Author: Kalantarian Kevo

TURQUIE : ERDOGAN RELANCE L’EPREUVE DE FORCE FACE A DES MANIFESTANTS DETERMINES

Le Premier ministre turc Recep Tayyip Erdogan a relance dimanche
l’epreuve de force avec les manifestants qui reclament depuis dix
jours sa demission en appelant ses electeurs a leur “donner une lecon”
aux elections municipales de 2014.

Au lendemain d’une nouvelle journee de contestation qui a vu des
dizaines de milliers de personnes descendre dans les rues de plusieurs
grandes villes du pays, le chef du gouvernement a renoue avec sa
rhetorique offensive en qualifiant les protestataires de “terroristes”
ou de “vandales”, pour le plus grand plaisir de ses partisans.

“Il n’y a plus que sept mois jusqu’aux elections locales. Je veux que
vous donniez a ces gens une première lecon par des voies democratiques
dans les urnes”, a-t-il lance a son arrive a l’aeroport d’Adana (sud)
devant une claque de plusieurs milliers de personnes organisee par
son Parti de la justice et du developpement (AKP).

“Ils sont lâches au point d’insulter le Premier ministre de ce
pays”, a poursuivi M. Erdogan, en presentant a nouveau son parti
islamo-conservateur comme “le parti des 76 millions” d’habitants de
la Turquie.

Depuis le debut du mouvement, les manifestants reprochent au chef
du gouvernement, leur principale cible, sa derive autoritaire et sa
volonte d’islamiser le pays.

A Istanbul, Ankara, Adana (sud) ou Izmir (ouest), des dizaines de
milliers d’entre eux ont montre leur determination en se rassemblant
jusque tard dans la nuit de samedi a dimanche dans une ambiance
de fete.

La place Taksim d’Istanbul et son petit parc Gezi, dont la destruction
annoncee a lance la fronde le 31 mai, a enregistre samedi soir sa
plus forte affluence depuis le debut du mouvement. Ce bastion de la
contestation a meme pris des airs de stade de football grâce au soutien
de milliers de supporters des trois clubs de la ville, Besiktas,
Fenerbahce et Galatasaray, venus se meler aux protestataires et aux
touristes. “C’etait incroyable, tellement beau d’etre tous ensemble”,
a dit a l’AFP Aykut Kaya, un etudiant de 23 ans en repliant sa tente.

Buse Albay, une architecte de 25 ans, a elle promis de rester sur la
place “aussi longtemps qu’il faudra”, jusqu’a la demission de M.

Erdogan. “Les gens veulent leur liberte et ils le disent”, a-t-elle
ajoute. Des milliers de manifestants se sont egalement reunis a Izmir
dans la meme atmosphère de kermesse.

Epreuve de force

A l’inverse, de violents affrontements ont eclate samedi soir lorsque
la police est intervenue avec des canons et des gaz lacrymogènes
pour empecher une partie des quelque 10.000 manifestants rassembles
au centre-ville de marcher sur le Parlement. Selon les medias turcs,
des echauffourees ont egalement ete signalees a Adana (sud) a l’issue
d’une manifestation entre opposants et partisans du Premier ministre.

Ces incidents et la strategie de la confrontation a nouveau adoptee par
M. Erdogan dimanche a la faveur de son deplacement a Adana suscitent
questions et inquietudes sur la suite du mouvement et les risques
d’escalade entre les deux camps.

Le prix Nobel de litterature Orhan Pamuk, une voix respectee en
Turquie, a lui-meme confie son desarroi après plus d’une semaine
d’une contestation sans precedent depuis l’arrivee au pouvoir de
l’AKP en 2002. “Je suis inquiet car il n’y a toujours pas en vue de
signes d’un denouement pacifique”, a declare l’ecrivain lors d’une
conference a Rome, cite par la presse turque, “je comprends la facon
de protester des gens”.

Après son “show” de la mi-journee a Adana, identique a celui qu’il
avait dirige dans la nuit de jeudi a vendredi a Istanbul a son retour
d’un voyage au Maghreb, M. Erdogan doit rallier en fin de journee
la capitale Ankara, où de nouvelles manifestations de soutien sont
attendues.

L’AKP a d’ores et deja prevu de recidiver avec deux reunions publiques
de masse samedi prochain a Ankara et le lendemain a Istanbul,
officiellement pour lancer sa campagne pour les elections municipales
de l’an prochain. Une nouvelle occasion pour le Premier ministre de
repondre aux dizaines de milliers de Turcs qui le narguent, souvent
bière a la main, devant les cameras du monde entier.

