Author: Hovhannisian John

ROMANIA’S SENATE CHAIRMAN VOICES HOPE CURRENT TENSIONS IN THE SOUTH CAUCASUS WILL WITHDRAW

Panorama.am
14:16 07/05/2010

Politics

Chairman of the Romanian Senate Mircea Geoana received newly appointed
Armenian Ambassador to Romania Hamlet Gasparyan. The Ambassador
presented the priorities of the Armenian foreign policy and the
issues the country is facing. Referring to bilateral relations, he
pointed out the opportunities that can promote the Armenian-Romanian
cooperation in all the spheres, Armenian MFA told Panorama.am.

Congratulating and the newly appointed Ambassador and wishing him
success in his mission, the Chairman of Romania’s Senate noted that
the century-long ties between the two countries and the experience
of living together have created firm basis for developing a close
cooperation between Romania and Armenia.

Appraising the high-level political dialogue over issues of bilateral
and international interest, he expressed readiness to enhance it at
a parliamentary level as well.

Stressing the importance of the South Caucasus region for Europe and
considering it its natural part historically, Mircea Geoana pointed
out the EU Eastern Partnership and the Organization of the Black
Sea Economic Cooperation as efficient and prospective frames for
cooperation, with Romania displaying great interest and activeness
in them.

He voiced hope that the current tensions in the South Caucasus
and around it will weaken in near future to ensure full usage of
the opportunities of the region and involving Armenia in economic
multilateral programs.

MIKHAIL BAGDASAROV: ARMAVIA’S LOSSES INCOMPARABLE TO THOSE OF MAJOR EUROPEAN COMPANIES

PanARMENIAN.Net
May 7, 2010 – 17:41 AMT 12:41 GMT

Armavia’s losses, caused by volcanic eruption in Iceland are
incomparable to those of major European companies, Armavia CEO Mikhail
Bagdasarov stated.

As he told a news conference on May 7, the company had to cancel 5
flights. "We don’t have the exact figure yet. At the moment, losses
are being assessed."

The 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajokull were a sequence of major
volcanic events at Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland which disrupted air
travel across western and northern Europe over an initial period of
6days in April 2010. Further more localized disruption continued into
May 2010.

BAKU REFUTED INFORMATION THAT ANKARA PREVENTED HOSTILITIES IN KARABAKH

news.am
May 5 2010
Armenia

Azerbaijani Ambassador to Turkey Zakir Hashimov refuted information
spread by Yeni Musavat newspaper that Turkish National Intelligence
Organization prevented the alleged military operation in Karabakh.

Ambassador said that journalists write about their dreams. "There
is no such a thing. This information raised laughter in Baku,"
Hashimov noted.

According to Yeni Musavat, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev decided
to launch military operation in Karabakh after Protocols were signed
last October, though MIT took certain measures and talked Aliyev out
of doing it.

THE ARMENIAN TEAM REMAINED IN THE SAME SUBGROUP

Aysor
May 5 2010
Armenia

The games of the 2 subgroup of the "Fed Cup" championship in "Orange
Tennis" club have been finished. The games had kicked off later
than they had to because of the rainy weather and were held with an
irregular graphic.

The participating teams were rather strong. The Armenian team will
have the opportunity to appear in the 2nd subgroup next year because
of the victory it took. The best results of in the tournament were
after the teams of Greece and Luxemburg, which will play in the first
subgroup next year. The teams of Norway and South Africa are left
out from the 2nd subgroup.

Wed, May 5, 2010

Denial, Anger and a Bunch of Mountains in Azerbaijan – Acceptance, That’s
Several Steps Later

Nicholas Clayton

Nicholas Clayton lives in Tbilisi, Georgia and works as a professor of
journalism and a freelance reporter covering the Caucasus. Having studied
NATO-Russian relations at Hertzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia in
2007, Clayton began blogging about the geo-politics …

Last September, Slate columnist Christopher Hitchens wrote that "engaging
with Iran is like having sex with someone who hates you." If that’s true,
then the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation process is something like an orgy
of mutually despising interlocutors, each only agreeing to do it in the one
position the other one hates.

With that visual in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising that after a year of
back-and-forths and ups and downs the process came to a screeching halt last
month as Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan announced he was "suspending"
discussion of the reconciliation protocols – a move that was
enthusiastically welcomed by his constituents.

But don’t worry, this doesn’t mean it’s back to the silent game.

Although the highly touted reconciliation protocols are considered to be an
important part of U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy ambitions in
Europe, the move to freeze the discussions was telegraphed by insiders well
in advance and has even been endorsed publicly by administration officials.

Why? Because few seem to have expected it to get this far the first place.
The Turkish-Armenian relationship is fraught with unresolved baggage mostly
surrounding denial, anger and a bunch of mountains in Azerbaijan.

Sargsyan’s announcement came 48 hours before the day that Armenians regard
as the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide – a nearly decade long
pogrom of ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire that killed an estimated
1.5 million people. Twenty countries and 44 U.S. states recognize the events
that occurred from 1915-1923 as genocide, and Armenians have been upset by
their government’s efforts to improve relations with Turkey without forcing
Ankara to recognize past crimes.

