
`Yet a combined or integrated approach in relation to conflict
resolution in the cases of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transnistria,
is of an order to tall for current EU diplomacy. In this
constellation, perhaps, more has to be expected from the political
leadership of both Azerbaijan and Armenia. Further meetings at
presidential level have been confirmed and sound promising, to say the
least’, he noted, adding that, in part, though, these are a reflection
of the degree of relative stability both leaders enjoy in their
respective political system.
While there are no convincing arguments to be found that recurrent
skirmishes and power gestures turn into a `hot conflict’, according to
Gunter Walzenbach, genuine conflict resolution seems equally remote.
`In the current state of affairs negotiation teams, diplomats and
decision-makers may have not much choice but look out for new windows
of opportunities coming along with broader changes in Russia’s
relations with the West’ emphasized the expert.
News from Armenia – NEWS.am
From: Baghdasarian
ARMENIE
Les spécialistes du tourisme sont en retard par rapport aux infrastructures
Les infrastructures touristiques se développent plus rapidement que la
communauté professionnelle a déclaré le vice-ministre arménien de
l’économie Ara Petrosyan.
L’Arménie manque d’un personnel de haut de gamme et ce problème est à
l’agenda du gouvernement, a-t-il dit ajoutant « qu’une bonne
infrastructure n’est rien sans le personnel ».
La demande de spécialistes qualifiés est en croissance dans le marché
du tourisme arménien chaque année, et une bonne formation peut offrir
un emploi dans le secteur a dit le vice-ministre.
Nous manquons de bons guides touristiques et de tours managers parlant
plusieurs langues, a dit Ara Petrosyan.
dimanche 5 janvier 2014,
Stéphane ©armenews.com
From: Baghdasarian
Perspectives on History
The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association
The Human Rights Historian and the Trafficked Child Writing the
History of Mass Violence and Individual Trauma
Keith David Watenpaugh, October 2013
>From The Art of History column in the October 2013 issue of
Perspectives on History
Photo from Khachadour Beroian’s 1923 intake survey, League of Nations’
Rescue Home, Aleppo, Syria. Courtesy of the United Nations.
The eyes of a young woman, stolen from her family when she was six
years old and kept as a slave for a decade, stare back at me from a
League of Nations’ document and across the elapse of 90 years.1 They
belong to Loutfiy Bilemdjian from the city of Ayntab, now Gaziantep,
in southern Turkey. Hers is the 1,010th entry in a collection of
notebooks that record the narratives of young survivors of the 1915
genocide of the Ottoman Armenians as they entered the care of the
league’s Rescue Home in Aleppo, Syria. In addition to the narrative,
each page includes a photograph taken at the time of admission and as
much biographical information as the young person could
remember-parent’s name, place, and date of birth.
As Loutfiyé told a league relief worker, at the onset of the genocide,
she and her family had been forcibly displaced to upper Mesopotamia,
where they were set upon by Ottoman irregular soldiers. She witnessed
the killing of her mother, father, and one of her brothers. A soldier
took her as booty and sold her to someone, who then resold her to a
wealthy man named Mahmud Pasha. He sent her to his house, where she
remained for 11 years. In 1926, she escaped across what had become the
international border between Syria and Turkey and reached Aleppo,
where she found one of her surviving brothers.
Elements of her story are similar to entry number 961, which tells the
story of Zabel, the daughter of Bedros from Arapg#r, a village known
for its wine grapes and woven textiles. She was sent into the Syrian
desert in 1915 with her mother, five sisters, and a brother. Along
with other girls from her village, she was gathered by Ottoman
gendarmes and sold. In the elliptical language of the interwar period,
her purchaser “married her.” She was 7 or 8 years old at the
time. After 11 years she learned that other Armenians had
survived. She escaped and made her way to Aleppo where she was
reunited with family. Her story is not unlike that of number 209,
Khachadour Beroian, from the city of Kharpert, now Elaz## in Turkey,
whose picture shows him wearing a kaffiyya and a wool-lined caba’
coat-clothes he wore as an unpaid agricultural laborer in eastern
Syria before he ran away from the farm where he’d been forced to work
for 9 years. He was around 12 years old when his father, Avedis, was
killed at the beginning of the genocide. Like other orphaned children
in his city, he had been rounded up and sent to Syria in a deportation
caravan.
