Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Students touring Armenia’s railway to come to know its history

YEREVAN, September 27. /ARKA/. Armenian students toured Armenia’s
railway on Saturday and saw the documents, photographs and samples of
the railway equipment and models of trains of various periods of the
railway’s history displayed in the Armenian Railway Museum.

The trip is organized by the country’s culture ministry and the South
Caucasus Railway as part of the European Heritage Days ‘A Look Back
100 Years Later’ dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the beginning
of World War I.

The students got information about the whole way of their country’s
railway development starting from July 5, 1895, when Emperor Nicholas
II signed a decree ordering construction of Tiflis-Kars Railway.
They also visited in Yerevan Railway Station the exhibition dedicated
to the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the Baikal-Amur Mainline
construction, in which Armenian railway workers have taken part.

The participants of the trip also traveled to Gyumri by train. A
documentary about participation of Armenians in World War I will be
shown to them in the city. The students will also see the Armenian
Railway’s equipment displayed in Gryumri’s museum.

South Caucasus Railway, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, runs
Armenian Railway, which was handed over to the South Caucasus Railway
on February 13, 2008 for 30-year concession management with a right to
prolong the management term for other 10 years. –0—

Karabakh celebrates Stepanakert Day

16:19 27/09/2014 >> SOCIETY

On September 27, Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan attended
celebrations dedicated to the Day of capital Stepanakert.

The President noted that celebrations of the capital’s day have become
traditional, which is of pivotal importance from political, cultural
and educational viewpoints.

Primate of the Artsakh Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church
Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan, NKR Prime Minister Ara Harutyunyan,
Mayor of Yerevan Taron Margaryan and other officials attended the
celebrations, the President’s press service reported.

Source: Panorama.am

Czech Senate to discuss in 2015 recognition of Armenian Genocide

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Vice Speaker of the Armenian parliament Edward Sharmazanov said today
at a press conference following his visit to Prague that there are
partners in the Czech Republic who are ready to raise the issue of
recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide.

“One of our partners raised that subject at the meeting with President
and Vice President of the Czech Senate,” Sharmazanov said.

According to him, it is not ruled out that in 2015 the issue of
recognizing the Armenian Genocide will be discussed in the Senate.
Members of the Senate expressed their willingness to attend the
Armenian Genocide Centennial commemorative event in Yerevan on April
24, 2015, E. Sharmazanov said.

TODAY, 14:48
Aysor.am

ARMENIE-COMMUNICATIONS
Les 30 sites d’information les plus fréquentés par les internautes d’Arménie

Le site arménien Qanon.am a diffusé la liste des 30 sites
d’information les plus visités par les @rménautes d’Arménie. News.am
est le site le plus visité. Suivi de Tert.am et 1in.am. L’agence de
presse officielle d’Arménie, Armenpress.am n’est qu’en 19e position.
Parmi ces sites 7 sont russes et occupent la 15e, 16e, 22e, 23e, 24e,
25e et 29e position. Le site anglais de la BBC est 28e. Ci-dessous la
liste complète des 30 sites d’information les plus lus d’Arménie :

1. News.am
2. Tert.am
3. 1in.am
4. Slaq.am
5. lragir.am
6. Asekose.am
7. Sport.news.am
8. Lurer.com
9. News.mail.ru
10. Aravot.am
11. Azatutyun.am
12. Hetq.am
13. Panorama.am
14. 168.am
15. Regnum.ru
16. Vesti.ru
17. Hraparak.am
18. Civilnet.am
19. Armenpress.am
20. Times.am
21. Panarmenian.net
22. News.yandex.ru
23. Gazeta.ru
24. Lenta.ru
25. Ria.ru
26. iLur.am
27. Yerkir.am
28. BBc.co.uk
29. Rbc.ru
30. Araratnews.am

Krikor Amirzayan

samedi 27 septembre 2014,
Krikor Amirzayan (c)armenews.com

Zhoghovurd: Armavia owner files bankruptcy lawsuit

11:17 * 27.09.14

Mika Limited, the company owning Armenia’s former national airline
Armavia, has applied to a Yerevan district court with an appeal for
declaring the company bankrupt, the paper has learned.

The news reportedly stirred up a fuss among former employees, as well
as passengers who had cancelled air tickets.

Speaking to the paper, a reader who identified herself as passenger’s
relative, said she was afraid they wouldn’t get back the money paid
for tickets. “A relative of mine has purchased nine tickets whose
total price tops one million Drams. They have been cancelled, and we
are now in a dÅad-end, as ármavia is now amid a liquidation procedure.
So who is supposed to pay us our money?” she said.

