Author: nina hovnanian

ARMENIA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS WILL CONSIDER BUYING ARMAVIA ONCE IT IS SOLD

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 13:17:57 – 15/03/2012

Reporters asked the vice-director of Armenia International Airports
CJSC why the fees of the Armenian airport are higher than those in
European countries. Andranik Shkhyan said they follow the task of
the government to be competitive in the region.

Shekhyan said after ten years from this instruction, Armenia has an
ultramodern airport which is competitive with those of Tbilisi and Baku
in terms of prices and quality of service. Andranik Shkhyan also noted
that it is wrong to compare the fees charged by the Armenian airport
with the fees of the European airports because they serve much more
passengers. But he added that the Armenian airport is competitive
with the airport of Prague, for example.

The taxes of most airports are 15% maximum, said Shkhyan adding that
the taxes have no impact on the costs of the company.

The reporters asked whether the airport is considering buying Armavia
once it is sold. Andranik Shkhyan said they have not been informed
and they will consider it once they are informed. He said that the
conditions they provide now will improve the company.

POLICE SEIZE OCCUPY MASHTOTS PARK ACTIVISTS’ TENT AS BRAWL ENSUES

epress.am
03.15.2012

Local police at around 9:30 pm on Wednesday night raided a central
Yerevan park where activists have been protesting non-stop for a month
and seized a tent belonging to them, according to the description
below the video uploaded on YouTube by Ecolur NGO. Recall, activists
are protesting the construction of shops in Mashtots Park, which they
say is illegal and deprives the public of one of the few remaining
green spaces in downtown Yerevan.

According to the Yerevan-based environmental organization and
the activists camped out at the park (who posted about the news on
Facebook), there was a brawl among 2-3 young men in one corner of the
park, which drew the activists’ attention. Police then took advantage
of the opportunity and came in droves and surrounded the sole tent
that activists had pitched in the park when a few days ago they
announced they would be camping overnight. Not only did police not
allow activists to approach the tent, but also they pried out one of
the activists who was in the tent and subsequently impounded the tent.

In a statement issued later that same night, police informed activists
that the tent is at the central police division and they can pick it
up anytime. Police also cautioned that placing tents or other such
objects in public spaces is prohibited by law and “was tolerated by
police merely to prevent the unnecessary aggravation of the situation.”

According to the statement, when the tent was being pitched police
officers had warned activists that it is a violation of public order.

Furthermore, according to the statement, at around 9:30 pm on
Wednesday, they had told activists to dismantle the tent. “The demand
was not met, after which RA Police dismantled it with its efforts,”
reads the statement.

Environmental activists, in turn, issued a statement of their own,
saying that police officers used brutal force against them last night.

They also point out that around 9:15 pm, the number of police officers
at the park swelled, which began to concern them.

“To our question what this was due to, those officials directing
the police forces said that police are replacing each other [a shift
change]. At the same time, they addressed us disparagingly, ‘What food
and drinks you’ve gathered here – you’ve made yourself at home, eh?’
Then, at that moment, immediately to the left of Metelitsa Cafe, in
the area behind the kiosks, 2-3 young men shouted loudly, so to divert
our attention, and more than 100 police officers ran toward our tent,
instead of determining who those were who were breaching public order,
shouting and cursing at each other in a public space.

“This incident permits us, civil society subjects, to note that the
RA Police resorted to the cheapest and lowest move, when staging
a performance, they attacked peaceful assembly participants, whose
number was far less than the number of police officers,” reads the
statement issued by civic initiative “We are the owners of this city,”
which is among the protestors in the park.

Activists add that the statement issued by police is arbitrary,
subjective and untrue. They stress that they will continue to remain
in the park until the partially constructed kiosks are demolished.

Furthermore, as noted in the statement, they are appealing to the RA
Prosecutor General, head of the RA Special Investigation Service and
the RA Police Chief to immediately investigate and hold accountable
all those police and state officials who “issued an illegal order
and those who followed it” at Mashtots Park yesterday.

ROBERT KOCHARIAN TO SPEAK PUBLICLY BEFORE ELECTIONS: SPOKESPERSON

epress.am
03.15.2012

Head of former Armenian president Robert Kocharian’s office Viktor
Soghomonyan is confident that Kocharian (pictured) will speak publicly
before the May parliamentary election, though he doesn’t know exactly
when, reports local daily Haykakan Jamanak (“Armenian Times”).

