Author: Jilavian Emma

TURKEY SET TO PASS KEY FREEDOM OF SPEECH REFORM
By Elitsa Vucheva

EUobserver.com
April 9 2008
Belgium

The Turkish parliament is next week likely to pass a bill softening
a law which sets limits on freedom of the speech by criminalizing
insults to "Turkishness".

One article in the country’s penal code – article 301 – currently
imposes up to three years in prison for such an insult.

Many Turkish intellectuals and writers have been tried under the
article, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.

"I believe we will push the amendment to Article 301 through parliament
next week," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday
(8 April), according to press agencies.

Late on Monday, the Turkish government submitted its draft proposal
for amendments to the parliament, suggesting, among other things, that
the country’s president should give his consent before prosecutors
can launch cases in that field.

It also proposes that the vague term "Turkishness" be replaced by
"Turkish nation", and the prison time envisaged be decreased from
three to two years while the sentence could be suspended or converted
to a fine, AFP reports.

The move comes just days before a visit to Turkey on Thursday and
Friday by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU
enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn.

The EU has repeatedly called on EU candidate Turkey to "repeal or
amend without delay" the controversial article as a prerequisite to
join the bloc.

The article has mostly been used against those who refuse to follow
Turkey’s official line on the killings of Armenians during World War I,
by for example referring to the events as "genocide" – a term Ankara
categorically rejects.

The amendment is expected to be adopted without difficulty in the
country’s parliament, as the governing Justice and Development (AKP)
party maintains a majority of 340 deputies in the 550-seat parliament.

Turkey has been an EU candidate country since 1999, and launched
accession talks with the bloc in October 2005. Progress has been slow
and it has so far opened six out the 35 chapters needed in order for
the accession negotiations to be closed.

FOUR BOXERS TO FIGHT IN GREECE FOR OLYMPIC LICENSES

ARMENPRESS
April 8, 2008

YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS: Four Armenian boxers will be fighting
to win Olympic Games qualification in a competition in Athens, Greece
that kicked off today.

Four Armenian boxers have already won such qualifications.

Rafael Mehrabian, head coach of Armenia’s national boxing team, told
Armenpress the competition in Greece is the last chance for Armenian
and European boxers to win Olympic Games licenses.

He said there will be tough fighting as many countries have not yet
won any qualification.

Armenian boxers are Derenik Gzhlarian, 51 kg, Arthur Hambardzumian,
54 kg, Azat Hovhanesian, 57 kg and Samvel Matevosian, 60 kg.

Rafael Ghazarian said in previous games in Athens Armenia was
represented by one boxer, in Beijing it will be presented at least
by 4 athletes.

RUSSIAN VIMPELCOM OJSC LAUNCHES BEELINE BRAND IN ARMENIA

arminfo
2008-04-07 15:54:00

ArmInfo. Russian VimpelCom OJSC launched Beeline brand in Armenia on
April 7.

VimpelCom Executive Vice President for Business Development in CIS
Dmitri Pleskonos said at a press conference in Yerevan that it is
a significant event for the company. He said that Beeline has been
operating for already three years. For the first time it was launched
in Russia. Armenia is the seventh country the brand is present
in. (Ed. Since 2007, VimpelCom subsidiary, local ArmenTel CJSC, has
presented the Russian company in Armenia). Due to the brand awareness,
the company will become more recognizable, which makes it raise the
quality of communication and service, the vice president said. ‘We
have made it our mission to become a service company of world level’,
D. Pleskanos said. Beeline network is present in Russia, Ukirane,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Armenia.

The network penetration in Russia and Ukraine reaches 100%, and in
other states there is a good perspective of development. The company
plans to penetrate into the CIS member-states and enter the far
abroad market.

BusinessWeek estimated Beeline brand at $7,164 million in 2007 and
the annual growth made up 24%. D. Pleskanos said the share of the
telecommunications market of VimpelCom OJSC in 2007 was up 5% to
15%. (Ed. The share of the cellular market of VimpelCom OJSC in 2007 in
Armenia decreased). For his part, Acting Executive Director of ArmenTel
CJSC Gennady Kalgashkin said the company’s priorities for the nearest
future are improvement of the communication quality and coverage,
as well as introduction of 3G (3rd generation) services, convergent
tariffs and further digitization of the fixed line communication.