Armenian News – Tert.am

A Group of intellectuals condemn anti-Armenian statements in textbooks
2014-09-26

A group of academics, journalists, artists and intellectuals have
released a statement condemning in the harshest terms what they define
as expressions that include “open hatred and hostility” towards
Armenians in Turkish schoolbooks, which were recently exposed by the
newspapers Agos and Taraf.

The two newspapers recently published reports on hateful remarks
targeting Armenians in the textbooks used in history classes.

A letter accompanying the text of the condemnation, written by
historian Taner Akcam, notes that including such expressions as lesson
material to teach children is a disgrace.

The signees said textbooks in schools should seek to encourage
feelings of peace, solidarity and living together over inciting hatred
towards different religious and cultural groups, Akcam said. He
further wrote: “Standing with integrity in the face of history is the
prerequisite for establishing the future on the foundations of
friendship and peace. I do hope that this signature campaign will be
taken as a scream from all of us for the publication of textbooks that
we would like to see.”

The statement said: “The revolutions history and history textbooks
should be collected immediately, with an apology issued to everyone
and particularly to Armenian students. This is where the path to
Turkish-Armenian peace lies, at this time when we are approaching
2015.” Revolutions history classes teach students the reforms carried
out by the first government of Turkey after the end of the Ottoman
Empire.

Next year will be the centennial of the events of 1915, when hundreds
of thousands of Anatolian Armenians were forced to walk across
Anatolia into Syria — a journey that saw most of them perish — which
Armenia says was genocide.

The signatories include some of Turkey’s most respected writers and
journalists. The full list of the supporters of the statement is as
follows: Adalet Agaoglu, Ahmet Altan, Ahmet Hakan, Ahmet Insel, Ali
Bayramoglu, Ali Nesin, Asaf Savas Akat, Aydin Engin, Ayhan Aktar, Ayse
Gunaysu, Ayse Hur, Baskin Oran, Bekir Agirdir, Betul Tanbay, Bulent
Bilmez, Bulent Kenes, Cafer Solgun, Cemal Usak, Cengiz Aktar, Daron
Acemoglu, Defne Asal, Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, Deniz Turkali, Edhem
Eldem, Elcin Macar, Emel Kurma, Emine Ucak Erdogan, Eren Keskin, Erol
Katircioglu, Fatih Akin, Ferhat Kentel, Fikret Adanir, Fuat Keyman,
Gulten Kaya, Hadi Uluengin, Halil Berktay, Halil Ergun, Hasan Cemal,
Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal, Ibrahim Betil, Ihsan Eliacik, Ihsan Yilmaz,
Ismet Berkan, Istar Gozaydin, Kemal Burkay, Kenan Cayir, Kutlug
Ataman, Leyla Neyzi, Mehmet Altan, Murat Belge, Murat Morova, Nilufer
Gole, Niyazi Kizilyurek, Oktay Ozel, Oral Calislar, Orhan Pamuk, Oya
Baydar, Omer Laciner, Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, Omer Madra, Perihan
Magden, Roni Margulies, Samim Akgonul, Saruhan Oluc, Savas Genc,
Selcuk Gultasli, Selim Deringil, Serra Yilmaz, Sevgi Akarcesme,
Seyfettin Gursel, Sinan Cetin, Soli Ozel, Sahin Alpay, Sanar
Yurdatapan, Sebnem Isiguzel, Taner Akcam, Tarik Ziya Ekinci, Temel
Iskit, Tilbe Saran, Turgay Ogur, Ufuk Uras, Ugur Komecoglu, Umut
Ozkirimli, Umit Kardas, Umit Kivanc, Ustun Erguder, Vedat Turkali,
Yasemin Congar, Yavuz Baydar, Zeynep Direk and Zeynep Tanbay.

The Hindu, India
Sept 28 2014

Outtakes: Artavazd Peleshian

by Srikanth Srinivasan

WHO is he?

Armenian film theorist and independent filmmaker who made close to 10
short documentary films between the late sixties and mid-nineties.
Peleshian studied film at the prestigious VGIK in Moscow and the
student films he made at the institute already bear significant traces
of his mature work.

WHAT are his films about?

Themes

Although there are hints that Peleshian seems to be commenting on the
tragic historical and natural calamities that have plagued Armenia,
the director denies it, instead attributing to his films a universal
validity. These de-contextualised films do indeed throw light on the
plight of entire humanity, poeticising its ability to pick itself up
and go on with life. Pain and ecstasy, suffering and resilience,
cynicism and optimism and life and death are binaries that abound in
these works, as do images of mass movements, imprisonments, struggle
and survival.

