Author: Frangulian Shushan

TURKEY PRE-EMPTS ANY EXCLUSION OF BAKU IN ARMENIA NORMALIZATION
Fulya Ozerkan

Hurriyet Daily News
April 5 2010
Turkey

Ankara believes Azerbaijan is an integral part of a solution to the
problem in the Caucasus and says its exclusion from the process is
out of the question

With speculation abounding about the Obama administration’s alleged
quest to neutralize the Azerbaijan factor in the Turkish-Armenian
normalization process, Ankara said it is out of the question for
Turkey to be involved in any formulation that excludes Baku.

"It is unquestionable for Turkey to leave Azerbaijan out of the cycle
in any manner," Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin told the
Hurriyet Daily News on Monday.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced last week he would
participate in an international nuclear security summit in Washington
on April 12-13, which took him a while to decide after a United States
committee passed a resolution labeling the 1915 killings of Armenians
as genocide.

But the margins of the summit will see diplomatic traffic between
Turkey and Armenia to revive the stalled normalization process.

Erdogan is expected to meet with Armenian President Serge Sarkisian,
and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu does not rule out a meeting with
members of the Armenian diaspora. Although diplomats say the program
is not yet clear, Erdogan may meet with U.S. President Barack Obama
for brief talks on the Ankara-Yerevan reconciliation before April
24, a day of commemoration for the 1915 events when U.S. presidents
deliver an annual message.

Azerbaijan’s absence at the summit, however, is strengthening the
argument of Washington’s so-called plans to eliminate Azerbaijani
pressure on Turkey, so that Ankara could take more progressive steps to
normalize ties with Yerevan. Turkish diplomatic sources told the Daily
News it is up to the host country, namely the United States in this
case, to decide which country to invite to the summit. The diplomats
added Azerbaijan’s non-participation should not be interpreted as
Baku’s exclusion.

Heads of state and government from more than 40 countries are expected
to attend the summit.

"We have not announced the full list of participants to the
international summit yet," U.S. Embassy spokesperson Deborah
Guido-O’Grady told the Daily News when asked if Baku was invited.

She denied the reports over the alleged U.S. plan to exclude Baku
from the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement as "incorrect."

"Azerbaijan and the United States work closely on a wide range of
issues, including the Minsk process, as well as with other countries
in the region including Turkey and Armenia," stated the spokesperson.

Together with Russia and France, the U.S. co-chairs the Minsk Group
of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE,
which aims to find a settlement for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Turkey says any solution to the problem will facilitate the
Turkish-Armenian relationship, while Armenia opposes the Turkish
linkage of normalization in ties to the conflict with Baku.

In a briefing last Monday at the Foreign Press Center in Washington,
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said, "Azerbaijan is
a very important partner to the United States. It’s a strong force
for peace and stability in the Caucasus."

Steinberg said he appreciated Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s
efforts to support the Minsk process.

"We know these are difficult issues for all of the parties concerned
and that we need to find creative ways to overcome the differences
because, in the long term, deeper integration in the Caucasus, just as
we’ve been discussing in the Balkans, is in the interest of all the
region, and we want to see improved ties among all the key countries
in the Caucasus along with Turkey. There has been an opportunity to
move that forward," he added.

The official also praised the leadership of both Erdogan and Sarkisian
to move forward with the protocols. "We want to support that process.

At the same time we move forward on the Minsk process to try to
resolve the differences between Armenia and Azerbaijan."

Ambassador Tan set for Washington

After Erdogan’s announcement that he would soon send the Turkish
envoy who was recalled after the passage of the genocide measure
back to the U.S., Turkish diplomatic sources said Ambassador Namık
Tan would leave for Washington on Tuesday. The decision is seen as
a positive signal to end the recent spat with Washington.

The relations between the two allies took a down turn last month when
the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs voted to recognize Armenian
genocide allegations by a margin of one vote on March 4. In protest,
Turkey recalled Ambassador Tan for consultations. U.S.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made a phone call to Davutoglu
urging Turkey to send the envoy back to his post while reiterating
the invitation for the nuclear summit.

TURKISH PM EXPECTED TO DISCUSS KARABAKH DURING US VISIT

news.az
April 6 2010
Azerbaijan

Recep Tayyip Erdogan Baku believes that the Karabakh conflict will
be a key topic of discussion during Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
visit to the USA.

The head of the public policy department at the Azerbaijani
Presidential Administration, Ali Hasanov, commented on the issue today.

‘We expect that the United States, as one of the co-chairs of the OSCE
Minsk Group, will bring pressure to bear and force Armenia to take
a constructive position on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict,’ Hasanov said.

The establishment of normal relations between Armenia and Turkey and
the creation of normal conditions for collaboration in the region,
as well as the restoration of all communication and transportation
corridors in the South Caucasus depend on Armenia giving up its policy
of occupation, Hasanov said.

‘So we think that one of the issues discussed at Erdogan’s meetings in
the United States will be a mechanism for putting pressure on Armenia.’

Speaking about the forthcoming parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan,
Ali Hasanov said that on the eve of the parliamentary elections, the
government would create the necessary conditions for all political
parties to operate under the law.

‘If activities are conducted within the framework of the law, the
government will create all the right conditions,’ he said.

ARMENIANS WON’T FORGET 20TH-CENTURY ATROCITY
by John Krafchek

Waterloo Region Record
April 5, 2010 Monday
Canada

Nearly 300,000 Armenian soldiers conscripted into the Turkish army were
killed in March 1915. The following April, 254 Armenian political,
religious and intellectual leaders were arrested in Constantinople,
then executed.

These martyrs are among the 1.5 million Armenians killed from 1915-23
in the 20th century’s first genocide.

On April 24, Armenians, including Canada’s 80,000, will commemorate the
victims of Turkey’s ultranationalistic government. Headed by the Young
Turks, it intended to exterminate the Ottoman Empire’s 2.5 million
Armenians in order to form an exclusively Turkish state. It implemented
the genocide with little interference during the First World War.

A total of 500,000 Armenians fled to different countries to avoid
relocation marches into the deserts of Syria, Arabia and Mesopotamia
where starvation, dehydration and exhaustion killed adults and
children. Victims were also bayoneted, drowned, raped and abducted
into harems.

In the 1930s and ’40s, my mother attended events at the Armenian hall
in Galt with my great-grandma, Marig Manasian. Mom remembers two women
scarred with reminders of when 250,000 Armenian women were forced to
work as slaves in Turkish harems. One bore her purple tattoo on her
face while the prettier one, Melina, bore hers on her arm.

The late Rev. Varant Bedrossian of the Armenian Apostolic Church,
who served as pastor to Armenians in Cambridge and other southwestern
Ontario cities, learned of the genocide while living in Aleppo, Syria.

When he griped about being poor, his parents recalled the death
and plundering.

"People lost family, identity and property," said Bedrossian. "All
the suffering makes Armenians emotional people."

His grandfather, a wealthy farmer in Sasson, Turkey, owned villages
and farms. The Turks took everything, including the lives of his
grandfather and 60 other relatives. Like hundreds of thousands of other
Armenian children, the genocide left his father, age 6, an orphan.

The Turks also tried eradicating the Armenians’ language and Christian
religion. To avoid death, some converted to Islam and others, like
Bedrossian’s mother’s family, spoke Turkish.

A few Armenians retaliated. My great-uncle, Mark Chichchian, fought
the Turks at Van until Russian soldiers arrived. Dressed as a Turkish
officer, he sailed across Lake Van in Armenia and battled beside the
Russians. Afterwards, he journeyed to France, then settled in Detroit.

Armenians were murdered before 1915. To stop revolts over high taxes
and meagre civil rights for non-Muslims, 200,000 were slaughtered
from 1894-96 under Sultan Abdul Hamid II. He also tried quashing
the notion of Armenian self-rule being promoted by Russia. Turkish
soldiers barged into Armenian homes to kill the men.

When one such soldier arrived at my great-grandparents’ house, my
great-grandma greeted him with a rifle as my great-grandpa, Bedros,
hid in a closet. Shortly after, he immigrated to Canada to work at
Galt Malleable Iron with other Armenians. Marig and their children
joined him months later.

During the Armenian genocide, the British, Russian, Austrian and
American governments condemned it.

However, after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, it received little
outside attention.

Although the succeeding Turkish government attempted to bring some of
its perpetrators to trial, Turkey now denies its occurrence. It labels
the genocide a domestic dispute where 300,000 Armenians and Turks died.

To the Turkish denial, Bedrossian said, "They can’t hide the truth."

Despite Turkey’s denial of the Armenian genocide, Armenians will
gather in Cambridge, Detroit, Paris and other world communities on
April 24 to remember its 1.5 million victims.

PRESS RELEASE
Knights of Vartan
558 Hilltop Terrace
Cliffside Park, NJ 07010
Contact: Taleen Babayan
Tel: 201-693-3453
Email: [email protected]
Web: april24timessquare.wordpress.com

New York Commemoration of the 95th Anniversaty of the Armenian Genocide

NEW YORK, NEW YORK — On Sunday, April 25, 2010, for the 25th year,
thousands of Armenian Americans and people against genocide will gather in
Times Square from 2-4 PM to commemorate the first genocide of the 20th
Century, the Armenian Genocide (*Medz Yeghern*). The new theme is "Turkey is
the Question, America is the Answer."

This historic event will pay tribute to the 1.5 million Armenians who were
annihilated by the Young Turk Government of the Ottoman Empire (1915-1923)
and address the consequences which are still with us today. Government
leaders and the news media have recently been preoccupied with
Turkish-Armenians relations and the closed borders in the Caucasus.

Major political figures will speak as well as civic, humanitarian, and
educational leaders.

This event is sponsored by the Knights & Daughters of Vartan, a national
fraternal organization, and co-sponsored by the Armenian General Benevolent
Union, Armenian Assembly of America, Armenian National Committee of America,
Armenian Democratic Liberal Party, and the Armenian Council of America.
Participating Organizations include the Diocese of the Armenian Church,
Prelacy of the Armenian Church, Armenian Missionary Association of America,
Armenian Missionary Association, Armenian Evangelical Union, Armenian
Catholic Eparchy, and several national Armenian youth organizations.

APPRECIATING ODDS AND ENDS IN ARMENIAN CULTURE
By Robert Fullam

ianyan magazine

April 1 2010

There long has been a phenomenon that not just myself, but countless
other Armenians have taken note of, those ubiquitous floral patterned
dresses that older Armenian women seem to wear. Whether they are at
the store, at a church bazaar, a kef or anywhere else, they wear
these things all the time! I have a feeling there is some rite of
passage for Armenian women regarding this thing. You would think
some people might catch on to new fashions yet women take after
their mothers and continue this tradition of dressing like their
grandparent’s generation.

There is this feeling in the pit of my stomach that today’s Armenian
girls, despite their UGGs and Juicy Couture pants, will inevitably
grow into this fashion faux pas . There’s the pattern with the dresses,
they are usually accompanied by those bland orthopedic shoes and dark
stockings and I can’t forget to mention some of the tacky jewelry
as well. I’m going to tell one of my stories about these dresses,
a quick one that some of you can relate to. I went to one of the
church bazaars during this past summer with my mother and grandmother,
letting my grandmother drag me around, introducing me to some of her
friends. They all tell me they remember how little I was, kiss me on
both cheeks and pinch me and they all wore those dresses but this is
not the clincher. After leaving the bazaar, we went to another one but
thought it was closed so we continued home and at a stop light me, my
mother and grandmother look over. There they were, three older women,
all slightly overweight, floral dresses, and all making eye contact
with us. It was at this moment everyone in the car knew that these
women were Armenian. We did not know them, we did not see them at the
bazaar, but we could tell that they were Armenian because of how they
dressed and I find something hilarious yet disturbing about that fact.

It was funny and a little sad, but such a stupid thing to laugh about.

It’s really just one of those cultural peculiarities that you have
love, savoring it because you know it’s unique, one of those things
that you just end up telling yourself, "I love being Armenian."

I will not deny however that this does not occur in other cultures as
well, I’m sure there are grandmothers out there with their mysterious
subculture that nobody can understand. Differences are not always bad,
I bet there are some Armenians out there who can totally relate to what
I’m writing about and some might not, Armenian subcultures vary widely
and what I am describing are my own experiences that have culminated in
a greater appreciation my culture and how it relates to me personally.

So I just ask you to look around at the grandfatherly men playing
tavlo(backgammon) in the park, the hairy, heavily mustached men who
grill at the kefs and bazaars and the packs of medzmayrigs gossiping
with each other and simply, appreciate it.

TURKISH GOVT PLANS EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN OF ILLEGAL ALIENS

April 1 2010
Turkey

Cubukcu said the current laws did not allow illegal alien children
to attend schools.

Turkish Education Minister Nimet Cubukcu on Wednesday said the
government was working on a plan for schooling of the children of
alien families living in Turkey illegally.

Cubukcu said the current laws did not allow illegal alien children
to attend schools.

"But we are working on an arrangement that would allow schooling
for children with unidentified legal status from Armenian descent or
others," Cubukcu said when responding to a question at the parliament.