La vague de contestation qui secoue depuis dix jours la Turquie a
affaibli son gouvernement, critique par des allies cle comme les
Etats-Unis ou l’Union europeenne pour la brutalite de la repression
policière.

Ces evenements sont egalement suivis de près dans les pays des
“printemps arabes”, notamment en Egypte et en Tunisie, où les
islamistes au pouvoir ont souvent vu le modèle turc de l’alliance
entre islam et democratie comme un exemple.

lundi 10 juin 2013, Stephane ©armenews.com

HRANT DINK FOUNDATION PRESS PUBLISHES COLLECTION OF ESSAYS

June 11, 2013 – 10:03 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – The collection of essays presented at the conference
“Social and Ecomic History of Diyarbakır and Region”, held in
Diyarbakır on November 11-13, 2011 by Hrant Dink Foundation, has
now been published in Turkish by Hrant Dink Foundation Press.

The book includes 24 essays on the region by researchers abroad and
in Turkey. Its importance is due to its contribution to the debates
about the peace process that Turkey goes through nowadays.

“Memory is returning to these lands. It is coming from a far, from
the period of nation-building, which is over a century away. Surely,
what has been deemed fit by the state for the inhabitants of these
lands during the process of nation-building, what the inhabitants
deemed fit for each other, the suffering, the collective violence,
every malign recollection that has been forgotten or worse, made to
forget, is returning now. But it is not just the malign memory that
is returning; the differences that these lands embraced, the wealth
that has been destroyed or ignored as a result of the nation-making
are also returning. Since decades, this country witnesses every day a
lot of information, existence and absence which is new but not really
new,” said Cengiz Aktar, professor of political science at Istanbul’s
Bahcesehir University.

POLLING STATION TO OPEN IN ARMENIA ON THRESHOLD OF IRANIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

15:29 ~U 11.06.13

A polling station will be opened in Armenia on the threshold of the
presidential election in Iran scheduled for June 14, Iranian Ambassador
to Armenia Mohammad Raiesi told journalists on Tuesday.

He noted that election frauds entail criminal responsibility in Iran.

Eight candidates intended to run for Iran’s presidency this year,
but one of them, Mohammad Reza Aref, has withdrawn his candidacy.

Iran’s incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cannot run for the
third term.

In response to Tert.am question about international monitoring of
the presidential election in Iran, Ambassador Mohammad Raiesi said
that, although not monitored at the international level, the Iranian
elections will receive wide media coverage. Armenian journalists can
follow the election process as well.

Armenian News – Tert.am

IRAN READY TO ASSIST ARMENIA ON GAS MATTERS – AMBASSADOR

June 11, 2013 | 14:49

YEREVAN. – Iran is ready to assist Armenia on matters of gas supply as
much as it can, Ambassador Mohammad Raiesi told reporters on Tuesday.

The Iranian diplomat stressed it is for Armenian side to decide
whether to use Iranian gas as an alternative to Russian.

At the same time, he noted that the Armenian-Iranian agreement on the
construction of a gas pipeline and gas supply was made on the basis
of gas in exchange for electricity principle.

In this regard, Raiesi said Iran has no special demand in electricity
and is exporting power itself. The main purpose of the above mentioned
agreement was to assist the Armenian side.

“Iran is committed to this agreement,” he added.

News from Armenia – NEWS.am

ZARUHI POSTANJYAN JOINED PROTESTING LAWYERS

12:36 PM | TODAY | POLITICS

Armenia’s Constitutional Court has postponed the hearing of the suit
filed by Heritage Party leader Raffi Hovannisian. CC member Felix
Tokhyan asked to postpone the discussion of the case for two weeks,
stressing the need to study the additional documents and international
experience.

Former presidential candidate Raffi Hovannisian applied to the
Constitutional Court to dispute the constitutionality of Articles 18
(pt. 5) and 26 (pt. 2) of the Armenian Electoral Code. The National
Assembly is involved in the hearing as the defendant.

Lawyer Karen Mejlumyan and MP Zaruhi Postanjyan, a lawyer by
background, represent Hovannisian’s interests in court.

Zaruhi Postanjyan today refused to answer questions on the case
saying she had joined the move of lawyers protesting against the
‘arbitrariness’ of the Court of Cassation.

The next court hearing is slated for June 16.

