Author: Kanayan Tamar

Tigran Hamaysan, The Stables, Wavendon, review
Tigran Hamaysan at The Stables, Wavendon, had something urgent to say.

Mixing folk with jazz: virtuoso Armenian pianist Tigran Hamaysan
Photo: Vahan Stepanyan
By Ivan Hewett

Daily Telegraph/UK
12:24PM GMT 27 Jan 2012

Being a virtuoso art, jazz produces prodigies just as miraculous as
those in classical music. The Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan is one
of them. At the age of three he was picking out his father’s favourite
rock songs at the piano, and at nine had moved on to his uncle’s
passion for Miles Davis and Duke Ellington. By the age of nineteen
he’d moved with his family to California, won the Thelonious Monk
competition and inspired awe in senior pianists such as Chick Corea.

As is often the way, this musical emigre has found that distance lends
an unexpected enchantment to his native roots. You could feel them
pulling right from the start of this gig, which drew on material from
his recent album A Fable. Hamasyan has become fascinated by the folk
music of Armenia, which in his hands sounds more Balkan than near
Eastern, turning round and round a plangent modal note with folk-like
obsessiveness.

Hamasyan is a slight, narrow-shouldered, darkly intense figure, who
often sings as he bends low over the keyboard. Much of the time he
focuses on the mid-range of the piano, as if unconsciously echoing the
limitations of folk instruments. Then he remembers he’s actually
playing the piano and the hands shoot away into Bud-Powell like flares
of virtuosity, or freeze on sudden moments of luminous stillness where
the piano rings like a bell.

This evocation of a distance from something longed-for is sharpened by
his subtle harmonic sense, which often gestures towards Chopin’s
mazurka-melancholy and Bartok’s folk arrangements. He loves to suck
the marrow from a particular interval, placing it in different
contexts to reveal its many implications. The sense of fixity this
brings is hard to escape.

Hamasyan was some minutes into My Prince will Come before he found a
jazz-like flexibility.

At moments like this it becomes clear that Hamasyan does have a real
jazz sensibility after all, something which until that point you might
have doubted (as some of the disgruntled jazz fans here clearly did).
In his efforts to catch something wild he sometimes pushes those
circling folkish patterns too far, and the awkward join between the
two halves of his musical persona sometimes shows.

But the occasional discomforts are a price well worth paying. There
are many brilliant and perfectly finished young jazz pianists around,
but Hamasyan stands out because he has something important and urgent
to say.

Tigran Hamasyan’s `A Fable’ is out now on Verve. He appears at St
George’s, Bristol (0845 4024 001), on March 1

Persepolis humbled by Sanat Naft
Sports Desk

On Line: 25 January 2012 15:51
In Print: Thursday 26 January 2012

ABADAN – Sanat Naft of Abadan crashed Persepolis football team 4-2 in
Iran Professional League (IPL) on Wednesday.

The IPL’s top scorer Founeke Sy scored a hat-trick in the match. He
put the hosts into the lead just six minutes into the match from a
free kick. Persepolis equalized the match when Sanat Naft keeper could
not save captain Ali Karimi’s bicycle kick in the 23rd minute.

Founeke Sy scored again five minutes later from a free kick. Shortly
after, Karimi leveled the match but referee Saeid Mozaffarizadeh ruled
out the goal due to offside.

Founeke Sy made hat-trick in the 28th minute after Persepolis keeper
Misagh Memarzadeh’s blunder.

Sanat Naft Armenian striker extended the lead after two minutes into
the second half after Memarzadeh made a big mistake once again. The
visiting team dominated the match and finally pulled a goal back in
the 86th minute by Mohammad Nouri.

`We conceded early and bad goals. Without a doubt, we solve the
problem soon,’ Mustafa Denizli said during the post-match news
conference. `I congratulate this victory to Abadan people and Sanat
Naft football team.’

`I congratulate people of Abadan people and Sanat Naft football for
this victory.’

Sophia Echo, Bulgaria
Jan 27 2012

Russia and Iran: Uneasy neighbours – since the 16th Century
Fri, Jan 27 2012 08:02 CET

Countries without natural borders are like amoebas. Over centuries,
they expand and contract, expand and contract.

As the Western world wonders why Russia has such a nuanced policy
toward Iran’s nuclear programme, it is important to skip back over
four centuries of history.

Under Ivan the Terrible, Russia defeated the Tatars and Russia started
to expand east to Siberia and south to the Caspian Sea. There, it
first encountered Persia, forerunner to modern Iran.

Persia’s first ambassador to Russia visited the Kremlin four centuries
ago, in 1592. For the next century, wary co-existence ensued between
the two empires, one Christian, the other Muslim.

Then, in 1722, Russia expanded south again, embarking on the first of
four successful wars against Persia. Steadily, Russia gobbled up
chunks of Persia’s Central Asian Empire. With the 1828 Treaty of
Turkemnchay, the Caspian Sea became a Russian lake.

One author of that treaty was Russia’s new ambassador to Persia,
Alexander Griboyedov, a witty and charming poet and playwright,
recently arrived from the court in St. Petersburg.

