Armenia beat the Spain 3.5-0.5 in the fourth round of the FIDE World Women’s Team Championship 2021 being held in Sitges, Spain.
In the first three rounds, Armenia—which are in Group A—had defeated France, played a draw with Azerbaijan, lost to India, and are second, with 5 team points, securing their place in the quarterfinals before the last round.
The national teams that take the first four places in their respective groups will advance to the playoffs.
Tuesday,
Baku, Tehran Trade Barbs After Iran-Armenia Trade Disruption
IRAN -- Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces hold a military exercise involving
ballistic missiles and drones in the country's central desert, January 15, 2021
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has criticized Iran for holding military
exercises near Azerbaijan’s borders after Baku began taxing Iranian trucks
transporting goods to and from Armenia.
Azerbaijani police and customs set up on September 12 a checkpoint on the main
highway connecting Armenia with Iran. A 21-kilometer section of the highway
passes through Armenian-Azerbaijani border areas along Armenia’s southeastern
Syunik province also bordering Iran. The Armenian government controversially
ceded it to Azerbaijan following last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Azerbaijani roadblock caused significant disruptions in Iran’s cargo traffic
with Armenia, with many Iranian drivers refusing or unable to pay a hefty “road
tax” demanded by Azerbaijani officers. Two of them were arrested by Azerbaijani
authorities two weeks ago for allegedly travelling to Nagorno-Karabakh without
Baku’s permission.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry called for the immediate release of the drivers.
Meanwhile, the Iranian military reportedly massed troops along the Azerbaijani
border and began large-scale military exercises there last week.
Aliyev described the exercises as “very surprising” in an interview with the
Turkish Anatolia news agency published on Monday.
“Every country can carry out any military drill on its own territory. It's their
sovereign right … But why now and why on our border?” he said.
“Why weren't the drills held when the Armenians were in the Jabrail, Fizuli and
Zangelan districts? Why is this being done after we liberated these lands after
30 years of occupation?” he asked.
Aliyev expressed hope that Tehran will end its “emotional reactions to our
legitimate steps.” He said that Baku set up the roadblock after Tehran ignored
repeated warnings to stop Iranian trucks from shipping cargo to Karabakh. That
was “disrespectful to the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan,” he said.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, reacted to Aliyev’s
remarks on Tuesday, saying that they are “surprising” given the “good relations”
between the two states.
Khatibzadeh insisted that Iran has always respected Azerbaijan’s territorial
integrity and that its war games are aimed at “protecting regional security.”
The Islamic Republic “will not tolerate the Israeli regime’s presence near its
borders,” he added, clearly alluding to Azerbaijan’s military ties with Israel.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian discussed the road crisis with
his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts during separate meetings held in New
York last week. According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Amir-Abdollahian told
Azerbaijan’s Jeyhun Bayramov that “some third parties should not be allowed to
affect” Azerbaijani-Iranian relations.
The friction between Azerbaijan and Iran was also highlighted by bitter verbal
exchanges reported between members of their parliaments.
The Iranian ISNA news agency reported late last week that some Azerbaijani
lawmakers have threatened to “remove Iran from the world map” and “raise Turkish
flags in all parts of Iran.” It said Iranian parliamentarian have responded by
“warning Baku of the dangers” of picking a fight with the Islamic Republic.
Ruling Party, Opposition Disagree On Karabakh War Probe
• Gayane Saribekian
Armenia - A woman visits one of the graves of Armenian soldiers killed in the
2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh and buried in the Yerablur Military Pantheon in
Yerevan, .
Parliamentary leaders of the ruling Civil Contract party and Armenia’s two
leading opposition blocs have reached no agreement so far on practical
modalities of investigating the causes and outcome of last year’s war in
Nagorno-Karabakh.
They both have pledged to launch parliamentary inquiries focusing on the
Armenian government’s handling of the six-week war that resulted in sweeping
Armenian territorial losses and at least 3,900 deaths.
Civil Contract’s Andranik Kocharian signaled the impending creation of a
relevant parliament commission as the newly elected National Assembly began its
work in early August. The commission has still not been set up.
Kocharian, who heads the parliament’s standing committee on defense and national
security, on Tuesday declined to give any reasons for the apparent delay. “We
are moving forward,” he said vaguely.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian stated later in August that the ad hoc commission
should comprise not only representatives of the parliamentary forces but also
political parties that failed to win any seats in the current legislature as
well as representatives of the families of Armenian soldiers killed or missing
in action. He held a series of meetings with the leaders of several such parties
this month.
