Author: Kalantarian Kevo

GERMANY AND NETHERLANDS SUSPENDED TURKEY’S EU MEMBERSHIP TALKS

12:51, 19 June, 2013

YEREVAN, JUNE 19, ARMENPRESS: Germany and the Netherlands put a
veto on the Turkey’s EU membership talks after the government’s
mishandling of the protests linked to the demolition of the Gezi Park
in the Taksim Square of Istanbul. The European countries suspended
the Turkey’s membership talks, scheduled to resume on June 26. As
reported by Armenpress, this was published by the Dogan News Agency,
stating that the EU negotiations with Turkey were intended to be held
on June 19 at the European Union Permanent Representatives Committee.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party,
the Christian Social Union (CSU), headed by the Chancellor of Germany
Angela Merkel, have long opposed the Turkey’s EU membership. It was
noted: “We reject full membership for Turkey, because the country
does not meet the criteria for joining the EU”.

In the interview given to the German RTL Public Television,
the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel strictly criticized the
repressions carried out by the police towards the protesters in the
Turkey’s Gezi Park.

The disorders in Turkey began when on May 28 2013 the plans of
replacing Taksim Gezi Park with a reconstruction of the historic Taksim
Military Barracks (demolished in 1940) with the possibility of housing
a shopping mall became known. The protests developed into riots when
a group occupying the park was attacked by police. The subjects of
the protests have since broadened beyond the development of Taksim
Gezi Park, developing into wider anti-government demonstrations. The
protests have also spread to other cities in Turkey, and protests have
been seen in other countries with significant Turkish communities. On
May 31 2013, police suppressed the protesters with tear gas, arrested
at least 60 people and injured hundreds. The police action received
wide attention online. 5 men died in the clashes between the police
and the protesters, more than 7500 people were injured and hundreds
of people were arrested.

The Turkish authorities were appealed by the White House, the UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the EU foreign policy commissioner
Catherine Ashton, the US Vice President Joe Biden and the President
of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to settle the issue via
a dialogue.

ARMENIAN USERS OF SOCIAL NETWORKS SHOULD KEEP INTERNET SECURITY IN LIMELIGHT: EXPERT

YEREVAN, June 19./ARKA/. The Armenian users of social networks
should not forget about Internet security, said Samvel Martirosyan,
information security expert and popular blogger in Armenia.

“They should always remember that the social networks are not a kitchen
where any conversation stays locked,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

He said one should be always aware that some individuals or
intelligence services can record their telephone conversations and
get access to their personal data.

“In reference to this, I recommend to people to enter minimum of
personal data into these networks, not to forward to the other users
some private information, pictures and videos,” he added.

Martirosyan also commented on the cases when hackers attack the
accounts of the users who shop online.

“It is not rare when Internet shops require credit card data,
however, after the transaction is made, the accounts of the users
may be hacked. Thus, choosing online shopping, users should always
be on alert,” the expert said and added free wi-fi zones can appear
as most dangerous for security in this context.

According to some experts, there were nearly 1.4 million Internet
users in Armenia in February. Some average of 777, 186 users visited
Odnoklassniki social network on a daily basis in February, which was
by 15.3 % higher fr om a year earlier. Armenian users account for 2%
of Odnoklassniki’s traffic.

According to Live Internet, less than 80,000 people
visit Vkontakte network, wh ereas 150,000 users log
in Facebook daily in Armenia. -0- – See more at:

ASHOT VARDEVANYAN: ARMENIA IS NOT POOR IN WATER RESOURCES, BUT IT SPENDS TOO MUCH WATER

12:53 19/06/2013 ” TOPIC OF THE DAY

25 percent of Armenian territory faces the danger of desertification,
while 81 percent is subject to desertification, Ashot Vardevanyan,
coordinator of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification,
told today’s news conference.

The speaker noted that some measures are being taken to tackle this
problem; for instance, reservoirs and drainage systems are being
restored.

“I think it is necessary to build small and medium sized reservoirs,”
he said.

According to Vardevanyan, Armenia is not poor in water resources,
but it spends too much water.

“Soon, wars will be waged not only for lands but also for water. Water
is an expensive resource,” he said, urging to economize water
resources.

Source: Panorama.am

“THE EYEWITNESS”: PAIN FOR KIDNAPPED MOTHER HAS NEVER ABANDONED 100-YEAR OLD AREVALUYS AMALYAN

11:08, 18 June, 2013

The Armenian Genocide initiated in the Ottoman Empire during the
World War I in the beginning of the previous century is one of the
biggest crimes against humanity. Advancing the 100th anniversary of
the Armenian Genocide the new project introduced by
“Armenpress” news agency is dedicated to the story of the
eyewitnesses and survivors of the calamity to prove the world one
more time that our demand for the recognition of the Armenian
Genocide is fair and justified. This time the project is dedicated to
the story of 100-year old Arevaluys Amalyan from Arabkir. In her
memories the Armenian Genocide and loss of her mother are
directly linked with each other.