Over the course of two summer days, I sat in the reading room of the
league’s archive in what is now the UN’s Geneva headquarters, and read
these stories, one by one, hour after hour. Each record told a
consistent story of survival in the face of extrajudicial murder,
forced migration, enslavement, or sexual violence.
The stories tore at me.
Perhaps it was because I knew people who could have been their
descendants; their names, their faces, their places of origin were all
familiar. I knew, as a historian of the period, that these were the
few who by force of will or circumstance (or both) had
escaped. Hundreds of thousands of children were killed during the
genocide, and, at the time of the Rescue Home’s operation, tens of
thousands of Armenian young people were still living in slavery.
The stories stayed in my mind even as I left the archive and walked to
my apartment, passing under the canopy of the most magnificent Cedar
of Lebanon I had ever seen. That night I awoke screaming from a dream
the details of which I’m glad I couldn’t recall. Making Meaning of
Trauma
What burdens do such stories of individual trauma and survival place
on the historian? Trying to answer this question is important,
inasmuch as the spoken, written, and forensic texts of witness,
memory, and testimony form the building blocks of human rights
history. But the question can also be answered by thinking about why
the league’s administrators recorded and preserved these
stories. Clearly, the biographical data and pictures were a tool for
family reunification. Sometimes, a page’s overleaf has an entry on the
placement of the young person with family nearby, or, like Khachadour,
emigration to join his brother in America. Combining photographs and
individual stories gave human meaning to the raw numbers needed by the
league’s bureaucracy; it was calculated to generate funding or support
from representatives of member states and secretariat officials.
Campaign poster for refugee relief, c.1917, W.B. King, Conwell Graphic
Companies, NY. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division,
Washington DC.
A league-produced reenactment of a young woman entering the Rescue
House from a 1926 film-itself a remarkable and evocative piece of
evidence-shows her telling her story to a league employee, who then
translated and wrote it down.2 The field workers believed that the act
of telling one’s life story at entry helped the individual mark that
moment as a rupture between the time she spent as a trafficked child,
unconsenting wife, or domestic slave, and a new life as a member of a
natal community. Putting the story-her history-down on paper
acknowledged the past in a way that could help her make a dignified
return to something approaching a normal life. The break from the past
was reinforced as the young people shed the clothes they wore upon
entry and were given Westerntyle dresses or pants and had their hair
cut.
Bringing human meaning to “the number” is among the central challenges
of writing about genocide or other kinds of mass human rights abuses
like state violence, ethnic cleansing, and slavery. As historians, we
need to be able to write about the anonymous scope and remorseless
uniformity of genocide-to explain its modernity, its political and
social importance, and the intent of perpetrators. But as the numbers
mount they become numbing and mute, and the historical experience of
genocide is flattened.
A focus on the individual behind the cold numbers of dead or
trafficked children can obscure the larger concepts and even leave the
historian vulnerable to claims that his history is merely anecdotal or
unrepresentative. We have, nonetheless, a responsibility to listen
when we can to the voices of those victimized by human rights abuse
and to disentangle those voices from dominant narratives of powerful
institutions and nation states-especially in those very rare instances
when we hear children’s voices.
The Unbearable and the Historian’s Humanity
To achieve balance between these two ways of writing the history of
episodes like the Armenian Genocide, the historian should embrace his
emotional responses, like the ones I had at the archive, to unleash as
a tool of method his empathetic imagination. This way of imagining is
central to what makes our discipline humane and helps the historian
retain the humanity of his work (and himself) when confronted with
hate, violence, and inhumanity. Moreover, it can bring history and the
historian into broader conversations about justice, acknowledgement,
and reconciliation, which is one of the promises of human rights
history.