The parliament statutes stipulate that only serving lawmakers can join such
commissions. Reports in the Armenian press have said that the ruling party wants
to amend the statutes accordingly.
Kocharian said that the authorities are now discussing “legal issues” relating
to the work of the commission. He did not elaborate.
The idea of expanding the commission is rejected by the main opposition Hayastan
alliance. One of its senior lawmakers, Artsvik Minasian, claimed on Tuesday that
Pashinian simply wants to involve more of his political allies in the planned
parliamentary inquiry to ensure that it covers up his mishandling of the war.
“They have said ... that the commission should be expanded, including through
the involvement of representatives of extra-parliamentary political forces
sympathetic to the authorities,” Minasian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“It is evident that they are not interested in solving apparent crimes committed
on their watch. They are interested in the opposite: to cover up, to withhold
and not to solve,” he said.
Hayastan and other major opposition groups blame Pashinian for Armenia’s defeat
in the war with Azerbaijan.
Minasian said that Hayastan will also press for the creation of a separate
“fact-finding” body tasked with looking into the causes of the defeat. He said
it should consist of an equal number of pro-government and opposition members as
well as independent experts.
Another opposition party, Bright Armenia, already called for the creation of
such body early this year. Pashinian’s political team rejected the idea.
U.S. Watchdog Deplores ‘Degradation Of Democratic Norms In Armenia’
Armenia - Former Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and senior members of his Civil
Contract Party celebrate their election victory at a rally in Yerevan, June 21,
2021.
U.S. democracy watchdog Freedom House criticized Armenian authorities on Tuesday
for seeking to prosecute a person who allegedly insulted Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian on social media.
It urged the authorities to stop enforcing recently enacted amendments that
criminalized defamation of government officials.
The amendments to the Armenian Criminal Code were passed by the country’s former
parliament dominated by Pashinian’s loyalists during its final session held in
late July.
They stipulate that “grave insults” directed at individuals because of their
“public activities” will now be crimes punishable by fines ranging from 1
million to 3 million drams ($2,000-$6,000) and a prison sentence of up to three
months. Those individuals include state officials, politicians and other public
figures.
The Armenian police reportedly opened last week the first criminal case under
the new articles of the Criminal Code. A police spokesman said that they are now
trying to identify the social media user who made an offensive comment under a
photograph of Pashinian posted on the prime minister’s Facebook page. It is not
clear whether investigators have already tracked down charged that person.
Freedom House expressed concern at the investigation. “This comes only two
months after the Parliament passed amendments criminalizing ‘serious insults’
against government officials, and signifies a clear degradation of democratic
norms in Armenia, including freedom of expression,” the Washington-based group
said in a statement.
“We call on the Armenian authorities to immediately cease enforcement of this
unconstitutional legislation criminalizing defamation,” added the statement.
The controversial amendments have also been condemned by the Armenian
opposition. Opposition leaders claim that Pashinian himself has relied heavily
on slander and “hate speech” since coming to power in 2018.
All forms of defamation had been decriminalized in Armenia in 2010 during then
President Serzh Sarkisian’s rule.
Government officials and pro-government lawmakers have denied trying to restrict
freedom of expression. One of them said in July that penalties for defamation
must be toughened now because verbal abuse in the country has become widespread,
especially on social media.
Pashinian’s political team already sparked controversy in March this year when
it pushed through the National Assembly a bill tripling maximum legal fines for
defamation. Armenia’s leading media associations criticized the move, saying
that it could be exploited by government officials and politicians to stifle
press freedom.
Consequently, President Armen Sarkissian refused to sign the bill into law and
asked the Constitutional Court to assess its conformity with the Armenian
constitution.
PACE Urges Azerbaijan To Free Armenian Prisoners
FRANCE – A session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in
Strasbourg, April 25, 2017
The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) has called on Azerbaijan
to set free “without further delay” all Armenian soldiers and civilians held by
it one year after the outbreak of a war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In a resolution on “humanitarian consequences” of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
adopted late on Monday, the PACE also urged Armenia to provide Azerbaijan with
more information about minefields in districts around Karabakh recaptured by
Azerbaijani forces.
