Author: Talar Tumanian

The Messenger, Georgia
July 28 2005
Prime Minister of Armenia and Burjanadze discuss problems in
ethnic-Armenian villages
Svobodnaya Gruzia reports that on July 25 Nino Burjanadze and the
Prime Minister of Armenia Andranik Margarian discussed the problems
of Samtskhe-Javakheti.
During their meeting they recalled a struggle that took place in the
village Samsa in Samtskhe-Javakheti region between Georgian and
Armenian inhabitants about the ownership of a local church.
The prime minister said the situation needed to be clarified.
“Georgian-Armenian administrations and the church must discuss the
issue of the ownership of the church once and for all to avoid
certain confusion in future,” Svobodnaya Gruzia quotes the prime
minister of Armenia as saying.
Burjanadze added, “The Prime Minister of Armenia Andranik Margarian
has a fairly correct and friendly position. I think that Armenian and
Georgia churches must settle this issue in a peaceful way.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The New Anatolian, Turkey
July 1 2005
Aliyev repeats Azerbaijan’s support for TRNC
BAKU – We’re ready to do whatever we can concerning the Cyprus issue,
said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev yesterday, repeating
Azerbaijan’s full support for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
(TRNC).
Aliyev made the remarks at a joint press conference with Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan following their bilateral and
inter-delegations meetings at the Presidential Palace in Baku. Aliyev
and the visiting Erdogan also signed bilateral agreements concerning
technical cooperation, veterinary medicine, protecting copyrights,
and communications.
Aliev said that as well as bilateral relations between Turkey and
Azerbaijan, they also discussed regional and international issues and
that he thanked Erdogan for Turkey’s support for Baku in the dispute
with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave within Azerbaijan
that’s been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces for more than
a decade. “The Nagorno-Karabakh dispute should be solved by
international law and over 1 million Turks have been exiled from
their homelands because of this dispute,” he added.
“We will continue our policy of support for Azerbaijan in all
international affairs and our approach fully coincides with the
position of Azerbaijan on this question,” Erdogan said.
Aliyev stated that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline is one of
the greatest energy investments in the world and said that
Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum Natural Gas Project will contribute to the
development of the region and both states.
The Turkish port of Ceyhan is the terminus of an oil pipeline
beginning near Baku that is to go into service this year. Aliev said
that it will further solidify relations with Turkey and encourage
stability in the often-contentious Caucasus region.
“The project will strengthen the role and influence of Turkey in
Azerbaijan even more and in the future will serve our economic and
political positions,” Aliev said.
Erdogan: Azerbaijanis to invest in TRNC, charter flights to begin
Erdogan said that the policies of Turkey and Azerbaijan coincide
concerning the Cyprus issue and stated that Azerbaijani businessmen
will begin to invest in the TRNC. Azerbaijan will also start charter
flights between Baku and Lefkosa.
Aliev said that he’s ordered the commencement of charter flights, and
that Azeri companies will open offices in the TRNC.
Erdogan also called for an increase of trade with Azerbaijan, aiming
for an annual trade turnover of $1 billion compared with the current
$407 million.
‘Two states, single nation’ understanding will rule Turkish,
Azerbaijani relations
Erdogan said that the “two states, one nation” understanding will
govern Turkish-Azerbaijani relations and that the two states will do
their best to further develop their relations.
Erdogan, who arrived in the Azerbaijani capital Baku on Wednesday
evening, visited a park named in memory of Aliev’s father Haydar, the
longtime leader of Azerbaijan, and memorials to fallen Azerbaijani
soldiers.
Erdogan meets with Rasizade
Following his meeting with President Aliyev, Erdogan met with his
Azerbaijani counterpart Artur Rasizade at the Hyatt Park Hotel but
the meeting was held closed to press.
Erdogan also took part in the laying of the foundation stone of a new
Turkish Embassy.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates
June 22 2005
Blast from past: The Ottoman shadow on Arab politics
BY MATEIN KHALID
A HUNDRED years after the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the shock
waves of its death are still rattling the Middle East. Both Arabs and
Turks have not come to terms with their common imperial Ottoman past.
Kemal Ataturk ridiculed and demonised the Ottoman heritage of the
Turkish Republic, as did the generation of Arab nationalists who
fought the Sultan’s armies in Syria, Hijaz and Palestine. Ataturk
deposed the last sultan, abolished the caliphate Sultan Selim had
claimed from the Mamluks, replaced the Shariah with the Swiss civil
code and replaced the Ottoman Umma with an aggressively secular
Anatolian nationalism.
Ataturk banned the fez, introduced by the Napoleonic era Sultan
Mehmet II as a symbol of the modern Turk, as anachronistic. Turkey
abandoned its historic ties to the Arab world. It was more than
history as amnesia. Ataturk performed a lobotomy on the Ottoman past.
