Author: Kalantarian Kevo

Trend, Azerbaijan
Dec 15 2013

Iran, Armenia stress expansion of ties

Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the Islamic Republic
attaches great significance to its bilateral relations with
neighboring countries, particularly Armenia, Press TV reported.

In a Sunday meeting with visiting Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister
Shavarsh Kocharyan in Tehran, Zarif hailed “longstanding” and
“friendly” relations between Iran and neighboring Armenia.

“Iran’s new administration attaches special significance to the
expansion of ties with neighbors and we are willing to bolster these
relations more than before,” said the Iranian top diplomat.

He further stated that Iran and Armenia enjoy great economic and
commercial grounds for cooperation, stressing that frequent visits by
officials of the two countries can “play an effective role in the
expansion of bilateral ties.”

Tehran and Yerevan should continue their negotiations and cooperation
on regional and international issues, added the Iranian foreign
minister.

Kocharyan, for his part, expressed hope that reciprocal visits by
senior Armenian and Iranian officials would pave the way for further
enhancement of Tehran-Yerevan relations in all areas.

The Armenian diplomat reaffirmed his country’s support for the
landmark nuclear deal signed between Tehran and the Sextet of world
powers – the US, Britain, Russia, China, France and Germany – in
Geneva, Switzerland, on November 24.

Kocharyan also held a separate meeting with Iranian Deputy Foreign
Minister for Asia and Pacific Affairs Ebrahim Rahimpour on Sunday.

In November, Armenian Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Armen
Movsisyan paid a visit to Tehran. He met with President Hassan Rouhani
and his Iranian opposite number, Hamid Chitchian, during his stay.

Movsisyan and Chitchian signed three agreements for the implementation
of joint hydropower projects during their November talks in Tehran.

ANS TV (Azeri), Baku
Dec 11 2013

Azeri official calls for Russian, Iranian pressure on Armenia

[Translated from Azeri]

A senior Azerbaijani official has accused Armenia of disrupting
regional peace and stability and urged Iran and Russia to exert
pressure on that country.

“We are completely confident that if Armenia… is located in our
region and that if Armenia is currently conducting a policy of
occupation, then it bears international responsibility. Other
neighbouring states [Iran and Russia] should not be indifferent to
this international responsibility of Armenia and its policy of
aggression. Other neighbouring countries, Iran and Russia, should
exert pressure on Armenia as it is mainly Armenia who disrupts peace
and stability in the region,” Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister
Xalaf Xalafov told reporters in remarks aired by privately-owned ANS
TV on 11 December.

In the meantime, Baku-based opposition Yeni Musavat newspaper
expressed cautious optimism about the resolution of the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

“Following the [Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders’] Vienna meeting [on
19 November], the meeting between [Armenian Foreign Minister] Edvard
Nalbandyan and [his Azerbaijani counterpart] Elmar Mammadyarov in Kiev
[on 4 December] can be regarded as an announcement of a further
intensification in the [peace] talks,” the newspaper said.

The daily pointed out the “special activeness” in the resumption of
the peace talks that it said was demonstrated by James Warlick, the US
mediator in the Karabakh peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Yeni Musavat quoted Warlick as saying: “The latest talks conducted in
Vienna and Kiev showed that the sides want to break the deadlock…
However, one should admit that this requires strong political will.”

The daily added that the absence of Russia’s Karabakh mediator from
the 5 December Kiev meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian pundits,
Eldar Namazov and David Shahnazaryan, which was organized by the US
mediator, showed that Russia was not happy about the US activity over
the conflict settlement.

BBCM note: Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian
counterpart Serzh Sargsyan met in the Austrian capital Vienna on 19
November after a two-year break to discuss a peaceful settlement for
the disputed Nagornyy Karabakh region. The OSCE’s Minsk Group,
co-chaired by France, Russia and the USA, has mediated peace talks
between Yerevan and Baku following an early 1990s war over
Azerbaijan’s breakaway region and a cease-fire reached in 1994. The
Azerbaijani authorities have been particularly critical of the
mediators for their failure to secure a final peace treaty.