But Persian resentment of the treaty boiled over when an Armenian
eunuch escaped from the Shah’s harem and two Armenian girls escaped
from the harem of his son-in-law. Under terms of the new treaty,
Armenians were allowed safe passage from Persia to Russian-controlled
Armenia. Ambassador Griboyedov stood on principle, and protected his
Armenian charges.
What happened next, made the Iranian seizure of the United States
embassy in Tehran in 1979, or the sacking of the British embassy two
months ago, look like tea parties.

A mob of thousands of rioting Persians overwhelmed the Russian
embassy’s Cossack guards and slaughtered everyone inside. A few days
later, the remains of the eunuch were so disfigured that he was only
recognised by a scar on his hand.

When Griboyedov’s 16-year-old bride, Nino, learned of her husband’s
fate, she became so distraught that she miscarried, and lost their
baby. For the rest of her life, she refused all suitors.Today, a
larger than life Griboyedov statue in Moscow is a popular meeting
point for young people. In St. Petersburg, Griboyedov Canal is a
picturesque waterway in the heart of historic city.

Division
The embassy slaughter may live on in Russian’s popular image of Iran.
But it did not deter the Kremlin, which retained control of Northern
Iran through 1946.

In 1907, with the military rise of Germany, Russia and Britain decided
to stop wasting their energy in their “Great Game” over the former
Persian empire. That year, they signed in St. Petersburg, the
Anglo-Russian Convention. Under this treaty, Persia was divided up
between a northern Russian zone, a central neutral zone governed by a
Shah, and a southern British zone. This allowed Britain to develop oil
deposits in southern Iran and to build a refinery in Abadan. Founded
in 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company grew into what is known today
as BP.

This division continued until August of 1941, when Britain and the
Soviet Union conducted a joint, three-week military campaign and
deposed the pro-German Shah, installed his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
For the next five years, the two foreign nations to oversaw what had
now come to be called Iran.

In early 1946, the British pulled out, but the Red Army stayed in
Northern Iran well beyond an exit deadline stipulated in the Teheran
Conference of 1943.

By early 1946, the Cold War was starting and Stalin tried to prolong
control over northern Iran by setting up two puppet Soviet republics
and signing a oil treaty with Teheran that gave the Soviet Union
ownership of 51 percent of northern Iran’s oil deposits. But soon
after Red Army troops withdrew from northern Iran, the puppet
republics collapsed. In late 1947, Iran’s parliament refused to ratify
the oil agreement.

`Impermissible’
With this history in mind, I could barely repress a smile Wednesday as
I sat in the Russian foreign ministry’s comfortable new press
auditorium building. Minister Sergei Lavrov, perhaps hoping that no
one in the hall knew history, was sternly warning that interference in
the internal affairs of Iran is “impermissible”.

Here, morality in diplomacy may be dictated by changing realities on the ground.

Six decades of oil earnings and a swelling young population have given
Iran a powerful military machine. Now, it may be building a nuclear
bomb.

In contrast, the Russian amoeba has retreated. With an aging and
shrinking population, Kremlin power projection has dramatically ebbed
from the Soviet era high water mark.

In the Caspian, post-Soviet Moscow’s control has receded to about 20
percent of the 7000km shoreline. And half of the Russia portion is in
Dagestan, where currently the hottest insurgency is underway in
Russia’s Islamic south. Instead of Moscow reaching across the Caspian
to destabilise Northern Iran, Moscow now fears Iran reaching across
the Caspian to destabilise southern Russia.

Last year’s Arab Spring ended a series of Soviet legacy relationships.
Russian influence in the Mediterranean receded to a toehold in Tarsus,
a naval base on Syria’s coast. Now, Russia seeks to prop up Syria’s
government, its last Arab ally in the Mediterranean. This month,
Russia sent to Syria its last aircraft carrier and fresh supplies of
bullets for Syria’s army. But a large question mark hangs over the
future of Syria.

And the Russian public has little taste in overseas military
entanglement, whether Syria or Iran.

In Central Asia, Russia talks loudly, but acts cautiously, In June
2010, Roza Otunbayeva, then president of Kyrgyzstan, publicly asked
Moscow four times to send troops to end ethnic rioting in Osh.
President Medvedev replied that he would study the matter.

Russia’s political system may be authoritarian. But the Kremlin keeps
its ear close to the ground through an extensive public opinion
polling system.

A weakened military, an aging population, and little popular support
for military adventures – these were not the concerns of Ivan the
Terrible, or of his modern day equivalent, Joseph Stalin. So, today,
as the Russian amoeba retracts, there is no indication that Russia’s
leaders want to tangle with Teheran.

James Brooke is the Moscow bureau chief of the Voice of America.

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Contact: V.Rev.Fr.Krikor Chiftjian, Communications Director
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:

PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon

Watch our latest videos on YouTube here:

HIS HOLINESS ARAM I RECEIVES THE DIRECTOR OF THE DEPARTMENT OF
INTERRELIGIOUS DIALOGUE OF IRAN

On Friday 27 February 2012, Dr. Mohammad Mozafari, Director of the
Department of Interreligious Dialogue met with His Holiness Aram I.
Archbishop Sebouh Sarkissian accompanied Dr. Mozafari.

Dr. Mozafari introduced the activities of his department, and expressed the
need to strengthen Christian-Muslim dialogue in the region. The
representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran also recognized the important
role of the Catholicosate of Cilicia in Christian-Muslim dialogue.

