Author: Garnik Tadevosian

‘A window to the past’: how old photos brought my parents’ empty house back to life

Garnik Tadevosian
The Guardian(London), UK
August 2, 2019 Friday 12:00 PM GMT
‘A window to the past’: how old photos brought my parents’ empty house back to life
For Aram Balakjian, clearing the family home after his father’s death led to a ghostly photographic project
 
by Paula Cocozza
 

 
After his father died, Aram Balakjian began the long job of clearing the family home. The house was large, with seven bedrooms and a cellar, and had belonged to the Balakjians for 27 years. The scale of the task overwhelmed him; both parents were artists and printmakers, with busy studios full of objects he had never been allowed to touch. His mother’s death from cancer four years earlier had already triggered a career change: in the year that followed, Aram wound down his web design business to develop his passion for writing and photography, and now, as he started clearing it, he began to take pictures of the house.
 
“I thought, ‘I’ll never really see this again,'” he says. “I wanted to capture how the house was. I wanted to get those things in my head.” He knew that the process of dismantling nearly three decades of family life would be laborious and painful. He was six when the family moved into the house in north London, and the photographs were a way of securing the memories for him, his sister Tamar and any future children.
 
But it was hard to know where to start. The house was awash with loss. His father, Marc Balakjian, had died in the living room, the same room in which his mother, Dorothea Wight, had passed away four years earlier. Together, his parents had built up the business of Studio Prints, printers to Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego among others, and it took Balakjian a week, “intermittently breaking down”, just to sort through the papers in the room they called “the computer room”. He thought, “How can we ever let go of this house? How can this ever not be our house?”
 
Daily he was floored by “emotional grenades”: a diary his father kept after his mother died, his grief-stricken poems, the sheer volume of stuff, or as Balakjian puts it, “all these things that meant so much to someone who meant so much to you”. Each one required an emotional valuation. “You’re dismantling their lives. It’s the end of their story. You really have this sense of what’s left after we die. Just a bunch of things, really.” And, of course, hundreds of family snapshots.
 
When Balakjian had finished, he reached for his camera again, this time to photograph the empty rooms. “It wasn’t the house I was struggling to let go of. It was the memory of our parents, that whole life, growing up, our youthful innocence.”
 
He had the idea of juxtaposing or conflating these empty images with the ones he had taken of the house immediately after his father’s death when it was still full of his parents’ things, “to show this weird contrast of what I experienced as I was clearing the house… this slow hacking away of emotions, and separation of them from the physical space”. He held up a printed photograph of a room full of family paraphernalia, and reshot it in exactly the same place, now empty. The image, showing both the before and after in a single frame, excited him. He tried the same with one of the hundreds of family snapshots he had unearthed. “That’s interesting,” he thought. “I can make the two images line up. It feels like looking through a window of the past.”
 
Here was the warmth of a family moment – each one raising the spectre of a lifetime of similar moments – suspended within a bright, empty room. Sometimes the inset pictures overlap with their host image; others butt up against them starkly. Still others show family moments appearing to hover in thin air. It is hard to tell which image feels more ghostly, the occupied or the unoccupied room. They haunt each other.
 
Making the two photographs line up seamlessly, as Balakjian first intended, proved impossible. As a result, the viewer sees both the continuities and discontinuities between the spaces the two cameras captured, the parquet kinks and the wood panelling warps where the past and present meet.
 
Bookshelves burst with books then terminate in emptiness. Flames flicker in one half of a fireplace while the neighbouring coals lie cold. The leaves of a copper beech glow burgundy, then abruptly wither. Random and bizarre episodes from years of family life are held to the light: a child (Balakjian himself) larks around the kitchen holding an orange, with a silly hairdo; his father carries a packet of flour; teenage girls, one of them Balakjian’s sister, rock face masks in a stupendously carpeted bathroom. All families know their lived space by heart, but every image here ends with the same heart-wrenching dispossession.
 
Yet for Balakjian, the process felt constructive. “The only way I could do the project was to detach myself from what I was looking at,” he says. “Most of the time, I didn’t look at the snapshot I was holding. I wouldn’t allow myself to ‘go there’ and to be in that room. I was thinking from a very technical point of view.”
 
Over two months, he took nearly 3,000 photos. Each time, he had to place himself in the footprints of the person who had taken the original image – usually his father. Marc, the son of Armenian genocide survivors, was “not emotionally open at all”, says his son. Presumably, trying to see long-forgotten family moments from his perspective must have created its own challenges.
 
“By the end, it wasn’t emotional,” Balakjian says. The process of clearing, sharpened by the practise of photography, led to a sort of disinvestment. “I was actually really happy to hand the house over to a new family,” he says. “I felt we’d borrowed this space for 30 years. We built these amazing things, and now it was time for someone else to come in.”
 
Go to arambalakjian.com/work/the-house to see more images from Aram’s project
 
If you would like a comment on this piece to be considered for inclusion on Weekend magazine’s letters page in print, please email , including your name and address (not for publication).
 
more photos at

Sports: UFC 240 results: Arman Tsarukyan grinds Olivier Aubin-Mercier, wins unanimous decision

Garnik Tadevosian
MMAMANIA
0 New,      

By Thomas Myers

Olivier Aubin-Mercier was eager to return to the win column tonight (Sat., ) in front of a proud hometown crowd at UFC 240, which took place inside Rogers Arena in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, after suffering back-to-back losses for the first time in his mixed martial arts (MMA) career.

However, his opponent, Arman Tsarukyan, had other ideas, grinding Mercier into the canvas for a large portion of the 15-minute bout to earn a unanimous decision victory.

