Author: Kajoyan Gevork

CAMERON WOULDN’T LIKE BRITISH INVESTMENTS IN AZERBAIJAN TO BE USED IN RESUMING WAR

Panorama.am
26/01/2012

British PM David Cameron delivered a speech Wednesday in PACE
session. Naira Zohrabyan, member of Armenian delegation, was interested
if the Great Britain, being one of major investors in Azerbaijan’s
economy, was concerned that Baku could have use the revenues from
British investments to resume a war.

“We surely would not like that to happen. Great Britain supports
negotiations being held on the sidelines of the OSCE Minsk Group
and we’re hopeful negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan will
proceed normally.”

David Cameron highlighted that Britain backs self-determination right
of peoples.

THE FRENCH BILL IN THE SPOTLIGHT OF EXPERTS’ ATTENTION
Anna Balyan

“Radiolur”
25.01.2012 15:26

The French bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide is
still at the spotlight of attention of international media and
experts. The issue was discussed today at a Yerevan-Moscow space
bridge.

Russian expert, Deputy Director of the Strategic Culture Fund
Andrey Areshev noted that the noise around the passage of the bill
criminalizing the Armenian Genocide denial will cease, since it is
addressed to the public at home.

Director of the Institute of Political Studies of the Black Sea
and Caspian Region Vladimir Zakharov noted that the decision was ha
historic one, since it puts an end to the doubts whether there was
genocide or not. According to him, it will encourage the parliaments
of other countries to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Expert of international relations Vladimir Vardanyan noted that
“the bill fits in the framework of France’s international legal
commitments.” “A similar law on the Holocaust has been in force in
that country since 1990,” he said.

K. AVAGYAN: AZERBAIJAN’S CRITICISM AGAINST FRANCE UNACCEPTABLE

Panorama.am
25/01/2012

“Azerbaijan, as “a junior brother” of Turkey, offers some service to
his elder brother which in this time is not logical. The more facts
display Azerbaijan is not sincere in its steps, the more Azerbaijan
demonstrates he’s a devoted brother,” Republican MP Karen Avagyan
told Panorama.am remarking on big noise created in Azerbaijan after
French Senate famous decision.

The MP has stated that Azerbaijan’s criticism in address to France
is unacceptable.

“It seems Azerbaijan and Turkey share some “agonic” relations –
they are doing irregular movements and statements,” K. Avagyan said.

“It’s high time Turkey accepts lessons from history, which will be
useful first of all for Turkish people and for its authorities,”
MP concluded.

RESEARCH OF ARCHIVE DOCUMENTS TO REVEAL HOW ARMENIAN GENOCIDE WAS STAGED -RUSSIAN EXPERT

NEWS.AM
January 25, 2012 | 16:15

MOSCOW. – It is high time for the Turkish Government to publish
documents on the Young Turks and the events which happened during the
Armenian Genocide, Russian experts said during Moscow-Yerevan space
bridge on Wednesday.

Director of the Institute of Political and Social Researches of the
Black Sea and Caspian Region Vladimir Zakharov said that before the
historic decision was made by the French Senate, a large group of
Russian intellectuals sent a message to the Turkish PM Recep Tayyip
Erdogan.

“The Young Turks relied on marginal groups of the population. Trying to
cheat them and hiding behind the slogans of pan-Turkism and Islam, they
established a system exterminating the working population, including
Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians who were perceived as competitors. While
real Turks, officials or common people tried to help victims of
violence,” the message written by Russian intellectuals reads.

It is high time for the Turkish Government to publish documents
reflecting the real face of the Young Turks, Zakharov said.

In his turn, expert at the Institute of Political and Social Studies of
the Black Sea and Caspian Region Andrey Areshev said that the Turkish
archives have lots of documents on how the 1915 events were organized.

“It is possible to understand who and how got prepared for the
genocide of the Armenian population while studying the documents,”
Areshev said adding that research will not damage current Turkey’s
image as it bears nor relation to the events.

BAKU, ANKARA HAVE SERIOUS CONTRADICTIONS – ARMENIAN EXPERT

PanARMENIAN.Net
January 25, 2012 – 13:31 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Turkey and Azerbaijan have serious contradictions
which they’re attempting to conceal, according to director of History
Institute at RA National Academy of Sciences.