After listening to his guest, Catholicos Aram I emphasized the importance of
including daily life issues in dialogue meetings.

At the end they talked of the on-going dialogue between the Catholicosate of
Cilicia and the Islamic Republic of Iran in the past ten years and agreed to
hold the next meeting in May 2012 in Tehran.

##
Photo:

HRANT DINK’S VOICE
Jenna Krajeski

New Yorker Magazine

Jan 27 2012

Last week, tens of thousands of people marched from Istanbul’s Taksim
Square to the offices of the Armenian weekly Agos to commemorate the
death of its founding editor, Hrant Dink, and to protest a long-awaited
verdict against Dink’s murderers, which had been delivered a few days
earlier. At the doors of those offices, five years ago, on January 19,
2007, a teen-ager posing as an Ankara University student angling for an
interview shot Dink at close range as he was returning to work. Dink,
a Turkish citizen of Armenian heritage, was outspoken about Armenian
issues; he was prosecuted three times for violating Article 301 of
the Turkish penal code, which makes it a crime to insult Turkishness,
the Turkish nation, or Turkish institutions. Dink spent his career
challenging the intolerance behind such statutes, becoming a champion
of minority rights in a country where such causes are punishable.

The murder instantly became a symbol of the racism and ultranationalism
grinding at the core of Turkish society, a war against freedom of
expression, and the complacency of Turkey’s intellectuals. Images
from the crime-of Dink’s shabby black shoes pigeon-toed beneath the
coroner’s white tarp; of the leaderless but determined Agos staff; of
teen-aged killer Ogun Samast seeming to celebrate with his arresting
officers beneath a Turkish flag; of Samast’s white cap and his alleged
cries when fleeing the scene of “I shot the infidel!”-were etched
into the national consciousness.

Later, another potent symbol was added, that of a small, circular
placard saying, “We are all Hrant. We are all Armenian.” In
the aftermath of Dink’s assassination, an organized, angry, and
determined protest movement was born in Turkey. Slogans professing
brotherhood with Dink were code for larger frustrations. It became
virtually impossible to talk about minority issues or human-rights
abuses or freedom of the press in Turkey without mentioning the Hrant
Dink assassination. Last week’s verdict, by which nineteen men were
acquitted of conspiring to kill Dink and one received a life sentence
(Samast was sentenced earlier to twenty-two years) angered many because
it ignored the possibility of a wider conspiracy. “The case will not
end like this!” was a common chant.

Dink continually professed his love for Turkey as the motivation
behind his criticism of it. The protesters, too, argued that saving the
country meant embracing, not alienating, its minorities. The rallies
were offered as an antidote the ultranationalism that killed Dink.

In the years since Dink’s murder, the movement has grown and become
more complex, bringing together Turkish liberals, Armenians, and
journalists, and also Kurds and Alevi, and women and members of the
L.G.B.T. community-basically all marginalized minorities in Turkey.

That round placard took on a neon hue at last year’s gay-pride parade.

Some complain that the passion of Dink’s defenders has overshadowed
other cases involving less prominent figures-the 2007 murder of
Christian missionaries in Malatya, for instance. But what the Dink
case provided, above all, was a starting point.

As the protest movement grew, so did the reasons to protest. In the
five years since Dink’s assassination, pressure on the opposition
from the government has increased tremendously. “Freedom of the press
in Turkey has deteriorated,” Robert Mahoney, Deputy Director of the
Committee to Protect Journalists told me. “It is going in the wrong
direction.” Mahoney said that the press in Turkey had a lot to lose
should Dink’s case not be investigated further. “Impunity is like
a cancer on press freedom,” he said. It leads to self-censorship,
preventing journalists from doing their job. “The press should be
able to investigate a crime if the court cannot do it,” Mahoney said.

“You have so many arrests of students just because they carry
posters calling for a better education,” Ekrem Eddy Guzeldere, of the
European Stability Initiative, told me. One journalist in prison is
Nedim Sener. His crime is writing a book claiming that the police and
gendarmerie (and, ultimately, the Ministry of Justice) were involved
in the murder of Hrant Dink. Only two people are allowed to visit
Sener in prison-his wife and Hosrof Dink, Hrant’s brother. After the
verdict finding that there was no conspiracy, Hosrof said, referring
to Sener, “The judiciary killed my brother again. I hope they don’t
kill my other brother.”

No one is happy with the verdict, not even the judge who admitted,
after the ruling, “I am not satisfied.” Observers noted that key
evidence-namely, phone conversations between the subjects-was not
taken into account. But what really seems to have paved the way
for the verdict, and the murder itself, is perhaps harder to admit:
deeply ingrained discrimination against Armenians, which incited both
the threats against Dink and the negligent reaction to them.

In the lead-up to Dink’s murder, some Turkish newspapers had written
published articles portraying Dink as anti-Turkish, and death threats
appeared in the comment sections of online media. Dink had asserted
publicly that one of Ataturk’s adopted daughters was of Armenian
descent, a claim that sent the nation into a tailspin. He received hate
mail and protesters marched against him outside of the Agos offices.