“I can only assume that until the parliamentary election he will
speak [publicly]; there will be an interview or an announcement –
I find it hard to say now,” he said.

To the reporter’s observation that Kocharian wasn’t invited to the
Prosperous Armenia Party’s congress, Soghomonyan said it’s impossible
to remember any congress or convention in which Kocharian participated.

“There was never such a case – neither in the Republic of
Nagorno-Karabakh where he was a president nor in the Republic of
Armenia either when he was the prime minister or during his 10-year
presidency,” he said.

Soghomonyan also refuted reports that Kocharian has health issues,
saying that he is in Armenia today and is following developments
in politics.

FRENCH SOCIALIST CANDIDATE MEETS ARMENIANS OF MARSEILLE

Tert.am
15.03.12

French socialist presidential candidate Francoise Holland met the
Armenians of Marseille in the course of his visit to the city on
Wednesday.

According to the French-Armenian publication Nouvelles d’Armenie,
Holland was also received by President of the Coordination Council
of French Armenians (CCAF), Julien Herunyan, and Secretary Paskal
Shamasyan.

Earlier in the day, he visited the Armenian cathedral of Prado to
lay flowers on the memorial to the Armenian Genocide victims. Holland
reiterated his stance on the law criminalizing the denial of genocides.

The Council hailed the socialist candidate’s statement, expressing
hopes that he will follow his pledge in case of being elected.

WASHINGTON URGES THE PARTIES TO THE KARABAKH CONFLICT TO PREPARE THEIR POPULATIONS FOR PEACE, NOT WAR

armradio.am
15.03.2012 13:21

The United States has urged the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict to remain committed to a peaceful resolution of the
long-running dispute.

“As a Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, the United States remains
firmly committed to assisting the sides in the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict reach a lasting and peaceful settlement. There is no military
solution to this conflict,” Spokesperson for the US Department of
State Victoria Nuland told a daily briefing in Washington.

“We urge the sides to prepare their populations for peace, not war,
and to refrain from any provocative rhetoric or actions on the ground,”
she added.

MEZIN. LARA KOLOGLU, PIANISTE SANS FRONTIERES
Stepahane

armenews.com
mercredi 14 mars 2012

Lara Kologlu est une jeune pianiste turque de 24 ans, venue participer
a la 14e session de jeunes solistes de Mezin. Dernièrement, elle
interpretait des ~uvres du compositeur armenien Khatchaturian en
compagnie de la violoncelliste Laure Volpato. Originaire d’Istambul,
Lara debute naturellement le piano a l’âge de 10 ans, son père est
musicien et sa grand-mère pianiste renommee. À l’âge de 16 ans,
elle quitte le sol natal avec sa maman pour la France. Elle entre au
Conservatoire a rayonnement departemental de Cannes, dans la classe de
Denis Weber avec qui elle travaille pendant six ans. Durant ces annees
de conservatoire, son esprit curieux s’interesse a d’autres formes
de musiques telles que le jazz et le tango. Elle suit une courte
formation en atelier de jazz avec Patrick Michel et intègre le Big
Band du Conservatoire de musique de Cannes. Elle ne quitte pas pour
autant ses etudes de piano jazz avec Jean-Christophe Di Costanzo. Son
interet pour les musiques traditionnelles l’amène a travailler
en musique de chambre de tango etablie par Aude Giuliano a Paris,
puis au Conservatoire de Gennevilliers avec Juan Mossalini. Cela lui
permet de rencontrer des professionnels mais aussi de faire un master
class avec Fernando Maguna. Actuellement, elle etudie la musicologie
a Paris et se perfectionne en piano au conservatoire Claude-Debussy
(Paris XVIIe) sous la direction de Jean-Louis Caillard. Pour la
jeune pianiste turque, la musique n’a ni frontière ni nationalite,
” ce qui est dans l’histoire reste dans l’histoire, seule importe
la qualite du compositeur et son genie. Les sentiments exprimes
relatent bien mieux que des historiens les circonstances de leur
ecriture. J’aime particulièrement interpreter les ~uvres dont la
richesse de sentiments et de nostalgie coloree me touche “.