Al-Monitor
dec 15 2013

Will Turks, Armenians ever reconcile?

Author: Mustafa AkyolPosted December 15, 2013

When Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu visited Yerevan on Dec.
12, in the first high-level visit from Turkey to Armenia in five
years, he was greeted not only by his Armenian counterpart, Eduard
Nalbandyan, but also by political activists. The latter’s welcome,
however, was not a warm one. A group of protesters gathered in front
of Davutoglu’s hotel to protest Turkey’s `denial of the Armenian
genocide.’ They wanted `recognition, condemnation and reparations,’
and opposed the Turkish foreign minister for not taking those steps.

Perhaps this was a bit unfair to Davutoglu, though, who said on this
trip something that no other Turkish statesman has openly said before:
that the `deportation’ of Armenians from Anatolia in 1915 was
`inhumane.’ (In Turkey, `deportation’ is the official and the common
term for what others call `Armenian genocide.’) No wonder Turkey’s
nationalists criticized Davutoglu for taking such an `unpatriotic’
step. Writing in Yeni ÇaÄ?, a hardcore nationalist daily, columnist
Ahmet Atakan argued that Davutoglu acted `as if he is not as the
Turkish foreign minister, but a negotiator between the two sides
[Turks and Armenians].’ More important, the deputy chair of the main
opposition CHP (People’s Republican Party), Faruk Logoglu, criticized
Davutoglu on Twitter and wrote (with my translation from Turkish):

`FM Davutoglu said to the Armenian FM, `The deportation of 1915 was
inhumane.’ What was inhumane? What would he rather have been done?’

Logoglu’s reaction is significant because it represents the mainstream
view in Turkey about the tragic fate of Ottoman Armenians. Most people
here simply believe that it was a defensible act to protect the
Turkish homeland.

Here is why. A considerable portion of the people who call themselves
Turks today are in fact rooted not in modern-day Turkey, but in two
neighboring regions: the Balkans and the Caucasus. During the
century-long shrinking of the Ottoman Empire, millions of Muslims in
these two regions faced persecution and had to flee to Turkey proper.
My own great-grandfather, for example, was a Circassian (Çerkes) who
first resisted the Russian occupation of the Northwest Caucasus around
the 1860s and then had to migrate to Yozgat, Anatolia, during the
ethnic cleansing of Circassians. It is estimated that, during that
long process of Russian onslaught in the Caucasus, some 1.5 million
Circassian men, women and children were killed, and more than 1
million others were expelled to Turkey. Hence comes the saying, “If
you scratch a Turk, you find a Circassian persecuted by Russians
underneath.’

A similar story took place in the Balkans as well. As the Ottoman
Empire shrank and new nation-states emerged in former Ottoman
territories ‘ such as Serbia, Greece or Bulgaria ‘ Turks and other
Muslims in these countries faced various waves of persecution and mass
murder, resulting in millions of refugees. That is why there are
millions of Balkan immigrants in modern-day Turkey ‘ people whose
origin is Bosniak, Albanian, Pomak or Balkan Turk. In his book, Death
and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922,
American historian Justin McCarthy calculates that some 5 million
Ottoman Muslims perished in a century due to ethnic cleansing by their
enemies, most of whom were either Russians or the Eastern Orthodox
allies of the Russians.

This is the background that most Turks have in mind when they think of
what happened to Ottoman Armenians. Of course, Armenians, who lived in
Anatolia side by side with Turks for centuries, were not responsible
for the tragic fate of the Muslims in the Balkans or the Caucasus. But
in the early 20th century, Armenian nationalists in alliance with
imperialist Russia aimed at carving out an independent Armenia from
the collapsing Ottoman Empire. Had they succeeded, they could have
initiated an ethnic cleansing against the Muslims similar to what
happened in the Balkans and the Caucasus. This was the logic of the
Ottoman Young Turk wartime government which, in the spring of 1915,
made the tragic decision to deport all Armenians from Anatolia to
Syria in response to the Armenian Uprising that began earlier that
year. In was, in the minds of the Young Turks, a pre-emptive ethnic
cleansing.