Style

Peleshian’s films are characterised by a highly stylised editing
style, which he calls Distance Montage, wherein the global rhythm of
the film and the circularity of structure become the key elements
instead of the shot-to-shot dialectic that was propounded by the early
pioneers of the Russian montage. These films contain no specific
characters (the entirety of humanity is the subject) and the
soundtracks are a mixture of conventional scores and pre-existing
sounds organised into a dense, experimental soundscape. They contain
no dialogue, typically possess a symmetric structure and employ varied
frame rates that either slow down or speed up action.

WHY is he of interest?

Peleshian’s work straddles the realms of filmic essays and filmic
poetry. Like, Godard, he uses existing images and footage,
re-deploying them a number of times in various diverse contexts and
yet retaining their emotional and intellectual potency. His films are
testimony to the universality of the cinematic medium in the way they
take a detached perspective from immediate events to reflect on
larger, existential behaviour of his human subjects.

WHERE to discover him?

The Seasons (1975) is set in the Armenian countryside and depicts
images from the daily life of peasants, their ceremonies and their
games. Emphasising the cycle of seasons as well that of life, the
25-minute work is a paean to man’s complicated and ironic relationship
with nature, in which nature becomes the force that both structures
quotidian life and disrupts it; both the life-giver and the grim
reaper.

Khachkar commemorating Armenian Genocide victims set up in Romanian PiteÈ’ti

11:51 ¢ 28.09.14

A khachkar (cross-stone) commemorating Armenian Genocide victims has
been set up in PiteÈ’ti, Romania, the Armenpress news agency reports,
referring to pastor of PiteÃ…?ti Ter Hetum Tarverdyan’s Facebook page.

The population of Armenian ethnicity in Romania is 7, 5-10 thousand.
Armenians are mainly based in the cities of Bucharest, Konstanta and
PiteÃ…?ti. Currently the number of the Armenians in Romania is inclined
to reduction, because most of the Armenian young people move to the
countries of West Europe.

ILLEGAL VISITS TO NAGORNO-KARABAKH VIOLATION OF INT’L LAW

AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Sept 26 2014

26 September 2014, 20:53 (GMT+05:00)
By Sara Rajabova

Any visit to Nagorno-Karabakh without Azerbaijan’s permission is a
flagrant violation of international law and national legislation. Now
Armenia aims to legalize the occupation of Azerbaijani territories
with organizing visits of foreign citizens and parliamentarians to
these territories.

Chairman of the Council of State Support to NGOs (CSSN) under the
President of Azerbaijan, Azay Guliyev made the remark while addressing
an international conference called “Legal consequences of illegal
visits to the occupied territories of Eastern Partnership countries”.

The conference was held with the financial support of the CSSN in
Tbilisi, Georgia on September 26.

Guliyev said Armenia has been organizing visits of foreign nationals
including parliamentarians, to the occupied Azerbaijani territories
in recent years.

He noted that Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry declares the violators
persona non grata and include their names on a special list.

Unauthorized visits to Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions of Azerbaijan
occupied by Armenia are considered illegal, and the individuals
who pay such visits are included in Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s
“black list”.

Earlier, Baku blacklisted the German MPs for their illegal visit to
Azerbaijan’s occupied territories.

The Foreign Ministry in 2013 released a list of 335 people declared
‘persona non grata’ over illegal visits to the Armenian-occupied
territories. Some of these people were removed from the list after
appealing to the Azerbaijani government.

“Unfortunately, among those included in the list, there are MPs from
the member states countries of European Union, as well as members
of the French delegation to PACE that violated Azerbaijani and
international law. This is unacceptable. Especially, as co-chair of
OSCE Minsk Group, France should prevent such actions, if it wants to
act from the position of an independent, honest broker,” Guliyev said.

He further noted that the individuals who illegally crossed the
state border shall be criminally responsible in accordance with
the Azerbaijani laws and the foreigners, who illegally visit
Nagorno-Karabakh, should take it into account.

Along with the illegal visits to the occupied Azerbaijani territories,
some foreign companies often get engaged in economic activities there,
Guliyev added.

“This is another flagrant violation of international law. There is
also evidence of sales in the EU member states of goods produced
in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, which is contrary to
international law,” Guliyev noted.

He went on to say that the only way out of the current deadlockis the
liberation of the occupied Azerbaijani territories and the return of
displaced persons to their homes.