Yet the Ottoman shadow still lingers in the landscape, politics and
souls of Islamic societies from Sarajevo to Sanaa to Sharjah. On
Khalid Lagoon in the UAE “capital of Culture”, I see mosques with
slender Byzantine minarets reminiscent of the Sulemaniya in Istanbul.
There are beautiful Ottoman mansions with latticed windows in Jeddah,
Beirut, Alexandria, Belgrade and Sarajevo. In fact, the hillsides of
the Bosnian capital evoke the old Ottoman place names long after
Tito’s Yugoslavia has vanished into a bitter memory.
The Ottoman ghosts haunt Arab politics. Take Iraq, for instance. The
Hashemite kingdom of Iraq was created out of the Ottoman vilayets of
Baghdad, Mosul and Basra (which, Saddam argued in August 1990,
included the Gulf emirate of Kuwait). Yet the Turkish republic never
accepted the Iraq Churchill sketched on a napkin and created out of
the carcass of its Mesopotamian empire at the Cairo conference. The
tragedy of Kurdistan was spawned amid the Machiavellian cynicism of
wartime British realpolitik in the Middle East.
As late as 1997, President Suleiman Demirel questioned why the
British gave the Ottoman oil rich province of Mosul to Iraq. The
Turkish republic sent troops across the international border into
northern Iraq on successive occasions and strangled the idea of a
Kurdish state that might well inflame the secessionist psyche of
Turkey’s own “mountain Turks” in the east, whose PKK civil war has
claimed 30,000 lives.
At fateful moments of Iraqi history, after Saddam’s armies were
routed at Fao in 1982 and Kuwait in 1991, Turkey signalled its
intention to annex Mosul if the Baathist regime in Baghdad fell. Even
Turkish-Syrian relations are held hostage to the Ottoman past. In
1998, Ankara almost went to war over the House of Assad’s covert
assistance to the PKK and Damascus still resents colonial France’s
decision to wrest Hatay province from Syrian. The Turkish republic’s
hostility to Alawite Syria and theocratic Iran has echoes of the
Ottoman sultan’s role as the standard bearer of Sunni orthodoxy
against the Persian Shia and esoteric Islamic sects of Bilad Shaam.
Even Israel’s close strategic relations with Turkey are a legacy of
the Ottoman past. The Jews of Istanbul are the descendants of the
Sephardis expelled by the Spanish Inquisition after the fall of the
Moorish Nasirid emirate of Granada in 1492. Sultan Selim welcomed the
Andalusian Jews himself at Galata and their descendants became the
empire’s richest bankers, grand viziers, pashas and scholars.
While Christian Europe persecuted its Jews, the Ottomans showered
their most brilliant minds with the highest offices of state. In
fact, the first Zionist aliyas (settlements) in Palestine would not
have been possible without the Sublime Porte’s consent though Sultan
Abdel Hamid angrily rejected the Jewish agency’s offer to literally
buy Palestine. The Ottoman cult of absolute rule, bureaucratic
politics, an elite palace guard and Western-centric reform was a
template for generations of Middle East dictators. If Ataturk was a
son of the Enlightenment, so were Reza Khan Pahlavi, Habib Bourguiba,
and Jamal Nasser.
The Ottoman empire was the antithesis of the sort of nineteenth
century nationalism, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution,
that swept across the Balkans, the Levant, Iran and the Hijaz as the
“sick man of Europe” went into its final, fatal convulsion in 1918.
Armenian, Azerbaijani, Iraqi, Syrian Lebanese, Egyptian, Greek,
Serbian, Bulgarian and Saudi nationalism were all nurtured in the
geopolitical chaos that followed the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
So many of the tragedies that haunt the Middle East in our time have
their origins in the British-French plots to dismember the Ottoman
empire. What if the Allies had not double-crossed Sharif Hussein and
his sons after the success of the Arab revolt in the Hijaz? What if
the French had not expelled the Hashemite Prince Faisal from
Damascus, not created a Maronite enclave in Mount Lebanon, not
recruited Alawite peasants from Latakia in the Syrian Army? What if
the Hijaz Railway still carried pilgrims from Bosnia, Turkey and
Albania to Makkah? What if Lord Balfour’s HM Government had not
viewed with favour the establishment of a Jewish national home in
Palestine?
The Ottoman past continues to influence the political culture and
international relations of the Arab world even today. Take the
Ottoman millet system, where Istanbul ruled multiethnic provinces via
hierarchies of religious leaders.
The modern Middle East intelligence state owes its model to Sultan
Abdel Hamid’s secret police, the most expensive, ruthless and
extensive organ of state in the Ottoman twilight. Strange, much as
the Arab tried to forget their Turkish past, the modern warlords,
spymasters are still haunted by familiar Ottoman ghosts. After all,
for six hundred years, the epicentre of world politics was not the
Kremlin, the Elysee Palace, Whitehall or the White House but the
palace, kiosks and terraces of Topkapi Serai on the Sea of Marmara,
the citadel of the House of Osman for six centuries.
