Author: Kalantarian Kevo

ELECTIONS CONDUCTED IN ARMENIA NEVER CORRESPONDED TO INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS – ARMENIAN HELSINKI COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN

TERT.AM
12:53 ~U 30.01.13

Election is not only the voting process and in case of Armenia it
has never been conducted in accordance with international standards,
chairman of Armenian Helsinki Committee Avetik Ishkhanyan (first
from left) said at the public hearing today dedicated to the upcoming
presidential election.

The discussion has been convened by Eastern Partnership civil
society forum~Rs Armenia~Rs National platform and Partnership for
Open Society initiative.

~SCompetition has always been during each presidential election
but every time after rigged elections the post-electoral situation
in Armenia was hard and rather dramatic,~T he said, stressing that
change of power in Armenia is being tied with a person.

The regular start to the situation with the upcoming presidential
election was given by the May 2012 parliamentary polls.

~SNow the Prosperous Armenia party considers itself an alternative
and till now I do not have any explanation to it and it just remains
to make conclusions why other three parliamentary forces except the
Republican party refused to participate in the presidential poll. It
is very strange,~T he said, adding that these elections differ from
previous one with the circumstance that we are going not to polls
but to voting.

“HRAPARAK”: VARDAN GHUKASYAN’S SHADOW STILL HAUNTS SAMVEL BALASANYAN

2013-01-30 10:37:33

“The former mayor ofGyumri, Vardanik’s, Vardan Ghukasyan’s shadow
still haunts Gyumri mayor Samvel Balasanyan,” writes the newspaper
“Hraparak.” Recently, a story-anecdote has beeen spread in the city.

One of the heads of departments of Municipality walked into the
office and asked Balasanyan: “And are we going to celebrate Vardanants
holiday?. They say Balasanyan protested and shouted: “Do not say that
name any more.”

The newspaper notes that Vardanants holiday this year will be
celebrated on February 7.

WHERE ARE ARMENIA’S OLIGARCHS? – NEWSPAPER

NEWS.AM
January 30, 2013 | 08:31

YEREVAN. – This year’s presidential election in Armenia differs from
the previous one also in the sense that, in the previous voting, the
task of securing votes to the candidate of the authorities was placed,
first and foremost, upon the MPs that were elected into parliament
by way of majority election; and, as it is known, these MPs had a
criminal-oligarchic track-record, Chorrord Inknishkhanutyun (CI)
daily reports.

“In this election campaign, however, [the ruling Republican Party
candidate, incumbent President] Serzh Sargsyan’s team has intentionally
isolated the oligarchs, wishing to create the illusion that, as if,
the criminal and the oligarchy are decoupled from the working regime.

So, according to CI’s information, the instructions to secure votes
[for Sargsyan] outside [capital city] Yerevan are [now] handed down
to the regional governors, mayors, [and] village prefects; that is to
say, to the officials that hold office in the state apparatus. And
this means, now, they will rig [the presidential election] with
‘lawful procedures,’ too,” Chorrord Inknishkhanutyun writes.

A ISTANBUL, LE TOURISME DE LA MOUSTACHE BAT SON PLEIN
Stephane

armenews.com
mercredi 30 janvier 2013

On connaissait les bains turcs, le cafe et les fameux “delices”
sucres. La moustache est desormais en passe de les rejoindre au
rang des specialites mondialement reconnues de la Turquie, où de
plus en plus d’hommes en mal de poils viennent se faire greffer les
respectueuses bacchantes dignes de leur rang.

Si elle disparaît a l’ouest, la moustache reste un attribut masculin
très en vogue en Turquie et au Moyen-Orient. Au point que les hommes
les moins bien dotes par la nature n’hesitent plus a remettre le
sort de leur système pileux deficient entre les mains de chirurgiens
esthetiques.

Le Dr Selahattin Tulunay est l’un d’eux. A la tete d’un prospère
cabinet prive jusque-la specialise dans les transplantations de
cheveux, ce chirurgien esthetique s’est rapidement adapte a cette
nouvelle demande.

“Cela fait environ trois ans que je fais des implants de moustaches”,
confie-t-il, “beaucoup d’hommes sont venus me voir en me disant +j’ai
40 ans, je suis a la tete d’une grosse entreprise et a l’etranger, on
ne me prend pas au serieux, je veux que l’on voie que j’ai des poils”.

Tout juste trentenaire, Engin Koc s’est longtemps desespere de son
visage glabre. Avant de s’offrir, il y a sept mois, la “brosse” de ses
reves sur une table d’operation. “J’ai voulu ressembler aux anciens
Turcs, aux Ottomans, et comme j’ai l’âme assez nostalgique et une
admiration pour cette epoque, j’ai fait ces implants”, raconte-t-il
avec fierte, “la moustache est un symbole de la virilite turque”.