To be sure, none of this justifies the death of even one of the
approximately 1 million Armenians who perished in that fateful year of
1915. This was, as Davutoglu put it, an `inhumane’ act. And it remains
a stain on Turkish history that I, as a fellow Turk, believe that we
Turks should apologize for. However, it did not take place in a
vacuum. Nor it did come out of a hateful ideology like that of the
Nazis against the Jews. It rather came out of a horrible historical
context which pitted the peoples of a crumbling empire against each
other and in which Turks suffered at least as much pain as they
caused.

Therefore, reconciliation between Turks and Armenians will be possible
only when this painful episode in history is understood in a way which
takes the perspectives of both sides into account. Armenians, most
naturally, recall only the suffering of their grandfathers and demand
respect for it. Turks, on the other hand, recall the sufferings of
their own grandfathers and question why the ethnic cleansing of the
Armenians is singled out among many other tragedies in which they were
the victims. Both sides need to understand the perspectives, and the
feelings, of the other side. Both sides, in other words, need to know
each other.

Read More:

Mustafa Akyol
Columnist

Mustafa Akyol is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse and a
columnist for Turkish Hurriyet Daily News and Star. His articles have
also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, The New York Times, The
Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. He is the
author of Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty.

Prayers in Aleppo, campaign in Beirut for return of the kidnapped

Dec 15, 2013

Aleppo, (SANA) _A religious mass has been held Sunday at the Armenian
Evangelical Church of Bethel in al-Sulaimanieh neighborhood in Aleppo
city for the release of the abducted bishops and nuns, and all the
abductees in Syria.

Worshippers lit candles and prayed for peace to prevail in Syria, for
the repose of the martyrs’ souls and the victory of the Syrian army.

Aleppo governor, Mohammad Wahid Aqqad said in a speech that ”the
crime of abducting the two bishops and detaining the nuns is
reprehensive and pulls the mask off the ugly face of the armed
terrorist groups and those providing them with support, funds and
cover.”

Attacks against mosques, churches and clergymen by terrorists ”run
counter to all divine religions that ban taking away human lives,” the
governor said, affirming that the crimes of terrorists serve to make
the Syrians more committed to their land.

Last April, an armed terrorist group kidnapped Bishop Yohanna Ibrahim,
head of the Syrian Orthodox Church (in Aleppo) and Bishop Boulos
Yaziji, head of the Greek Orthodox Church (in Aleppo) while they were
on humanitarian operations in the village of Kafr Dael in Aleppo
province.

Earlier this month, an armed terrorist group attacked St. Thecla
Convent in Maaloula town in Damascus Countryside and kidnapped Mother
Superior and a number of nuns.

Campaign in Lebanon to release abducted Syrian nuns, bishops

Lebanese Social, political activities on Sunday staged a sit-in before
the Turkish Embassy in Beirut, launching a popular campaign to release
the nuns of Tecla convent of Maaloula in Damascus countryside, Aleppo
bishops Paul Yazaji and Yohana Ibrahim, abducted by the armed
terrorist groups in Syria.

The participants in the sit-in affirmed that the campaign will be
launched in Lebanon and abroad to press Turkey, condemning the Turkish
authorities for not taking any move to release the nuns and bishops.

They held the Turkish government responsible for not releasing bishops
Yajazi and Ibrahim who were kidnapped while assuming a human mission
in Aleppo countryside.

The participants affirmed that the Christians are not a minority in
the region, but they are part of a wide civilization stretching from
Lebanon, Athens to Moscow.

M. Ismael/ Mazen

Hrachia Harutyunian’s detention extended for another three months

Sunday, December 15, 2013

The detention of Hrachia Harutyunian, an Armenian citizen accused of
causing a fatal road accident near Moscow in July that left 18 people
dead, has been extended for another three months, Harutyunian’s
daughter, Lilit Harutyunian, told Aysor.am.