The last time Turkey and Armenia recognized one another diplomatically was a
brief period after the fall of the Soviet Union until 1993, when their
already rocky relationship hit a new low over Armenia’s support for ethnic
Armenian separatists in the Nagorno Karabakh (Russian for Mountainous or
Highland Karabakh) region in neighboring Azerbaijan, a Turkish ally. Armenia
continues to occupy Nagorno Karabakh as well as other Azeri territory and
the two nations remain in a state of war.

In the end, despite the unprecedented nature of the breakthrough that led to
these talks, first announced in April 2009, neither side has been a
particularly considerate to each other’s needs, and it’s not surprising both
are saying they now need a break from each other.

The preexisting gripes quickly reclaimed the focus of the discussion not
long after it started; denial, anger and a bunch of mountains in Azerbaijan.
In the initial aftermath of this most recent hiccup in the dialogue, it’s
not difficult to feel like both sides took one step forward and two steps
backward. In March, after Sweden and the U.S. House Foreign Relations
Committee recognized the Armenian Genocide, Turkish Prime Minister Recep
Erdogan told the BBC that he was considering deporting 100,000 Armenians he
claimed were living in Turkey illegally.

However, many observers see genuine progress amid the habitually fiery
rhetoric. Davit Alaverdyan, the chief editor of Media Max News Agency in
Armenia said that while he feels it is difficult to see where the process
will lead from here, he thinks both sides have made achievements through the
past year’s bickering – first and foremost that the two sides were talking
at all.

But there’s more to it than that.

When Obama gave a speech on the anniversary of the genocide last April using
the phrase "Medz Yeghern" – the Armenian word for the genocide, meaning
"Great Massacres" – he was falling short of using the G-word like he
promised during his campaign for president, but nonetheless pleased many on
both sides.

Suat Kiniklioglu, a member of the Turkish parliament and spokesman of the
Turkish Foreign Affairs Commission from the ruling Justice and Development
party told Media Max in an interview at the time, "I believe that "Medz
Yeghern" is an invaluable term for a positive language about the events of
1915. "Medz Yeghern" is a term whose scope should be widened. World War I
and the events leading to the war, namely the physical removal of Turks and
Muslims from the Caucasus, the Balkans and the Middle East was a Great
Catastrophe for us as well. Turks, Kurds and Armenians in the eastern front
of the empire truly experienced a Great Catastrophe […] The Armenians lost
their homes and property and had to leave Anatolia. There were many deaths
and it was an immensely sad chapter of this region’s history […] I hope
that when we establish diplomatic relations, open borders and when our
peoples get the chance of direct communication with each other, we will be
able to elaborate positive wordings."
It’s certain that there is no consensus for movement towards genocide
recognition in Turkey – it remains illegal to insult the Turkish nation or
ethnicity, a law that has been invoked to prosecute Turks calling for
genocide recognition.

But Armenians continue to point to various signs that an internal dialogue
within Turkey about its hard past is beginning. A few hundred Turkish
artists and intellectuals marched in Istanbul commemorating the 95th
anniversary of the genocide this year chanting "never again." Also,
information security analyst and blogger, Samvel Martirosyan pointed out
that new Turkish directives to its diplomats encourage them to engage with
Armenian communities abroad and publicly discuss and debate the facts of
1915-1923.

All of this he said shows things are moving, albeit so slowly it’s hard to
actually see it. Meanwhile, Alaverdyan said in a Media Max report that the
temporary freeze with Turkey will give Armenia more time to devote to
resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict while still appearing to be the
one committed to the process.

While no one is quite sure when, eventually the orgy of malice and mistrust
will be in full swing again in the near future.

MORE TURKS CALL FOR REASSESSMENT OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
Sandy Smith

HULIQ.com
May 3 2010
SC

A retired Turkish military judge and a columnist for Turkey’s largest
newspaper have added their voices to the small but growing number
of influential Turks who are calling on their country to formally
acknowledge its responsibility for the massacre of millions of
Armenians in the waning years of the Ottoman Empire."

In a detailed historical essay in the May 2 edition of Today’s Zaman,
Turkey’s largest English-language daily, retired military judge Umit
KardaÅ~_ suggests that Turks should condemn the actions of the "Young
Turk" government that led to the death march of 1915, an effort to
rid the country of its Christian population, most notably the large
Armenian minority that made up just about all of the Ottoman merchant
and professional class.

KardaÅ~_’ essay argues that the ethnic cleansing of the country’s
Christian populations was a betrayal of the early principles
of the "Young Turk" party, the Committee of Union and Progress,
and that Turkey remains a morally stunted country because of its
unwillingness to fully acknowledge the wrongs committed in 1915-16. "No
justification…can be offered for this human tragedy," he wrote. "No
technical term [like "genocide"] is vast enough to contain these
incidents, which are indescribable."