Depuis des lustres, la moustache est effectivement une affaire très
serieuse en Turquie. Un dicton populaire y affirme d’ailleurs qu’un
“homme sans moustache est comme une maison sans balcon”. Sa forme y
est meme lue politiquement.

“Broussailleuse, facon Staline, elle est plutôt l’apanage de la gauche
ou des Kurdes”, explique l’anthropologue Benoît Fliche, de l’Institut
francais d’etudes anatoliennes d ?Istanbul. “Mince, comme celle du
Premier ministre Recep Tayyip Erdogan, elle devient religieuse et
conservatrice (…) Et si elle descend en forme de crocs de part et
d’autre de la bouche, elle est alors marquee a l’extreme droite”.

Forfaits moustache

Meme si elle seduit aujourd’hui un peu moins les Turcs des grandes
villes, plus tournes vers la mode occidentale, la moustache et la
barbe restent un “must” pour la gent masculine des pays arabes ou des
republiques turcophones d’Asie centrale, qui font le voyage d’Istanbul
pour satisfaire leur appetit de poils.

“Les series televisees turques diffusees dans le monde arabe ont
une grande influence”, assure le Dr Tulunay, “c’est en voyant nos
acteurs que ces patients sont venus nous demander les memes barbes
ou les memes moustaches”.

Ces clients constituent l’essentiel de ce nouveau marche de la
“pilosite faciale”. Rien qu’a Istanbul, quelque 250 cliniques ou
cabinets prives se livrent une concurrence acharnee pour vendre leurs
services, a grands coups de promotions.

La plupart se sont associes a des agences de voyage et proposent des
formules qui incluent l’operation et le sejour a l’hôtel de leurs
patients, qu’elles prennent en charge dès l’aeroport… Les plus
competitifs proposent des forfaits “moustaches” très avantageux a
partir de 2.000 euros, bien moins chers que chez leurs concurrents
europeens ou americains.

Le tourisme du poil bat son plein donc, confortablement assis sur la
progression constante du nombre de visiteurs etrangers qui se pressent
en Turquie. Plus de 35 millions en 2012, selon les estimations.

“Chaque semaine, nous accueillons entre 50 et 60 patients pour
une greffe de cheveux, et 5 a 6 pour une greffe de moustaches”,
se rejouit le Dr Meral Tala, chirurgienne au Istanbul Hair Center,
“et comme nos resultats sont bien meilleurs qu’avant, nous prevoyons
une très grande augmentation des demandes”. Les chirurgiens esthetiques
d’Istanbul n’ont pas fini de se friser les moustaches.

mercredi 30 janvier 2013, Stephane ©armenews.com

WHO WILL REPLACE ARMENIAN PUBLIC TELEVISION AND RADIO COMPANY COUNCIL CHAIRMAN?

29.01.13

The tenure of the Armenian Public Television and Radio Company Council
chairman Alexan Harutyunyan comes to an end on February 1. He has
no right to apply to the position again, having served for already
second time.

For the second time Harutyunyan was elected in the office in late
January 2007 with six year term.

According to the corresponding law, ten days are provided for the
nomination of candidacies and the information about them is being
published by mass media. The president appoints one of the winners
of the competition as member of the Council.

According to media outlets, different names are being circulated
starting from the spokesperson of the president Armen Arzumanyan,
ending with the director of Sharm Holding Ruben Jaghinyan and
president’s aide Avetis Berberyan.

Tert.am’s sources though claim that the name of the executive director
of Public Radio Armen Amiryan is also being circulated.

In an interview Alexan Harutyunyan gave to Tert.am few months ago, he
shrugged off the possibility of returning to his former, diplomatic
career. As to the assessment of his work during his two tenures,
he said he leaves it to public.

85-YEAR-OLD CHRISTIAN WOMAN IN TURKEY REPEATEDLY STABBED, CROSS CARVED ONTO HER CORPSE

Posted GMT 1-29-2013 18:50:58

MARISSA Kucuk was a little old Armenian lady who lived on her own in
Samatya, a picturesque neighbourhood of Istanbul where Christians and
Muslims used to rub along peacefully. On December 28th Ms Kucuk, 85,
was found dead in her apartment. She had been stabbed, repeatedly.

Relatives said a crucifix was carved onto her naked corpse.

Last week, a masked assailant attacked another elderly Armenian as
she was entering her apartment. He punched her in the head. When
she fell to the ground he began kicking her. “My mother’s mouth
was filled with blood…the neighbours came to the rescue when she
screamed for help and the man fled,” Maryam Yelegen, told AGOS,
a Turkish Armenian weekly.