OSCE MONITORING TO TAKE PLACE ON MARCH 31 IN ARMENIAN-AZERBAIJANI CONTACT LINE

/lang/en
2010-03-30

YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS: The regular monitoring of the OSCE will
take place on March 31 in the sector of Ijevan’s Berkaber village of
Tavush province of the Armenian-Azerbaijani contact line.

An official from the Armenian Defense Ministry told Armenpress that it
is not specified yet whether Andrzej Kasprzyk, personal representative
of the OSCE chairman in office or his field assistants will take part
in the monitoring from the Armenian party.

This is this year’s first monitoring of the contact line of Armenia
and Azerbaijan. This year several monitoring have been conducted in
the contact line of the NKR and Azerbaijan as well.

>From the very beginning the Armenian party has expressed a wish to
implement the monitoring in the part of the contact line, where an
Azerbaijani diversion group was rendered harmless on March 3. But
a decision has been adopted to implement the monitoring in the part
of Berkaber.

KARABAGH : "LA GUERRE PEUT ECLATER N’IMPORTE QUAND"
par Marion

armenews
31 mars 2010

Diplomatie

Samvel Babayan, ancien chef militaire du Haut-Karabagh, a
averti, mardi, contre la menace croissante d’une nouvelle guerre
armeno-azerbaïdjanaise qui, selon lui pourrait eclater " a tout moment
".

" Les choses evoluent sur la voie de la guerre parce que l’Azerbaïdjan
a l’imprudence de tout demander et de refuser de renoncer a quoi que
ce soit ", a declare Babayan lors d’une conference de presse.

" La situation est vraiment dangereuse. La guerre peut eclater
n’importe quand. "

Babayan, qui a dirige les forces armeniennes du Karabagh pendant
la guerre avec l’Azerbaïdjan entre 1991 et 1994, a fait valoir que
le seul facteur empechant la reprise des combats est un manque de
confiance en soi de l’Azerbaïdjan.

" L’Azerbaïdjan se rend compte que si elle reprend la guerre et echoue
sur le champ de bataille, elle perdra non seulement 13 a 20 % de son
territoire, mais peut-etre 50 %, et qu’alors, aucun mediateur ne sera
en mesure d’arreter le conflit ", a-t-il ajoute. " Consciente de cela,
elle se rend compte qu’elle doit très bien se preparer a la bataille.

"

Ces remarques contrastent avec une declaration faite par le ministre
de la Defense armenien, Seyran Ohanian, la semaine dernière. Ohanian,
egalement chef militaire pendant la guerre du Karabagh, a declare a
RFE / RL qu’une autre guerre avec l’Azerbaïdjan semble peu probable
a ce stade.

TURQUIE : PRESSION CONTINUE SUR L’ADMINISTRATION AMERICAINE
par Jean Eckian

armenews
lundi29 mars 2010
GENOCIDE ARMENIEN

A l’approche du 24 Avril, les pressions exercees par la Turquie sur
Washington s’accentuent.

Selon Hurriyet, hier une conversation telephonique de 40 minutes
entre le ministre des Affaires etrangères de Turquie, A. Davutoglu,
et la secretaire d’Etat Hillary Clinton, a porte sur la resolution a
propos du genocide armenien, adoptee par la Commission des Affaires
etrangères du Congrès americain, et le processus de normalisation
des relations turco-armeniennes.

Davutoglu a exprime l’espoir que "le president Obama dans sa
declaration annuelle le 24 avril ne repetera pas l’erreur du Congrès ".

"De telles mesures, non seulement entravent la normalisation des
relations entre Erevan et Ankara, mais l’impact est globalement
negatif sur l’ensemble des processus dans la region du Caucase […]
La Turquie et le peuple turc ne cederont jamais a la pression",
a-t-il dit.

CATHOLICOS OF ALL ARMENIANS RECEIVES AMBASSADOR OF CHINA

Noyan Tapan
March 31, 2010

ECHMIADZIN, MARCH 31, NOYAN TAPAN. On March 30, Catholicos of All
Armenians Karekin II received newly appointed Ambassador Extraordinary
and Plenipotentiary of China to Armenia Tian Changchun.

The Patriarch greeting the Ambassador attached importance to close and
friendly contacts established between the two peoples and expressed
the hope that during T. Changchun’s tenure that cooperation will
further strengthen and develop.

According to the Information Services of the Mother See of Holy
Echmiadzin, during the talk the interlocutors also touched upon
the spiritual life of the two peoples, emphasized spiritual life’s
importance in the issue of strengthening moral-spiritual values
in society.