Article 216 of the Turkish penal code allots specific jail time-ranging
from six months to three years-to crimes having to do with social
class, race, religion, or sectarian or regional differences, even
gender. But the article is generally only used against those who
denigrate Turks, not minorities. And in a country where the President
responded to assertions that he was part Armenian by bringing a court
case against those who “slandered” him, there is a long way to go.

Mustafa Akyol, a journalist and the author of “Islam Without Extremes,”
pointed to the sluggishness and bigotry of the Turkish justice system
at all stages of the Dink story. “The people in Istanbul didn’t do
anything to protect him,” Akyol told me. “I think it was basically
stupidity, neglect, and deep-seated nationalism. I think they thought,
‘Why should we protect this Armenian guy?'”

For three years, Ozlem Dalkiran, a human-rights activist, has worked
on a Web site that tracks hate speech in Turkish media, particularly
against minorities. “The focus of the hate speech changes depending on
Turkey’s agenda. But what doesn’t change are the top two: the Kurds
and the Armenians,” she told me. “Dink was murdered because he was
Armenian-because he was an Armenian who spoke out.”

“Turkey is racist,” Esra Arsan, a professor at Bilgi University,
told me. “Even after this trial, people are shouting against Armenians.

They wonder why people are taking this case so seriously. They say that
someone killed him, and that guy is in jail and what more do you want?”

At the protest last week, a moment of silence was punctuated by a
recording of Dink’s voice. Mahoney, who interviewed Dink when he was
under threat, said, “What struck me about him was his quiet courage.

He refused to be intimidated. He would write about these issues in
Agos, and then go on television and in fluent Turkish say the same
thing.” The protesters in downtown Istanbul were asking for exactly
what Hrant Dink wanted-as Dink told Mahoney, years ago, “Justice,
and to be able to speak the truth.”

PRISON FOR DENYING GENOCIDE, PRISON FOR SAYING IT TOOK PLACE
by Charles Glass

The National

Jan 28 2012
UAE

The Armenian village of Kassab, amid the apple orchards of northern
Syria, boasts three churches. Each serves a branch of the Christianity
practised there, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. The Protestant
church, understandably, is the least ornate, lacking the Catholics’
rococo angels and the gold-leaf icons of the Orthodox. When I visited
in 1986, I was struck by a simple painting that I wrote about at
the time.

It showed Jesus Christ, the good shepherd, holding in his arms the
body of a slain boy, the boy’s head and arms dangling like Christ’s
own in Michelangelo’s Pietà. Behind him were the mountains of Armenia,
and at his feet were a mound of skulls and bones with the date “1915”
written on them.

An inscription in Armenian proclaimed: “So much blood. Let our
grandchildren forgive you.”

The grandchildren of the Armenian survivors of the First World War
massacres came of age years ago, and they have yet to forgive the
Turks. Turkey’s leaders have not made it easier for them by their
refusal to acknowledge the Ottoman Empire’s attempt to exterminate its
Armenian subjects. To me, as to anyone else who has listened to the
stories of old people who were children in 1915, Turkey’s attempted
“genocide” of the Armenians is an undeniable historical fact. The
sooner Turkey grows up and admits it, the sooner those grandchildren
can forgive.

The French parliament has weighed in, not merely to support the
view that the Armenians suffered genocide, but to punish with prison
and fines anyone who says otherwise. In 1990, it enacted a similar
prohibition against denying another historic genocide, that by the
Nazis of Europe’s Jews in the Second World War. The question is: can
any country legislate history? Doesn’t history along with other arts
and sciences require free inquiry, free research, free discussion
and the right to hold the wrong opinion?

Unfortunately, the French and Turkish governments have chosen to set
themselves up as history’s arbiters. France initiated its involvement
in Ottoman historiography in 1991, when parliament declared Turkey’s
wartime policy genocide. Making denial a crime this year puts the
French police, already busy tearing off women’s burqas, a further step
on the road to enforcing one view of history. When President Nicolas
Sarkozy signs the bill into law, anyone who states that there was no
Armenian genocide will be subject to a year in prison and a ~@45,000
(Dh 217,000) fine.

Turkey, despite its protests to Paris, has behaved with equal
determination to impose its historical beliefs by prosecuting writers
for daring to state that genocide took place. In France, you can
go to prison for stating one thing and in Turkey for maintaining
the opposite.

While Turkey is attempting to conceal its past and absolve national
heroes of murderous crimes, French politicians have been acting even
more cynically. The Paris daily Libération commented that passage
of the law by the French Chamber of Deputies and Senate was “not
entirely free of ulterior political motives, considering that there
is a 500,000-strong French-Armenian community in France”. The bill
was sponsored by a member of the lower chamber in President Nicolas
Sarkozy’s party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, who represents
Marseille and its large Armenian population. This is an election
year that is expected to be close for both the presidency and the
parliament, and even minority votes count. Nonetheless, enthusiasm
for the measure in the Senate was so lukewarm that its Laws Commission
rejected it and 212 out of 348 Senators did not vote at all.

France is paying for the measure in terms of its relationship with
Turkey and the loss of its citizens’ freedom of expression.