The wide-ranging resolution, opposed by virtually all Azerbaijani and Turkish
members of the Strasbourg-based assembly, further says that both sides should
investigate allegations of war crimes committed by them the during the six-week
hostilities stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire accord last November.
The deal calls, among other things, for the unconditional release of all
prisoners of war and civilian captives held by the parties. Dozens of Armenians
remain in Azerbaijani captivity.
They include 48 soldiers taken prisoner when Azerbaijani troops seized in
December the last Armenian-controlled portions of Karabakh’s southern Hadrut
district. Baku says that they are not covered by the truce accord, a claim
rejected by Yerevan.
The PACE expressed serious concern about their detention conditions as well as
the fate of about 30 other Armenians “allegedly seen, filmed or photographed in
captivity, with no indication as to their current whereabouts.”
“The Assembly is alarmed at allegations made by Armenia that these persons have
been subjected to enforced disappearances and possibly killed,” it said, adding
that the Azerbaijani authorities must shed light on their whereabouts and
“release all remaining captives and return them to Armenia without further
delay.”
Baku repatriated 30 other Armenian prisoners this summer in exchange for
Armenian maps of about 200,000 landmines laid around Karabakh. The PACE
resolution urges Yerevan to release “all mine maps in its possession.”
“The Assembly is concerned about the many allegations of crimes, war crimes and
other wrongful acts leveled against both Armenia and Azerbaijan during the
6-week war,” reads the resolution.
It points to a “substantial number of consistent allegations of inhuman and
degrading treatment and torture of Armenian prisoners of war by Azerbaijanis, as
well as a number of allegations of similar treatment of Azerbaijani prisoners of
war by Armenians.” The two sides, it says, must “fully investigate the
allegations and bring to justice anyone, including at command level, found to be
responsible for crimes, war crimes or other wrongful acts.”
The PACE also stressed the need to help tens of thousands of Karabakh Armenian
civilians displaced by the war, protect religious and historical monuments in
the conflict zone and de-escalate tensions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani
border. It called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to start demarcating the border and
“examine the possibility of creating a demilitarized zone with the presence of a
peacekeeping or military monitoring force.”
The head of the Armenian delegation at the PACE, Ruben Rubinian, was quick to
welcome the resolution passed by 80 votes to 18, with 3 abstentions. In a long
Facebook post, Rubinian listed its provisions, notably the call for the release
of the Armenian prisoners, reflecting the Armenian authorities’ position.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2021 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
The raging battle against the state emblems of the Republic of Artsakh is yet another manifestation of the xenophobic behavior of the authorities and armed forces of Azerbaijan against the Armenians. This is what Human Rights Defender of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) Gegham Stepanyan wrote on his Facebook page.
“The case of wiping the state emblems of Artsakh with needles from the bus transporting minors on the Goris-Kapan road and the demands to remove the flag of Artsakh from various settlements and constructions in Artsakh serve as brilliant examples of the complete absence of tolerance of Azerbaijanis towards the Armenians living in Artsakh.
It is necessary to take into consideration the fact that the state emblems of Artsakh form an integral part of our cultural values, and so intolerance towards them serve as further evidence of the fact that Azerbaijan is systematically combating Armenian cultural values in Artsakh.
The state emblems serve as the symbols of the right of the people of Artsakh to live in their homeland, to preserve their identity and to self-determination, and any encroachment against them is itself targeted against the dignity and common system of rights of our people,” Stepanyan added.
Armenia has confirmed 939 new cases of coronavirus in 24 hours, bringing the national tally to 255,648 as of 11 a.m. Thursday, September 23, the Ministry of Health reports.
592 more patients have recovered from the disease with the total number of recoveries now standing at 237,855.
The Covid-19 death toll has increased by 19 to 5,200. The figure does not include the deaths of 1,197 other people carrying the virus. According to the health authorities, they were caused by other diseases.
Armenia now has 11,396 active cases. As many as 1,669,977 tests have been performed in the country since the disease outbreak.
DIGIS MAK
The American news the American way
Sept 18 2021
At the beginning of the last century, a mainly Greek city bathed by the Mediterranean Sea lay on the western coast of what is now Turkey.
Smyrna was a prosperous city where the Turks were a minority and represented less than a third of the population, compared to a Greek and Christian majority. Both groups lived with smaller communities of Armenians and Jews.