YEREVAN, JUNE 18, ARMENPRESS. 100-year old Arevaluys Amalyan is not
fond of recalling 1915 and her birthplace Arabkir. The
eyewitness has her reasons not to respond questions regarding the
Armenian Genocide and the Turks. “The Turks murdered
Arevaluys’s father in 1915 and took her mother with them on one
condition – that thus they would spare her family. She survived
along with her brother, grandfather, aunts and uncles, but her
mother, who was a very beautiful woman, had to marry a Turk,” 
Arevaluys Amalyan’s daughter in law – Varduhi Grigoryan stated.

The kidnapping of the Mother enabled the family a chance to stay in
Arabkir until 1926. After they moved to Batumi and then reached
Yerevan on train. Here they received arable land and settled in
Armenia permanently. Few years later Arevaluys married a blacksmith
called Sargis, who was also from Arabkir. Sargis was 6 years old
during the Genocide. Arevaluys’s elder son Levik Amalyan told us: “My
father also was a person remarkable for longevity. He passed away at
the age of 99. He used to tell us about the atrocities of the Turks.

He
told us how the Turks lined up 300 Armenian on the bank of the
Euphrates River and in order to save bullets killed them by hitting
them
with canes, thus throwing them into the water.”

Years passed, and Arevaluys’s mother – Vergine, who was but 25 years
old, when the Turks kidnapped her, managed to find her son, who
was in Syria in 1980s, notwithstanding Arevaluys refused to see her
mother…

Among other things Varduhi stated: “Vergine said that she did not
want to remain a Turk for life, she mentioned that she wanted to die
as
an Armenian. Vergine met her son in Aleppo, but Arevaluys had no wish
to see her mother, as she did not forgive her marriage with a Turk
even at the expanse of their lives.”

In addition she said that even the media referred to the fatal
meeting of the mother with her son. The 117-year old woman, who was
forced to marry a Turk and give birth to four children, managed to
preserve her Armenian identity to some extent.

Today Arevaluys Amalyan is surrounded with four children. She has two
sons and two daughters. Her elder daughter is 82-years old. The
100-old woman from Arabkir has 67 grandsons, great grandsons, and
great great grandsons. 

(THE FULL VERSION OF THE ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE IN ARMENIAN)

r-has-never-abandoned-100-year-old-arevaluys-amalyan.html

Article by Tatevik Grigoryan
Photos by Samvel Berkibekyan

NEW FACTS ABOUT THE LIFE OF ACTING GOVERNOR OF SYUNIK ARA DOLUNTS

June 17 2013

The former mayor of Goris Samvel Harutyunyan told Aravot.am about the
activity of Acting Governor of Syunik Ara Dolunts (in the photograph).

“Twenty years ago, among many people, I was participated in Deputy
Executive Committee of District Council of Goris Ara Dolunts’ father’s
funeral. In the presence of 200 people gathered Ara made a stunning
announcement that his immediate supervisor, the Chairman of the
Executive Committee of District Council Robert Aleksanyan have had
a role in his life which was not less than the role of his own father.

Ara said as long as Robert Armeniakich is alive he is not going
to admit that he is an orphan. Several months after when I had to
disclaim my responsibilities of Chairman of the Executive Committee
and of District Council and announced about it, before making the
statement I referred to Robert Alexanyan warning that he is going to
have a severe employment end. I told him that the officials appointed
by him will soon go against him, first and foremost, his deputies,
I meant especially Dolunts. A year after my prediction came true. Ara
Dolunts, the deputy of Robert Aleksanyan, first signed underneath the
dismissal claim of Aleksanyan who appointed him to that post. And this
is the perception of aradoluntsyan moralality”,- told Mr. Harutyunyan.

He said that A. Dolunts did it by the assignment of Surik Khachatryan.