, Turkey
June 9 2013

Turkish FM wants Iran explanation over comments on Armenians

Turkish FM Davutoglu said he spoke with Iranian FM regarding Iranian
Vice President Baghaei’s statements on Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
time.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he spoke with Iranian
foreign minister regarding Iranian Vice President Hamid Baghaei’s
statements on Armenians in the Ottoman Empire period.

When a reporter said, “at a conference in Tehran, Baghaei claimed that
a genocide was committed against Armenians during the rule of Ottoman
Empire,” Davutoglu said, “our ambassador in Tehran held talks with
Iranian foreign ministry which made a statement on the matter, as you
know.”

Davutoglu said he has just spoke with Iranian foreign minister
(Manuchehr Motaki) and asked for an explanation.

“Iranian foreign minister told me that the statement (of Baghaei) was
not like as it was published in media. He said the conference (in
Tehran) was about the World War II and he (vice president) made a
reference regarding the World War I. He said Iran did not change its
position on the matter. I told him that Iranian vice president should
make a statement,” he said.

Davutoglu said Iranian foreign minister told him that vice president
would make a statement on the issue.

Care centers for mental patients to open in Armenia

19:48 – 09.06.13

The Armenian government has approved an NGO proposal for opening
special care institutions for mental patients.

In response to a bid submitted by the Helsinki Association’s Vanadzor
Office, the executive has already ok’ed a relevant concept which
envisages the opening of a round-the-clock care house and a day center
for individuals with mental problems. It is planned to purchase at
least 10 apartments and one private house to offer a shelter to the
beneficiaries, according to a statement on the Association’s website.

Preliminary estimates suggest that that the institutions will house
around300 beneficiaries.

Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Artem Asatryan has told the
representatives of the organization that people with mental
impairments account for 10.9% of the registered individuals with
disabilities in Armenia.

As for psychiatric patients in general, their total number is 45,000.

One specialized boarding house and three specialized orphanages
operate in Armenia to offer aid to the above-mentioned group of
people. The Vardenis Psychoneurologic Boarding House (Gegharkunik
region) is the only institution across the country to offer
round-the-clock care to lonely elderly patients with chronic
disorders. Some 450 beneficiaries receive in-patient care at the
hospital now; fifty more are said to be on the enrollment list, but
most stay in families because of the absence of a corresponding
institution.

Referring to figures provided by Ministry specialists, Asatryan said
that the number of mental patients needing permanent care increases by
every year.

Specialists find that the elderly are more prone to psychiatric
diseases, with their social status, general health condition, feeling
of loneliness and psychological complexes being contributory factors.
The risk group includes the disadvantaged, particularly the homeless,
who spend the nights in streets, deprived of foods and minimal living
standards.

Armenian News – Tert.am

DIPLOMATIE ARMENIENNE
Le nouvel Ambassadeur d’Arménie au Saint Siège, reçu par le Pape
François au Vatican

Le 7 juin l’Ambassadeur d’Arménie au Saint Siège, S.E. Mikaël
Minassian a présenté ses lettres de créance au Pape François au
Vatican. Le diplomate arménien -gendre du président Serge Sarkissian-
était accompagné de son épouse. Lors de l’entretien entre
l’Ambassadeur Mikaël Minassian et le Pape François, il fut rappelé les
relations historiques, culturelles et religieuses entre l’Arménie et
le Saint Siège.

Le nouvel Ambassadeur d’Arménie -le premier nommé par Erévan- a
affirmé sa volonté de développer les relations entre Erévan et le
Vatican dans de nombreux domaines dont la culture et le patrimoine
chrétien de l’Arménie. Il a également transmis au Pape François la
lettre du Catholicos Karékine II d’Etchmiadzine. L’Ambassadeur
arménien a également remercié le Pape François pour sa reconnaissance
du génocide arménien. Le diplomate arménien a remis au souverain
pontife une invitation de visite en Arménie adressée par le président
Serge Sarkissian. Le Pape François a confié qu’il se rendra en Arménie
dès que l’occasion se présentera. Après cette entrevue avec le Pape,
le nouvel Ambassadeur d’Arménie a rencontré le Secrétaire d’Etat du
Vatican, le cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Ce dernier lui a demandé de
remercier le président arménien d’avoir procédé à l’ouverture d’une
Ambassade d’Arménie au Saint Siège. De son côté il a affirmé que le
Vatican envisage l’ouverture d’une représentation en Arménie.

Krikor Amirzayan

dimanche 9 juin 2013,
Krikor Amirzayan ©armenews.com

Specialists making calculations to understand whether transport tariff
will grow or not

15:15 – 08.06.13

With the instruction of the Yerevan Municipality specialists are
making calculations to understand whether gas tariff will cause raise
of transport tariff or not, mayor Taron Margaryan told the reporters
on Saturday.