Apparently, the traditional liberté, fraternité et égalité excludes
the liberty to espouse a view with which the state disagrees. When
some future French president needs the Arab vote, will he make it a
crime to deny the Nakhba under which three-quarters of the Palestinian
population were expelled and their property seized by Israel from 1947
to 1949? When he or she seeks the African vote, will historians be
banned from suggesting that Africans themselves participated in the
slave trade? (Actually, that is already the law in France.) If there
were a substantial Chinese vote in France, would the law criminalise
denying the rape of Nanking?

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyep Erdogan, recently stated that
France herself is not untainted by the genocide charge. “In Algeria,
an estimated 15 per cent of the population had been subjected to the
massacre of French from 1945 on. This is genocide.” An estimated
two million Algerians died during the struggle for independence,
about a half million more than the number of Armenians who died at
Ottoman hands.

France’s action makes it harder for any Turkish politician to address
his country’s history. All Turks are aware that France during World
War I played a decisive role in subverting the loyalties of Ottoman
subjects, particularly Christians. Are modern Turks more or less
likely to make a serious investigation of their country’s past
when France claims to have decided the issue for them? In recent
years, intellectuals such as Orhan Pamuk have found space in which
to bring up what was a taboo subject – the Ottomans’ murder and
dispossession of one and a half million Armenians. That space will
narrow considerably if the government, media and public identify such
intellectual discussion with interference by foreign powers.

Less than a century has passed since 1920, when French, British and
Greek troops marched through the streets of Istanbul in a futile
attempt to dictate terms to Turkey. Anyone who stands up to France
today can claim the mantle of Ataturk, who finally expelled the
European invaders and prevented Turkey from being colonised as its
former empire was.

The former Oxford historian Norman Stone, who moved from England to
Turkey, wrote: “The fact is that there is no proof of ‘genocide’,
in the sense that no document ever appeared indicating that the
Armenians were to be exterminated.”

If he wrote that in France today, he could find himself in prison. It
is better, though, not to grant him martyr’s status and let other
historians deal with him. His statement that “no document ever
appeared” perches on the same moral and historical plane as David
Irving’s assertion that no document ever linked the extermination
of Europe’s Jews to Adolf Hitler. Irving served time in an Austrian
prison for Holocaust denial, but his real penance is to have been
disowned by credible historians who have examined the corpus of
documents relating to the Nazi Final Solution, heard the testimony
of witnesses and examined the sites where the murders took place.

Investigation and argument, not laws, make history.

The great British historian Eric Hobsbawn wrote: “It is time to
re-establish the coalition of those who believe in history as a
rational inquiry into the course of human transformations, against
those who distort history for political purposes – and more generally,
against relativists and postmodernists who deny this possibility.”

Is it possible to establish a coalition of historians, when their
opponents are subject to imprisonment and fines for disagreeing? Must
historians seek refuge from governments that endorse their views,
like medieval scholars obtaining patronage from pope or emperor
depending on whose claim to supremacy they supported? If that day
returns, will they be historians or courtiers?

Charles Glass is the author of several books on the Middle East,
including Tribes with Flags and The Northern Front: An Iraq War Diary.

He is also a publisher under the London imprint Charles Glass Books

IRAN CRISIS WORRIES ARMENIA

Deutsche Welle
January 27, 2012 Friday 2:07 PM EST
Germany

For Armenia, Iran is de facto the sole connection to the outside
world. The transport routes through other neighboring countries are
blocked. Yerevan fears isolation in case of a military conflict in
the Gulf.Armenia is watching the nuclear dispute between Iran and
the West with growing concern. Sharper sanctions against Tehran are
unsettling the government in Yerevan.

But foremost, there is fear of a military escalation of the conflict.

It would impact the planned common energy and transport projects,
which are vitally important for Armenia.

An intended rail line linking Armenia to the Persian Gulf, for example,
would be endangered. But the construction of an Iranian-Armenian
pipeline, as well as two hydropower plants on the Aras river, which
runs along their mutual border, would also be put into question. These
projects are important for Armenia, as they are intended to solve
the country’s energy problems.

All routes via Iran

At the moment, Armenia’s southern neighbor Iran is pretty much the
sole connection to the outside world. Relations to the remaining
bordering nations – Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey – are strained
due to serious conflicts.

Turkey and Azerbaijan are blocking Armenia because of the unresolved
conflict surrounding the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The region, which is predominantly populated by ethnic Armenians,
declared independence from Azerbaijan following the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991. The dispute over the mountainous enclave led to
a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 1992. Since a 1994 ceasefire,
it has been under the control of Armenian troops.

Armenia’s transport routes to the north, to its military ally Russia,
run through Georgia. But this corridor is partially blocked due to the
strained relationship between Tbilisi and Moscow. The railway line
through the conflict region of Abkhazia is also interrupted. Moscow
recognized Abkhazia, as well as the breakaway province of South
Ossetia as independent countries after the Russian-Georgian war in
August 2008. Georgia, however, still considers the regions part of
its national territory.

Strong Iranian presence in Yerevan

If the conflict surrounding Iran’s nuclear ambitions escalates
militarily, it wouldn’t only threaten Armenian-Iranian economic
projects. It could also lead to a flow of Iranian refugees to Armenia,
observers in Yerevan fear. They estimate that 200,000 to 400,000
people could seek refuge in the neighboring country, including many
of the some 300,000 ethnic Armenians living in Iran.