To prove his point, Ashot Melkonyan cited Baku’s pressuring Turkey into
non-ratification of protocols with Armenia, despite clear benefits the
official Ankara might reap as documents envisaged Armenia’s refusal
from territorial claims to Turkey.

“The economically developing Azerbaijan is reluctant to accept the
role of a “younger brother”, current contradictions with Turkey pushed
to the background only in the face of major problems with Armenia,”
the expert said.

“By its response to Armenian Genocide bill adoption Baku did a
disservice to Ankara,” Melkonyan concluded.

On January 24, demonstrators gathered in front of the French embassy
in Azerbaijan to protest the passage of the Genocide bill. As the head
of Azeri Social Union noted at the rally, French Senate “endorsed a
historic error.” “Fraternal Turkey can always count on our support,”
he said.

FRANCE PLEDGES TO ENACT GENOCIDE LAW IN TWO WEEKS

Tert.am
25.01.12

France will within a fortnight enact a new law banning denial of the
Armenian genocide, despite threats by Turkey to impose sanctions
against Paris, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office said Tuesday,
according to Expatica.com.

“The president of the republic will promulgate the law punishing denial
of the genocide of the Armenians in 1915 within the normal timeframe,”
which is two weeks, a Sarkozy aide said.

The French Senate on Monday approved the measure which threatens with
jail anyone in France who denies that the massacre of Armenians by
Ottoman Turk forces amounted to genocide.

Turkey on Tuesday slammed the planned law as discriminatory and
racist and vowed to impose unspecified sanctions against Paris on a
“step-by-step” basis.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe appealed to France’s “Turkish
friends” for calm as Turks reacted furiously to the Senate’s approval
of the bill.

But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that his
Islamist-rooted government would punish Paris with retaliatory
measures if Sarkozy, whose right-wing UMP party initiated the bill,
signed it into law.

Hundreds of people protested outside the French embassy in Ankara
Tuesday and the consulate in Istanbul, chanting slogans such as
“Armenian Genocide Is an Imperialist Lie”.

France has already recognized the killings as a genocide, but the
new bill would go further, by punishing anyone who denies this with
a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros ($57,000).

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in
1915 and 1916 by the forces of Turkey’s former Ottoman Empire.

Turkey disputes the figure, arguing that 500,000 died, and denies this
was genocide, ascribing the toll to fighting and starvation during
World War I and accusing the Armenians of siding with Russian invaders.

MICHAEL KAMBECK: ERDOGAN HYSTERIC – SHOULD HE RESIGN?
by Michael Kambeck

Noyan Tapan
2012-01-25

The hysteria in Turkey over the French bill prohibiting the denial
of the Armenian Genocide could hardly be more self-damaging or more
revealing. Readers of the official Turkish official statement of 24
January will be struck by a tone unworthy of a strong and mature nation
and rather be reminded of speeches of some of those Arabic leaders,
who have recently been ousted by their people.

France is allegedly “damaging the freedom of expression in a tactless
manner”, says Turkey, which has just today (25 January 2012) received
another condemning report from Reporters Without Borders for its
further weakening media freedom, dropping down to place 148 out of 178
(France is on 38, Armenia on 75, Azerbaijan on 162). The French law
does the opposite of what the Turkish government claims. It protects
freedom. France has, together with the country I know best, Germany,
for many years had such laws against the denial of the Holocaust..

This has neither stopped researchers on this issue nor journalistic
freedom, even where journalists took views which I personally would
find inappropriate. But such laws DO protect against blatant hardliners
and their propaganda, who generally practice the politisation that
Prime Minister Erdogan so loudly condemns these days. He accuses
Sarkozy of fishing for Armenian votes, while omitting the large
number of voters with a Turkish background but a French passport. The
Armenian Genocide has long been recognised by France, as by many other
European states and the European Parliament. This has been done in
view of overwhelming evidence, while in Turkey archives still remain
closed, documents still disappear and journalists writing about 1915,
like Hrant Dink, face the opposite of freedom. The new French law
simply brings the prosecution in line with the earlier recognition
decision. The German Bundestag is allegedly considering a similar move
and should do so. The European ideal of tolerance needs intolerance
vis-Á-vis intolerance. Genocide is the ultimate intolerance. Free
democracies need to be strong in their defence against those who seek
to undermine that freedom.