`Specialists are still studying the issue. After the calculations we
will come up with a statement,’ he said.

Asked whether the municipality will be able to assume the burden and
subsidize it with the government’s example, Taron Margaryan said, `The
municipality has always been ready to do everything for Yerevan
residents and especially for the insecure families. Our budget
envisages assistance to the people in different areas, like for
instance in the kinder-garten issue. Today about 30,000 children are
visiting kinder-gartens for free, which means that 30,000 families
receive assistance from the Yerevan budget with the decision of the
City Council.’

He also said the kinder-gartens have issues to be solved with a number
of children not being able to attend them.

`Years ago kinder-gartens in some administrative districts closed.
Steps are being undertaken to solve the issue,’ he said.

The New York Times
June 8, 2013 Saturday

In Istanbul’s Heart, Leader’s Obsession, Perhaps Achilles’ Heel

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: June 7, 2013

ISTANBUL – On a normal day, Taksim Square is a mess of buses and
crowds, a tangle of plazas, streets, shops and taxi horns. Turkey’s
prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is determined to clean it up and
make it into a pedestrian zone, with a new mall, mosque and tunnels
for traffic to move underground.

The outrage in response has filled the square with noisy, angry,
determined protesters. At midday, the muezzin’s call to prayer now
mixes with the chants of union workers and bullhorn speeches from the
Anti-Capitalist Muslims. At night, drummers and singers agitate the
throngs until dawn.

After Tahrir Square in Egypt and Zuccotti Park in New York, Taksim is
the latest reminder of the power of public space. The square has
become an arena for clashing worldviews: an unyielding leader’s
top-down, neo-Ottoman, conservative vision of the nation as a regional
power versus a bottom-up, pluralist, disordered, primarily young, less
Islamist vision of the country as a modern democracy.

`Taksim is where everybody expresses freely their happiness, sorrow,
their political and social views,’ said Esin, 41, in a head scarf,
sitting with relatives on a bench watching the protest in the square.
She declined to give her surname, fearing disapproval from
conservative neighbors. `The government wants to sanitize this place,
without consulting the people.’

So public space, even a modest and chaotic swath of it like Taksim,
again reveals itself as fundamentally more powerful than social media,
which produce virtual communities. Revolutions happen in the flesh. In
Taksim, strangers have discovered one another, their common concerns
and collective voice. The power of bodies coming together, at least
for the moment, has produced a democratic moment, and given the
leadership a dangerous political crisis.

`We have found ourselves,’ is how Omer Kanipak, a 41-year-old Turkish
architect, put it to me, about the diverse gathering at Gezi Park on
the north end of Taksim, where the crowds are concentrated in tent
encampments and other makeshift architecture after Mr. Erdogan’s
government ordered bulldozers to make way for the mall.

And there’s the hitch. The prime minister has emerged as the strongest
leader Turkey has had since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the republic
– but he remains not much of an architect or urban planner. Like other
longtime rulers, he has assumed the mantle of designer in chief,
fiddling over details for giant mosques, planning a massive bridge and
canal, devising gated communities in the name of civic renewal and
economic development. The goal is a scripted public realm. Taksim, the
lively heart of modern Istanbul, has become Mr. Erdogan’s obsession,
and perhaps his Achilles’ heel.

And it’s no wonder. Taksim’s very urban fabric – fluid, irregular,
open and unpredictable – reflects the area’s historic identity as the
heart of modern, multicultural Turkey. This was where poor European
immigrants settled during the 19th century. It was a honky-tonk
quarter into the 1980s, a haven to gays and lesbians, a locus of
nightclubs, foreign movie palaces and French-style covered arcades.
Gravestones from an Armenian cemetery at Taksim demolished in 1939
were used to construct stairs at Gezi Park, a republican-era project
by the French planner Henri Prost that is like the jumble of high-rise
hotels, traffic circles and the now-shuttered opera house on the
square, named after Ataturk. It is a symbol of modernity.

The prime minister’s vision of a big pedestrian plaza, with buried
traffic, is intended to smooth out the square – to remake it into a
neo-Ottoman theme park. Mr. Erdogan has lately backed away from
installing a mall in the faux Ottoman barracks that will go where Gezi
is now. But he intends to raze a poor neighborhood nearby called
Tarlabasi and build high-end condominiums. Yet another of his projects
envisions a hygienic parade ground on the southern outskirts of the
city, designed for mass gatherings as if to quarantine protests: the
anti-Taksim. The real Taksim is an unruly commons in the middle of the
city. Mr. Erdogan has already demolished a beloved cinema and old
chocolate pudding shop on Istiklal (Independence) Avenue, the main
street and neighborhood backbone into Taksim.