The attack marks the fifth in the past two months against elderly
Armenian women (one has lost an eye). All of the attacks took place
in Samatya, which is home to some 8,000 Armenians and the seat of the
Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate. Opinion remains divided as to whether
these are organised hate crimes targeting non-Muslims or just random
theft. Istanbul’s governor, Huseyin Avni Mutlu, insists that it was
the latter. “The incident was inspired by robbery, there were no
racial motives. Be sure we will find the perpetrators. Good night,”
he tweeted to some 100,000 followers.

Some of the victims were, indeed, robbed. The Turkish police are said
to be concentrating their investigation on a man in his thirties as a
potential suspect. Turkey’s Human Rights Association remains unswayed.

“The attacks were carried out with racist motives,” it concluded in
a report that was published last week.

Either way, the attacks have dredged up memories of the mass slaughter
of about a million Ottoman Armenians in 1915. “The attacks highlight
the unbearable heaviness of being Armenian in Turkey,” says Khatchig
Mouradian an Armenian activist and academic who lost ancestors in
the killings.

Academic opinion worldwide tilts towards the view that these
constituted genocide. Turkey refutes this saying the majority died
of illness and hunger during forced deportations to the Syrian desert.

Those who dared to challenge the official line (among them Orhan Pamuk,
Turkey’s sole Nobel laureate for literature) have faced prosecution
and death threats. But none as much as Hrant Dink, the outspoken
Armenian journalist who founded AGOS as a platform for unfettered
debate about 1915. He was murdered in 2007 by an ultra-nationalist
youth outside his office in the heart of Istanbul.

Mr Dink’s family insists that the killer was acting under orders from
rogue ultra-nationalist elements within the security forces, who,
in turn, were probably linked to a Byzantine plot known as “Kafes”
or Cage.

Scores of suspects, including three admirals tied to Kafes are being
tried on charges of conspiring to murder Christians in Turkey. Their
alleged aim was to intimidate Christians into leaving for good, place
the blame on Turkey’s Islam-tinged Justice and Development (AK) Party
and thus lay the ground for the army to intervene. The 2007 murders
of three Christian missionaries in the eastern province of Malatya
(their throats were slit) are believed to be part of Kafes. Orhan Kemal
Cengiz, a lawyer for the victims, sees parallels between the Kafes
plot and “the ultra-nationalist mentality informing 1915” which tends
to view “citizens of Armenian descent as disloyal and untrustworthy.”

Fresh evidence emerged last week suggesting that local gendarmerie
officials kept thousands of pages worth of files on missionaries
and other Christians in Malatya. But the defence argues that the
evidence was “sexed up” by prosecutors as in the Sledgehammer case,
another alleged coup plot. Independent forensic experts have supported
these claims.

In any case Mr Cengiz says had the Kafes suspects not been brought to
trial attacks against Christians would have continued. Many credit AK
for easing pressure on non-Muslims. A small but vocal group of Turkish
historians now openly talk about genocide. Bookstores have entire
shelves devoted to the topic. Tens of thousands of illegal migrants
from the neighbouring Republic of Armenia with which Turkey has no
official ties work in Istanbul, as the authorities look the other way.

“Reconciliation” projects between Turks and Armenians have become so
commonplace that hawks on both sides no longer blink.

Yet the message from the government is somewhat mixed. Mehmet Nihat
Omeroglu, the controversial judge who upheld a conviction of Mr Dink
for “insulting Turkishness”, was recently sworn in by the parliament
as the head of the newly created ombudsman institution. The case was
widely publicised and helped to whip up nationalist fervour against Mr
Dink. Mr Omeroglu apparently has no regrets. “We made our decision on
this case on the basis of our conscience,” the ombudsman told Radikal,
a liberal daily.

TURKISH PARLIAMENT’S KURDISH PARTY CONDEMNS ATTACKS ON ARMENIAN WOMEN

TERT.AM
17:20 ~U 29.01.13

Kurdish Peace and Democracy party representatives in the Turkish
parliament condemned the violence against ethnic Armenian women in
the Istanbul Samatya district.

Party’s deputy chairman Gultan Kicanak reminded that five women were
attacked in the district, one of them was killed, the others injured.

“The periodicity of this attacks and how they occur make it clear
that these are hatred crimes. These attacks were manifestations of
racism and hatred,” she said.

Kicanak said during one of the attacks the criminal left money on
the table of the victim which proves that the crime was not for
robbery purpose.

“We know how Armenians were annihilated, massacred. It is still the
aching wound for Turkey. Now not ensuring their security is the shame
of this country. These attacks continue for already second month but
neither police nor government makes any comments. It is shameful for
the country,” she said.

Gultan Kicanak also noted that their party condemn the attacks and
expresses its support to the Armenian compatriots, saying they are
not alone.