Matein Khalid is a Dubai based investment banker
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

INTERNATIONAL OBSERVERS DO NOT TAKE NOTICE OF ANY CONSIDERABLE
VIOLATIONS DURING PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN NKR
STEPANAKERT, JUNE 20. ARMINFO. International observers has not taken
notice of any considerable violations in the course of the
parliamentary elections of 4th convocation in NKR.
According to ARMINFO’s correspondent to Stepanakert, in the course of
a press conference in Stepanakert, Observer Zoran Puzich from Croatia
stated that had had visited electoral districts in all the regions in
NKR together with other observes, but did not observed any
considerable rigging. He emphasized the activity of electors, adding
that fair elections were another step towards construction of
democracy in Nagorny Karabakh.
Another observer from Czechia Milan Stephanez (editor-in-chief of
“Czechia” newspaper) says he visited only 9 electoral districts in
Stepanakert, Askeran and Mardakert regions, so he cannot assess the
elections on the whole. But he observed such lacks as poor knowledge
of the Law and definite articles of NKR Election Code by the members
of district electoral commissions, participation of contract military
in voting with a passport of Soviet example, a case when a voter
showed his ballot-paper to a member of the election commission. He
says such and even more considerable violations were characteristic to
the elections in Azerbaijan and Belarus. Yana Gradilkova, another
observer from Czechia (NGO Berkat) thinks the elections free and the
people in NKR do not afraid of asking questions and getting answers to
them.
Greek Observer Kostis Papaioannu has noticed the open interests of the
citizens in the elections, aspiration to protect their right to
freedom of will. He thinks the basic rights and freedoms, in
particular, freedom of speech, are observed in Nagorny Karabakh,
however, it is necessary to further develop them as democracy is an
everyday process. He says he did not notice any serious violations.
Marina Sargsyan, an observer from Czechia, pointed out the activity of
electors, the transparency and all the other democratic principles of
elections, on the whole. She thinks the elections will play their role
in creation of Nagorny Karabakh’s statehood.
It should be noted that a press-conference of the representatives of
the US Observation Mission will take place in Yerevan today.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

WORLD BANK SET TO RELEASE SECOND CREDIT FOR ARMENIAN JUDICIARY REFORM
Armenpress
YEREVAN, JUNE 13, ARMENPRESS: An official of the Armenian justice
ministry told Armenpress the ministry and World Bank have reached
a principled agreement on implementation of a second credit program
for judiciary reform.
Arthur Tunian, head of a ministry office for program implementation,
said the ministry and the World Bank are engaged in talks to specify
its components. Justice minister David Harutunian had earlier said
the first credit program was assessed highly by World Bank.
In 2000 September the World Bank approved the first US$11.40 million
equivalent (SDR8.6 million) for a Judicial Reform Project in Armenia to
help its authorities in the development of an independent, accessible,
and efficient judiciary, essential to governance, rule of law, and
investment climate. The total cost of the project was US$12.2 million
including US$800,000 from the Armenian Government. The credit was
disbursed on standard IDA terms with a maturity of 40 years including
a 5-year grace period.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Agence France Presse — English
June 10, 2005 Friday 2:31 PM GMT
Withdrawal from Georgian bases on time “impossible”: Russian MPS
MOSCOW
Russia is technically unable to deliver on an agreement to dismantle
its two remaining Soviet-era military bases in Georgia before the end
of 2008, Russian deputy Gennady Gudkov was quoted as saying on
Friday, citing a report by the lower house of parliament.
“Russia will only be able to respect the agreed timetable if it
leaves behind half of its material and all its troops in the field,”
he was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Moscow and Tbilisi agreed on May 30 the approximately 3,000
servicemen on the two bases — one in Akhalkalaki, near the
Georgian-Armenian border, the other in Batumi, on the Black Sea coast
— would be put on withdrawal status and would pullout totally by the
end of 2008.
However, Gudkov said a technical feasibility study by a group of
visiting deputies from the State Duma lower house of parliament had
shown that was impossible.
Withdrawal from Batumi by sea would take between three and a half and
five years, while withdrawal from Akhalkalaki would be even more
difficult, he said.
The May agreement marked a breakthrough after years of rancorous
negotiations over the two bases, which were once part of Soviet
defences on the southwestern flank with NATO, but have recently
become a bargaining chip in Moscow’s fight to retain influence in the
Caucasus.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Georgian Armenians: Dr. Ardziv Papazian lectures on Javakhk
Azad-Hye, Dubai
May 29 2005
The Armenian Community in Sharjah had the opportunity to meet Dr.
Ardziv Papazian on 23rd May 2005 and got amazed by his wonderful and
most accurate lecture about Javakhk.