LA TURQUIE REVIENT SUR LE CONFLIT DU HAUT-KARABAGH
Laetitia

armenews.com
mercredi 14 mars 2012

La Turquie reste inflexible pour normaliser ses relations et trouver
une ” resolution convenable ” au conflit du Haut-Karabagh, a declare
le vice-Premier ministre turc Bekir Bozdag mardi 13 mars 2012.

” Le Haut-Karabakh est une region musulmane, une region de
l’Azerbaïdjan occupee par l’Armenie “, a declare Bozdag aux
journalistes lors d’une visite a Bakou. ” Tant que l’Armenie ne se
retirera pas du Haut-Karabagh, les relations turco-armeniennes ne
seront pas normalisees “, a-t-il dit, selon l’agence de nouvelles.

Ankara a suivi cette ligne, meme après la signature en 2009 des
deux protocoles avec Erevan qui devaient permettre aux deux parties
d’etablir des relations diplomatiques et d’ouvrir la frontière
turco-armenienne. Les dirigeants turcs ont declare a plusieurs
reprises que les protocoles ne seront pas ratifies par le parlement
de la Turquie avant une percee des efforts internationaux visant
a negocier un accord de paix armeno-azerbaïdjanais sur le conflit
du Haut-Karabagh.

La partie armenienne rejette cette condition prealable, accusant les
Turcs d’agir contre l’esprit des protocoles soutenus par l’Occident.

Le president Serge Sarkissian a menace l’an dernier de retirer la
signature d’Erevan.

Sarkissian a mentionne que le processus de normalisation turco-armenien
a echoue lors du congrès du parti republicain samedi.

Il a fait valoir que Ankara a ete ” contrainte ” en 2009 de signer un
document juridiquement contraignant qui appelle a une normalisation
inconditionnelle des relations turco-armeniennes.

PUBLIC JUDGED TARON

Story from Lragir.am News:

Published: 20:30:18 – 13/03/2012

On March 8, the activists of Mashtots Park were able to overcome the
barriers of the policemen and liberate the park. The chair of IDHR,
Arpine Galfayan, said the society cannot protect its own rights
and from now on they will examine the cases of misappropriation of
public property and ownership. The guards of the park insist on their
three claims: a public green area, dismantled constructions and a
well-maintained park.

The pronouncement of the mayor that the girls are just having fun is
an indicator of the consciousness, while women in the park are fighting
for their rights and the right of people to have a public space.

Today judges Arthur Grigoryan, Gor Hakobyan and Lena Nazaryan conducted
the first session of the Independent and Fair Civil Court to examine
the protection of the public ownership of Mashtots Park. The City
Hall was also summoned but the answerer did not show up in the session.

Sona Aivazyan, the head of Transparency International Anti-Corruption
Center (plaintiff) claims to dismantle the kiosks set up in Mashtots
Park on the basis of the December 15 decision of the mayor on
dislocating the dismantled kiosks of Abovyan Street, ignoring the
legislation, namely the land code, stating that the decisions of the
City Hall shall be based on the master plan of Yerevan. According to
her, the City Hall did not have the right to give architectural and
planning tasks involving activities which are not in line with the
zoning plan of Yerevan adopted by the City Hall in 2007.

Besides, Sona Aivazyan noted that the park is over 10 thousand square
meters, while according to the law on the environment, urban planning
activities registering an area over 1500 square meters are subject
to environmental testing of modification of the environment of life.

Plaintiff Vahram Soghomonyan, a member of We Are the Masters of This
City Initiative, noted that the City Hall explanations hold that we
deal with respect for private property and compensation. According
to him, these companies got private space on Abovyan Street and
made profit on this area and today they have left this area without
restoring its appearance. Vahram Soghomonyan noted that Mashtors Park
is public property which belongs to the community of Yerevan.

It has been a month the citizens of Yerevan protect public property –
the park. “I demand repealing the decisions, reveal and prosecute
those responsible and restore the public green area in accordance
with the RA legislation. This is a case of abuse of official powers
with the view to protect the interests of a few people and playing
down the public interests of the citizens of Yerevan.”

The judges promised to pass the verdict on Friday. A round-day sit-in
started in the park.

ARMENIAN LEADER ‘RAVING’, SAYS BAKU
Novruz Mammadov

News.Az

Armenia’s leaders have no grasp on reality, a senior official at the
Azerbaijani Presidential Administration has said.