Gevorg Poghosyan, head of the Armenian Sociological Association,
considers these figures realistic. He said that already now, people
from Iran are relocating to Armenia.

“Business circles and intellectuals are particularly sensitive to
the situation in Iran,” Poghosyan said. “There are entire families
moving to Armenia.”

The Armenian authorities are not deterring Iranians from opening
businesses or buying real estate in Armenia. In Yerevan, there are
Iranian banks and restaurants, a mosque and a cultural center. Many
Iranians own houses or apartments in the center of Armenia’s capital.

According to real estate experts, Iranian nationals in the meantime
hold a 10 percent share of the Armenian real estate market – and the
trend is growing.

“If the situation with Iran comes to a head, the prices for houses
and apartments will increase significantly,” said Artem Pribilsky,
the director of the Armenian Real Estate Market in Yerevan

Authors: Aschot Gasasjan, Markian Ostaptschuk / sacEditor: Michael
Knigge

TURKEY AND ITS NEIGHBOURS
Yusuf Fernandez

id=22&seccatid=55&s1=1

The relations between Turkey and its neighbours have entered an
uncertain future. When Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his party, the AKP,
came to power in Turkey, they promoted a “zero problems with the
neighbours” policy. However, Turkey´s tensions with these countries
appear to have effectively nullified that doctrine.

Actually, Turkey finds itself in a international precarious
situation. Firstly, its interests are clearly ignored by Europeans,
who have put the country´s bid for membership in the European Union
on indefinite hold. The crisis with Cyprus, an EU member, is getting
worse. Ankara has recently threatened military action in response
to this country´s oil exploration activities in a disputed maritime
area. In a recent meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
in New York, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was told that
the United States supported Cyprus´ right to explore in the area,
which is led by an American company. In January, France passed a law
against the so-called “armenian genocide” and Turkey´s protests were
treated with disdain.

Ankara always claimed that it had alternatives if the EU closed its
doors for Turkey. It was assuming a predominant role among the Muslim
nations and using its political and economic power to become a conflict
mediator in the region. However, this role could become impossible
if Turkey continues to alienate its neighbours. Currently, the
deterioration of relations with Syria, Iraq, Russia and Iran appears
to be more or less serious and could have far-reaching consequences.

[turkey-syria-border.jpg] When Erdogan became PM in 2004, Turkey
started to court its neighbours, especially Iran, Syria and Iraq.

Ankara reconciled with Damascus after decades of mistrust due to the
strategic alliance of Turkey with Israel. The Syrians then became the
neighbours with whom the Turks developed their closest ties. Their
armed forces conducted joint maneuvers, while their foreign and
defense ministers set up a “strategic cooperation council.” Both
countries signed economic agreements worth billions of dollars.

According to the newspaper Hurriyet, Turkey had never cooperated so
closely with any other country.

However, the romance did not last. After the unrest in Syria broke out,
Turkey embraced the opposition, gave up on Assad´s regime and announced
sanctions against its old ally. Later, it started to openly promote
a regime change in Damascus and hosted Syrian political and armed
opposition groups. It allied itself with Syria´s main Arab enemies,
especially the Arab Gulf countries. This policy meant the official
“denouement of the Erdogan/Davutoglu investment in Bashar al-Assad” and
thus it was the “end of what has been billed as Turkey’s transformative
diplomacy,” wrote Steven A Cook in The Atlantic.

“For the first time in the life of the Turkish republic,
a Turkish government has adopted a policy of open, unprovoked
[turkey_syria_flag.jpg] confrontation with a neighboring country”,
wrote Ankara-based writer Jeremy Salt. “Turkey spent years repairing
relations with neighbors under the banners of soft power, strength
in depth and “zero problems”. At every level, the outcome was very
positive. Months ago, however, under the impact of the so-called
“Arab spring”, that policy was abandoned virtually overnight. It has
been replaced by threats, belligerence and support for an armed group
seeking the overthrow of a government with which Turkey had friendly
relations until very recently”. While Turkey once threatened to go
to war unless Syria expelled Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the Kurdish
Workers’ Party (PKK), it “is now supporting a man, Riad al Assad,
whose “Free Syrian Army” is doing exactly the same across the Syrian
border”, he added.

There are different reasons for the deterioration of links with
Damascus alongside with the “altruistic” goal of “helping Syrian
people”. Syria´s strong axis with Iran under Assad’s leadership makes
it difficult for Turkey to play a meaningful role in the region. Ankara
also sees Syria as a rival that competes for influence in Iraq. Syria´s
influence over Palestinian and Lebanese parties and organizations,
including Hamas and Hezbollah, also limits Turkey´s capacity to become
a decisive actor in Palestine and Lebanon.

Although some media has spoken of a possible Turkish military
intervention in Syria, there are some factors preventing Turkey from
taking such a step. Firstly, Turkey understands the importance of
avoiding a miscalculation over Syria. If there was chaos in Syria,
it would be Turkey that most suffers the consequences.