Tsarukyan got the action going early, closing the distance and angling to take Mercier down to the canvas. Mercier defended well along the fence, nailing Tsarukyan with a solid knee to the face when the returned to the center of the Octagon. Tsarukyan scored a takedown moments later after eating a solid head kick, getting behind Mercier and peppering him with short shots along the fence. Tsarukyan continued to work relentlessly to get the Canadian off the fence, but Mercier’s defense was just too stubborn. Tsarukyan opted to just unload knees to Mercier’s thighs as the round came to a close much to the chagrin of the restless crowd.

Mercier came out seemingly determined to start the second stanza, but Tsarukyan fired several hard shots before diving in for a single-leg takedown. Mercier was able to step out and reverse Tsarukyan along the fence, tripping the Armenian to the mat momentarily. Back on their feet, Mercier nailed Tsarukyan with several hard body kicks and then drilled him with a shot upstairs that appeared to hurt him. Tsarukyan was able to weather the storm and eventually dove in for another takedown attempt, which Mercier once again defended expertly. Tsarukyan fired a straight left down the middle that landed hard, but Mercier was unfazed. The pair shadow boxed for the remainder of the round.

The fight appeared to be up for grabs heading into the third and final frame. Tsarukyan’s corner encouraged him to have a strong round and he immediately scored with a hard right hand, which he followed with an unsuccessful takedown attempt. Mercier charged in with a combination, eating some shots on his way in, and was able to transition it into a takedown. However, Tsarukyan quickly reversed position and postured up in full guard, but he was unable to land any significant shots. Mercier, meanwhile, landed some solid elbows from bottom position, while the referee warned Tsarukyan to get busier. Tsarukyan continued to grind Mercier into the canvas, with Mercier attempting various submissions off his back that never were never serious threats.

It wasn’t pretty, but Tsarukyan was effective. He was able to neutralize a very talented opponent to score his first-ever win inside the Octagon. Tsarukyan hasn’t had any creampuffs to start his UFC career, and if he continues on this track, don’t expect anything to change for the 22-year-old hopeful.


On this day in history: July 25, 2019

Garnik Tadevosian
The Chronicle (Toowoomba, Queensland)
Thursday
On this day in history: 

Today is Thursday,
 
 
0326 – Constantine refused to carry out the traditional pagan sacrifices.
 
1394 – Charles VI of France issued a decree for the general expulsion of Jews from France.
 
1564 – Maximillian II became emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
 
1587 – Japanese strong-man Hideyoshi banned Christianity in Japan and ordered all Christians to leave.
 
1593 – France’s King Henry IV converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.
 
1759 – British forces defeated a French army at Fort Niagara in Canada.
 
1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Ottomans at Aboukir, Egypt.
 
1851 – An uncredited diary entry describes the “~Yowie’ of Southeast Queensland in detail.
 
1862 – After successfully crossing Australia from south to north, John McDouall Stuart raises the British flag at the mouth of the Mary River.
 
1907 – Korea became a protectorate of Japan.
 
1909 – French aviator Louis Bleriot flew across the English Channel in a monoplane. He travelled from Calais to Dover in 37 minutes. He was the first man to fly across the channel.
 
1914 – Russia declared that it would act to protect Serbian sovereignty.
 
1924 – Greece announced the deportation of 50,000 Armenians.
 
1943 – Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was overthrown in a coup.
 
1952 – Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the US.
 
1973 – The numbat is proclaimed as Western Australia’s official faunal emblem.
 
1984 – Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space. She was aboard the orbiting space station Salyut 7.
 
1994 – Israel and Jordan formally ended the state of war that had existed between them since 1948.

RFE/RL Armenian Report – 07/26/2019

Garnik Tadevosian 
                                        Friday, 
Armenian President Calls For ‘Unity’
Armenia -- President Armen Sarkissian (C) visits the village of Odzun in Lori 
province, July 20, 2019.
President Armen Sarkissian on Friday urged Armenia’s leading political actors 
to exercise restraint in their heated debates on judicial reforms planned by 
the government and other major issues.
“I am hopeful that the ongoing and future developments will not only promote 
the efficiency of the judicial reforms but also the improvement of all areas of 
the state and public administration, mutual understanding and broader 
cooperation between the public and the authorities,” he said in a written 
address to the nation.
“We need to realize that not only the goal is important but also the means to 
achieve it,” read the carefully worded statement. “Let’s make disagreements and 
problems the topic of our discussions but never the individuals.”
“In order to move forward, often it is expedient to take a little break, to 
muse once again over the task ahead,” added Sarkisian, who has largely 
ceremonial powers. “Let’s realize that today we need unity, stability, ability 
to see the future, a vision as well as concrete programs.”
The head of state appeared to allude to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s 
deepening dispute with Armenia’s Constitutional Court and its chairman, Hrayr 
Tovmasian, in particular.
Pashinian launched a scathing attack on Tovmasian in an interview with RFE/RL’s 
Armenian service last week. He accused Tovmasian of cutting political deals 
with former President Serzh Sarkisian to “privatize” the country’s highest 
court through constitutional amendments that took effect in April 2018.
“The Constitutional Court must get out of this status of a privatized booth,” 
the premier said, implicitly demanding changes in the court’s composition. In 
that regard, he did not exclude that his administration will initiate 
constitutional changes in order to “resolve the situation around the 
Constitutional Court.”
Tovmasian, who previously served as a senior lawmaker representing Sarkisian’s 
Republican Party (HHK), rejected the harsh criticism as offensive and baseless. 
He warned the Armenian government against trying to force him and other members 
of the court to resign.
Pashinian also signaled support for Vahe Grigorian, the Constitutional Court’s 
newest judge elected by the Armenian parliament in June. Citing the amended 
constitution, Grigorian has challenged the legitimacy of Tovmasian and six 
other members of the court appointed before the “Velvet Revolution” of 
April-May 2018.
Grigorian’s stance has been backed by some of Pashinian’s political allies but 
strongly condemned by opposition politicians, notably senior HHK figures. The 
latter have also accused President Sarkissian of turning a blind eye to what 
they see as illegal government pressure on courts.
In his statement, Sarkissian said he is “following closely numerous pronounced 
statements, opinions, viewpoints, appeals to act, and appeals regarding these 
appeals.” But he argued that the constitution bars him from “becoming part of 
the ongoing dispute.”
Row Between Armenian, Karabakh Leaders ‘Settled’
        • Sargis Harutyunyan
Nagorno-Karabakh -- Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (C), Karabakh 
President Bako Sahakian (R) and Archbishop Pargev Martirosian leave a newly 
built church in Stepanakert, May 9, 2019.
The leaders of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh have normalized their relations 
following a recent public spat, a senior official in Yerevan insisted on Friday.
“The relationship between Yerevan and Stepanakert is in a very good state at 
the moment,” said Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council. 
“There were some problems but those problems are now a thing of the past.”
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian charged in May that unnamed “forces representing 
the former corrupt system” are intent on provoking a war with Azerbaijan, 
losing “some territories” and blaming that defeat on Armenia’s current 
government. He effectively pointed the finger at Karabakh’s leadership.
In early June, Pashinian accused the authorities in Stepanakert of spreading 
false claims about significant territorial concessions to Azerbaijan planned by 
his government. Bako Sahakian, the Karabakh president, was quick to deny that.
The secretary of Sahakian’s national security council, Vitaly Balasanian, was 
relieved of his duties a few days later. Balasanian had publicly scoffed at 
Pashinian’s confidence-building understandings reached with Azerbaijani 
President Ilham Aliyev late last year. The remarks sparked a war of words 
between Balasanian and Pashinian’s press secretary, Vladimir Karapetian.
The Armenian premier was also irked by a written petition by Sahakian and his 
predecessor Arkadi Ghukasian which facilitated the release from prison on May 
18 of Robert Kocharian, Armenia’s Karabakh-born former president facing coup 
and corruption charges. Kocharian was arrested again on June 25.
Grigorian, who visited Stepanakert last week, declined to comment on the 
“problems” between Yerevan and Stepanakert. “The problems have been talked 
about in public and discussed during meetings,” he told reporters.
Grigorian also would not be drawn on the “treasonous” conspiracy alleged by 
Pashinian. “Security bodies are dealing with that,” he said vaguely.
Armenian Government Evacuates Tourists Stranded In Egypt
        • Susan Badalian
EGYPT -- Tourists enjoy their time off at the pool of a hotel in Red Sea resort 
of Hurghada, January 9 2016.
Armenia’s government urgently hired a passenger jet on Friday to evacuate more 
than 100 Armenian tourists stranded in an Egyptian Red Sea resort because of a 
Yerevan-based travel agency.
The tourists were due to return to Armenia from the Hurghada resort on 
Wednesday. However, their flight organized by the A & R Tour agency was 
cancelled.
According to the Armenian Embassy in Egypt, A & R Tour failed to make a payment 
to a Greek airline which was due to carry out the flight. Flights from Yerevan 
to another popular Egyptian resort, Sharm el-Sheikh, arranged by the same 
agency were also cancelled this week.
The government decided to pay the Greek airline Ogrange2Fly 47 million drams 
(about $100,000) to bring the 130 or so stranded holidaymakers back to Armenia. 
An Ogrange2Fly plane carrying them landed at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport on 
Friday evening.
The payment also covers a second Hurghada-Yerevan flight which will be carried 
out on Monday. According to a spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister Tigran 
Avinian it will bring home more than 100 other A & R Tour customers whose 
holidays end next week.
Scores of other Armenians, who have bought tour packages from the agency and 
were due to travel to Egypt this week, remained in limbo. Some of them again 
visited its Yerevan office to demand information or reimbursement for their 
expenses. The office was closed, however.
One customer, Lianna Hovannisian, said she managed to talk to A & R Tour’s 
director, Ani Aleksanian, by phone in the morning. “I asked her to give my 
money back … She said their accountant will contact me. That hasn’t happened 
yet,” Hovannisian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
Aleksanian’s lawyer, Arsen Mkrtchian, said she has filed a report to 
law-enforcement authorities alleging that the flight disruptions resulted from 
an obstruction of her agency’s activities. Mkrtchian did not elaborate on those 
claims.
The Armenian police said, meanwhile, that they have launched a preliminary 
investigation.
Press Review
“Zhoghovurd” comments on the decision by the European Court of Human Rights 
(ECHR) to order Armenia to pay $1.8 million to Yuri Vartanian, a Yerevan 
resident whose house and land were confiscated in 2005 as part of controversial 
redevelopment projects overseen by then President Robert Kocharian. The paper 
says the ruling is “exceptional” not least because the sum exceeds the total 
amount of all other compensations paid by the Armenian authorities in line with 
similar ECHR judgments. “And secondly, the ECHR verdict names a concrete judge: 
Arman Mkrtumian, the former chairman of the Court of Cassation,” it says.
“Ask the second president [Kocharian] and his courtiers about what they think 
of the construction of [Yerevan’s] Northern Avenue,” “Aravot” writes on the 
same subject. “They will speak of that process with pride: jobs, a construction 
boom, full refrigerators and so on. None of them will say that as a consequence 
of the construction of that avenue, dozens of residents of central Yerevan were 
left homeless. None of them will feel responsible for the fact that the ECHR 
has ordered the government to pay 1.6 million euros to a citizen who had been 
dispossessed as a result of their actions.”
“Haykakan Zhamanak” says that the key actors in political processes taking 
place in Armenia are not politicians but mass media. The paper says another 
specificity of the Armenian political scene is that parties are first and 
foremost trying to undercut their rivals, rather than boost their own approval 
ratings, through media outlets controlled by them. It says that in many 
countries the parties also give voters concrete promises and come up with 
programs of fulfilling them. It says the former ruling Republican Party of 
Armenia does not do this because it realizes that it stands no chance of 
winning over most Armenians with a constructive agenda.
(Lilit Harutiunian)
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2019 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
www.rferl.org

168: Millions that haven’t been received, serious risks, expectations that haven’t been met — Whose side is time on?