Along with representatives of the UN, PACE and EU officials, the
officials from Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan and other countries of the
“Eastern Partnership” took part in the conference.

Azerbaijan has repeatedly warned foreign officials and diplomats about
visits to its territories that are occupied by Armenia, calling it
contradictory to international laws.

Baku has stated that such visits, paid without prior notification to
the relevant authorities of Azerbaijan, are illegal and damage the
settlement process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing
of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were
killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale
hostilities. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20
percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and
seven surrounding regions.

TURKEY AND ARMENIANS

Daily Sabah, Turkey
Sept 26 2014

Markar Esayan
26 September 2014, Friday

Turkey has been experiencing significant political developments
for the last 12 years and the Armenian community is also a part of
this process. Currently, about 60,000 Armenians live in Turkey, and
this transformation affects not only them, but also the Armenians
with Anatolian origins living in Armenia and the Armenian diaspora
worldwide. Consequently, the notion of being an Armenian is also
undergoing a transformation during this political process. People in
Turkey are in a convenient phase of reviewing what has been led by
recent political developments.

They get to know not only other people, but also themselves again
– and they are aware of the fact that a braver and more impartial
interpretation of history is obligatory to do that. While they are
stepping out of official history and searching for their own roots
by using various free sources they also encounter “the others.” For
instance the religious groups who wonder about the stories of
the religious leaders executed in Independence Courts during early
Republican Era in 1925 and try to re-acquire the reputation of their
losses, discover that Armenians went under even more tragic incidents
in 1915 and that they also occupy a place in the big picture.

For the West, it was not easy to understand the state of terror
targeting minorities, religious groups like Alevis and Kurds both
during the 1915 genocide and Republican history, or it simply did
not interest them. Turkey, founded on a much smaller territory than
the Ottoman Empire – the strongest representative of the East – was
expressing the peak of a great victory through the Western model
it chose. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s political choice meant Western
civilization putting its flag on the peak of the East, and this
metaphor was quite true. Through Turkey’s existence, it was officially
proved that the West won the civilization war in a physical sense.

Of course the fascist conjuncture prevailing in the world until 1945
and Turkey’s participation in NATO during the Cold War period played
a role in exculpating the violent acts of the Turkish state. This is
the realpolitik side of the issue. An ally that had the second greatest
army of any NATO country had a considerable strategic importance that
could not be criticized due to the shortcomings of its democracy. It
was not needed and Turkey was being ruled as the West wished.

Thus, Kemalist nationalist elites first dissolved ethnic minorities
and suppressed the religious ones then killed the Kurds and Alevis and
economically condemned large masses to poverty. A small elite group –
called White Turks in a sociological context – dominated the media,
academia, politics, economy, and public sphere in the country. While
Armenians could not even be assigned to the lowest positions in this
social hierarchy, state institutions were off-limits to religious
people and Kurds. Alevis, meanwhile, were stuck in between state
massacres and Sunni fear.

So, this elite and unconscionable state model has been revised and
reformed with a gradual and peaceful public revolution for the last 12
years thanks to the support of the social groups I mentioned above. In
2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) became the
ruling party for the first time, this elite status quo was angry
but self-confident. The presidency, judiciary, chambers, media, NGOs
and more importantly, the army, were backing them. They were giving
the AK Party a very short lifetime and a coup resembling the Feb. 28,
1997 post-modern coup was expected at any moment. Attempts to overthrow
the government had started. The army, pro-coup juntas within the army,
the media and judiciary took immediate action to achieve it.

But they could not succeed. Reforms were gradually implemented and
pro-coup elites found themselves in a more democratic country. So,
the non-political struggle methods had to become more democratized and
nuanced. The most functional method developed today is bringing down
the reform process through the traumas of minorities like Kurds and
Alevis. The elite intellectuals obsessed in overthrowing Recep Tayyip
Erdogan are concerned about how to manipulate the delicate issues
such as the 1915 incidents to undermine the government. They also
receive much support from international circles since they perform
their activities under a Western guise. They might even manipulate
diaspora populations in this sense.

It seems that with the 100th anniversary of 1915 the pain of Armenians
will be manipulated in a sovereignty fight. If the diaspora community
is searching for an influential and legitimate addressee for this
pain to be acknowledged and respected, it should be the sociological
actors of this reform rather than those attempting to end the reform
period in which Armenians feel equal and secure for the first time
in Turkey’s Republican history. The formerly dominating groups are
about to become a thing of the past and have lost their character of
being an addressee.