[russia.jpg] Secondly, Russia and China made it clear in their joint
declaration issued in Moscow after the recent visit by President Hu
Jintao that they will not allow the West to repeat the Libyan scenario
in Syria. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has said that it will use
veto if the Western countries press for a resolution on Syria at the UN
Security Council. “What I will not support is a resolution similar to
1973 on Libya, because I am convinced that a good resolution has been
turned into a piece of paper to cover a senseless military operation,”
Medvedev said.

Ankara has worked hard in last years to develop its relations with
Moscow and shares important economic and energy interests with
this country. Turkey has also increased its energy links with Iran
and both countries exchange human and technical intelligence on the
Kurdish armed organizations operating along their respective frontiers,
diplomatic sources told the Hurriyet Daily News. On the whole, Russia
and Iran provide 70% of Turkey´s energy imports.

However, Turkey´s embrace of the bid by NATO to station an anti-missile
radar on its territory has already angered both countries, which have
also become increasing suspicious of the new Turkish policy towards
Syria. In this way, Turkey is not clearly interested in further
antagonizing Russia and Iran by starting a military adventure in Syria.

Problems with Iraq[Iraq_Nouri_alMaliki.jpg]

After the serious deterioration of his relations with the Syrian
leadership, Erdogan has started another verbal war with his Iraqi
counterpart, Nouri al Maliki.

Turkey has its own agenda on Iraq, which is widely determinated
by the Kurdish issue. Ankara´s main focus is the prevention of an
independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, the elimination of attacks
on its territory by PKK fighters across the border and the protection
of the Turkmen minority that resides mainly in Mosul and Kirkuk. To
achieve this goal, Turkey does not need too much from Baghdad. Only
its aquiescence when it invades northern Iraq to attack PKK bases.

Turkey also wants to increase its leverage over this country. But it
cannot influence the Shiite forces and parties that control the Iraqi
politics now. This is why the Turkish government worked behind the
scenes to help build the Al Iraqiya coalition, which was supported by
ex Baathists, Sunni secular nationalists and Turkmen. Turkish support
for the coalition prompted protests from the leaders of Shiite and
Kurdish organizations, which sent messages of discontent to Ankara.

When the election result was known the Turkish government was taken
by surprise. Although Al Iraqiya came first, it did not gain enough
seats to form a government. Therefore, Ankara failed to turn their
support into a political triumph. Even after the election, Ankara
kept on ignoring the Shiite groups and Kurds and instead insisted
on strengthening its ties with Al Iraqiya. Finally, the Kurds and
Shiites parties sat around a table and found common ground to set up
an executive.

[hashimi1.jpg] According to Cengiz Candar, a prominent Turkish
expert on Middle East affairs, Ankara also wanted a Sunni president,
especially Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, instead of Kurdish
Jalal Talabani. However, both Talabani and the other Iraqi Kurdish
leader, Massoud Barzani, supported the first one´s bid for presidency
and Turkish plans failed.

At a point, Erdogan seemed to realize that if Turkey wanted to expand
its influence in Iraq, then it needed to reach out to Shiites and
Kurds. This is perhaps why Erdogan became the first Turkish PM who
visited Najaf, the religious center of the Shiites in Iraq, and Irbil,
capital of the Kurdish autonomous region. However, he was unable to
overcome widespread suspicion towards Turkey´s intentions.

The relations between Turkey and Iraq reached another lower point
when Erdogan publicly supported Iraqi Hashemi, who has been accused
of having links with terrorist groups by the Iraqi authorities. On
December 19, 2011, an investigative committee within Iraq´s Interior
Ministry issued an arrest warrant for Hashemi after three of his
bodyguards made confessions of taking orders from him to carry
out the terrorist attacks. Hashemi later fled to the Kurdistan
region.[iraq_syria_flags.jpg]

On January19, Erdogan warned Maliki that Ankara would not remain silent
if he promoted a sectarian conflict in his country. Maliki´s office
responded with a statement again criticizing Turkey´s “interference”
in Iraq’s affairs. “This is not acceptable in the dealings between
officials of different states and especially from heads of state,”
Maliki´s office said. “Erdogan has to be more careful in handling
the usual protocols in international relations.”

In a posterior interview with al-Hurra television in January, Maliki
said: “Turkey is unfortunately playing a role which may lead to
disaster and civil war in the region.”

The tension with Iraq could have serious economic consequences for
Turkey, which has already lost the Syrian market. It is noteworthy
to point out that Iraq is now Turkey´s second biggest export market
after Germany, with trade volume between the two reaching nearly
12 billion dollars in 2011. In the political field, the conflict is
likely to further diminish Ankara´s influence over its neighbour.

UELI LEUENBERGER ECRIT A JEAN-VINCENT PLACE
Stephane

armenews.com
jeudi 26 janvier 2012

Ueli Leuenberger, President des Verts en Suisse, a envoye un courrier
electronique au Chef du groupe ecologiste au Senat, M. Jean-Vincent
Place, pour lui demander de reconsiderer sa position avant le vote
de lundi.

A l’attention de Monsieur le Senateur

Jean-Vincent Place

Chef du Groupe des Verts au Senat francais

Genève, le 16 janvier 2012

Monsieur le Senateur,

Cher collègue,

Je viens d’apprendre par la presse que, lundi 23 janvier 2012, le
Groupe des Verts au Senat francais votera contre la proposition de loi
de Madame la deputee Valerie Boyer, adoptee par l’Assemblee nationale
le 22 decembre dernier. Selon mes informations, cette proposition
correspond a la transposition, dans le Droit francais, du Droit
communautaire (Decision cadre 2008/913/JAI du Conseil europeen du 28
novembre 2008 sur la lutte contre certaines formes et manifestations
de racisme et de xenophobie).