`The ombudsman informed us about that. The case has not yet been sent
to court. I think this has to do with the New Year holidays,’ she
said.

14.12.2013, 15:47
Aysor.am

Armenian opposition initiative holds awareness march (PHOTOS)

December 14, 2013 | 16:59

YEREVAN. – Armenia’s opposition Pre-Parliament initiative on Saturday
commenced, from capital city Yerevan’s Liberty Square, its awareness
march devoted to the `Founding Parliament.’

About 30 to 40 initiative members, wearing yellow caps and holding
flags and signs, are participating in the march (PHOTOS).

The marchers informed that their objective is to form `the necessary
national resistance force for the removal of the anti-national and
criminal regime.’

To this end, the Pre-Parliament initiative is planning to hold similar
marches every week in order to inform and organize the people.

Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Dec 14 2013

Personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in -Office tells there
are grounds for optimism in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

14 December 2013 – 5:55pm

The personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in -Office, Andrzej
Kasprzyk, said today that there are grounds for optimism in the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

According to Trend, Kasprzyk explained that this and the meeting of
Azerbaijani and Armenian Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan,
in which the heads of state made it clear that they intend to step up
the pace of negotiations, and officials from both countries rated the
settlement process.

He said that Aliyev and Sargsyan had called on the OSCE to take
additional measures to strengthen the ceasefire and the establishment
of trust, so that the atmosphere of the negotiations could improve.
According to Kasprzyk, one such measure is the development of
humanitarian contacts between representatives of academia and public
intellectuals of the two countries. In addition, a mechanism to
investigate possible incidents on the front line is under development.

ITAR-TASS
December 8, 2013 Sunday 04:16 AM GMT+4

About 4,500 families in Armenia’s Gyumri live badly 25 years after Spitak quake

GYUMRI (Armenia) December 8

– A quarter of the century after a disastrous Spitak earthquake about
4,500 families, who lost their housing in the Armenian city of Gyumri
as a result of the earthquake, continue to live in tiny wooden and
metallic dwellings, which lack basic conveniences. This statistical
data was made public on Saturday during a visit in the Armenian city
by members of the Friendship Group with Armenia from the French
National Assembly lower house of parliament headed by Vice-President
of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Rene
Rouquet.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union many construction organisations
from different Soviet republics have gradually wrapped up their
activity in the natural disaster zone that resulted in a sharp decline
of housing rented in the area.

Along with housing construction, the unemployment remains the most
pressing problem in the districts affected in the calamity. “Over
total unemployment Gyumri turned in a zone of misery from the natural
disaster zone,” the newspaper Voice of Armenia reported on Saturday.
The earthquake has destroyed the industrial potential of the region
and then the country’s economy slumped.

On December 7, 1988, strong underground tremors measuring ten points
on the 12-point scale have destroyed at 11:41 local time (10:41Moscow
time) almost the whole northern part of the Caucasian republic for
half a minute. According to official reports, an earthquake hitting
the territory with the population of about one million people who have
made one third of republican residents claimed more than 25,000 lives,
left about 19,000 people disabled and left 530,000 people homeless.

The city of Spitak turned out to be in the epicentre of the earthquake
and was ruined to ashes. Along with Spitak and neighbouring villages
the natural disaster has destroyed 21 towns and settlements, 324
villages and has destroyed 80 percent of housing, social and
production facilities in the second largest Armenian city, Leninakan
(now it is named Gyumri). The earthquake has eliminated about 40
percent of industrial potential in the republic.

Yorkshire Post, UK
December 10, 2013 Tuesday

James Commey: Love was the key to a complex man in a complex land

PERHAPS the finest illustration of Nelson Mandela the man came during
his presidency. In 1995, he invited Percy Yutar for lunch. The
significance? Yutar was the man who prosecuted him in the infamous
Rivonia Trial of 1963. It was that trial that sent Mandela to prison
for 27 years.

As an Armenian Jew, Yutar had himself suffered anti-Semitism at the
hands of the Afrikaners. For that reason he remained for a while a
junior state prosecutor and was forbidden from joining the attorney
general’s office in Cape Town.