At that time its inhabitants were unaware that the multiculturalism that characterized the metropolis would cease to exist a couple of decades later and that that ancient city would be renamed İzmir, the Turkish translation of the original Greek name.
In August 1922, after winning the final battle of Dumlupinar of the Greek-Turkish War, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s army – considered “the father of modern Turkey” – took a further step towards the goal of diminishing Hellenic influence. in Anatolia (now Turkey).
The Battle of Dumlupinar, in addition to marking the end of the bloody conflict that lasted from 1919 to 1922, represented the beginning of the end of the Greek presence in Asia Minor.
By removing the army from the then kingdom of Greece, Atatürk also began to expel a large number of ethnic Greeks, something that was later institutionalized and dubbed “the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey.”
Thousands of refugees flocked to the waterfront in Izmir seeking shelter when the city was on fire.
Through this population exchange stipulated in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, about 1.5 million Greek Orthodox Christians – many of whom had never lived outside of Turkey – were expelled from this country and fewer Muslims were deported from Turkey. Greece to Turkish territory.
One of the darkest episodes of what some controversially call “greek genocide“It was the burning of Smyrna, which happened shortly after.
“It was the biggest blow Hellenism has suffered and one of the biggest for Christianity,” Vasilios Meichanetsidis, co-author of the book, tells BBC Mundo “The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks” (The genocide of the Greek Ottomans), an analysis on the “extermination campaign” of the Christians of Asia Minor “sponsored by the state”.
Despite the fact that Atatürk was an authoritarian leader, the majority in Turkey have a favorable opinion of his figure.
Meichanetsidis assures that the burning of Smyrna was an even more powerful blow than the fall of Constantinople, because with it “Hellenism and Christianity were exterminated” from the Ottoman Empire “completely and forever”.
The fire started the afternoon of September 13, -four days after Atatürk’s army entered Izmir after the withdrawal of the Greek troops-, in the Armenian quarter of the city (which is now called Basmane) and spread rapidly due to the strong wind that was blowing that day .
Furthermore, according to historians, the authorities made little effort to put out the fierce flames.
“One of the first people to notice the start of the fire was Minnie Mills (…) She had just finished her lunch when she noticed that one of the neighboring buildings was on fire. She stood up to take a closer look and was surprised because of what he witnessed, “notes the British historian Giles Milton in his book”Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922“(Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922).
Minnie Mills, who was the director of the city’s American Institute for Girls, told the author that saw a Turkish officer enter a house with small cans of oil or gasoline and that shortly after the house was on fire.
She was not the only witness at the institute: “Our teachers and girls saw the Turks in normal soldiers ‘uniforms and some in officers’ uniforms. They used long sticks with rags on the end that they dipped in a can with a liquid and then carried to houses that were burned shortly after, “Mills said.
The city of Smyrna caught fire on September 14, 1922.
The day after the fire started, thousands of refugees flocked to the pier on Izmir’s waterfront seeking refuge in a city that was on fire.
According to historians, the heat of the fire was so intense that many were concerned that the refugees would die.
“Throughout the morning you could see the glow and then the flames of burning Smyrna”, recounts US Lieutenant Aaron Stanton Merrill in the book “Fires of Hatred“(Fires of Hate) by Norman Naimark.
“We arrived about an hour before sunrise and the scene was indescribable. The entire city was on fire … Thousands of homeless refugees came and went on the scorching pier, panicking to the point of insanity. It was painful. listen the piercing screams of women and children”.
The fire lasted nine days and completely destroyed the neighborhoods inhabited by Greeks and Armenians; the Muslim and Jewish sectors were not harmed.
There are different accounts and reports that differ about who was responsible for the fire.
But today, most experts agree that Turkish soldiers set fire to homes and Greek and Armenian businesses. Some Proturkish sources maintain that it was the Greeks and Armenians who set fire in their own neighborhoods to damage the Turkish reputation.
Izmir was a prosperous and multicultural city before the fire.
“There is controversy on the subject, but most historians, be they Westerners, Greeks and even Turks, now admit that you were Atatürk’s troops. According to the Turkish ideology of the time, the city had to burn,” he says Vasilios Meichanetsidis.
“The Turks were determined to create a modern Turkish state, where there were no minorities, but everyone would be Turks, Muslim Turks. Even the Kurds lived that process of “turqueization” within that nationalist idea “he continues.
