Author: Boris Nahapetian

 – As Europe’s refugee crisis unfolds, Armenia says it has hosted thousands of Syrians, particularly those from the Christian-Armenian community.

Since the start of the conflict, at least 15,000 Syrians have found refuge in Armenia, according to UNHCR figures.

The majority of these are descendents of Armenians who escaped the mass killings and deportations by the Ottoman Turks in 1915, and were given refuge in Syria.

At the time, Syria’s Deir Ezzor region became a major destination for Armenians subjected to death marches through the desert. But a century later, increasing numbers of Syrian Armenians are now driving to Beirut, where they board flights to Yerevan.

Before the conflict, the estimated number of ethnic Armenians in Syria was about 100,000. More than 60,000 of them settled in Aleppo, with smaller communities in Kessab, Qamishli, Yacubiyah, Kobane and Damascus.

Many in the Armenian diaspora consider Syrian-Armenians as their “mother community”.

The influx of Syrian refugees into Armenia started in 2012, when over 6,500 people fled. In 2013, the number of Syrian Armenians fleeing reached 11,000 and by August 2015, over 15,000 Armenians had been reported to be seeking asylum in Armenia.

For Syria’s ethnic Armenians, Armenia represents a safe choice – not only as an ancient homeland and predominantly Christian country – but also one with migration policies and repatriation programme that make it easy for them to settle.

The Armenian government has adopted “special measures” to help Syrian Armenians. It authorised consular offices in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon to issue citizenship and passports to Syrian Armenians free of charge.

But Armenia’s own economic woes mean that it struggles to provide accommodation and jobs for the newly-arrived Syrians. State assistance for Syrian Armenians covers mainly education, medical care and the provision of documents.

“We are concerned about the rental of accommodation; this is already a challenge to us. We have to turn to international and benevolent organisations for help because we will face a problem. The flow is too big, we cannot cope,” Firdus Zakaryan, an official from Armenia’s Ministry of Diaspora, said recently.

Armenian state officials insist that the plight of even the most impoverished refugees in Armenia pales in comparison with the four million displaced Syrians, many of whom struggle for life in camps and rundown urban areas of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem premiered at the Revival Square in Stepanakert today. The performance was dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide and those, who lost their lives in the struggle for the independence of Armenia and Artsakh.

The event was attended by President Serzh Sargsyan and Mrs. Rita Sargsyan,political and religious leaders of Artsakh.

President Serzh Sargsyan received today Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov. Speaking about the ongoing protests in Armenia against the planned electricity price hike, President Sargsyan said some experts seek to find anti-Russian sentiments in the developments. He said he’s glad that protesters themselves reject these assumptions.

The President informed that Armenia had to make the unpopular decision because of the fluctuation of the currency exchange rate and the rise of the net worth of electric energy. He added that issues of subsidising the cost to needy families have also been taken into consideration. The Government ruled yesterday to raise the monthly allowances for 105 thousand families. The President said the losses of the Electric Networks of Armenia that resulted from possible shortcomings of the company’s activity.

The President said it would be right for the Armenian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission to keep the activity of the Russian companies in Armenia in the focus of attention.

The President noted that it would be correct for the Commission to consider the option of conducting audit in the Distribution Networks of Armenia with the participation of the expert community and representatives of the civil society.

 

Award-winning Armenian jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan performed a concert on June 23 outside the Akhtamar Church on the historical Akhtamar Island in Van, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

The concert on Akhtamar Island was “vigorous,” said Tamar Nalci, the project coordinator at Anadolu Kültür (Anatolian Culture), a non-profit cultural institution that organized Hamasyan’s concerts in Turkey.

“Tigran Hamasyan is a reputable Armenian jazz pianist who performs mini concerts at historical sites and churches with the company of the state chamber choir of Armenia [Hover]. This is a concert of church music.”

Tigran Hamasyan is accompanied by a group of 25 musicians. This has been our second concert. It attracted much interest. The concert was vigorous,” Nalci said after the concert held on the historical island.

Van Deputy Mayor Cahit Bozbay and Gevaş District Mayor Sinan Hakan were among the attendees of the concert, along with a number of local residents.

Hamasyan will continue performing in various Turkish provinces until June 30 in a project called “Luys i Luso.” He will also perform in 100 churches in Armenia, Georgia, Lebanon, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech Republic, England, Germany, Luxembourg, Russia and the U.S.