To recall, local IT-company Bi Line as against the brand Beeline
in Armenia.

The company lodged against the Intellectual Property Agency of Armenia
for allowing the license agreement between VimpelCom and ArmenTel.

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
April 6 2008

Ideologies and the politics of polarization

by DOGU ERGIL

In a previous article I tried to analyze the social and economic
causes of polarization in Turkish society. This time I will try to
indicate the ideological and political causes.
The constitutive ideology of the republic is nationalism.
Nationalism has to have two basic aspects to be inclusive and
comprehensive. 1) It has to "see" the variety in what is to be the
"nation" and try to reconcile differences by providing a
"supra-identity" to all social and cultural groups that make up the
society. 2) It has to set in motion an economic system that would
incorporate all groups in a grand (and more modern) division of labor
and to acculturate all groups in the official language and across the
board basic education given in that language.
None of these could be realized in full, due to either a wrong
conceptualization of nationhood or inefficient administration of
economic affairs. First of all, Turkish nationalism is based more on
ethnicity and religious creed than political solidarity of different
ethnic and religious groups. Ethnic "Turkishness" and the Sunni brand
of Islam (particularly the Hanefi interpretation) formed the bases of
citizenship and nationhood. This exclusive understanding of the
nation not only neglected those who did not fit into these
categories, but they were also laden with negative values and
attributes. The "internal others" would either agree to be Turks and
Muslims, or they would remain suspicious aliens in "our" world and
country.

Hence Turkish nationalism, like all nationalisms, was built on a
"we-they" dichotomy and continuum, but basically the "they" category
was internally construed. So the Turkish society could not build a
national unity and political solidarity against the "they" that were
internal to the society. The internal "they" had to be either
demonized and extradited or assimilated beyond recognition. An
ideology (nationalism) that ought to be unitary turned out to be
divisive and destabilizing by creating fault lines within the nation.

The end result is traumatizing: Kurds and Turks are at odds in owning
the country; Turks and Armenians or Jews are at odds in interpreting
a shared history; Sunnis and Alevis are at odds in defining the terms
of co-habitation; the pious are at odds with those who define
themselves as secular; those who look for a more contemporary
political and legal system are at odds with those who claim to be
followers of Atatürk, who is the architect of the world they know;
every woman with a covered head is labeled a fundamentalist and a
threat to the state; every homosexual is a danger for national
morality; all minorities are fifth column agents of imperialist
forces, and every follower of Atatürk is a putchist for others who
pursue other political projects. All these fractures do not allow for
the making of a national spirit shared by all or yield a pluralist
democracy based on the recognition and reconciliation of differences.

In the final analysis, Turkey was bereft of a single political
nation. The Turkish (ethnic) nation created its counterpart: the
Kurdish nation. Now two nationalisms sharpen on each other. The
secular nationalism that disregarded the cultural heritage of the
society created its counterpart: religious nationalism (the pedigree
of the incumbent Justice and Development Party [AKP] comes from the
Milli Görüº, or National View, which in fact defines the nation as an
assembly of believers). But more importantly there is the "nation of
the streets," which is much more dangerous because it exists between
the cracks of social classes and ethnic and religious communities.
This "nation" is the neglected youth of this society that neither
goes to school nor is employed. This parasitical young population by
the millions poses the greatest danger to the security and its
stability of the society.

This brings us to the great rift between the haves and the
have-nots; between the educated and the un- or undereducated; between
the men and women that the republican administrations failed to
bridge, putting Turkey in 86th place in the UNDP Human Development
Index. While there are 394 public libraries in the country, there are
400,000 teahouses where the idle youth mainly linger. According to UN
figures, in terms of the book stocks of countries, there is one book
per 25 persons in Japan. In France this ratio is one to seven. In
Turkey it is one book to 12,089 persons. In terms of the amount of
investment in education, with $142 per capita, Turkey is among the
category of most stingy countries in educational spending. The end
result is revealed by UN figures: According to the UNDP’s 2008 "Youth
in Turkey" report, the population between the ages of 15 and 24 is
more than 12 million. Of these 40 percent, or 5 million, neither goes
to school nor works. Women are worse off both in terms of education
and employment. An estimated 2.2 million women have lost their
chances for education and are unemployed. This is the youth we are
fighting against on the mountaintops, in the urban underworld and in
our cozy "secular" social environments. We have learned the hard way
that poverty and hopelessness neither marry secularism nor flirt with
the rule of law. Yet these are the by-products of the system we have
built and still maintain as if it was the right thing to do for
national security and stability.