Kardas’ essay comes on the heels of a column by Mustafa Akyol in the
English-language edition of Hurriyet, Turkey’s largest newspaper,
calling on Turkey to express remorse for the Armenian slaughter on
grounds of Islamic morality. Citing some Muslim muftis in Turkish
provincial towns who opposed the forced deportations out of fear
of the wrath of Allah, he wrote, "Those God-fearing individuals, I
believe, were the best of my nation in 1915. And now more of us are
remembering their spirit, and even joining them in their tears." In
a followup column responding to widespread criticism of his first
essay, he defended his view by first dismissing the standard Turkish
explanations of the genocide as a defensive reaction, then saying,
"The fact that we Turks also suffered should not make us blind and
indifferent to the suffering on the other side, whose proportions are
undoubtedly much larger. The fact that we remember and honor our own
dead, in other words, should not prevent us from feeling mercy and
remorse for the hundreds of thousands of perished Armenians."

* Turkish Newspaper on Armenian Genocide: We Made A Terrible Mistake

Both writers back recent efforts to normalize relations between modern
Turkey and modern Armenia, including reopening the border between
the two countries with no preconditions. Turkey objects to Armenia’s
control of a portion of neighboring Azerbaijan that has an Armenian
majority; Akyol argued that this should not override the need for
remembrance and contrition.

As one respondent to the followup column wrote, "The debate [on the
Armenian genocide] is always twisted in Turkey. But at least it is
now opened."

SONG TOUCHING ‘THE ARMENIAN QUESTION’ BANNED

Freemuse
sp
May 3 2010

Eileen Khatchadourian’s music video ‘Zartir Vortyag’ which touches
on Armenian topics is reported to have been banned by the Lebanese
General Security

In the music video a mother is seen calling upon her son to go and
fight the enemy, and it also includes the quote The Armenian and The
Armenian by William Saroyan.

Lebanese officials are said to be afraid of offending the Turkish
Ambassador to Lebanon fearing that Turkish-Lebanese relations will be
affected with the video, since the debate about Armenian minority,
and especially the discussions over the killing of Armenians in the
beginning of the 1900s, is a very sensitive topic in Turkey.

ARMROBOTICS OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP TO BE HELD IN YEREVAN MAY 28

PanARMENIAN.Net
May 3, 2010 – 17:05 AMT 12:05 GMT

ArmRobotics open championship will be held in Yerevan on May 28.

As ArmRobotics manager Mariam Nahapetyan told a PanARMENIAN.Net
reporter, Minesweeper Robot contest will host 15 youth teams with
Armenian and Iran’s Armenian Diaspora representatives as participants.

As she noted, competition theme was offered by HALO Trust,
non-political, non-religious registered British charity and American
non-profit organization whose purpose is to remove the debris left
behind by war, in particular, landmines and unexploded ordnance.

The goal of Minesweeper Robot is to send minefield map to the server
though WiFi, radio transmitters or flash carriers, upon discovering
mines in the assigned area.

1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners will be awarded AMD 250, 150, 100
thousand respectively.

UITE’s Arm Robotics championship was first held in Armenia in 2008.

ARMENIANS COMMEMORATE GENOCIDE 95 YEARS LATER
Natasha G.

Care2.com
ghts/blog/armenians-commemorate-genocide-95-years- later/
May 3 2010

This year marks the 95th anniversary of the mass murders and expulsion
of Armenians from Turkey. While the Turkish government claims a total
of 300,000 died, Armenia estimates 1.5 million died.

Last week, tens of thousands of people in the capital of Yerevan
walked up the steep hill to the national memorial to lay flowers
around its eternal flame. With President Serzh Sarkisian present,
the Armenian Orthodox Church led a commeorative service.

There has been a longstanding controversy behind this event, as Turkey
is unwilling to call it a genocide. A genocide, as described in the
UN Convention on Genocide, is when acts are carried out "to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."

Turkey claims that there was no plan to systematically eliminate
Armenians, and that innocent Turks were causalities as well.

On a political level, relations between Turkey and Armenia remain
tense. They both signed an agreement to establish diplomatic relations
in October 2009, but it has since faltered.

However Al-Jazeera reports that in Istanbul citizens gathered to
remember the tragedy. "It is an unusual event…it is a measure of
the degree to which the ability to discuss the issues here in Turkey
has freed up, " said correspondent Anita McNaught. "They have come
here as Turks and Armenians, and relatives of Armenians living in
Turkey sitting side by side."

GAS SUPPLY TO ARMENIA NOT RESUMED YET

PanARMENIAN.Net
May 3, 2010 – 15:15 AMT 10:15 GMT

Natural gas supply to Armenia has not been resumed yet, a spokesperson
for ArmRosGazprom CJSC said.

"We do not have additional information about certain date of gas
supply resumption," Shushan Sardaryan told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter.

A landslide in a high-altitude region of the Northern Caucasus damaged
the gas main on April 28. According to ArmRosGazprom, the internal
market needs will be satisfied without limitation due to reserves of
the underground gas storage.

Earlier, it was reported that the pipeline repair works will take
about three days.