This is why it has come as little surprise to many Turks that Gezi
Park was the last straw. `We need free places,’ Pelin Tan, a
sociologist and protester, explained.

`Public space equals an urban, cosmopolitan identity,’ is how Gokhan
Karakus, an architecture critic here, phrased it. `That’s exactly what
the prime minister doesn’t like. Turkish people who have taken over
Gezi Park in protest feel it is truly theirs, not something awarded to
them by their leaders, so in that sense the move to destroy it has
backfired on him.’

Maybe. Mr. Erdogan has doubled down on demolishing the park, saying he
regretted only that police brutality escalated the protests. `These
actions that turned into vandalism and lawlessness must stop
immediately,’ he warned, as thousands of his supporters cheered him.
Gezi has meanwhile evolved into a festive village with tent
settlements, general stores distributing free food and clothing, a day
care center, a library and an infirmary, even a veterinary clinic and
community garden, nasturtiums where the bulldozers ripped out the
first trees. The architecture is tactical urbanism: bare-bones and
opportunistic, tin lean-tos, and spare concrete bollards and crates
used to make picnic tables. The park has spawned its own pop-up
economy as well, street vendors hawking Turkish meatballs, vinegar
(for the tear gas) and Guy Fawkes masks.

A poll published in the Hurriyet Daily News on Thursday revealed that
70 percent of the protesters insisted they did not `feel close’ to any
political party. Politics in the 21st century is about private
freedoms and public space. Esin, watching the protest in the square,
added that her conservative parents think Mr. Erdogan goes too far by
banning alcohol and scolding couples for kissing on subways.

Near the statue of Ataturk in the middle of Taksim Square, now
festooned with protesters’ banners and flags, I found a 24-year-old
photography student who identified herself as Kader, from northern
Turkey. `I come to hang out here because there are all kinds of people
and it’s fun,’ she told me. As she spoke, a Turkish couple, arm in
arm, the woman in head scarf, passed by. `The prime minister is
treating the place as his private property,’ Kader wanted to make
clear.

Mr. Erdogan’s plan for removing buses and taxis and installing a
single, vast pedestrian zone at Taksim, stripped of its gritty and
unpredictable energy, turned into a polite shopping area, will sap the
square of its pedestrian vitality, not make it pedestrian-friendlier.
After several days with few cars or buses getting into Taksim because
of the barricades, the illogic of Mr. Erdogan’s tunnel is obvious.
There has been no great traffic crisis.

`We know from the 1960s that pedestrianizing everything doesn’t work,’
agreed Hashim Sarkis, who teaches architecture and urbanism at
Harvard. `Managing the balance is better. There is much to be said for
loose, indeterminate places like Taksim. Its changeability is its
strength, which is the threat perceived by authorities. It’s too loose
and open.’

I hailed a taxi to check out the Dolmabahce Tunnel, another of Mr.
Erdogan’s renewal projects, which is akin to the tunnel now being
devised under Taksim, where people would descend for buses and taxis.
It was no place for pedestrians to go. My driver, Erdal Bas, 42,
volunteered that it had also done nothing to reduce traffic jams. `It
just adds another road into them,’ he said.

We drove on to Sulukule, a neighborhood hard by the ancient city
walls, where the Roma have lived for more than a thousand years. Mr.
Erdogan’s government forced many of them out a few years ago to clear
land for a condo complex, which opens shortly. I found what is left of
the old streets alive with families and children playing. The new
buildings next to them, sterile three- and four-story concrete, glass
and wood townhouses with duplex and triplex apartments, had all the
charm of a suburban office park.

Back at Gezi, a placard quotes an old poem by Nazim Hikmet:

I am a walnut tree in Gulhane Park

neither you are aware of this, nor the police.

Mr. Kanipak, the architect, told me that the threat of Mr. Erdogan’s
architectural intervention at Taksim `has for the first time helped to
break down the walls of fear about opposing an autocratic state.’ That
said, tensions are swiftly rising after Mr. Erdogan’s latest speeches.

The conflict over public space is always about control versus freedom,
segregation versus diversity. What’s at stake is more than a square.

It’s the soul of a nation.

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