Garnik Tadevosian
| 13:58 | July 22 2019
Category
BUSINESS & ECONOMY

Whereas there was a time when the solutions to issues seemed simple, the situation is totally different after the revolution in Armenia. The situation in many sectors has gotten so mixed up that it’s safe to call it chaotic.

Time is clearly no longer on the authorities’ side. They no longer have the reputation that they had a month or two months ago or even a year ago. The authorities are losing trust day after day, and no matter how much they try to make it go unnoticed, it’s going to be hard to conceal the disappointment of the public.

Change of power did not help meet the expectations of the citizens who had come out to the streets, closed roads, expressed lack of confidence in the previous defective phenomena and the people who created those phenomena and the citizens who helped Nikol Pashinyan become Prime Minister during the days of the revolution. There are no signs of improvement of the country’s social and economic situation. People are still unemployed and are compelled to emigrate. You’ll be convinced of this, if you take a trip to any place outside of Yerevan, even places near Yerevan.

There might be a change of atmosphere, but it’s not like that the living and working conditions have become better. As in the past, people still have their worries and face them alone. With the hope for improvement of the economic climate, the government is waiting for citizens to create jobs for themselves and their neighbors, become rich and enrich the country, but citizens don’t have that opportunity and are compelled to leave the country in search of jobs abroad. However, the government was promising immigration.

The lack of jobs is a serious problem in Armenia. It will be impossible to change the social conditions in the country so long as this problem remains unsolved. Unemployment might have dropped and the number of jobs might have increased based on statistics, but the picture of employment remains the same since people’s incomes haven’t been raised.

The increase of local salaries can, in the best case scenario, mitigate poverty, but not improve people’s welfare, especially since this concerns very few people.

A year after change of power, the amount of pension remains unchanged, not counting, of course, the several thousands of citizens for whom an exception was made in the form of the minimum pension.

Now it seems that the government is considering the possibility of increasing the minimum pension for everyone starting next year, but this is a 10% increase. How much will it be? It will only be AMD 2,500, and this is how we have to wait for improvement of people’s social conditions, especially when inflation “sweeps it away”.

As a matter of fact, recently, according to official data, there has been quite an increase of inflation, and first and foremost in the market of vital commodities. In May, the inflation of foodstuffs reached 5.3%.

There has been quite a sharp inflation of agricultural products. Based on the latest data, this year, the price of cabbage is 78% higher. The price of one onion head has increased by more than 65%, and the prices of potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots and pepper have increased by 38%, 36%, 18%, 33% and 28%, respectively. But this isn’t the whole chain, and it’s not surprising at all that people’s living conditions aren’t improving.

There is no improvement because there are more expenses, but the incomes aren’t increasing, or they’re increasing to the extent that they can barely cover up for the impact of inflation. This is the image of the social conditions in Armenia, and nobody knows how it will change in the near future.

Despite the promises for deflation, recently, there are essentially higher risks of increase of the tariffs for public services, and this first and foremost refers to the natural gas inflation. This year, it seems as though the government managed to avoid inflation, but what about next year? It’s not too hard to guess.

The natural gas inflation is a serious social burden for the economy and citizens. It usually not only spreads throughout the economy, but also has an impact on the costs of other public services. How is the government planning on going against this? Perhaps it will the minimum pension by 10%.

The economic processes in Armenia are also not such that will allow one to think about neutralizing the risks or reducing them to a minimum. Although the government records economic growth, and rather high at that, there is no quality, and it’s unnoticeable. There is a sort of lack of real progress, and this doesn’t come as a surprise at all.

The millions of dollars that the government anticipated to receive through investments and financial support to the velvet revolution remained as a kind wish, just like many other promises that the public was given during the days of change of power. The investment risk in Armenia has grown so much that even international organizations are calling on people to stay far from Armenia’s economy, if they don’t want to suffer financial losses. It’s hard to recall something like this during the reign of the former authorities.

Of course, the political authorities, which are incapable of bringing the country back on track and helping it grow even a year after change of power, are the ones responsible for this. People are tired of the constant clash of intrigues. This isn’t what the people are waiting for. How much longer can the government keep the country turbulent and in tension?

People want to see the creation of jobs, economic development, the increase of incomes and the improvement of living conditions, but they are in a different reality.

The bad thing is that nobody sees how all this will end and how long it will continue. There is much more uncertainty, and there can be new surprises every second.

It’s no surprise that the business community is avoiding doing business, undertaking economic projects, creating new and real jobs, ensuring employment and creating conditions for the increase of people’s incomes and mitigating the social burden.

HAKOB KOCHARYAN




RFE/RL Armenian Report – 07/22/2019

Garnik Tadevosian 
                                        Monday, 
13 Charged Over Violent Unrest In Armenia
        • Marine Khachatrian
Armenia -- The building of the Investigative Committee in Yerevan.
An Armenian law-enforcement agency has pressed criminal charges against 13 men 
arrested after last week’s violent clashes between riot police and people 
protesting against a government ban on unauthorized logging in the northern 
Tavush province.
The clashes broke out in the provincial capital Ijevan late on July 17 as 
several hundred protesters defied police orders to unblock a major highway 
passing through the town. A dozen police officers and at least two civilians 
were hospitalized as a result.
The Investigative Committee announced on Monday that the arrested men have been 
formally charged with hooliganism and violent assault on law-enforcement 
officers. They will risk between four and seven years in prison if convicted.
A statement by the Investigative Committee said 10 of the suspects were 
remanded in pre-trial custody while the three others were set free pending 
investigation. It said investigators have also arrested another man as part of 
the ongoing inquiry.
A spokeswoman for the committee, Naira Harutiunian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian 
service (Azatutyun.am) that law-enforcement authorities are also continuing to 
hunt for 11 other individuals suspected of involvement in the unrest.
Relatives of at least some of the indicted men have said that the latter did 
not commit violent acts and are unjustly prosecuted.
The mother of Vahram Simonian, an arrested Ijevan resident, insisted on Monday 
that he did not participate in the demonstration. She claimed that Simonian and 
his father and brother found themselves at the site of protest only because 
they got stuck in a traffic jam in their car.
Simonian’s lawyer, Ara Gharagyozian, said, for his part, that the case against 
his client is based only on incriminating testimony given by another person.
The Armenian police deployed hundreds of officers in Ijevan during and after 
the unrest. The national police chief, Valeri Osipian, defended the use of 
force against the protesters when he visited the town on July 18.
The protests erupted after authorities moved to stop illegal logging in Tavush 
forests, which has been widespread for over two decades. The angry protesters 
accused the Armenian government of depriving them of their sole source of 
income.
Government officials counter that the country’s deforestation has reached 
dangerous levels. They also say that commercial logging has primarily benefited 
a small number of timber traders.
EU Envoy Praises ‘Excellent’ Ties With Armenia
        • Sargis Harutyunyan
Armenia -- Piotr Switalski, head of the European Delegation in Armenia, at a 
news conference in Yerevan, .
The outgoing head of the European Union Delegation in Yerevan, Piotr Switalski, 
described the EU’s relationship with Armenia as “excellent” on Monday.
“Cooperation between the European Union and Armenia is on the right track,” he 
told a farewell news conference.
Switalski pointed to their “very intensive and friendly political dialogue” 
involving mutual visits by Armenian and EU leaders and the EU’s “technical 
missions” to Yerevan focusing on wide-ranging reforms planned by the Armenian 
government.
European Council President Donald Tusk praised the government’s reform agenda 
during a visit to Armenia earlier this month.He specifically hailed “the focus 
on creating an independent, efficient and accountable judicial system” after 
holding talks with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Switalski reaffirmed the EU’s readiness to support judicial reforms planned by 
Pashinian’s government with “political, technical and financial” assistance. 
The financial aid should be made available already this autumn, he said.
Switalski also stressed the importance of 25 million euros ($28 million) in 
additional EU aid to Armenia that will be provided this year. He portrayed the 
sum as a reward for reforms already implemented in the country. The diplomat 
singled out the holding in December 2018 of parliamentary elections widely 
recognized as democratic.
The EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, also acknowledged the 
“democratic reforms” last month when she announced the extra aid after 
chairing, together with Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian, a 
session of the EU-Armenia Partnership Council.
The CEPA offers the South Caucasus state the prospect of a closer relationship 
with the EU in return for major political and economic reforms. The 350-page 
agreement is already being partly implemented despite not having been ratified 
yet by all EU member states.
Armenian Army Switching To Private Canteen Services
        • Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- Soldiers at the privately managed canteen of a military base in 
Armavir, July 19. 2019.
Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan on Monday defended his decision to gradually 
outsource the Armenian military’s canteen services to private companies.
Armenia’s Defense Ministry has always purchased foodstuffs and delivered them 
to army bases where they have been cooked and served to soldiers by military 
personnel. Earlier this year the ministry contracted six private firms that 
will all army canteens within the next three years.
Four army units, all of them training centers for non-commissioned officers, 
already have their canteens managed by one of the private contractors. Prime 
Minister Nikol Pashinian visited the unit located 50 kilometers west of Yerevan 
and dined at its new canteen with soldiers late last week.
Tonoyan said the main purpose of the change is to improve the quality of 
soldiers’ food. He indicated that it is also meant to eradicate corruption in 
food supplies to the armed forces.
Armenia -- Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Defense Minister Davit Tonoyan 
(second from right) inspect the new canteen of a military base in Armavir, July 
19, 2019.
“Improving the quality of food within the framework of cooperation between the 
state and the private sector is the best variant,” he told reporters. “That 
will be obvious.”
“Time will tell whether [the new system] is more expensive or cheaper,” the 
minister said. “In any case, I don’t think that our soldiers must east cheaper 
food.”
Tonoyan acknowledged that an Armenian company that has become the first 
military canteen operator is owned by a friend of his. He denied any conflict 
of interest and expressed confidence that the company, which has until now 
specialized in imports of medical equipment, will be equal to the task.
“I don’t deny that the company chief is doing that at my request because I 
don’t have another credible option,” he said. “If he fails I will fail too.”
“As soon as the five other companies get down to business the process will move 
forward very fast,” added Tonoyan.
Senior Prosecutor Accused Of Bribery
Armenia -- Prosecutors attend an event marking the 101st anniversary of the 
creation of their agency, Yerevan, July 1, 2019.
A senior Armenia prosecutor has been charged with large-scale bribery and 
suspended as a result, it was announced on Monday.
Armenia’s Office of the Prosecutor-General said the official, identified by his 
L. K. initials, demanded last month and subsequently received a “large bribe” 
for pledging to ensure that a man serving a 10-year prison sentence is released 
from jail on parole. The bribe was paid by a person close to the convict in 
several installments, it said in a statement.
The statement added that investigators have asked to remand the prosecutor in 
custody on charges carrying between four and ten years’ imprisonment.It did not 
say whether he will plead guilty to the accusations.
The statement also said that the alleged bribery was exposed by the National 
Security Service (NSS). It was not clear whether the suspect was caught 
red-handed.
Corruption among Armenian law-enforcement officials and prosecutors in 
particular has long been a serious problem. According to the statement, 
Prosecutor-General Artur Davtian has repeatedly warned his subordinates against 
engaging in corrupt practices, saying that they would receive tougher 
punishment than other citizens accused of such crimes.
The NSS has been behind most of the high-profile corruption investigations 
conducted in Armenia after last year’s “Velvet Revolution.” The former Armenian 
branch of the Soviet KGB said on Monday that since May 2018 it has recovered 
22.6 billion drams ($47 million) worth of financial “damage” inflicted on the 
state as a result corruption and other crimes.
 