PRESIDENT IS DEMANDED TO PROTECT COVERED MARKET FROM VANDALS

ARMINFO
Tuesday, January 29, 12:10

A group of cultural workers and artists has sent an open letter
of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan demanding him to stop further
destruction of the Covered Market.

The letter reads that last year the Covered Market had been repeatedly
damaged by construction: the arc roof was damaged twice and the iron
columns erected in the built-down part of the building have changed its
external appearance. The authors of the letter recall that the Covered
Market is included in the list of Yerevan’s historical monuments. So,
they call on the president to consider the above actions as vandalism
and launch a criminal case against those responsible for destruction
of the building.

The authors of the letter come out for transferring the Covered Market
under management of the Culture Ministry for further assessment of the
damage caused to the building and its restoration. They warn that the
building of the Foreign Ministry of Armenia that is to be turned into
a hotel may face a similar fate. The letter was signed by Head of the
Union of Architects of Armenia Mkrtich Minasyan, ethnographer Hranush
Kharatyan, film director Tigran Khzmalyan, Head of the Association
For Sustainable Development Karine Danielyan, honored architect of
Armenia Sashur Kalashyan, Head of the Association for Preservation of
Historical Monuments Gagik Soghomonyan, and a number of architects –
laureates of the State Prime and the President’s Prize. The copies
of the letter were addressed to the prime minister, the parliament
speaker and the prosecutor general of Armenia.

To note, the Covered Market was built in 1952 on the project of
Armenian architect Grigory Aghababyan and has been considered one of
the symbols of the Armenian capital since then. Mass media reported
that Armenian MP Samvel Alexanyan had bought the Covered Market from
the Leader of Prosperous Armenia Party Gagik Tsarukyan. Earlier the
Union of Initiative to Protect Yerevan addressed an open letter to
the president concerning the Covered Market.

IN YEREVAN THE SON BEAT AND STRANGLED HIS MOTHER, THEN BROUGHT HER DOWN THE STAIRS

2013-01-29 15:18:48

Yesterday, on January 28, at 07:30, 64-year-old resident of Yerevan
Gagik Senekerimyan called Erebuni police department and reported that
his mother, 75-year-old Geghanush Mangyan brought down the stairs
and died.

According to shamshyan.com, Erebuni Department investigative force
headed by the deputy of Police chief of Erebuni Arsen Avoyan arrived at
the scene. The employees of the investigative branch of the Department
of Erebuni with the head of department Mushegh Aleksanyan were also
at the scene.

Yesterday the forensic medical examination revealed that the cause
of death was mechanical asphyxiation.

Photojournalist reports that neighbors told that G. Mangyan lived
there with her two sons, Gagik and 45-year-old Karen Senekerimyans.

Karen was divorced, and there was always a quarrel over family matters;
Karen blamed his mother in his divorce. Yesterday the voices of a
quarrel were also heard.

G.Shamshyan reports that the brothers have been subjected to detention
in order to clarify details of the murder.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CALLS ON TURKEY TO INVESTIGATE INTO ATTACKS ON ARMENIAN WOMEN

TERT.AM
29.01.13

Amnesty International calls on the Turkish authorities to carry out
a prompt, thorough and impartial investigation into the series of
attacks on elderly Armenian women in Istanbul.

In the last two months, four attacks, one of them fatal, took place
in Samatya an area historically inhabited by Armenians in central
Istanbul. All four women are Turkish citizens of Armenian origin.

The Turkish authorities have an obligation to investigate any alleged
racist and/or religious bias behind the perpetration of these crimes.

A failure to do so may amount to a violation of the European
Convention of Human Rights, ratified by Turkey, and the prohibition
of discrimination set forth by it.

Hate crimes constitute a serious form of discrimination. State
authorities have not only to refrain from discriminating themselves
but also exercise due diligence to prevent and combat discrimination
from private parties.

It is regrettable that Turkish legislation does not foresee any
legislative and policy measures ensuring that hate motives are
systematically and thoroughly investigated and duly taken into account
in the prosecution and sentencing.

Police insist that they are investigating the cases thoroughly.

However, Amnesty International is concerned at public statements made
by the authorities discounting the possibility of a racist motivation
to the attacks.

Amnesty International believes that the authorities must carry out
a thorough investigation into these attacks without discarding the
possibility of hate motivation from the outset and take steps to
prevent further attacks.

The incidents

In late November 2012, an 87 year-old woman was physically attacked
in the street. She was severely beaten and as a result of the attack
lost the sight in one eye.

A group of three men allegedly attempted to abduct another elderly
woman while on her way to the church on the occasion of the orthodox
Christmas on 6 January. The attackers reportedly fled after the
intervention by other church goers.

On 28 December, an 85 year-old woman was found stabbed to death in
her home. Her jewellery was stolen.

On 22 January, an 80 year-old woman was attacked and beaten as she
was returning to her home.