While the law does not mention Turkey and President Sarkozy even sent
a conciliatory letter to the Turkish government, Erdogan’s reaction
was a whole list of threats, calling the law “an unjust action,
which disregards human values and public conscience”… “No one
should doubt our Government’s principled approach in this issue”
the MFA refers to the announced retaliation measures. Such words
do not sound like the communication of a mature and proud nation,
it sounds like a vexed child in a sand box, saying “He started
first!”. Turkey kills its relations with France and blames France
for it. Instead, Turkey would have had the chance to run a different
policy, even a very nationalistic one (which I would deem wrong but
at least clever): Turkey could have opened the border with Armenia
and with that started a process of debating the issue, which no
international player would have liked to interfere with. Turkey
could state, how ever they classify the “events of 1915”, that this
was during the Ottoman Empire and hence only indirectly concerns
modern Turkey. Turkey could have focussed on its national interests
by gaining support from the international community for securing a
deal which limits possible Armenian damage claims and embarking on a
course of a genuine zero-problem-policy with its neighbours. Instead,
that zero-problem-policy has visibly failed all around and Turkey
is today mainly known for being “loud”. It destroyed its interests
with the EU and sends enraging and mobilising signals to the Armenian
Diaspora around the world and to its own minorities, especially to
the Kurds in its poorer East.

All this has a high price for Turkey and all this has been dominated
neither by Turkey’s Foreign Minister nor by the President. In the
interest of the Turkish nation, you would have to call upon Prime
Minister Erdogan to resign. And as even long-standing friends of
Turkey, like MEP and Turkey rapporteur Oomen-Ruijten, become publicly
more and more frustrated and critical, France and the EU seem to
have little to lose, as long as Mr Erdogan is in power. The only
light comes from the Turkish intelligentsia, which means that civil
society is today our best hope for saving Turkey’s modernisation.

*Dr Michael Kambeck is Secretary General of the Brussels based NGO
European Friends of Armenia (). These views represent
his own.

NOBEL LAUREATE DENIES RELATIONSHIP WITH TURKISH-ARMENIAN ARTIST

epress.am
01.25.2012

Turkey’s Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk has denied he is in a romantic
relationship with artist Karolin Fiþekçi, sending her a formal
notification through his lawyer that he would file a legal complaint
if she does not stop her public remarks suggesting that she is the
novelist’s girlfriend, Today’s Zaman reports.

Fiþekçi, a Turkish Armenian painter, was photographed with Pamuk
two months ago at a shopping mall in New York, sparking widespread
speculations in the Turkish media that Pamuk broke up with Indian
writer Kiran Desai and is now together with Fiþekçi.

The 32-year-old painter (pictured below) then has made numerous
statements to the Turkish media confirming the reports and said
Pamuk’s relationship with Desai had ended and that they are mere
business associates now.

Pamuk’s lawyer Haluk Ýnancý said in a formal notification addressing
Fiþekçi that Pamuk last saw Fiþekçi at a mall in New York two months
ago and that he has had no contact with her since. “Fiþekçi is not my
client’s girlfriend,” Ýnancý said. Ýnancý said Fiþekçi’s statements
describing Pamuk’s relationship with Desai as a business relation was
“untrue.”

Ýnancý said Fiþekçi’s statements were an insult to Pamuk’s privacy and
against not only morality but also laws. “My client has not authorized
anyone to speak on his behalf. It seems Fiþekçi is not aware that
she is committing a crime while violating Pamuk’s privacy,” he said,
warning that Fiþekçi will face a legal complaint and a compensation
request if she does not stop her statements.

POLITICAL EXPERT: ARMENIA IS NOT SHORT OF SUPPORTERS IN EU

arminfo
Wednesday, January 25, 14:40

Armenia is not short of supporters in the European Union thanks
to both the Diaspora organizations and other ways to involve EU
institutions. The country’s historical and cultural image looks
relatively favorable in Europe. Marat Terterov, Director of the
European Geopolitical Forum, political expert (Brussels), said in an
on-line interview with ArmInfo.

Interviews with experts and political figures from various countries
for Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian mass media on the relevant
problems of security and NATO’s role in their resolution are organized
within the project “Security of South Caucasus and NATO”. The project
of the “Region” Research Center (Armenia) is supported by the NATO
Headquarters Public Diplomacy Division (Brussels).