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2019 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc.
1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
www.rferl.org

‘Police officers demanded to see my books’: Elif Shafak on Turkey’s war on free-speech

Garnik Tadevosian
The Guardian(London)
July 15, 2019 Monday 9:00 AM GMT
‘Police officers demanded to see my books’: Elif Shafak on Turkey’s war on free-speech
The author once put on trial for ‘insulting Turkishness’ explains why writers, academics and especially women, face escalating hostility in Erdogan’s Turkey
 
by  Elif Shafak
 
 
One day two months ago I woke up to thousands of abusive messages on Turkish social media, many of them generated by bots and trolls. Sentences had been plucked from one of my novels, The Gaze, and were being circulated by people demanding fiction writers be put on trial for “obscenity”. My new novel, 10 Minutes38 Seconds inThis Strange World, was also targeted. Both books explore difficult subjects – sexual harassment, gender violence and child abuse – and I was far from the only writer targeted in this way. Soon the hysteria turned into a kind of digital lynching of Turkish authors who had even slightly touched on similar issues in their novels and short stories.
 
I received a distressed call from my Turkish publisher the same week, informing me that civilian police officers had come to the office demanding to see a number of books. Not only my fiction but titles by Duygu Asena, a leading feminist who died in 2006. The books were taken to the prosecutor’s office to be investigated.
 
Much has been said about the anti-liberal nature of authoritarian populism, but little about anti-intellectualism and anti-feminism
 
Since the attempted coup of 2016, 29 publishing houses have been closed by decree, and 135,000 books have been banned from public libraries, including those by Louis Althusser and Nâzim Hikmet, Turkey’s greatest poet. A prosecutor has accused Baruch Spinoza and Albert Camus of being members of a terrorist organisation. Much has been said about the anti-liberal nature of authoritarian populism, but relatively little about two other features concomitant with its rise: anti-intellectualism and anti-feminism. Authoritarian populism likes to divide society into two camps: the pure people versus the corrupt elite. Writers, poets, journalists and scholars are often associated with the latter group. In the populist imagination, being elite has nothing to do with economic power or social status. It is about values. In this way, a university assistant who cannot afford a house in the city and has to commute for hours every day but happens to have progressive ideas can be labelled “elite”, while a hedge fund manager will be called “a man of the people” if he sponsors populist nationalistic movements.
 
The people are romanticised as pure and innocent. The deputy rector of a newly established university in Turkey, Bülent Ari, claimed on TV: “I’d rather trust ignorant people who have not attended university or better yet, not even attended primary school … because their minds are pure.” Saying he was unhappy to see literacy rates going up, he claimed that people who had higher education and were more cultured also had blurred minds and couldn’t think straight. “If Erdogan leaves it will be a catastrophe,” he added. Afterwards, he was promoted by the government to the Council of Higher Education.
 
There is a clear animosity towards intellectuals under President Erdogan’s AKP government. More than 7,300 academics have been dismissed via emergency state decrees. Around 700 scholars have been criminally charged for signing a peace petition. They have lost their jobs and been blacklisted. Some have been arrested, others have had travel bans imposed on them or had their passports confiscated. Mehmet Fatih Tras, a university assistant who had signed the peace petition and was then fired, killed himself. Professor Sebnem Korur Fincanci, chair of the Human Rights Foundation, and Ayse Gül Altinay, a professor of gender and women’s studies, were both given two-year prison sentences. Professor Füsun Üstel, one of Turkey’s leading academics on nationalism and identity, is in prison.
 
It is equally hard for female journalists. Nurcan Baysal had police knocking on her door in the middle of the night. Baysal is one of the most important voices writing about the traumas of Yazidi and Kurdish women, and she was put on trial for her articles. Ayla Albayrak from the Wall Street Journal was charged with “terrorist propaganda” after penning an article about what was transpiring in the Kurdish-majority south-east. She was sentenced in absentia. Article 19 called the decision “an unprecedented verdict for a reporter of a foreign media outlet”.
 
Like intellectuals, feminists are accused of being ‘pawns of the west’ and ‘rootless cosmopolitans’
 
The rhetoric of anti-intellectualism goes hand in hand with anti-feminism. “You [feminists] have nothing to do with our religion or our civilisation,” said Erdogan. Like intellectuals, feminists are accused of being “pawns of the west” and “rootless cosmopolitans”. Women in opposition parties are targeted ruthlessly. Canan Kaftancioglu, the provincial chair of the Republican People’s Party, played a major role in the electoral victory of the twice elected mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu. Today Kaftancioglu is under vicious attack by pro-government papers and social media channels. Last week Istanbul prosecutors demanded she be imprisoned for writing a series of tweets. She is accused of insulting the president and spreading terrorist propaganda. In response she tweeted: “There is something clear: they are afraid of women, of women who do not mince their words and are brave. I think they are right to be afraid.”
 
