13:31, 7 February, 2022
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 7, ARMENPRESS. Wizz Air Abu Dhabi airline launched the Abu Dhabi – Yerevan- Abu Dhabi flights February 7, the Armenia International Airports CJSC said in a statement.
The airline will operate the route on Mondays and Fridays.
People shop at a market in Istanbul, Turkey, Jan. 4, 2022. (Reuters Photo)
Turkey’s central bank on Thursday hiked its year-end annual inflation forecasts for this year as well as the next, while it stressed supporting the lira is a key objective of its ongoing policy review.
The end-2022 consumer price index estimate has been raised to 23.2%, Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) Governor Şahap Kavcıoğlu told a meeting in the capital Ankara to present the bank’s first quarterly inflation report of the year.
In its last report in October, the central bank forecast inflation would ease to 11.8% by the end of 2022. The annual inflation rate stood at 36.08% in December, its highest level in 19 years.
Kavcıoğlu dismissed the notion that a series of interest rate cuts sent prices soaring and the lira declining. He noted that unhealthy price formations in currency markets impacted inflation and this year’s forecast had been affected by lira-denominated import prices.
The bank forecast 8.2% inflation for 2023 and a return to its official target of 5% a year later, Kavcıoğlu said.
Data shared by the bank showed it expects inflation to approach 50% in January, peak near 55% in May and then drop sharply in the third quarter, which Kavcıoğlu attributed to the government’s new economic strategy.
The bank hiked its year-end food inflation estimate to 24.2%, compared with 13.9% previously, before it drops toward 10% in 2023.
Kavcıoğlu stressed that the bank’s estimate for food prices was revised up with cumulative effects of the ongoing rises in international food prices taken into account, especially the exchange rate developments and the developments in agricultural drought.
The governor said the bank was observing the impact of recent policy rate decisions and was reviewing policy while prioritizing the lira.
The bank has slashed the policy rate to 14% from 19% since September. It kept the benchmark one-week repo rate steady last week.
The de-dollarization of Turkey’s financial system will allow policymakers to curb price growth, and Kavcıoğlu signaled the determination of the officials to support the lira.
He dubbed policies aimed at widening the use of the local currency “liraization,” and said they will limit the impact of currency volatility in prices.
“The stress from foreign exchange rates are having a negative impact on prices in Turkey,” he said. “This distorts pricing behavior and has recently resulted in a divergence between Turkey and the rest of the world.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan last month unveiled a scheme that safeguards lira deposits against volatility in the foreign exchange rates.
The initiative came after the lira fell to a record low of 18.4 to the United States dollar, before rebounding sharply to just over 10 and then settling at current levels just under 14 to the U.S. dollar.
Kavcıoğlu said that the rate of conversion to lira deposit accounts has picked up pace recently and will continue to accelerate.
He said the current level of more than TL 200 billion ($14.70 billion) transferred to the protected accounts since Dec. 20 is in line with projected targets.
In the minutes of this month’s monetary policy meeting, the central bank on Thursday also said it will develop instruments to support lira deposits, increase the share of lira in funding, gradually reduce the volume of swaps and strengthen forex reserves.
It said it is taking the necessary measures about exchange rate stability. It added that disinflation is expected to begin due to recent measures taken, as well as the so-called base effect.
Kavcıoğlu said the bank sets policy based on data when asked at a press conference about its independence.
The lira weakening “has nothing to do with the rate cuts” and would have happened irrespective, said the governor.
He added that rising inflation was not completely due to rate cuts. “We took care of the exchange rate, God willing we will take care of inflation too with these policies.”
Erdoğan, who has long backed the view that interest rates cause inflation, launched a new economic program last year that prioritizes lower borrowing costs, exports, lending and investment.
He late Wednesday harshly criticized private lenders, saying they were attempting to continue exploitation.
In an interview with private broadcaster NTV, Erdoğan urged households to borrow from state banks and help boost production under the new economic policy that he said should protect the economy from speculation.
High loan rates by commercial banks are not justified, given the 14% one-week repo rate, Kavcıoğlu said.
Erdoğan said the government will take steps to relieve the burden of inflation. He also promised new alternative debt issuance for investors.
Kavcıoğlu said the bank continued to build up foreign exchange reserves, blaming the recent drawdown on market volatility, as well as the hard currency needs of the state-owned energy distributor BOTAŞ and other institutions.
He also called on the banking sector to believe in disinflation and act accordingly and said much of the price pressure was down to global supply issues.
Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and its special envoy Ruben Rubinyan will attend the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu announced Thursday.
Armenia wants to establish diplomatic relations with Turkey without any preconditions, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Monday, indicating that the country might attend the Antalya Diplomacy Forum.
Speaking at a press conference, he said: “Our special representatives have met. If the process continues like this, it is highly possible that Armenia will participate in the Antalya Diplomacy Forum. It would be irrational to miss a chance to continue meetings.”
The Antalya Diplomacy Forum will be held on March 11-14 in Antalya province, under the motto “Recoding Diplomacy” and will be attended by several heads of states, ministers, academicians and members of the press.
The gathering, where the most important regional and global issues on the world’s agenda will be discussed in a solution-oriented platform, will provide leaders, politicians, prominent academics, thinkers, opinion leaders, diplomats and business people an opportunity to discuss international issues from a diplomatic perspective.
After a 1 1/2 hour meeting recently in Moscow, the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministries published the same statement hailing the talks and agreeing to “continue negotiations without preconditions.” Turkey aims for the next meeting to be held either in Turkey or Armenia, sources said.
By Ilham Nagiyev*
With all the trouble in the world today it is easy – as many have – to overlook the significance of the peace talks between President Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Pashinyan of Armenia which began in Brussels in December last year. Yet to do so is to miss a potentially critical and defining moment in the post-soviet history of the Caucasus – as well as overlook a source of economic opportunity for Europe.
Since a 44-day war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in late 2020, there has been an uneasy ceasefire between the two countries – but little else. The meeting of December, hosted by European Council president Charles Michel, was the first and most promising step since the conflict towards future certainty and permanent peace.
At the talks progress was made on border demarcation, more cooperation on the exchange of maps of landmines laid by Armenia for prisoners arrested by Azerbaijan. But perhaps even more importantly for the future than these first steps forward, initial agreement was reached on “Zangezur” – a transport corridor that will run from the Caspian Sea in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west – transgressing both Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Turkish territory.
This project offers crucial diversification for all three countries.
For Turkey, with its policy of regional engagement, it offers a way to expand beyond diplomatic initiatives.
For Armenia, whose economy was stunted for decades by political and economic isolation from its neighbours, a transport route offers much-needed income.
For Azerbaijan, as a nation built on oil and gas exports in an increasingly decarbonising world, it offers a route to increase the speed of economic diversification away from fossil fuels.
For all three nations along with Georgia, Russia and Iran, the other countries that straddle the Caucasus, there may be longer-term the potential for co-operation over a replacement for Metsamor – the Chernobyl-design nuclear power station that provides most of Armenia’s electricity while posing a threat through dilapidation and mismanagement to the lives and livelihoods of an entire region.
And this also offers opportunity for western nations, particularly Britain and those in Europe. There are contracts to be gained not merely on the transport corridor – but on the vast reconstruction needed of Karabakh, occupied by Armenia from 1994 but won back during the 2020 conflict – and to where close to one million Azerbaijanis displaced in the 90s seek to return.
Already the UK, as the world leader in mine and ordinance clearance, has provided government funding for demining programmes. Private British companies that specialise in clearance are part of the Azerbaijani national effort which by the end of 2021 had cleaned some 21,000 hectares of land contaminated with 53,000 landmines. Another British company has, in concert with the authorities, produced the masterplan for the reconstruction of the entire region.
While foreign investment is arriving, is it obvious that with more certainty through a potential future peace deal, and overseas interest would multiply.
But let us not get ahead of ourselves. A future of prosperity across the region depends on the continuing success of peace talks only just begun last month in Brussels.
While it can be guaranteed those talks will be difficult, we can hardly second-guess the length of time it will take to complete them. What we do know, however, is that there are other examples of the peace dividend to focus on – starting within the most obvious which emerged through peace in Europe some 70 years ago.
There were, of course, very different circumstances to that pan-Europeanizing effort – and no one is suggesting anything as expansive as political and economic union is the direction of travel, or even desirable in the case of Armenia and Azerbaijan.
But what is clear is that prosperity between countries with land borders is built on peace and the determination to avoid war. Once that is secured, with borders at last designated and finalised, economic cooperation – across those borders – can sustainably develop. How that progresses, and the trade in which goods and services, and what is transported – whether manufactured products on trucks and trains or oil and gas and electricity through pipelines and cables – depends on what those two countries offer to exchange with the other because they lack them themselves.
That is for the future – but perhaps not one that is too distant. For now, we must watch and wait how peace talks progress, with the anticipation that 2022 is the year when the Caucasus puts war behind it and learns to love economics.
*The author is an Azerbaijani economist, author, IT entrepreneur, co-founder and the Chairman of the Board of security company GESCO OJSC
Congressman Frank Pallone has urged the US Department of State to use diplomatic tools to ensure the release of Armenian prisoners of war.
“Spoke with State Department today, where I reiterated the need for the US to strongly and publicly support Armenia’s democracy and bring our countries closer together,” Rep. Pallone said in a Twitter post.
“I urged them to use every available diplomatic tool to halt Azeri aggression and ensure the release of Armenian POWs,” he added.
11:08, 20 January, 2022
YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. 621 new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Armenia in the past one day, the ministry of health reported.
The total number of confirmed cases in the country has reached 349,329.
The COVID-19 recoveries rose by 103 in a day, bringing the total to 333,857.
The death toll has risen to 8026 (1 death case in past day).
5838 COVID-19 tests were conducted on January 19.
The number of active cases is 5927.
Baku will suppress attempts of the OSCE Minsk Group to engage in the Karabakh conflict, local media reported citing Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Aliyev said that OSCE should not deal with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, because it has been solved.
Aliyev stressed that the Minsk Group must accept the reality and know that they cannot deal with the Karabakh issue because they will not allow that.
‘Official Baku undermines regional security’– Armenian Foreign Ministry issues statement
23:38,
YEREVAN, JANUARY 11, ARMENPRESS. Armenia’s foreign ministry has issued a statement, condemning the gross violation of the ceasefire regime by the Azerbaijani armed forces in the eastern direction of the border of the Republic of Armenia with the use of artillery and UAVs.
“We strongly condemn today’s (January 11) gross violation of the ceasefire regime by the Azerbaijani armed forces in the eastern direction of the border of the Republic of Armenia with the use of artillery and UAVs, as a result of which servicemen of the armed forces of Armenia Arthur Mkhitaryan and Rudik Gharibyan were fatally wounded and two servicemen were injured. We extend our deepest condolences to the families and relatives of the killed servicemen and wish a speedy recovery to the wounded.
The provocative actions of the Azerbaijani armed forces are another manifestation of the continuous encroachments of Azerbaijan on the territorial integrity of Armenia, which have started since May 12, 2021, with the infiltration into the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia and continued with recurrent armed attacks.
The Republic of Armenia draws the attention of international community to the fact that official Baku, continuing its encroachments on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia, violates the basic principles of international law, including the UN Charter, and undermines regional security.
The Armenian side has repeatedly stated that one of the ways to avoid further escalation of the situation may be the mirrored withdrawal of troops from the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and introduction of an international monitoring mechanism along the border.
We call on the Azerbaijani authorities to refrain from provocative actions and implement their commitment on establishing stability in the region undertaken as a result of the Brussels meeting and with the Trilateral Statement of Sochi”, the statement says.
Talks are taking place between Turkey and Armenia that could lead to the normalisation of relations between the two countries
Within three days of each other in mid-December, the two capitals appointed special envoys for talks aiming to revive bilateral relations frozen since 1993. If the negotiations, to be sponsored by Moscow, are successful, they could lead to a meeting between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the former told Sputnik news on 24 December.
However, despite such steps, prospects of success seem far from certain, according to Fehim Tasktekin in the website Al-Monitor. “Nagorno-Karabakh may no longer be an obstacle to Armenian-Turkish normalisation, yet political and psychological stumbling blocks remain intact,” he said.
Ankara sees Armenia as a permanent thorn in its side, with the “Armenian lobby” in Washington and other Western capitals constantly raking up the humanitarian tragedy that befell Armenians under the former Ottoman Empire and exhorting them to pressure Turkey to own up to what it was: genocide.
Ankara sticks to its own reading of that history, saying that the Turks had founded a new republic in the 1920s and therefore should not be associated with the crimes of the Ottoman Empire. Besides, atrocities were committed by both sides, it says.
The Armenians refute that claim and counter with reams of testimonies and historical accounts thoroughly documenting the forced marches, massacres and other cruelties that led to hundreds of thousands of Armenians dead and attesting to a deliberate policy of annihilation.
Although no political party in Turkey is prepared to recognise the Armenian Genocide, apart from the progressive pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), there has been a degree of softening and introspection in some political quarters, especially the more Western-oriented ones that share the views of many NGOs and rights groups.
At a more pragmatic level, some believe that their country’s attitude towards the Armenian question is an obstacle to international and regional acceptance. They realise that keeping the matter unresolved does not serve Turkish interests in the US and Europe. The only solution, therefore, is to break the taboo on the subject and discuss it rationally in the hope of arriving at some sort of “compromise”.
This could entail activating the stalled 2009 agreement that called for the establishment of an international commission to investigate the mass killing of Armenians during World War I.
Although discussions of the matter in Turkey have received little attention in the predominately government-dominated press, they appear to have support among academic circles in universities and research centres, as well as in some quarters of the public at large, especially those affiliated with the People’s Republican Party (CHP), Turkey’s largest political party.
Despite the government’s iron grip on the press, the CHP and other opposition forces, which can reach the public through the Internet and social media, have been drawing voters away from the dwindling ranks of Erdogan’s ruling AKP.
Indeed, a main reason behind his initiative to kickstart normalisation talks with Yerevan was precisely to pull the rug out from under the opposition’s feet.
It is no coincidence that the initiative was launched at the height of the Turkish lira’s unprecedented nosedive, with its implications in terms of runaway inflation and the worsening economic straits of the vast majority of Turkish citizens.
Against this backdrop, the pro-government media has billed the rapprochement with Yerevan as a prelude to Turkey’s political and economic expansion towards the Caspian Sea and Central Asia via linkups through a proposed corridor between Turkey and Azerbaijan passing through the autonomous Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhichevan along the Turkish border.
Erdogan also calculates that the initiative could reduce tensions with both Brussels and the US, which would have payoffs for Turkey’s beleaguered economy. Pashinyan might be operating on a similar calculus which, as Tastekin observes, seems to rest on opening Armenia’s borders as a means to strengthen its economy and eventually reduce its dependence on Russia.
However, even if it takes off, the normalisation drive will run up against walls of resistance among nationalists on both sides. Pashinyan is in a stronger position, having survived a bid to vote him out of power in early elections in June 2021. But in Turkey, the situation is a little more complicated.
The ultranationalists, as represented by the extremist National Movement Party (MHP), are not that numerous, but they are vocal and, more importantly, they are the AKP’s junior partner in the People’s Alliance and the key to the parliamentary majority that Erdogan relies on.
If the MHP fell out with Erdogan over the normalisation question to the point of rupturing their electoral alliance – though this is unlikely as it would be tantamount to political suicide – it would set the country on the path to early elections.
The AKP would be unlikely to perform well in those, and judging by recent opinion polls, the opposition would prevail and then follow the path towards normalisation.
A version of this article appears in print in the 6 January, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
PanARMENIAN.Net – Rector of the Yerevan State Medical University Armen Muradyan has revealed details from a recent meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani public figures, in which he participated. According to him, the conversation only covered matters in the humanitarian field.
Armenian and Azerbaijani public figures recently met in Moscow, at a gathering organized with the mediation of Mikhail Shvydkoy, the special representative of the Russian President for international cultural cooperation. Muradyan, artistic director of Hovhannes Tumanyan State Puppet Theater Ruben Babayan, Director of the Stanislavsky Theater Marianna Mkhitaryan and filmmaker Harutyun Khachatryan participated in the meeting from the Armenian side.
Muradyan noted that the Armenian side has suggested sending a group of doctors to examine the prisoners of war still being held in Azerbaijan after the 44-day war.
Muradyan added that the Armenian delegation spoke about all the inhumane acts that the Armenian people have witnessed during the wars and after ceasefires, as well as raised the endangered Armenian historical and cultural heritage.
“The purpose of the meeting was to separate humanitarian issues from political and military ones. The meeting was tense, but within the limits of correctness,” Muradyan said in a social media post on Sunday, December 26.
He also reminded that such meetings had last been organized in 2004, 2006 and 2008.