“As part of the Yerevan-Brussels Agreement of Partnership and
Cooperation, Armenia has an opportunity to use various financial
and other assistance projects coordinated by Brussels. EU is trying
to more integrate Armenia into the European institutional space
through the Association Agreement, documents on free trade or other
instruments. I suppose these forms of cooperation will be continued,
for most of these projects are part of compulsory inter-governmental
agreements,” Terterov said. The political expert believes that
crisis in the Eurozone seriously affects the EU countries rather than
their relations with the countries bordering with the Caucasus. It
will have much serious impact on the EU than the countries like
Armenia. Nevertheless, the crisis affects general sentiments in
Brussels and perspectives leading the policy bodies in Brussels to
certain pessimism. This means, he said, that Brussels will no longer
try to increase the budget or establish new forms of institutional
cooperation in the Caucasus. “I don’t think, however, that the crisis
will have any direct impact on the EU Eastern Partnership Project.

Revision of the fiscal aid scales to the six partner-states involved
in the Project is not possible either. The aid is already being paid
by donor-states. But the crisis may have a negative impact in future,”
Terterov said.

The EU Eastern Partnership Project was initiated by Poland and
Sweden and approved by 27 countries of EU at a summit in Brussels
in December 2008. The program envisages considerable raising of the
level of political cooperation, wide integration of former Soviet
republics Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Moldavia, Belarus and Ukraine
into EU economy, increasing volumes of financial support to them and
strengthening energy security. The program also envisages allocation
of 600 mln EUR to these 6 countries by 2013. The Constituent Summit
of the EPP was held on may 7 2009 in Prague.

GAZPROM AVANCE LE DEBUT DE LA CONSTRUCTION DE SOUTH STREAM A DECEMBRE 2012
Stephane

armenews.com
mercredi 25 janvier 2012

Le geant gazier russe Gazprom va lancer la construction du gazoduc
South Stream, destine a livrer du gaz russe a l’Union europeenne via
la mer Noire, en decembre 2012 et non en 2013 comme prevu auparavant,
a-t-il indique vendredi.

“Conformement a la directive du chef du gouvernement russe Vladimir
Poutine, il a ete decide d’accelerer nettement le debut de realisation
du projet”, explique le groupe dans un communique.

M. Poutine avait exige le 30 decembre d’avancer le debut des
operations, deux jours après que la Turquie eut donne son feu vert,
attendu de longue date, pour faire passer le gazoduc dans ses eaux
territoriales en mer Noire.

“A ete approuve un plan detaille des mesures permettant de lancer la
construction du gazoduc South Stream non en 2013, comme il etait prevu,
mais en decembre 2012”, ajoute-t-il.

“Le projet repond a une demande et il est attendu, nous allons debuter
sa realisation”, declare le PDG du groupe, Alexeï Miller, cite dans
le communique.

Le gazoduc, d’une longueur de 3.600 km, doit alimenter l’Europe
occidentale, notamment la Grèce et l’Italie, via la mer Noire et
les Balkans.

Il doit permettre a la Russie de contourner l’Ukraine, principal pays
de transit avec lequel des conflits tarifaires avec Moscou ont entraîne
des interruptions temporaires de livraison vers les pays de l’UE.

Alors que la Russie a en novembre mis en exploitation un autre gazoduc,
Nord Stream, qui passe au fond de la mer Baltique, la decision de
Gazprom accroît la pression sur Kiev, qui tente depuis des mois,
en vain jusqu’a present, de renegocier a la baisse le prix du gaz
qui lui est facture par Moscou.

Le geant petrolier italien ENI detient une part de 20% dans le
capital du consortium charge de la section sous-marine du gazoduc
South Stream, en mer Noire. Le francais EDF et l’allemand Wintershall,
filiale du geant de la chimie BASF, en possèdent de leur côte chacun
15%, et Gazprom les 50% restants.

La construction de la partie terrestre de South Stream sera assuree
par des coentreprises que Gazprom a creees avec les societes publiques
du secteur energetique d’Autriche, de Bulgarie, de Croatie, de Grèce,
de Hongrie, de Serbie et de Slovenie.

Un autre gazoduc, le projet Nabucco, doit livrer le gaz du Caucase
a l’Europe occidentale en passant par la Turquie et les Balkans,
et donc en evitant la Russie.