Turkey’s trajectory shows that wherever there is a rise of nationalism and authoritarianism, patriarchy and homophobia are also in the ascendant. Last month, for the fifth time, the Pride Parade in Istanbul was banned and dispersed with rubber bullets, tear gas and police violence. This is the kind of Europe authoritarian populists are trying to create: an anti-intellectual, anti-feminist, anti-LGBT and anti-abortion rights Europe. In Hungary, the government has banned gender and women’s studies, with the assertion: “We do not consider it acceptable to talk about socially constructed genders, rather than biological sexes.” Prime minister Viktor Orbán’s policy of giving tax cuts to mothers who bear more children resembles Erdogan’s drive to encourage Turkish women to have bigger families. “Have not just three, but five children,” Erdogan told Turks in Europe in 2017. Meanwhile the Polish health ministry has put out a video urging citizens to procreate: “If you ever want to be a parent, follow the example of rabbits.” Morning after pills are no longer available over the counter in Poland and Polish abortion law remains one of the strictest across Europe. In Warsaw 14 women were beaten and prosecuted for opening a banner that said “Stop Fascism”. In Spain, the Vox Movement hired a bus with a picture of Hitler on it and a caption underneath that said: #StopFeminazis.
 
Gender is an important part of this new narrative. If women can be convinced to return to traditional values, the population will increase and majority-minority ratios will be as they used to be. Demographic changes are a primary concern for populist nationalists. If white populations continue to remain as the majority, nationalism will feel more secure. There will also be less need for immigrant workers coming from abroad. It is not a coincidence that anti-immigration rhetoric is entwined with a growing anti-feminist rhetoric.
 
In 2006, after I wrote The Bastard of Istanbul – a novel about a Turkish and Armenian-American family – I was put on trial for “insulting Turkishness”. The words of several of my Armenian fictional characters were used as “evidence” by the prosecutors. As a result, my Turkish lawyer had to defend not only me but also my characters. I wish I could say that Turkey has made progress in human rights and freedom of speech since then, but I am afraid it has been the opposite.
 
No country is immune to the rise of populist nationalism. As liberal democratic values continue to be endangered, we storytellers are now facing unexpected challenges. Doris Lessing once said that literature was analysis after the event. But there might be times when literature has to become analysis during the event. Paradoxically, at a time when truth is under attack, writers might need to defend fiction more loudly. In the age of anger, tribalism and apathy, we need stories of connectivity, humanism and empathy. In the face of binary oppositions, we need to promote a more nuanced way of thinking. Wherever there is a decline in democracy we will see an increase in censorship and intolerance. Today, more than ever before, literature has to be not only about stories but also about silences and the silenced. It has to become a sanctuary for the disempowered and the marginalised across the world.

Why do Azerbaijanis in Georgia have such a hard time getting an education and good work?

Garnik Tadevosian
JAM News
Shalala Amirjanova, Marneuli
Tatia nikoladze

Locals say the main reason is that Georgian language isn’t effectively taught in local schools

There are almost 300,000 Azerbaijanis in Georgia – about 7.5 per cent of the country’s population. 

The bulk of Azerbaijanis in the country are located in the Kvemo Kartli region, and live in relative isolation from Georgian society.

•How Russian propaganda sways Georgia’s ethnic minorities

•Islamic sacred sites in Georgia – Azerbaijanis ask the authorities to help repair them

For many years, the government and non-governmental organizations in Georgia have come up with many projects for this region to turn the tide. They’ve spent a lot of money, but the result negligible. 

“These people still do not participate in the sociopolitical processes in the country and do not feel that they are a full-fledged part of it,” said Georgian Public Defender Nino Lomjaria in June 2019.

A recent study by the Institute of Social Research and Analysis (with the support of the Georgian branch of the Soros Foundation) has come to similar conclusions.

Why hasn’t the problem been solved on a fundamental level, despite legislation that complies with European requirements and the enormous finances spent?

We decided to seek answers to this question in the Azerbaijani community in the Kvemo Kartli region. Based on dozens of interviews and conversations, we came to the conclusion that the root of the problem is where the basis for the development and integration into the larger community should have been laid: in schools.

•Low level of teaching of the Georgian language.

•Low quality of general education.

•Studying in a Georgian school is too often not a solution, but the creation of additional problems.

More on each of these problems below.

There are 78 schools in Kvemo Kartli – 58 of them are non-Georgian. Children study here mainly in Azerbaijani or (less often) in Russian.

Georgian is taught in non-Georgian schools from the first grade. But the majority of pupils finish school without having learned to speak Georgian, even elementary phrases.

•Georgia – schools without children 

•My German house in Georgia

The first is that only five lessons per week are allocated to Georgian. This alone should be enough to understand why children do not know Georgian well after leaving school.

But there is also a second reason: textbooks are generally poorly prepared, but even such books are sorely lacking. Teachers say that children pass textbooks to each other for several years in a row, and new students use books that are not easy to read.

But local people say that even these two problems are not the most significant. The biggest challenge is educators who do not meet specific local needs.

“Our Georgian teacher comes to classes from Tbilisi. She does not understand the Azerbaijani language at all and, accordingly, cannot communicate with children. The lesson is not in language learning, but in the attempts of the teacher and students to understand anything they want to say to each other,” the director of one of the Azerbaijani schools told JAMnews.

He did not want to give his name, he said, out of respect for the Georgian language teacher.

Few if any local solutions have been put forward. Locals largely put the responsibility and burden on the ability of the state to solve the issue.

“Private tutor? This is completely inaccessible to our family money wise. It’s not just about getting a tutor – it’s about getting a taxi to Marneuli from our village for lessons. After all, the teacher will not come here”, JAMnews was told again and again in villages in the region

One could argue that there are free language courses that are funded from the state budget. But after talking with local residents, it became clear that they, too, did not solve the problem.

The demand for these courses is very large. But in order to be accepted to study, you must pass a number of tests. And many either can not pass them, or do not try. 

“I don’t want to disgrace myself before the examiners,” a 32-year-old farmer from Marneuli told JAMnews.

This applies to a majority of people. But of course, there are also results from these courses and various projects, especially among young people.

Many high school students in the regional center of Marneuli told JAMnews that non-formal education programs, which are paid for by either international organizations or the state budget, helped them enormously. 

“I became involved in youth projects after 8th grade. I started speaking Georgian very quickly after I visited several summer schools, camps, trainings and courses”, says 17-year-old Aytan Rustamova.