Hamasyan, 27, who started playing piano at the age of three and won the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2003 and the Thelonious Monk Institute piano contest at the age of 18, performs traditional Armenian music in his concerts.

A crowd of a few dozen gathered in front of the Armenian embassy in Tbilisi on Wednesday afternoon to show their solidarity with protesters in Yerevan, DFWatch reports.

One of the rally organizers Rezo Karanadze from the Self-Organized Student Network, a grass-root leftists organization, told that the idea was to express solidarity with Armenian protesters who were suppressed by the police yesterday.

“We believe that Armenian public has legitimate reason to protest against artificially raised electricity prices. First of all, Armenia has a nuclear power plant. Also, it is weird that electricity prices in Armenia are the highest in the post-soviet space,” Karanadze said.

Another reason for the rally was to show that people care not only about liberal and human rights issues, but about socio-economic causes as well, he added.

“If nationalism divides us, our class struggle unites us. Therefore we stand here not as Armenians and Georgians, but as socialists, as one class, which is being exploited by the political and economic elites,” Karanadze said.

 

Among the protesters were few Armenians from Yerevan as well. One of them, Anna Davtyan, told DFWatch she and her friends came to Georgia on a business trip yesterday. She wished to be in Yerevan at the moment with her friends, but came to the rally in Tbilisi instead.

”We don’t understand what is written in Georgian, but it is nice to see solidarity. It is very empowering to have good, understanding neighbors,” Davtyan said. .

The current wave of protests in Yerevan started when the governmental Public Services Regulatory Commission decided to allow the rise in electricity prices.

Known as the greatest living Armenian composer, Tigran Mansurian was in Istanbul for a special occasion. Commissioned by the 43rd Istanbul Music Festival, the premiere of Mansurian’s work titled ‘Sonata da Chiesa for Viola and Piano, In Memoriam Gomidas Vartabed’ was held in the evening of June 10 at the Surp Vortvots Vorodman Church with a concert titled ‘A World Premiere with Kim Kashkashian & Péter Nagy’.

In an interview with Istanbul based weekly Mansurian told about his friend Parajanov, composing film scores, the feelings he has had while visiting Turkey for the first time.

“It was 1969, and I was 30 years old when Parajanov asked me to compose the score of ‘The Colour of Pomegranates’. “I am travelling to Kiev, I’ll come back when you’re finished,” he said, gave me the film, and went. There was no sound in the film, but the images were complete. For three months, I worked every day, from 9 in the morning until 9 in the evening. It was fascinating work. Parajanov would transform even the simplest things in such ways… He would elevate them from the ground into the sky, and then, take them even higher than the sky. He would conjure up incredible symbols from very simple objects, giving them artistic forms. I tried to do for sounds what Parajanov had done with images,” Mansurian said.

Speaking about the difference between the film scores and other compositions, the composer said: “It’s a completely different kind of work. My approach changes entirely when I am composing a film score. Because the music I make for a film does not belong to me but to the film, and every film has its own unique music. So I become a different person from one film to the next. I have composed scores for more than hundred films, and each work is different. But the music that belongs to me, that has stayed the same over the years. No doubt, some things change, but I can say that the essence of my music has always remained the same.”

“There is a truth within me, and when that truth meets with the work you are doing, then you know you are doing something right,” Mansurian said. Speaking of the source of that truth, he said: “I love Armenian music. Our culture has been conveyed to the present day from very ancient times. For instance, ‘Anganimk’, from the 5^th century… ‘Anganimk’ is a hymn that takes me back 1,500 years. In a single second, I go back 1,500 years and return to the present day. This journey is my wealth. And this journey of immense wealth has been travelled by a great number of people throughout history. The work of each and every one of them has been inscribed along this path.”

“I believe that the language a musician speaks is his or her greatest teacher. You constantly speak and hear this language. Every language has its unique phonetics and intonation. For instance, in some languages the emphasis is on the final syllable of the word. That is how it is in Armenian, and also in French; but it is entirely different in Russian… So in the works of a musician who speaks Armenian, you observe influences unique to that language, and that musician becomes ‘the musician of the Armenian language’. I, too, am a musician of the Armenian language,” the composer noted.

