Author: Kalashian Nyrie

FILM ON MESKHETIAN TURKS CONTAINS ANTI-ARMENIANS ELEMENTS

AKHALKALAK, JANUARY 22, NOYAN TAPAN – ARMENIANS TODAY. Georgian
film director Toma Chagerishvili’s documentary on Meskhetian Turks,
the presentation of which took place on January 18 in Akhaltskha,
expresses anti-Armenian and anti-Russian moods. This was informed by
the A-Info agency. The film allegedly represents Samtskhe-Javakhk’s
history from the beginning of the century up to our days and
Meskhetian Turks are presented as pure-blooded Georgians. The film
author qualified Russians as usurpers and Armenians as 5th column
supporting the usurpers. The film contains an episode on events of
1918 where Georgian General-Governor Maghrakelidze and Turk Omar Bek
Server (he is presented in the film as a Georgian) argue. Omar Bek
blames Maghrakelidze for supporting Armenians. He planned to slaughter
Armenians and a fratricidal war between the so-called Mohammedan and
Christian Georgians broke out due to Maghrakelidze’s resistance. The
film presents no episodes on self-defence of Armenians of Akhaltskha
in 1918. During the discussion held after the presentation ceremony,
former Georgian State Minister on Settlement of Conflicts, Georgy
Khaindrava positively estimated the film and considered necessary
Meskhetians’ resettlement in the region, especially in the settlements
where they have never lived (Akhalkalak and Nonotsminda regions are
meant here). Many historians, lecturers, representatives of NGOs,
Georgian clergymen also took part in the discussion. According to
A-Info, anti-Armenian atmosphere also on the whole prevailed during
the discussion.

Armenia sends deputy FM to funeral of ethnic Armenian journalist in Turkey

International Herald Tribune, France –
Jan 22 2007

The Associated PressPublished: January 22, 2007

YEREVAN, Armenia: Armenia will send a deputy foreign minister to the
funeral of an ethnic Armenian journalist who was murdered last week
in Turkey, officials said Monday.

Arman Kirakosian will attend Tuesday’s funeral as part of an official
delegation that includes a permanent Armenian representative to a
regional Black Sea cooperation body based in Turkey, the Foreign
Ministry said.

The Armenian Orthodox Church also said it will send a representative
to the funeral, U.S-based Bishop Khazkah Parsamian.

Hrant Dink, the 52-year-old editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper
Agos, was gunned down outside his newspaper’s office in Istanbul on
Friday. The killing, blamed on nationalists, drew attention to the
precarious state of freedom of expression in a country vying for
European Union membership.

Turkey has no diplomatic ties with Armenia but still invited Armenian
officials and religious leaders as well as moderate members of the
diaspora to the funeral on Tuesday.

Turkey’s relationship with its Armenian minority has long been haunted
by a bloody past. Much of its once-influential Armenian population
was killed or driven out beginning around 1915 in what an increasing
number of nations are calling the first genocide of the 20th century.

Hürriyet, Turkey
Jan 21 2007

Chief Prosecutor: Seven people held under custody

A.A.

Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin said on Sunday
that seven people, including the suspected gunman, were currently
held under custody in relation with the murder of the Turkish
Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

The suspect, a 17-year-old teenager identified as Ogun Samast, was
taken by plane from the Black Sea city of Samsun to Istanbul early in
the morning together with two other people who were believed to have
been involved in the murder. Another four were brought by plane to
Istanbul from Trabzon province.Engin also said that an authorized
unit on organized crimes will conduct the investigation into Dink’s
killing.

Ali Ertem: It was a political murder

ArmRadio.am
20.01.2007 12:08

Hrant Dink’s assassination was organized y Turkish authorities. This
was how Turkish intellectual Ali Ertem assessed the fact of murder of
the editor-in-chief of the Istanbul based Armenian Agos newspaper in
an interview with Armenpress.

`It was a political murder. Living in the Turkish state, Armenians
have no security guarantees, said Ali Ertem.

According to him, a country aspiring to join the European Union,
cannot act that way. `Turkey should change its policy, the current way
of action does not promote the process of EU accession. Turkey’s
chances to join the EU reduce after Hrant Dink’s assassination,’ Ali
Ertem said.