The Ottoman was a cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire and for many “Kemalists” (as the followers of Kemal Atatürk were called) that was one of the causes of its dismemberment.
The idea of Atatürk was to convince all these different ethnic groups and religious groups to continue being part of the Turkish Republic under the concept that there was only one ethnic group in the civic sense of the word, referring to “turkishness”: the quality of be Turkish.
According to Meichanetsidis, the burning of cities and towns had already been going on in Anatolia for 10 years.
“The Turks used to come to these places, they massacred the Armenians or the Greeks they found and then burned the place to prevent any refugee from returning. ”
Before its burning, Smyrna was one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the Ottoman Empire, with Greek, Armenian, Levantine, Jewish, Turkish, English, American and French Ottoman inhabitants, among other nationalities.
Era a city that no longer had a place within the Turkey that was to be born.
For more than 3,000 years, the Greeks had lived in the territory of what is now Turkey and until the last days of the Ottoman Empire there was still an important Hellenic community that dominated much of the trade in Asia Minor.
The process to “turkish” and Islamize a city the size of Izmir was by no means easy. However, the Greco-Turkish war gave the Kemalists a golden opportunity.
It is estimated that before the burning of Smyrna about 2 million Greeks lived in Anatolia.
But after the fire and especially after the population exchange in 1923 and the Istanbul riots of 1955, the Greek population was dramatically reduced.
“Currently there are less than 2,000 in the whole country. In Izmir there are a few who have settled in the city recently. After the events of 1922, the Greeks found it difficult to stay in Izmir,” details the historian Vasilios Meichanetsidis.
Many monuments and reminders of the heritage left by the Greeks in Turkey have disappeared or have been transformed over time.
“Today there are very few reminders of the Greek past in Turkey, especially in Izmir, because the fire consumed the entire neighborhood of the community in that city.”
Caption,
Atatürk transformed Hagia Sophia, which was an Orthodox church, into a museum in 1935. Last year Tayyip Erdogan’s government gave the green light to plans to convert it into a mosque.
10:56, 13 September, 2021
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. 335,721 vaccinations against COVID-19 were administered in Armenia so far, the healthcare ministry said on September 12. Out of this number 215,278 people are fully vaccinated while 120,443 have received the first dose.
Anyone 18 years and older can get the vaccine in Armenia.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
September 15, 2021
Washington, DC: An International Monetary Fund (IMF) team, led by Nathan Porter, held virtual staff-level discussions with the Armenian authorities during September 7–14, 2021. The discussions covered recent developments, the economic outlook, and policy priorities ahead. At the end of the visit, Mr. Porter issued the following statement:
“Spurred by strong external and domestic demand, the Armenian economy is rebounding from a severe recession in 2020 with GDP growth of almost 5 percent in the first half of 2021. Annual inflation accelerated to 8.8 percent in August driven by a surge in food prices, dram depreciation though the first quarter, pent-up demand for in-person services, and supply constraints. In 2020, the fiscal deficit widened to 5½ percent of GDP and central government debt reached 63½ percent of GDP, reflecting higher health spending and government support to the economy. The fiscal deficit narrowed in the first half of 2021 owing to the economic recovery and stronger revenue collections, and a gradual scaling down of spending support. The external position has also improved, with the currency strengthening over the past few months.
“The economic recovery is set to continue in the second half of 2021 and through 2022 with GDP growth of 6.5 and 4.5 percent, respectively, expected this year and next. Downside risks remain elevated, however, including from geopolitical tensions, a slowdown in external demand, and heightened global financial market volatility. A new wave of Covid-19 infections could also pose risks and, in this context, the recent rapid increase in vaccinations is very welcome. Inflation is expected to start moderating in the second half of 2021, as the temporary impact of imported food inflation and dram depreciation dissipate, and recent monetary policy actions have an impact. Despite the recovery in domestic activity, robust exports and remittances are expected to narrow the current account deficit modestly in 2021, and international reserves are projected to increase from the 2020 levels, supported by the recent IMF allocation of Special Drawing Rights.