“They have to get rid of Robert Aleksanyan so that not only Goris,
but the whole region would obey Surik Khachatryan. He was to wholly
take the power of the region and make his property. Ara Dolunts
contributed to all this. Since then, for 18 years, Ara, subjected to
Surik Khachatryan, together with him authored numerous illegal acts,
owning and abusing state property. Three years ago the President of
Chamber of Control issued the results of the audit carried out in
the Syunik Governor’s Office as to flagrant abuses committed by the
administration of Syunik, about the waste of financial resources. The
First Deputy Governor Ara Dolunts was not apart from it. On March
2004, when Surik Khachatryan was appointed a Governor, he appointed
Dolunts as the First Deputy. By the leadership of Surik Khachatryan
and Governor’s Office, “Syunik” Charity Foundation and “Tigran and
Trdat” company owned by his family conducted millions of dollars of
abuse and appropriations, and Ara Dolunts has been one of the active
participants”. According to information provided by Mr. Harutyunyan,
at the demand of Surik Khachatryan, governmental and non-governmental
organizations, individuals had transferred millions of dollars to
“Syunik” foundation. “And significant part of it was plundered
and robbed. The majority of dozens of objects of Surik Khachatryan
are formulated in the name of given company. There is a workshop
manufacturing euro-doors and windows in plundered and privatized
malls in Goris, and it turns out that, in the past ten years, during
the construction and repair of state facilities, schools, health and
houses of culture, the procurements were made right from aforesaid
workshop with higher than the market price. It turned out that just
this company was almost the winner of all tenders”. Arpine SIMONYAN
P.S. Henaran.am has published news that the acting Governor of Syunik
Ara Dolunts has initiated a signature gathering campaign in protection
of the former Governor Surik Khachatryan. The Acting Governor has
gathered the elite of Goris: the intellectuals, teachers, artists,
doctors and also village mayors and explained that Khachaturian’s
salvation depends of their signature gathering.

Read more at:

© 1998 – 2013 Aravot – News from Armenia

TURKEY’S FALSE NOSTALGIA

Op-Ed Contributor

By EDHEM ELDEM

Published: June 16, 2013

ISTANBUL – THE demonstrators who have filled the streets of Istanbul
and other Turkish cities for nearly three weeks complain that Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known
as the A.K.P., has adopted an increasingly authoritarian attitude that
threatens basic freedoms. They also resent his tendency to meddle in
the personal lives of citizens – by condemning abortion or trying to
control the sale and consumption of alcohol.

But Mr. Erdogan isn’t the first Turkish leader to have flirted with
authoritarianism and social engineering. This is important to remember,
since many of his opponents tend to hark back to a nostalgic past,
best illustrated by the profusion of Turkish flags and images of the
republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Before claiming that Mr. Erdogan’s moves can be countered by returning
to the foundations of the secular republic, we should recall that
Turkey was not a democracy until 1950; that it was ruled consecutively
from 1923 to 1946 by two unchallenged leaders, Ataturk and Ismet
Inonu, each invested with dictatorial powers; and that its democracy
was “interrupted” three times by military coups or interventions, in
1960, 1971 and 1980, not to mention a failed one in 1997. Moreover,
Turkish “secularism” often marginalized and oppressed those who openly
displayed their beliefs; head-scarf-wearing women were banned from
universities, and few protections were given to religious minorities.

Turkey’s past has little to offer in terms of democratic inspiration.

Ironically, there is hardly any difference between the nostalgia for
Ataturk-era secularism and the A.K.P.’s glorification of the Ottoman
imperial past. Both rest on the reinvention of an imagined golden age –
the former with a secularist emphasis, and the latter with a focus on
Islamic identity. And both look back fondly on authoritarian regimes,
which makes them all the less credible as political models for a
democratic present and future.

The current protest movement isn’t about the past; it is about
today and tomorrow. It started because a new generation wanted to
defend Gezi Park, a public green space, against the violent, abusive
manner in which the government sought to sacrifice it to the gods of
neo-liberalism and neo-Ottomanism with a plan to build a replica of
Ottoman barracks, a shopping mall and apartments.

The real challenge for the protesters, therefore, is to ensure that
this movement is not hijacked by a Kemalist backlash that seeks to
reduce Turkey’s complex social problems to a simplistic dichotomy
between Islam and secularism.

What Mr. Erdogan is currently undermining and destroying isn’t an
imagined golden age of a secular and democratic Turkey, which never
really existed, but rather the “etat de grâce” that followed his
party’s first electoral victory in 2002. For five or six years, the
A.K.P. used democracy as its only defense against the authoritarian
ways of the old guard – the coalition formed by the secular political
parties and the army, long considered the guarantor of secularism.

It is disturbing that Mr. Erdogan, after years of successfully fighting
the legacy of military control, has now chosen to revive precisely
the same methods and strategies that characterized his predecessors’
rule. Banking on the combined power of religion and nationalism in
a country whose population is known for its conservative attitudes
on both counts, he is seeking to do with the help of the police what
previous governments did with the help of the army.