06.04.2008

Documents on mineral deposits in Armenia being digitized

2008-04-05 22:15:00

ArmInfo. Armenia is digitizing the documents on mineral deposits. The
materials will be available for the companies interested in exploration
and exploitation of ore deposits, Armenian Environment Minister Aram
Harutyunyan told ArmInfo correspondent.

Digitization is being held at the Institute of Geology of RA National
Academy of Sciences, where a specialized web-site is also being
prepared. According to the minister, special scanning equipment was
acquired to convert the archive documents into the digital format.
About 15 mln AMD were allocated by the Environment Ministry.

The history of the geological survey of Armenia started in 1919. In
1923 the works at copper mines in Kapan and Alaverdi were resumed, and
new mineral deposits in Armenia were explored 2 years later.
Afterwards, 26 metallic deposits, including gold, silver, molybdenum,
aluminum and iron deposits were explored, as well as 558 freestone and
clay deposits were explored to produce cement. Furthermore, according
to the explored data, there are 43 underground drinking water sources
and 23 mineral springs in Armenia. On the whole, currently there are
mineral reserves worth 150 bln USD in Armenia.

DEPUTY MINISTER OF DEFENCE MANVEL GRIGORIAN SENDS IN HIS RESIGNATION AT SUGGESTION OF ARMENIAN PRESIDENT

Noyan Tapan
April 4, 2008

YEREVAN, APRIL 4, NOYAN TAPAN. The Armenian president Robert
Kocharian follows the investigation of the criminal cases opened in
connection with March 1 events: he receives reports on these cases
every week. During the April 4 meeting with reporters, the president
said that about 20 cases related to March 1 events and illegal keeping
of weapons have already been sent to court.

"It is already obvious today that the disorder had an organized
character," R. Kocharian said, adding that the chronology of March
1 events has been restored in great detail, and "those who try
to speculate on the subject of political prisoners will feel deep
disappointment during the court sittings when they become acquainted
with the materials gathered by the investigation group". In his words,
these people will see "whom they tried to defend and perpetrators of
what kind of crimes they tried to back."

As for relieving the deputy minister of defence Lieutenant General
Manvel Grigorian of his post, R. Kocharian said that at his suggestion
M. Grigorian has sent in his resignation.

To recap, the hero of the Artsakh liberation war Manvel Grigorian
is also the chairman of the union of "Yerkrapah" (land defender)
volunteers.

Although the general did not officially declare his support for the
first Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosian, many of the members of
"Yerkrapah" union are followers of Ter-Petrosian and activists of
"Republic" party supporting him. It is also noteworthy that among
the MPs who signed the statement about supporting L. Ter-Petrosian
was member of the National Assembly "Republican Party of Armenia"
(RPA) faction Hrant Grigorian, nephew of the general.

ARMENIAN COMPANY BI LINE DENIES INFORMATION ON FORTHCOMING PRESENTATION OF ITS BRAND

arminfo
2008-04-03 14:49:00

ArmInfo. In connection with numerous calls of media and foreign
states’ embassies, Bi Line company officially states that it is not
going to hold any presentation at Marriott Armenia Hotel in the near
future. ArmInfo was told about this by Be Line.

To recall, it was earlier reported that ArmenTel Company, the
telecommunication operator in Armenia, will start introducing brand
Beeline in Armenia on April 7. The CJSC ArmenTel press-service told
ArmInfo that on April 7 Russian VimpelCom OJSC and its Armenian 100pct
subsidiary ArmeTel CJSC will announce Beeline Day to present the
brand in Armenia. The first Beeline shop will be open in Yerevan. In
addition, VimpelCom leadership will present the plans, strategy and
specifics of the future work of the group of the companies in the
Armenian mobile market.

It is noteworthy that Russian Vimpelcom and Armenian ArmenTel
companies had a legal conflict with Armenian IT-company Bi Line since
the brand actually belongs to the latter. Bi Line intends to appeal
against the decision of the Intellectual Property Agency of Armenia
on registration of a contract between VimpelCom and ArmenTel for
transfer of the right to use Beeline trademark.