“The Government’s success in maintaining political, external, financial, and fiscal stability is notable amid the twin shocks of the pandemic and military conflict. Policy priorities are to fast-track large-scale vaccinations; secure the recovery; balance fiscal support and medium-term sustainability; reduce inflation towards the Central Bank’s target of 4 percent; safeguard financial stability; and deliver sustained, strong, and inclusive growth. The focus of the Government’s 5-year program on the pursuit of a knowledge-based, export-oriented, investment-driven growth strategy, aimed at reducing poverty and improving living standards is very welcome. As envisaged under the government’s program, steadfast implementation of reforms is needed to continue strengthening governance, improving the business environment, enhancing social safety nets, and fostering economic inclusion. The mission looks forward to discussing the details of their program’s implementation with the authorities in due course.
“Maintaining a credible medium-term fiscal framework remains critical to further strengthen resilience and economic growth. This should be underpinned by tax-base broadening measures (such as turnover and environmental tax reforms, the removal of tax exemptions and deductions, and improved compliance risk management) and current expenditure restraint. These measures would help ensure a more efficient and transparent tax system and generate adequate resources for social protection and capital projects. They are also crucial to achieve the authorities’ debt reduction objectives under the fiscal-rules framework, including bringing debt-to-GDP below 60 percent in the short term and below 50 percent in the medium term. Progress on structural fiscal reforms should continue, including strengthening program-based budgeting, public investment management and implementation, creating a pipeline of construction-ready public projects, and improved fiscal risk management.
“The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) has remained proactive in managing the challenges from above-target inflation and an uncertain global environment. It has raised the policy rate by 300bps since December 2020, and is carefully monitoring the inflation outlook, standing ready to adjust its monetary stance as necessary while allowing the exchange rate to be a shock absorber. The authorities’ plan to develop capital markets is also welcome and its timely implementation would help increase access to finance and promote investment. While the financial sector weathered the twin shocks in 2020 relatively well, the global pandemic is evolving and the authorities should continue to monitor capital and liquidity buffers, perform regular stress tests, and enforce provisioning rules compatible with international standards.
“The mission would like to thank the Armenian authorities for fruitful discussions and commend their commitment to the IMF-supported program. It looks forward to conducting the pending review under the Stand-By Arrangement and the Article IV consultations with the authorities later in 2021.”
16:55,
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 16, ARMENPRESS. On September 16, Speaker of Parliament Alen Simonyan received Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) to Armenia Abbas Badakhshan Zohouri, the Parliament told Armenpress.
Welcoming the guest, the Parliament Speaker has underlined that the relations with Iran are of strategic importance for Armenia. He has noted that the centuries-old friendship and the two peoples’ peace loving attitude serve as a unique bridge between the Republic of Armenia and Iran. The active political dialogue formed as a result of Armenia-Iran collaboration is considered to be as a firm basis and guarantee in all spheres for continuous development and strengthening of the inter-state cooperation. Alen Simonyan has underscored that our country seeks to maintain and to further strengthen the continuous growth for the dialogue of the political and economic fields and the trade cooperation. In this aspect, the Speaker of Parliament drew attention especially to the fact that during 2020, despite the spread of COVID-19 and its negative consequences, the Armenian-Iranian trade turnover had not undergone the most serious changes, and the export even had grown to some extent. Alen Simonyan also noticed that the indices of the Iranian investments in Armenia and the Armenian investments in Iran affirm that the potential of the Armenian-Iranian trade-economic relations is not realized with its entire volume. In the viewpoint of the Armenian side Iran is a reliable friend and a good neighbour. Alen Simonyan highlighted the Armenian-Iranian interaction in the development of the regional strategic infrastructures, as well as in the regional military-political security issues. The works for the solution of the situation in the vicinity of Vorotan settlement of Goris-Kapan inter-state road were touched upon.
Thanking the Parliament Speaker for the reception, the Ambassador has documented that the role of the Armenian cultural heritage is considerable in the Iranians’ life, and the Armenian community is rather active and inclusive is presented Iran.
The sides referred to the role of the inter-parliamentary cooperation in strengthening of bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation bases. In this context the activity of the parliamentary friendship groups was emphasized.
EARLY IN GHOSTS OF KARABAKH, a documentary about the 2020 Karabakh War, journalist Jake Hanrahan interviews a young Armenian soldier stationed at the frontline. A blasted-out tank and bare winter mountains serve as backdrop while Hanrahan asks the soldier whether he believes a ceasefire with the Azerbaijani army will last. “The war isn’t over yet,” the young man replies. “There’s a big possibility that the enemy won’t stop until they’ve taken over all of [Nagorno-Karabakh] and even Armenia.” Hanrahan’s film moves through territories recently destroyed by war and invites locals including veterans, nurses, refugees, and widows to tell their stories before the camera. This isn’t the full story of Nagorno-Karabakh, but it’s a fair attempt to highlight the experience of those who were on the ground for some of the worst fighting the region has seen in decades.