NewsWise Press Release
Jan 20 2007

Turkey Must Note Slain Journalist’s Legacy, Says Expert

Libraries
Life News (Social and Behavioral Sciences)

Contact Information

Available for logged-in reporters only
Description

The assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was more
than a senseless murder, says Colgate University professor and
Armenian Genocide expert Peter Balakian – it shows just how far
Turkey is from being a true democracy. Balakian is available to
comment on Dink’s death.

Newswise – The assassination today of Turkish-Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink in Istanbul was more than a senseless murder, according to
Colgate University professor and Armenian Genocide expert Peter
Balakian – it was yet another example of how far Turkey is from being
a democracy.

Balakian, author of New York Times bestseller and Raphael Lemkin
Prize winner The Burning Tigris; the Armenian Genocide and America’s
Response, is available to comment on Dink’s death.

`As editor of Agos, a weekly Armenian newspaper, Dink held a uniquely
important place in Turkish society, so his slaying was particularly
significant,’ said Balakian. `If Turkey wishes to go forward as a
democracy, it must find a way to embrace Dink’s legacy.’

Eighteen journalists have been killed in Turkey in the last six
years, and 77 are on trial now, he said, but violence toward
intellectuals begins, in the modern period, for Turkey with genocide
of the Armenians in 1915. `Turkey has a long history of punishing its
writers, thinkers, artists, and ethnic minorities,’ he explained. `On
April 24, 1915, at the beginning of the Armenian Genocide which
claimed more than a million lives, the Ottoman government rounded up
more than 250 Armenian leaders in Constantinople (Istanbul) and
transported them out of the city. Most of them were killed, making it
easier for the government at that time to carry out its planned
extermination and exile of the rest of the Armenian population. Dink
now joins those martyrs.’

Political violence of this nature increased when Turkey began its
accession to the European Union in recent years, said Balakian, and
it is definitely not random. `The ruling party’s attempts to meet the
EU’s conditions – among them, more freedom of expression, equal
treatment of minorities, and an end to official government denial of
the Armenian Genocide – amplified the resistance of extreme
nationalists and the military to such reforms,’ he said.

Because of Dink’s standing, Balakian believes the slaying will
reverberate beyond Turkey. `His death is emblematic of the struggle
for freedom of thought and expression people face under violent and
repressive societies and governments all over the world.’

Of Dink himself, Balakian commented: `Despite Turkey’s penal code –
which mandates prison sentences for a long list of offenses that
constitute the crime of `insulting Turkishness’ – Dink persisted in
publishing articles and speaking openly about subjects that are taboo
in Turkey, most notably the Armenian Genocide of 1915 committed by
the government of the Ottoman Empire. For doing so he was put on
trial last year, and threats against his life had increased
dramatically in the last few weeks. Yet no amount of brutality and
danger diminished his courage; he continued to work toward his goal,
which was to help achieve a peaceful reconciliation between
ethnically Armenian and Turkish society.’

Balakian is the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the
Humanities at Colgate.

6699/

New York Times
January 16, 2007

Music Review | Isabel Bayrakdarian

A Visa Problem in Canada, and an Excursion to Spain
By ALLAN KOZINN

Isabel Bayrakdarian, the soprano, and Russell Braun, the baritone, were to
have shared a recital on Sunday afternoon at the Morgan Library & Museum.
Both singers are Canadian, as are the pianists they work with, and at the
last minute, visa problems prevented Mr. Braun from traveling to New York.
So Ms. Bayrakdarian and her pianist, Serouj Kradjian (they are also
married), added two groups of songs and a solo piano work to the Schubert
and Pauline Viardot groups they had planned, and had the recital all to
themselves.

The amended program was a tour of national styles filtered through 19th- and
early-20th-century sensibilities, and Ms. Bayrakdarian was at her most vivid
when the music drew most overtly on folk music and dance roots. She gave a
florid account of `L’Invito,’ the bolero from Rossini’s `Soirées Musicales,’
for example, and her reading of the `Tarantella Napoletana’ from the same
set was brisk, fiery and suffused with an undercurrent of sensuality.

Ernesto Lecuona’s `Malagueña’ was enlivened with a similarly vital
performance. Here, and in its companion works in her Spanish set – `Del
cabello más sutil’ and `Chiquitita la novia’ by Fernando Obradors – Ms.
Bayrakdarian caught the essence of the music in her subtly shifting tempos
and flamenco-tinged vocalise passages.