Earlier, President of the Armenian Bi Line Company Hayk Khanjyan
called the above decision illegal in an interview with ArmInfo. He
believes all the previous hearings of the case in the Economic
Court biased. Hayk Khanjyan also added if the Court of Appeal does
not make a fair verdict, Bi Line is ready to appeal to international
instances. ‘The right to use Bi Line trademark belongs to our company
and cannot be transferred to another party’, he says.

ARMENIAN STATE BUDGET IMPLEMENTED WITH SURPLUS OF 5.2BLN DRAMS IN JAN-FEB

ARKA
April 3, 2008

YEREVAN, April 3. /ARKA/. The state budget was implemented with surplus
of 5.2bln Drams (without target credit funds from external sources
under international credit programs) by the end of January-February
2008, the Press Service of Armenian Ministry of Finance reported.

According to the report, internal sources of the state budget
surplus totaled 546.4mln against 19.9bln Drams in the same period
of 2007. External sources of the surplus were 4.6bln Drams against
3.6bln Drams in January-February 2007.

Net receipts from borrowings (securities) were 5.8bln Drams. Free
budget funds grew by 6.4bln Drams Credits from state budget credits
totaled 3.6bln Drams provided to Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in
January-February – a 25.4% increase against the same period of the
year before.

According to the Finance Ministry, about 1.1bln Drams were directed to
pay off the external liabilities with 871.3mln Drams directed to repay
the debt to the World Bank and 188.6mln to repay the U.S. commodity
loans.

On the whole, Armenian budget incomes increased 19.2% or by 16bln
Drams to 99.1bln Drams in January-February as compared with the same
period of 2007.

Expenditures grew by 57.5% or by 34.3bln Drams up to 93.9bln Drams.

The law about state budget for 2008 was passed by the parliament
on November 28 2007. The budget incomes were 746bln Drams and
expenditures were 822bln Drams with the deficit being 76bln
Drams. ($1=307.38Drams).

"ARTSAKHBANK" COMPENSATIONS ARE GIVEN

Panorama.am
20:15 03/04/2008

Today the president of the NKR Bako Sahakyan signed a decree which
authorized citizens to receive their compensations from the previous
"ArtsakhBank".

Panorama.am was informed about the above mentioned from the NKR
president’s administration.

According to the decree the citizens who were born till 1958 are
authorized first to receive the compensations. The group is covered
by soldiers’ families who died in the war time and the first rate
unable people.

BLACK SEA TRADE AND INVESTMENT ENCOURAGEMENT PROGRAM PRESENTED

Noyan Tapan
April 3

YEREVAN, APRIL 3, NOYAN TAPAN. The main purpose of the Black Sea
Trade and Investment Encouragement Program of the Balck Sea Economic
Cooperation (BSEC) organization is to promote business in the BSEC
member states and cooperation among these states, the program’s
coordinator in Armenia, director of the Armenian Development Agency
(ADA) Tigran Davtian stated at the April 3 presentation of the program
in Yerevan.

In his words, one of the major goals of Armenia’s participation in
the program is to encourage export of goods from the country. Funds
for implementation of this two-year program have been allocated by
the UNDP and the BSEC countries. T. Davtian said that the ADA in its
turn will also provide funds for the program’s implementation.

According to the RA minister of trade and economic development Nerses
Yeritsian, BCES countries do not differ very much in terms of their
development degree so cooperation will allow to achieve good results
in development.

The UN resident coordinator and the UNDP resident representative
to Armenia Consuello Vidal, the RA deputy foreign minister Gegham
Gharibjanian, the chairman of the Union of Manufacturers and
Businessmen of Armenia Arsen Ghazarian spoke about the significance
of the Black Sea Trade and Investment Encouragement Program. The
program was presented by the head of programs the UNDP Europe and
CIS countries regional bureau Jusepe Belsito.

To recap, the decision to launch the program was made in December 2007,
during a meeting of BSEC and UNDP representatives in Greece. It is
envisaged organizing business events (forums or exhibitions) in the
capital of a member state twice a year within the framework of the
program. The BCEC members are Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Turkey,
Armenia, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Serbia
and Montenegro.