She has just graduated from high school and is taking university exams. She wants to be a physiotherapist.

“After these trips where I was invited, I had a lot of Georgian friends on social media. And when I enter the university, I’ll probably get acquainted with how Georgians live and I will have Georgian friends, and not just Azerbaijanis, as now.

Now that I’ve covered this path, I can say that five school lessons of the Georgian language a week were definitely a waste of time,” says Aytan.

Deputy Minister of Science, Education, Culture and Sport of Georgia Irina Abuladze calls schools where children from ethnic communities study a “parallel reality.” 

Children from Azerbaijani and Armenian schools make up the minority of schoolchildren in Georgia – but among those who fail in school leaving exams, these children account for about 20–25 percent each year.

A JAMnews correspondent asked Azerbaijani parents in Marneuli why local children have difficulties passing exams: 

“Because they are taught by teachers who are long overdue to retire”, the absolute majority replied.

Teachers in schools, even according to statistics, are mostly elderly, and rely largely on Soviet educational methods. 

But many, as students and their parents complain, have long ceased to follow innovations in their disciplines and do not have much of an understanding of modern methods of conducting a lesson.

A professional retraining programme which has been conducted by IREX since 2016 with the support of the Georgian government has been one response to the problem. 

The beneficiaries of the programme are school principals and teachers from grades 7 to 12 who teach chemistry, biology, mathematics, physics, geography, and English.

One of those who completed this course is the young director of a school in the village of Jandara of Marneuli district Vusal Bayramov.

“The program was not available to everyone, and after each training I tried to repeat it for teachers at my school. This knowledge helped me a lot”, said Vusal.

And what about the most seemingly obvious way out of the situation – when Azerbaijani children go to study in Georgian schools?

More and more often Azerbaijani parents are giving their children to study in Georgian schools in the hope that this will solve problems for the child in the future – to get a higher education and find a good job.

“My son studies in a Georgian school, my wife and I decided that this was the only way we could give him a fighting chance in his country,” said a resident of Marneuli, who did not want to give his name. “He already knows the Azerbaijani language – he doesn’t need more of it.” 

However, the situation is not as clear as it may seem.

18-year-old Aysel Nasibova from the village of Kizialjilo in the Marneuli district says that when the family discussed where she should study, her father insisted on a Georgian school.

But after the 9th grade, Aysel had to leave school – she had failed graduation examinations.

“From the first grade, studies were hard. At home they could not help me with homework – I had to deal with a tutor. By grade 5, I knew Georgian at an elementary level. Often in the chemistry, physics classroom I could not understand the explanations of the teacher. I asked classmates to help, but they could do little, because they also spoke to me only in Georgian”, Aysel says.

 

Shalva Tabatadze, head of the Center for Civic Integration and Interethnic Relations, considers it wrong to send Azerbaijani children to Georgian schools:

“Georgian schools and their programs are not adapted for the Azerbaijani-speaking population. As a result, we get a student with poor knowledge of both the Georgian language and other disciplines. But the trend is already deeply rooted in the Azerbaijani population, and, unfortunately, the state supports it.”

For many years, due to the lack of knowledge of the Georgian language, Azerbaijani and Armenian youth were deprived of the opportunity to receive higher education in Georgia.

The situation began to change after the state launched the 1 + 4 educational program in 2009.

The idea is that applicants for whom Georgian is not a native language can pass an examination in a higher educational institution in their native language, and then intensively study Georgian for a year. After that, they are automatically transferred to the initially chosen faculty, where classes are conducted already in Georgian.

In the 2017-2018 school year, this preparatory program benefited 792 students. This is two to three times more than in the previous two years.

But in itself, this figure is very small in comparison with the number of graduates of Azerbaijani and Armenian schools. Very few of them are students.

There is another sad statistic.

At least 80 percent of Azerbaijani and Armenian applicants stop studying right after the preparatory courses or drop out in the middle of a bachelor’s degree. As many of our interlocutors said, it becomes very difficult to study, because there is a lack of general education and knowledge of the Georgian language, which the school should have given.

Iran president invited to Eurasian Economic Summit in Armenia 1 October

Garnik Tadevosian
president.ir , Iran
Iran president invited to Eurasian Economic Summit in Armenia 1 October

[Armenian News note: the below is translated from Persian]

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been invited to attend the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) Summit in the Armenian capital Yerevan due to be convened on 1 October, the president’s website report on 10 July.

According to the report, he was invited in course of a telephone conversation with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Armenia has the term presidency of EAEU until 31 December 2019.

During the conversation, Rouhani expressed satisfaction over agreements between Iran and five Eurasian countries. He added that the implementation of the agreements would boost economic and trade cooperation between Iran and Eurasian states.

The Iranian parliament on 10 June ratified an agreement that allows the government to join a free trade zone with the EAEU countries.

According to the president’s website, Pashinyan said: “Armenia seriously pursues the implementation of the agreements made between the two countries.”

Referring to his country’s presidency of the EAEU, he said: “The agreement of forming free trade zone between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the EAEU member states has been approved by the parliaments and is ready to be implemented.”

The EAEU comprises the five nations of Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan.

Armenia 2nd President’s lawyer: Robert Kocharyan not allowed to see his son

Garnik Tadevosian
News.am, Armenia
Armenia 2nd President’s lawyer: Robert Kocharyan not allowed to see his son Armenia 2nd President’s lawyer: Robert Kocharyan not allowed to see his son

16:23, 10.07.2019
                  

Armenian second president is still not allowed to see his son, Hayk Alumyan, lawyer of Robert Kocharyan told reporters on Wednesday.

According to him, there were no problems with visiting lawyers, but there was a problem regarding meetings with family members.

However, Hayk Alumyan refused to talk more on this topic, explaining that the topic of the meeting with the press is different.