For the documentary, Hanrahan and his team, who make up the independent platform Popular Front, reported only from the Armenian side; Azerbaijan denied them entry. The Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, too, tried to control the team’s access to fixers and locations, so they relied on cooperative locals to travel to shooting locations. When I asked Hanrahan how he approached reporting without access to both sides, he told me context was key. “The way of balancing it was just to go into detail,” he said. During the war, “a lot of the reporting was accurate, maybe in terms of facts, but facts without context are useless.”
Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous enclave in the Caucasus region that is claimed by Azerbaijan but has been inhabited and governed by Armenians. The disputed territory has seen several wars and ethnic cleansing committed by both sides. The most recent fighting began last September and ended with an Azerbaijani victory and ceasefire in November. During that war, the self-determined Artsakh Republic—where Karabakh’s ethnically Armenian population of about 150,000 live—was supported by Armenia. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, received military aid from Turkey. The conflict displaced thousands of Armenians and left a significant portion of Nagorno-Karabakh under Baku’s control. Today, tensions along borders remain high, and skirmishes are frequent. Azerbaijan is still holding dozens of Armenian prisoners of war.
I can attest to this recent war’s devastating impact: I am an Armenian living in Yerevan, and my relatives and friends have served at the frontlines. In forty-four days, more Armenian soldiers were killed than American soldiers during the entire twenty-year invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. For Armenia and Artsakh, whose combined population is just three million, that death toll is equivalent to a lost generation.
During the war, when I looked for coverage of what was happening in the international press, I found mostly misunderstanding or indifference. Through Twitter, I discovered Popular Front, as well as reports from a handful of independent journalists who visited the frontline under great personal risk to collect firsthand experiences of the war. Their work was and is the exception. The international press remained mostly uninterested. As thousands died in a conflict involving major players—Turkey, Russia, France, and the United States—Western news outlets ignored it or engaged in lazy, under-researched storytelling. When Azerbaijan waged an unprecedented drone war against Nagorno-Karabakh, the media silence persisted. The ongoing POW crisis barely appears in the international press.
In Armenia, we relate to the international press the way one relates to a ghosting love interest. You may not care about us, but we hang on your every word. Global headlines register as decrees because they reflect the attitudes of larger countries that decide our fate. Two days before Azerbaijan launched its attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, Americans within Armenia received a US Embassy alert advising them not to travel to the region. It seems world powers knew what was coming before the first shell hit. The local Armenian press, especially independent and investigative reporting, is limited. During the war, news outlets mostly reiterated statements from the government, which meant that the war’s devastating reality was hidden from Armenians until the moment of capitulation.
Because there was so little coverage of the war, every story broaching the topic felt monumental. Armenians fervently collected foreign press articles and shared them on social media. Our collector’s enthusiasm, however, soon gave way to frustration because much of the reporting painted an incomplete picture. Major outlets like the Financial Times made embarrassing errors, publishing photos showing Artsakh’s capital, Stepanakert, alongside headlines about Azerbaijani cities. Many reports hesitated to identify an instigator to the conflict, employing passive voice to say that fighting had merely “erupted.” And most of the press failed to point out the power imbalances between the two sides: Azerbaijan is militarily superior, has roughly three times the population of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia combined, and was backed by Turkey.
In Armenia, we relate to the international press the way one relates to a ghosting love interest.
The majority of coverage simplified the conflict’s complicated history, tracing it only as far back as the nineties. The New York Times described Nagorno-Karabakh as conquered land, while the Associated Press emphasized the presence of Armenian troops in the region without mentioning that Armenians have lived there for centuries, alongside Azerbaijanis. Nagorno-Karabakh’s population was 94 percent Armenian when the Soviets made it a semi-autonomous part of Azerbaijan in 1923, and roughly 75 percent Armenian when it declared independence in 1991. This act of self-determination led to violence, which turned to war. A ceasefire ended fighting in 1994, when Armenian forces gained control and displaced hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis from districts bordering Nagorno-Karabakh. That territorial gain was aggressive. Still, implying Armenians are occupiers in the region is a willful ignorance of history.