Novruz Mammadov, head of the foreign relations department at the
Presidential Administration, said there was no point in expecting
logical thought from the Armenian leadership.

He was commenting on remarks by Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan
to the 13th congress of his Republican Party that “Karabakh was,
is and always will be Armenian land.”

Novruz Mammadov said: “Those who came to power through blood and
murder, the leaders of Armenia who have turned their people into the
victims of their own adventurist policies, think they will achieve
their visionary goals. But they are profoundly mistaken, their time
has run out and the hour is nearing when they will regret their words.”

The leaders of Armenia, instead of learning the lessons of history,
continue the adventurist policies of their predecessors, Mammadov
continued.

“They never worried about the fate of the Armenian people. All of
this comes from the fact that the authorities in Armenia are drunk
on their ghostly adventures and unconstructive position. They put
themselves in a difficult position. In fact, the Armenian leadership
has brought their country to a political and diplomatic impasse from
which it cannot find a way out. I really pity the Armenian people,
who are not lucky with their leaders.

“Everyone knows that the world’s geopolitical situation changes. The
situation will continue to change. Sargsyan should think today about
what place Armenia will take in this geopolitical panorama. The day
will come, according to [Armenian opposition leader Ter-Petrosyan],
when Armenia will be in a difficult geopolitical situation and will
have to ask the indulgence of their powerful neighbours.

“And no matter who does it, Sargsyan, Nalbandian or someone else,
that day is near and the Armenian authorities should seriously think
about their situation, not hope for patrons. If the Armenian people
take this into account and make the right choice, their situation
will become much better,” Mammadov said.

As for Sargsyan’s statement that “Armenia has significantly
strengthened its defensive capabilities and is ready to deter hostile
encroachments of the Azerbaijani side”, Mammadov called this “raving”.

“All these statements by Sargsyan show that his regime is in its
death throes and is hardly able to hold its shaky government. Serzh
Sargsyan is well aware of the fact that the Armenian army is degrading
and thrives on bullying, bribery and lack of discipline. How can the
Armenian army grow when Armenia itself barely survives? Judge for
yourself: its budget is only $2-3bn. Does the leadership of Armenia
think it can strengthen the army by holding marathon fund raisers?

Therefore, all these statements are nothing but raving,” Mammadov said.

Turkey’s enlightenment languishes, like the journalists in its prisons
The record number of reporters imprisoned in Turkey threatens to
extinguish the flame of democratic reform

Fiachra Gibbons
Tuesday 13 March 2012 16.39 GMT

A year ago, police burst into the homes of two of Turkey’s best
investigative journalists, Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik, and carted them
off to prison where they remained until last night, charged with
crimes so nebulous even prosecutors can’t explain them.

They are not alone. Turkey now holds the world record for locking up
journalists, leaving Iran and China scrabbling in the dust, with by
most reckonings 103 reporters behind bars, as opposed to 42 in Tehran
and 27 in China. More journalists were arrested in Istanbul in one
morning over Christmas than the Chinese managed all year – who says
Europe can no longer compete?

Sik and Sener’s dramatic release on bail yesterday after an
international outcry hopefully shows the Turkish authorities are
finally coming to their senses. Both men are nevertheless still
looking at up to 15 years in prison for basically doing their job.

The exact number of journalists in prison awaiting trial is hard to
pin down – estimates range from eight to 122, with 103 being the most
generally accepted – because the charges against them can be kept
secret under Turkey’s draconian anti-terrorist laws. The lowest figure
is a provisional one from the New York-based Committee for the
Protection of Journalists, which believes its final verified count may
top 90. Another 30 press workers are in jail, rounded up under laws
drafted by the country’s former military rulers and enforced by a
judiciary cut from the same cloth.

Two columnists from the website Oda TV, who had also been held in
solitary confinement in the same prison as Sik and Sener, were also
bailed last night. But as they were hugged and cheered by their
families and supporters, other journalists were still being arrested.

On Saturday night, Ozlem Agus became the 106th journalist to be
jailed, accused of “spreading terrorist propaganda” by breaking the
story of the rape and sexual abuse of minors charged with terrorist
offences held in an adult prison near Adana. Having ignored his
reporting for months, the government was forced to react to the
scandal last week. The price was Agus’s freedom. The following day,
another Kurdish reporter was remanded in custody accused of the same
crime.