Just as it seemed that the protesters had sealed their victory and
forced the government to recognize their legitimacy, another brutal
police crackdown began on Saturday evening. To make matters worse, Mr.

Erdogan is now inciting and mobilizing his own supporters in a
dangerous game of intimidation and escalation. Unless moderates in
his own party abandon their unquestioning submission to his leadership
and speak out, the situation could deteriorate further.

Turkey has come to a point where the government, setting aside timid
attempts at conciliation, seems intent on waging all-out war against
any opposition to its policies. A crisis that could have been managed
through a democratic process has now escalated to a frightening level
of polarization and violence.

A.K.P. leaders need to understand that true secular democracy is the
only viable way to guarantee the rights and freedoms of all citizens,
including Muslims. And Mr. Erdogan’s opponents must grasp that true
secularism, contrary to its earlier Kemalist incarnation, requires
that the principles of democracy be applied to all members of society.

Unfortunately, the new egalitarian discourses rising from Gezi Park
risk being drowned out in the clamor of an outdated political struggle.

Edhem Eldem is a professor of history at Bogazici University.

BAKO SAHAKYAN RECEIVED YURI PIROUMYAN, GRANDSON OF FAMOUS ARMENIAN GENERAL, HERO OF THE SARDARAPAT BATTLE DANIEL BEK-PIROUMYAN

18-06-2013 12:08:10 | |

On 17 June Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan received Yuri
Piroumyan, grandson of famous Armenian general, hero of the Sardarapat
battle Daniel Bek-Piroumyan.

President Sahakyan welcomed Yuri Piroumyan in his ancestor’s land,
highlighting the necessity of maintaining firm ties with the homeland.

The Head of the State rated high the work dedicated to his heroic
grandfather, considering it demanded from historical and political
viewpoints as well as within the context of military-patriotic
upbringing.

CENTRAL INFORMATION DEPARTMENT OF THE OFFICE OF THE ARTSAKH REPUBLIC
PRESIDENT

News from Armenia and Diaspora – Noyan Tapan – See more at:

POLICE STILL HAVEN’T CHARGED FORMER MAYOR SIX MONTHS AFTER HETQ BROKE STORY ON FINANCIAL SHENANIGANS
Larisa Paremuzyan

A criminal case looking into charges that a former mayor of the village
of Shnogh ripped off taxpayers has languished in the investigations
unit of the Alaverdi Police Department for the past six months.

Hetq broke the story back in December in an article entitled “Taxpayer
Rip-Off: Former Shnogh Mayor Was a Shrewd Wheeler-Dealer”.

Hetq revealed that former Shnogh Village Mayor Haykaz Kochinyan was
paying 1.2 million AMD ($3,000) every year from 2007 to 2011 out of
the community budget in gas expenses for a car that didn’t run and that
was parked in the mayor’s outside garage for the years in question.

According to unit head Edward Karapetyan, the case is still in the
preliminary stage and that Kochinyan has yet to be charged with
any crimes.

Karapetyan refused to offer any details on the case given its ongoing
nature.

The current Mayor of Shnogh Hovik Sahakyan told Hetq that no on-site
investigation into the matter has taken place in the village and that
the municipality hasn’t been recognized as a “injured” party.

Mayor Sahakyan says that it’s amazing that the police haven’t charged
Kochinyan even though they have confiscated a number of pertinent
documents relating to the matter.

HAYKAKAN ZHAMANAK: AUTHORITIES TRYING TO RECONCILE BUDAGHYAN WITH KHACHATRYAN

12:33 18/06/2013 ” DAILY PRESS

Citing its sources, Haykakan Zhamanak writes that the authorities
are trying to reconcile the Budaghyan family with former governor of
Syunik province Suren Khachatryan.

“But for this moment, the only thing Budaghyan wishes is revenge,”
the paper says.

The paper adds that colonel Artak Budaghyan, who was wounded in the
exchange of fire near the former governor’s house, has been told of
his brother’s death.

Source: Panorama.am

WILL GOVERNMENT GIVE ITS STAKE IN ARG?

Yesterday the minister of energy and natural resources Armen
Movsisyan met with the head of Gazprom Alexey Miller at the company’s
headquarters, the official website of Gazprom informed.

The sides discussed key issues relating to Armenian-Russian cooperation
in the gas sector, including Gazprom’s participation in energy projects
in Armenia.

The gas bills of households were discussed. They also discussed
Gazprom’s stake in ARG, namely increasing it up to 100%.

Currently Gazprom’s stake at ARG is 80%.

09:56 18/06/2013 Story from Lragir.am News: