Author: Maral Chavushian

The US co-chair commented on Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan’s recent statement that Nagorno-Karabakh is an inseparable part of Armenia.

The co-chairs remain committed to addressing all elements of a settlement that are of importance to the parties, Warlick added.

The attempts of the Azerbaijani side to escalate the situation threaten to destabilize the situation in the region at large, should the international community fail to give a proper response, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan told journalists following the summit of the CSTO member states in Tajikistan

Speaking at the session, President Sargsyan informed the heads of CSTO member states about the situation in the South Caucasus. He called attention to the escalation of tension at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the line of contact between the armed forces of Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes the events in and around Turkey that followed the previous parliamentary elections will force voters to ‘prefer stability and security’ by giving a larger amount of votes to the ruling party in the forthcoming snap elections.

Turkish analyst Ozgur Unluhisarcikli is confident Erdogan’s expectations will not come true. He says polls show the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) will retain and even increase the number of votes.

The expert is confident that the ruling party will again fail to gain majority and will have to form a coalition.

Whether the future agenda of Armenian-Turkish relations is positive or negative will depend on this coalition, he believes. According to Unluhisarcikli, Turkey is likely to develop a positive agenda if the HDP forms part of it.

The expert is assured that if talks between Armenia and Turkey resume, the bilateral relations should be clearly separated from two factors – the ‘1915 events’ and the Armenian-Azerbaijani disagreements.

Armenian analysts consider there is no ground for positive expectations today. Expert of the Analytical Centre on Globalization and Regional Cooperation David Shahnazaryan says any initiative should come from Turkey, as it was there that the Zurich protocols ‘faded.”

Today’s conference dedicated to the Armenian-Turkish relations was organized by the Analytical Centre on Globalization and Regional Cooperation with financial assistance of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

July 31 is the birthday of great American Armenian writer William Saroyan.

William Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908 in Fresno, California to Armenak and Takoohi Saroyan, Armenian immigrants from Bitlis, Ottoman Empire. His father came to New York in 1905 and started preaching in Armenian Apostolic Churches.

At the age of three, after his father’s death, Saroyan, along with his brother and sister, was placed in an orphanage in Oakland, California. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno.

Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of his father’s writings. A few of his early short articles were published in Overland Monthly. His first stories appeared in the 1930s.

Among these was “The Broken Wheel”, written under the name Sirak Goryan and published in the Armenian journal Hairenik in 1933. Many of Saroyan’s stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley or dealt with the rootlessness of the immigrant. The short story collection My Name is Aram (1940), an international bestseller, was about a young boy and the colorful characters of his immigrant family. It has been translated into many languages.

As a writer, Saroyan made his breakthrough in Story magazine with The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), the title taken from the nineteenth century song of the same title. The protagonist is a young, starving writer who tries to survive in a Depression-ridden societ

Saroyan published essays and memoirs, in which he depicted the people he had met on travels in the Soviet Union and Europe, such as the playwright George Bernard Shaw, the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, and Charlie Chaplin. In 1952, Saroyan published The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills, the first of several volumes of memoirs.

Saroyan died in Fresno, of cancer at age 71. Half of his ashes were buried in California and the remainder in Armenia at Komitas Pantheon near film director Sergei Parajanov.

On July 24 Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan received Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Czech Republic to Armenia Peter Mikiska and newly appointed Military Attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Stefan Grivalsky.

Minister Ohanyan noted that cooperation with the Czech Republic in the field of defense is important to Armenia.

He voiced hope that the appointment of the new attaché would give new impetus to the bilateral cooperation.

Ambassador Mikiska noted, in turn, that Armenia is an important partner for the Czech Republic and the latter is willing to continue the dynamic development of cooperation in the field of defense.

On 17 July Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan visited the Kashen mining complex of and got acquainted with activities being carried out there, Central Information Department of the Office of the Artsakh Republic President reported.

President Sahakyan noted that the state paid special attention to the development of mining industry, considering it among the pivotal components of Artsakh’s economy.

Thereafter Bako Sahakyan visited several agricultural fields in the Askeran region and got acquainted with the modern irrigation technologies being implemented there. The Head of the State underlined that the authorities would continue to keep in the spotlight the application of leading experience in the agricultural sphere.

Prime-minister Ara Haroutyunyan and other officials accompanied the President.

Russian businessman, billionaire German Sterligov has moved to Nagorno Karabakh, Russian media report.

The Russian News Service claims the businessmen is selling his property. His assistant Polina Sirota has said Sterligov left for Karabakh on July 4.

“He has left for Nagorno Karabakh, and it’s not known when he’s going to return. Serious circumstances have made him leave Russia. But it’s not bandits, it’s on a higher level,” she said.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry has already announced it will investigate the fact of ‘illegal stay’ of the Russian businessman German Sterligov and his family members in Nagorno Karabakh.

Michael Georg Link, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), today called on the Armenian authorities to respect the right to freedom of peaceful assembly of those taking part in a peaceful protest in central Yerevan.

“Armenia, like all OSCE participating States, has committed itself to protect and promote the fundamental freedom of peaceful assembly, and must fully respect the rights of the protesters in Yerevan to exercise this freedom,” the ODIHR Director said. “The reports of the actions of law enforcement agencies yesterday morning, including the use of water cannons against and the arrest of hundreds of peaceful protesters, raise serious concerns.”

OSCE commitments on freedom of assembly not only guarantee the right to peaceful assembly and demonstration, but state that any restrictions on this right have to be prescribed by law and consistent with international standards.

“The law-enforcement authorities have the duty to facilitate peaceful assemblies, and any police measure has to be legitimate, necessary and proportionate,” Director Link said. “All allegations of the excessive use of force or unjustified or indiscriminate arrests should be impartially, thoroughly and promptly investigated to hold those responsible accountable.”

The protests against a looming 17 per cent rise in electricity prices began last Friday, and thousands took to the streets in Yerevan on Tuesday morning. The demonstrators were charged by police and fired upon with water cannon after they blocked a main street in the capital. More than 200 protesters were reportedly arrested, while 14 demonstrators and 11 police were injured. Those detained on Tuesday have since been released. Hundreds of demonstrators returned today to continue the protest.

After a marathon of amendment voting, PACE  approved its resolution on democratic institutions in Azerbaijan by 140 votes to 13.

The Assembly voted 85 to 78  to accept the amendment tabled by the Armenian delegation to exclude the term”occupation” with regard to Nagorno Karabakh.

The Parliamentary Assembly says in the final text of the Resolution it “is fully aware of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict which dominates to a large extent the Azerbaijani foreign policy agenda.”

The draft reaolution read: “The Assembly is fully aware of the occupation by Armenia of NagornoKarabakh and seven other provinces of Azerbaijan, which dominates to a large extent the Azerbaijani foreign policy agenda.”

The rise of Brenda Shaffer as a scholar and oft-quoted expert in the field of energy politics illustrates just how vulnerable the American foreign policy establishment is to manipulation by foreign agents, accoridng to a report published by the .

Till Bruckner, Advocacy Manager for Transparify, which promotes greater integrity in policy research, reveals that “supported by an overseas regime and an assorted network of overt and undercover lobbyists, she used oil money to build her academic credentials, then in turn used those credentials to promote Azerbaijan’s agendas through Congressional testimony, dozens of newspaper op-eds and media appearances, countless think tank events, and even scholarly publications.”

Shaffer first walked into Congress in 2001 to testify before the House of Representatives’ Committee on International Relations.

She was introduced as “the director of the Caspian Studies Program and a post-doctoral fellow in the international security program at the Belfort [Belfer] Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government”.

Addressing lawmakers, she asked them to repeal a section of the Freedom Support Act that barred direct US aid to the Azerbaijani government. “They have extended their hand to the US. They have huge expectations that the policy of this country is based on some sort of morality and high ideals,” she told them, and reinforced this in written testimony she also submitted.

Challenged about Azerbaijan’s democratic record, she replied: “There is a lot of room for improvement in terms of democratization. However, every six months, every year, things are getting better and better.”

“What lawmakers listening to Shaffer didn’t know was that the Caspian Studies Program she headed at Harvard was set up in 1999 through a $1 million grant from the US Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce and a consortium of oil and gas companies led by Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron, all of which had commercial interests in the region. The chamber of commerce is a pro-Azerbaijan pressure group whose Board of Directors includes a vice president of SOCAR, the Azerbaijan state-owned energy company, and top lobbyists for BP and Chevron,”
Till Bruckner writes.

Shaffer led the Caspian Studies Program until 2005. During her tenure, she wrote 14 op-eds for leading US and Israeli newspapers including the International Herald Tribune and the Jerusalem Post. Most called on American policy makers to pay more attention to the region. One exhorted the US to stop funding for Nagorno-Karabakh.