For Armenians, the misframed coverage felt personal, as if the world was turning its back. Reporters on the ground, too, noticed errors of omission. “It really seemed as though some journalists hit the Nagorno-Karabakh Wikipedia page before churning out their pieces,” Lindsey Snell, an independent reporter, wrote to me in an email. Peter Liakhov, an editor of the independent Tbilisi-based news platform, OC Media, noticed a pattern of reporting that defined the conflict through imported frameworks. “It takes work to understand what the context is for the conflict geopolitically, nationally,” he said. “They just slot in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno-Karabakh based on preconceptions… and that’s deeply irresponsible. I think it belies a great lack of respect for what’s actually happening.”
Some of the misunderstanding is surely also due to practical limitations. Covering Nagorno-Karabakh is difficult and dangerous. Azerbaijan and Turkey rank 167 and 153, respectively, on the World Press Freedom Index. Both regimes jail journalists who are critical of their governments. Many reporters who travel to Nagorno-Karabakh find themselves in the line of fire. They spend nights in bomb shelters or face threats from propagandists on social media. For some outlets, the Karabakh conflict is just too remote and too marginal to justify the resources needed to cover it. In its pitching guidelines, Foreign Policy actually names Nagorno-Karabakh as a topic they don’t want to hear about unless it’s “relevant or worth reading by someone in, say, Antananarivo…”
This method of story selection is reductive at best. In a globalized world, everyone is complicit. If you’re an American citizen, your tax dollars have directly funded Azerbaijan with military aid. If you’re European, your elected officials have been bought by a multi-billion-dollar laundromat set up by Azerbaijan’s ruling elite. If you’re British, your government has lobbied to open mines in territories newly taken by Azerbaijan, and your economy is bolstered by UK companies that are set to develop Shushi, a city Armenians lost during the war, and BP, which is deeply invested in Azerbaijani oil. From a less cynical perspective, the sheer scale of human suffering and the loss of democracy in Karabakh should be enough to garner interest. As Jake Hanrahan puts it: “For me, when kids are dying, it’s important to report it no matter where it is.”
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Journalism without context always has consequences. The stakes are especially high with Nagorno-Karabakh, where the erasure of a people’s history is beginning to align with physical erasure. Perhaps the most important context left out of virtually all coverage of the war and that of the POW crisis is the violent state rhetoric of Turkey and Azerbaijan. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, uses phrases such as “remnants of the sword,” which refers to Armenian and other non-Muslim survivors of twentieth-century Ottoman persecution. At a meeting with a German municipal delegation, Hajibala Abutalybov, who was the mayor of Baku for seventeen years and a deputy prime minister until 2019, said: “Our goal is the complete elimination of Armenians. You, Nazis, already eliminated the Jews in the 1930s and 40s, right? You should be able to understand us.” And of course, both states continue to deny the Armenian Genocide, in which Ottoman Turks massacred at least 1.5 million Armenians.
Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, promotes a systemic Armenophobia that has acquired new fascistic forms in the past year. In April, Aliyev opened a victory park to celebrate Azerbaijan’s gains in Karabakh. The park displays helmets of dead Armenian soldiers and exhibits with mannequins that show Armenians in humiliating poses. Aliyev has said Armenians are being driven out of Karabakh “like dogs.” And he often makes claims on the territory of nearly half the Armenian Republic. Ongoing altercations along Armenia’s borders indicate that these aren’t empty threats.
Any coverage of Nagorno-Karabakh that doesn’t address Erdogan’s and Aliyev’s dangerous rhetoric tacitly endorses it. One month into the recent war, Genocide Watch declared that Azerbaijan’s persecution of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians had become a genocide emergency. A few days after that report’s release, the New York Times published an article, written by its Istanbul bureau chief, that focused on the shelling of Terter, an Azerbaijani village; it made no mention of the tens of thousands of Armenians who’d fled Nagorno-Karabakh due to nonstop bombardment of major towns and cities.
In painful moments, a nation, like an individual, wants to be seen. While Armenians grapple with the aftermath of war, the loss of life and right to ancestral lands, we turn to the outside, hoping our story might be recognized and told. Yet the international press believes a story is only valuable if it serves market interests or is happening in the more “important” parts of the world. This attitude applies a hierarchy to suffering and inevitably warps the historical record—a history that, for Armenians, has never been set straight.