Tigran Mansurian also spoke about three names in Armenian classical music:

“Komitas is our father, he is the father of us all. He brought us everything about us, laid it all out before us and said, “Here, this is what we are”. And the whole world saw this, began to discover Komidas, and that discovery continues to this day

“Aram Khachaturian came to say, “We lost one and a half million of us, but we continue to live”. And he made that heard with such a voice that the whole world heard him, and they came to know him and Armenian music.”

“Tigran Hamasyan is a very sweet musician. His singing takes me back to Armenia. Whether with his piano or his voice, he shows that he is a child of those lands. He has a very rich memory. It’s fascinating how he has such an immense memory. I can’t tell whether the music is borne from him, or he from the music.”

On May 24, a delegation of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund comprising trustees, representatives of affiliates worldwide, benefactors, and associates, began a series of project-site visits in Armenia, starting with the Tavush Region. The visits come on the heels of several others which the delegation made to the sites of current or newly completed projects in Artsakh, starting on May 20.

The delegation’s first stop in Tavush was the village of Khachardzan, where the fund is renovating the community’s school with the financial support of longtime benefactors Mr. and Mrs. Arto and Hilda Kalciyan of Argentina. With access to natural gas and equipped with a new central-heating system, the school will provide students with a comfortable learning environment year-around. The renovated and fully furnished campus will open its doors in September. Assistance to Khachardzan is also being provided by the Armenia branch of the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). After planting an orchard in the vicinity of the school, UMCOR is currently donating farm animals and beehives to 28 economically disadvantaged local families.

Also on May 24, the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund delegation visited the community of Lusadzor, in Tavush, for a first-hand look at the activities of a farm established through the support of the fund’s French affiliate. For the past several years, a number of far-reaching agricultural-development programs have been implemented throughout Tavush, with the joint support of France’s Hauts-de-Seine General Council and the French-Armenian community.

A Turkish court fined a leading newspaper Thursday for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan while a top model went on trial on similar charges, as controversy grows over eroding freedoms ahead of June elections, AFP reports.

An Ankara court deemed that a column last year by one of the Hurriyet daily’s star commentators, Mehmet Yilmaz, was an “attack on the personal rights” of Erdogan.

It ordered the newspaper’s chairwoman and Yilmaz himself to pay 20,000 lira ($7,760) in damages to Erdogan, whose lawyers had requested 100,000 lira in the civil case, the official Anatolia news agency reported.

The report gave no details on the nature of the column dated August 25, 2014. But on that day, Hurriyet had published a lengthy article by Yilmaz recalling extensive corruption accusations against Erdogan, two weeks after his victory in presidential elections.

 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reportedly criticized his predecessor for attending a football match between Turkish and Armenian national teams in 2008, which was then dubbed “football diplomacy” between Turkey and Armenia, reports. 

Speaking to a group of nationally respected historians at the presidential palace in Ankara on Thursday during a meeting to discuss the 1915 killings of Armenians, President Erdogan this time targeted former president Abdullah Gül for visiting Yerevan to attend a soccer match several years ago, becoming the first Turkish president to set foot in Armenia since the ex-Soviet nation gained independence in 1991

According to Erdogan, Gül’s visit played into the hands of Armenians and failed to yield any substantial result on the diplomatic front, a historian who attended the meeting told the media.

Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan invited Gül to watch a World Cup qualifying match between the Turkish and Armenian national teams in Yerevan in September 2008. Gül’s landmark visit to Yerevan paved the way for a diplomatic breakthrough for both countries, which have no diplomatic relations even though Turkey was among the first countries to recognize Armenia’s independence.

Following Gül’s visit, both countries embarked upon a number of diplomatic meetings mediated by Switzerland, resulting in the Zurich protocols to normalize ties between Turkey and Armenia. The protocols were signed in Zurich on Oct. 10, 2009 with the aim of establishing diplomatic relations and opening the two countries’ land border.

The process for reconciliation between the two countries has been deadlocked since then.

The Armenian national team maintains the 77^th place in a new FIFA World Ranking released today.

World Champion Germany remains on top of the list followed by Argentina and Belgium.

Armenia’s rivals in Euro-2016 qualification round are placed as follows: Portugal – 7th, Denmark – 29th, Serbia – 44th and Albania – 57th.