Now, as deputy attorney general of the Transvaal province, he was
eager to please his bosses at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria.

In cross-examination of the defendants, he was relentless and Mandela
was convicted. Yutar insisted on the death penalty. Mandela declared
that he was prepared to die for the ideal of equality. It was not to
be. Judge President Quartus de Wet found a technicality to deviate
from the recommended sentence of death.

Some say he did not want to make Mandela a martyr, but the judge knew
that the ANC leader did not deserve to die. He sentenced him to life
imprisonment. The loophole was that Mandela had been charged with
sabotage instead of high treason. The imponderable remains: what would
have happened to Mandela and his legacy if he had been hanged?

Back to Mandela. After his release from prison 27 years later, this
was not the time for winners and losers. He understood Yutar’s
position. After a kosher lunch he held his hands like lawyers do and
said: “You were only doing your job.” Mandela was the ultimate
peacemaker. And blessed are the peacemakers.

At his presidential inauguration in May 1994, his prison guard was
invited as a VIP guest. He subsequently had tea with Betsie Verwoerd,
the wife of the architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd.

In a world of political pettiness, and factionalism, he captured the
global imagination. And when he walked into a rugby stadium wearing
the Springbok rugby jersey of the captain at rugby union World Cup
final in 1995, the conversion of his arch-enemies was complete. They
chanted “Nelson, Nelson, Nelson”.

Mandela was an idealist, a romantic and a pragmatist all rolled into
one. And yet he simply wanted to be like everybody. He wanted no
personal glorification but to be judged by his ideals of freedom and
justice – a timeless universal ideal. He once said: “I don’t think
there is much history that can be said about me. I just want to be
remembered as part of that collective.”

He also said “what counts in life is not the mere fact that we have
lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that
will determine the significance of the life we lead”.

He had that elusive quality that is uncommon: an effusive generosity
of spirit. He was a father, lover, fighter, politician, peacemaker,
everyman.

That is why the majority of white South Africans embraced him – and
his changes – on his journey from uncompromising revolutionary to
unifier. They believed. He saved them from a prison house and it was
freedom. But whether it was justice is still being debated.

Prior to the first multi-racial elections in April 1994, there was
tension and extreme violence perpetrated by various formations, but
whites and blacks walked the streets of Johannesburg without
animosity. It is also to the credit of the black population that they
agreed to see beyond hatred and revenge. South Africa is a complex and
remarkable country.

In his latter years Mandela discussed with his son-in-law, Dr Kwame
Amuah, the prospect of death. Mandela said: “How do you write about
death when you have not experienced it? Rather write about love,
because it is something we all experience.” Love was the compass that
gave direction to his project.

Nelson Mandela is said by many to have been in the greatest figure of
the 20th century. As he now lies in state ahead of his funeral on
Sunday, the world – and South Africa in particular – cannot thank him
enough.

*James Commey is a writer and lawyer from South Africa.

Turkologist: Ahmet Davutoglu successfully performed his mission unlike
Edward Nalbandyan

by Ashot Safaryan
Saturday, December 14, 15:33

Ahmet Davutoglu has successfully performed his mission unlike Edward
Nalbandyan, Turkologist Artak Shakaryan told journalists on Saturday,
when asked to comment on the Turkish Foreign Minister’s Thursday visit
to Armenia.

“Davutoglu has hit the mark: he came, made a show and went away. He
just wanted to see how the world community would react to his step.
And what he saw was quite satisfactory: the whole world applauded him
and welcomed his ‘constructive’ efforts to start a dialogue with
Armenia. Davutoglu made it clear that Azerbaijan’s view is important
in the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement. Even though he never mentioned
Nagorno- Karabakh, he spoke a lot about regional stability and
security and this overshadowed Nalbandyan’s words about the
inadmissibility of preconditions in Armenian-Turkish relations. I
think Nalbandyan should have been more active and decisive in his
words,” Shakaryan said.

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