In the years since I returned from the archive, those narratives have
shaped the way I’ve written about humanitarianism and human rights in
the Middle East.3 As Syria has again become a killing field, the
stories helped me think about what it means to be a young person
displaced by war-nd led me to a refugee camp in the Jordanian desert
to research and advocate for displaced Syrian university students.4
Even now, when I tell the story of the children in the notebooks to my
students or, recently, to a group of high school social studies
teachers preparing a curriculum on genocide, I can still feel a
burning ember of the sadness I experienced in the archive.
-Keith David Watenpaugh is a historian of the modern Middle East and
director of the University of California, Davis, Human Rights
Initiative. His work has appeared in the American Historical Review,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Social History, Journal
of Human Rights, and Humanity and has been translated into Arabic,
Armenian, German, Persian, and Turkish. He is the author of Being
Modern in the Middle East, and the forthcoming Bread from Stones: The
Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism.
Notes
1. Archives of the League of Nations, United Nations Organization,
Geneva, Records of the Nansen International Refugee Office, 1920-47,
“Registers of Inmates of the Armenian Orphanage in Aleppo,” 1922-30, 4
vols.
2. Karen Jeppe, Danish Film Institute, director unknown (1926).
3. See my article, “The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide
Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920-1927,” AHR
115, no. 5 (December 2010): 1315-39.
4. K. D. Watenpaugh, A. E. Fricke, et al., “Uncounted and
Unacknowledged: Syria’s Refugee University Students and Academics in
Jordan,” a joint publication of the University of California, Davis,
Human Rights Initiative and the Institute of International Education
(April 2013).
From: Baghdasarian
Russia not decided on funding of Armenian railroad section – South
Caucasus Railway
January 04, 2014 | 13:18
YEREVAN. – The Russian railways have not yet decided on the funding of
the construction of the Vanadzor-Fioletovo railroad section in
Armenia.
`South Caucasus Railway’ Closed Joint-Stock Company General Director
Victor Rebets told the aforesaid to Armenian News-NEWS.am.
In Rebets’s words, although the technical and economic bases for the
project are ready, no decision was made along the lines of Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to Armenia.
According to the latest estimates, the construction of this railway
section may cost $200-250 million. The amount of funding will depend
on the construction of tunnels and the options for the route, since it
will pass through mountainous terrain.
The 37.8-kilometer-long Vanadzor-Fioletovo railroad section will close
Armenia’s northern railway link and reduce, by 70-100 kilometers, the
freight route between capital city Yerevan and the Georgian border.
From: Baghdasarian
HAUT KARABAGH-CONSOMMATION
La nouvelle usine d’huile végétale au Haut Karabagh créera 30 emplois
Au Haut Karabagh l’extension de l’usine d’extraction de l’huile
végétale située dans la région de Martouni, devrait créer une
trentaine d’emplois supplémentaires affirme Mhér Asryan, le
responsable de la société « Reypsid » propriétaire de l’usine. L’usine
du village de Daghavart dans la région de Martouni (République du Haut
Karabagh) devrait produire de l’huile végétale. En 2014 les salaires
de ces postes seront payés 70 000 drams par mois (environ 125 euros)
et 80 000 en 2016. Ces emplois seront occupés par les habitants des
villages de Daghavart et Sarkissachen. L’investissement prévu est de
657 millions de drams (environ 1,2 millions d’euros). Pour la
production de l’usine, les dirigeants ont déjà planifié les cultures
du tournesol, du soja et du colza. La production de l’huile de
tournesol et du colza sont une première pour l’agriculture du Haut
Karabagh. L’huile végétale du Haut Karabagh sera essentiellement
diffusée dans les grandes surfaces d’Erévan ainsi que par internet.
Selon Mhér Asryan l’usine aura la capacité de traiter chaque jour de
40 à 50 tonnes de végétaux et produire près de 15 tonnes d’huile. Mais
la production dépendra surtout de la demande des consommateurs.
Krikor Amirzayan
samedi 4 janvier 2014,
Krikor Amirzayan ©armenews.com
From: Baghdasarian