This has all come amid a blizzard of prosecutions of journalists that
now tops 4,000, the latest brought this weekend by the prime minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who claims the independent daily Taraf injured
his dignity by imputing in an editorial that he had become
increasingly “arrogant, uninformed and uninterested” in reform.

So how could a country that is held up as a poster boy for democratic
reform and economic success, the model Muslim democracy for the Arab
spring to follow, go quite so horribly wrong?

The answer, or much of it, lies in that police raid last March on the
homes of Sik and Sener, and shows how Turkey’s once reformist
government has succumbed to the same old repressive paranoia of the
military-nationalist establishment it was elected to clear away nearly
10 years ago.

Sik and Sener have spent years winning international awards for
excavating the Turkish “deep state”, the shadowy cabals within the
military and civil service who staged four coups in as many decades in
the name of protecting Ataturk’s secular legacy, and shackled Turkey
with its present constitution, the most authoritarian this side of
Pyongyang.

Yet they ended up in prison as a part of the 18th wave of arrests into
another putative coup, the so-called Ergenekon conspiracy to overthrow
Erdogan’s moderately Islamic AK party government – a plot revealed by
none other than Sik and his colleagues at the Nokta magazine. Sener
had meanwhile exposed staggering official negligence, if not
connivance, in the murder of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink, and was in the process of linking the killing to Ergenekon. (To
give you an idea of how surreally skewed press freedom in Turkey is,
prosecutors initially demanded Sener serve a longer sentence for
revealing the scandal than the one they demanded for Dink’s killers.)

It would be funny if the circumstances of the Dink case were not so
horribly tragic. And then it got even worse. The police began bugging
the two journalists’ phones, hoping to piggy-back on their inquiries,
having arrested 700 military figures and other government opponents
over four years with little or nothing to show for it investigating
Ergenekon and another alleged coup plot.

In so doing, they discovered Sik was writing a book on a “second deep
state”, one run in opposition to the Kemalist military by police
officers, business leaders and AK party politicians loyal to the
exiled theologian Fethullah Gulen, often hailed as the visionary
behind Turkey’s democratic Islamic enlightenment.

The Gulen movement – a kind of sufi freemasons where secrecy and jobs
for the boys are squared by good works and the common goal of a Turkey
guided by a revived, scientific Islam – owns the country’s biggest
selling newspaper, Zaman, controls hundreds of Jesuit-style schools
turning out its new, religiously minded elite and various charities
and TV channels.

Suddenly, Sik the man who stymied the nascent military coup against
the government was accused of being part of it. Police not only seized
his unfinished manuscript on the Gulen movement, The Army of the Imam,
they destroyed it, and began a paperchase to destroy any other copies
that might exist.

Gulen may preach openness and tolerance of other faiths, but the
movement run in his name is a model of opacity – understandably so
given the history of repression of similar dervish orders by the old,
rigidly Kemalist elite. Sadly, however, the new observant elite appear
to have inherited their secular predecessors’ love of conspiracy, as
well as their fearsome arsenal of repressive laws. None of which bodes
well for justice and transparency in the new Turkey Gulen and his
millions of followers want to create, particularly when the prime
minister and AK party luminaries brand journalists who criticise them
as “criminals and terrorists”.

Turkey is a much freer country today than the day the AK party came to
power, and much of that is also due to the Gulen movement. But it is a
funny kind of freedom, one where the internet is tracked and
restricted and where freedom of speech comes at a price. Turkey stands
proud again on the world stage as a major player and model to the
Muslim world, yet at home no one risks being entirely open, nor
entirely honest.

In this atmosphere, with renewed violence and repression in the
Kurdish south-east, chest-beating nationalism, and such public tension
between the devout and the secular that MPs cannot debate an education
bill without two mass brawls in a week, a new constitution to replace
the old military one is finally being broached. Erdogan, the rock on
which hopes of reform once rested, has entered his third term in power
ill and ill-tempered, his absolute majority in parliament fighting
yesterday’s sectarian battles. The Turkish enlightenment may not yet
be completely dead, but its flame is fading, locked away in the jails
where so many journalists are now being held.