Spain seemed to exert an unusual pull on Ms. Bayrakdarian and Mr. Kradjian.
Two of the Viardot songs, `Madrid’ and `Havanaise,’ emphasized the
composer’s Spanish roots and drew on flamenco figuration as fully as the
Obradors songs. On the other hand, in his pastel-hued performance of
Granados’s `Quejas o la maja y el ruiseñor,’ from `Goyescas,’ Mr. Kradjian
highlighted the stylistic connections between Granados and his French
contemporary Ravel.

Ms. Bayrakdarian put Viardot’s Gallic side in the spotlight as well, by way
of gracefully turned performances of `Sylvie,’ the gently macabre `Enfant et
la mère’ and the swirling `Aime-moi,’ a reworking of a Chopin mazurka.

The recital, part of the series that the George London Foundation has
presented at the Morgan since 1995, began with a group of Schubert songs in
which Ms. Bayrakdarian acclimated herself to the small, acoustically bright
new hall. At first she seemed to overestimate the power she needed, but by
the third song, she had taken the room’s measure, giving a beautifully
serene performance of `Nacht und Träume’ that showed her interpretive
flexibility and expressive sound to fine effect.

sic/16morg.html

PanARMENIAN.Net

Georgian Side Refused to Meet with South Ossetian Representatives in Yerevan
19.01.2007 13:14 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Georgian side refused to hold a sitting of the
Mixed Control Commission on the settlement of the Georgian-Ossetian
conflict in Yerevan. According to first deputy to the South Ossetian
Premier, South Ossetian Co-chair of the MCC Boris Chochiyev, the OSCE
has issued an oral invitation on conduction of the MCC meeting in
Yerevan January 24-25. `The South Ossetian side gave its consent. As
far as I know, the North Ossetian and Russian members of the MCC
agreed as well,’ he said.

At the same time Chochiyev underscored that according to the available
data, Georgian state minister on conflict settlement Merab Antadze
disagreed on the date and venue of the meeting. `You can eye the
non-constructive position of the Georgian side,’ Chochiyev said. `I am
sure Georgia will reconsider its stance since long breaks have a
negative impact on the negotiation process,’ he resumed, reports IA
Regnum.

PanARMENIAN.Net

Two Suspects of Dink’s Murder Arrested
19.01.2007 20:21 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
said the killing of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant
Dink was an attack against Turkey’s unity and vowed to
catch those responsible. Erdogan said two suspects had
been arrested, but that the full details of the
killing were not yet known. "Once again, dark hands
have chosen our country and spilled blood in Istanbul
to achieve their dark goals," Erdogan said at a news
conference. "We are investigating all aspects of this
crime," he said. Erdogan said he had assigned top
officials from the Justice Ministry to the case and
that they were on their way to Istanbul from the
capital, Ankara.

LEVON ARONIAN’S RIVAL AT 4TH STAGE OF WIJK AAN ZEE TOURNAMENT IS 16-YEAR OLD NORWEGIAN MAGNUS KARLSEN

Noyan Tapan
Jan 18 2007

WIJK AAN ZEE, JANUARY 18, NOYAN TAPAN. January 17 was a resting day
in the big international chess tournament being held in the city
of Wijk Aan Zee of Holland. The 4th stage is being held on January
18. Levon Aronian’s rival at this stage is 16-year Norwegian star
Magnus Karlsen. Vladimir Georgiev (Macedonia) is the rival of Gabriel
Sargsian, the participant of the 2nd tournament being held in parallel.

TRANSFERS FLOW TO ARMENIA PREDICTED TO GROW 17.3% TO $560.5MLN IN 2007

Arka News Agency, Armenia
Jan 16 2007

YEREVAN, January 16. /ARKA/. Transfers flow to Armenia is expected to
total $560.5mln in 2007 after growing by $82.6mln or 17.3%, compared
with 2006, experts at the Central Bank of Armenia predict.

They also think private transfers will grow 19.5% while official
transfers are predicted to grow 2%.

Private transfers will reach $498.1mln and official transfers to
$62.4mln in 2007.

In 2006, current transfers grew 16.8% to $477.8mln. They grew mainly
thanks to private transfers, which contributed 21.9% to the growth.

Private transfers reached $416.7mln in 2006 while official transfers
grew 9.2% reaching $61.1mln.