Tout en respectant votre position, j’aimerais attirer votre attention
sur le fait que cette proposition vous donne la possibilite de voter
en faveur d’un moyen de droit visant a empecher un crime bien reel en
Europe, le negationnisme. Un crime grave qui viole le droit fondamental
europeen qu’est la dignite humaine.

En Suisse, nous avons fait l’experience, a plusieurs reprises,
de groupes nationalistes pilotes par l’Etat turc, venus en Suisse,
notamment dans les villes de Winterthur, Olten, Lausanne, Zurich et
Berne, pour destabiliser, sur fond de racisme, la paix publique. Je
n’ai pas l’impression que vous etes en train de vivre une experience
très differente de la nôtre, et que, par ailleurs, vous etes sensible
au maintien des valeurs fondamentales qui sont le fondement de la
Republique francaise.

J’ai personnellement assiste, en mars 2007, au procès d’un
negationniste turc, M. Dogu Perincek, chef d’un mouvement appele ”
Comite Talaat Pacha “, tristement celèbre, tant en Allemagne qu’en
France, pour sa volonte et sa politique de negation du genocide
des Armeniens. Il est de notoriete publique que les activites de ce
mouvement ont ete directement cautionnees par l’Etat turc.

Je peux vous garantir que les nombreux charters organises par Ankara,
afin d’influencer les politiciens ainsi que les juges suisses,
ont heureusement contribue a eclaircir quelles etaient en fait les
finalites reelles de cette strategie !

Ce qui a permis au Parlement suisse, en connaissance de cause,
d’edicter une loi qui permet de penaliser le crime de genocide :

” celui qui aura publiquement, par la parole, l’ecriture, l’image,
le geste, par des voies de fait ou de toute autre manière, abaisse ou
discrimine d’une facon qui porte atteinte a la dignite humaine une
personne ou un groupe de personnes en raison de leur race, de leur
appartenance ethnique ou de leur religion ou qui, pour la meme raison,
niera, minimisera grossièrement ou cherchera a justifier un genocide
ou d’autres crimes contre l’humanite ”

(Vous voyez qu’on n’est pas trop loin du texte de la proposition de loi
de Mme Valerie Boyer et que les instances europeennes se sont inspirees
de la loi Suisse pour faire une loi globale et non particulière).

M. Perincek a ete definitivement condamne par le Tribunal federal
en decembre 2007, creant ainsi jurisprudence. Les collègues de ce
monsieur et ses mandataires, revenus a la charge une annee plus tard
dans la ville de Winterthur, ont ete aussi condamnes par la plus haute
instance juridique de notre pays en 2010. Depuis, nous n’avons plus
enregistre en Suisse de cas de negationnisme.

Par la force des choses, nous avons dû malheureusement constater que
le genocide des Armeniens est loin d’etre un detail de l’histoire, et
surtout qu’il reste fortement lie a l’histoire actuelle de la Turquie.

Sa negation constitue bel et bien un crime qui doit etre poursuivi
par une loi penale et non pas par une loi ” memorielle “.

J’espère vous avoir fourni, Cher collègue, quelques elements pour vous
suggerer l’utilite d’une telle loi. Je suis a votre entière disposition
pour vous fournir tout detail ou information supplementaires dont
vous pourriez avoir besoin.

Veuillez croire, Monsieur le Senateur, Cher collègue, aux sentiments
de ma très haute consideration.

Ueli Leuenberger

President des Verts suisses

Conseiller national

President de la commission des institutions politiques

Membre de la commission de contrôle de gestion

Co-President du Groupe parlementaire Suisse -Armenie

OBJECTIONS INCREASING AGAINST FRENCH SENATE’S DECISION ON ARMENIAN BILL

Anadolu Agency
Jan 25 2012
Turkey

Objections are increasing in France against the bill, which
criminalizes the denial of Armenian allegations on 1915 incidents
and was recently adopted by French Senate.

French parliamentarians have launched an initiative on Tuesday to
apply to Constitutional Court in order to object the bill.

The European Democratic & Social Rally (RDSE), which has 16 seats
at French Senate, declared that it would fully support the appeal to
Constitutional Court. RDSE stated that the bill was against the 34th
article of Constitution.

Meanwhile, four parliamentarians of the ruling UMP party said that
they would support the initiative to apply to the Constitutional Court.

Also a group of senators from Socialist Party is getting prepared to
object the bill and support the initiative.

According to French Constitution, 60 parliamentarians or senators
have the right to apply to Constitutional Court about a bill adopted
at Parliament within a month.

French Senate on Monday adopted a bill that criminalizes the denial
of Armenian allegations pertaining to the incidents of 1915.

The bill was adopted by a vote of 127 against 86.

With the adoption of the Armenian bill at the French Senate, the
denial of Armenian allegations regarding the incidents of 1915 would
be penalized with a prison term of one year and a monetary fine of
45,000 euros in France.