Being a member of Non-Governmental Organization in France (named
Shen-France) he had the opportunity to visit Javakhk several times
and he even participated in building a hospital there, something the
people needed badly.
Dr. Papazian began his lecture with a DVD movie (prepared by L.EM.,
Lebanon), followed with a slideshow on Javakhk: the people, churches,
roads, schools and landscape. He explained thoroughly with his most
delicately prepared maps how Javakhk is Armenia~Rs only open boarder
not populated with ethnic Turks. If we loose this land, he stressed,
we will be 100% surrounded by ethnic Turks.
Then he went over our history and reminded us with the victories of
Sartarabad, Pash Abaran and Gharakiliseh (May 1918), adding to this
list a fourth battle (fought in Javakhk), which unfortunately was
lost. This battle was rarely mentioned, because Armenians in those
days needed to hear good news from the frontline, he explained.
Dr. Papazian also talked about the hard time the Georgian Government
is giving to the Armenians in Javakhk, resulting in evacuation from
the ancestral land. It is unfortunate that in present day Georgia
some of the old Armenian churches are reconfigured to Georgian ones
by adjusting the eastern entrances (making it towards the south)
and demolishing the belfry structures in those churches, because they
are characteristically in Armenian style.
Dr. Papazian added that Javakhk is a poor country with no electricity,
no educational institutes, no proper for vehicles, with long and cold
winters, no trees but plenty of pastures. It is a perfect country for
farming and breeding animals. It can provide, if properly managed,
all the meat and diary needs of Armenia itself.
And last but not least Javakhk has so many water sources. Quoting Dr.
Papazian, the lake Parvana ~Shar yev nman e Sevana lijin~T (it is so
much like the lake Sevan).
LIZA / SHARJAH
Additional Information: Javakhk is an area of land within Georgian
borders, adjacent to Armenia and populated with Armenians. The
population lives in extremely difficult economic situation, especially
that the central government in Georgia is not in a position to
financially sport any of social or economic projects in the region.
Recently the Georgian Public Prosecutor paid an official visit to
Armenia, during which he met Church figures and higher governmental
officials in Armenia and discussed with them the problems of Georgian
Armenians, especially the case of the Georgian nationalists who are
trying to put under their control Armenian churches or real estate
belonging to the Armenian Church in Georgia.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

WELL-KNOWN ARMENIAN WRITERS AND PUBLICIST ZORIY BALAYAN DETAINED AND
THEN RELEASED IN ITALY
YEREVAN, MAY 25. ARMINFO. Officers of International Police in Italy
detained the well-known Armenian publicist and writer Zoriy Balayan
yesterday and released soon. According to the newspaper “Ayots
Ashkhar” Balayan was detained in an Italian port Brindissi. It should
be noted that the writer is on a tour on the board of the Armenian
sailing vessel “Cilicia” built on the model of old Cilician vessels.
Press Secretary of the Armenian Foreign Ministry Hamlet Gasparyan
informed ARMINFO that the Armenian party took measures on release of
Balayan immediately after information on his detention was received.
Several years ago, due to Azerbaijan’s efforts, the name of Zoriy
Balayan was included in the lists of the International Police,
however, it was withdrawn from these lists two years ago. As it is not
the first time when law-enforcement bodies of other states find the
name of Balayan in the “black list,” it is not ruled out that
Azerbaijan sends them relevant false statement.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Greek-American Organizations APPEAL TO WHITE HOUSE WITH CALL TO
RECOGNIZE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
YEREVAN, MAY 24. ARMINFO. The American Hellenic Institute announced
today that the major Greek American membership organizations endorsed
the policy statement on Armenia prepared by the American Hellenic
Institute. These are: the Order of AHEPA, the Hellenic American
National Council, the Cyprus Federation of America, the Panepirotic
Federation of America, the Pan-Macedonian Association of America, the
Evrytanian Association of America and the American Hellenic
Institute. Hellenic News of America reports.
According to the resource, the endorsed statement, which is part of
the 2005 Greek American Policy Statements, follows: We support the
Armenian American community’s efforts to secure full recognition,
proper commemoration, and a just resolution of the Armenian Genocide.
In 2005, the 90th anniversary of the Genocide, the Administration
should, for the sake of U.S. interests and American values, finally
bring an end to all forms of U.S. complicity in Turkey’s denial of
this crime against all humanity. The President, in his annual April
24th remarks, should properly recognize the Armenian Genocide as a
clear instance of genocide, as defined by the United Nations Genocide
Convention. We refer readers to Professor Peter Balakian’s recent
book The Burning Tigris, a remarkable history of the Armenian
Genocide by the Young Turk government in Turkey. Professor Balakian
includes the details of the humanitarian movement of leading American
public citizens and ordinary citizens to save the Armenians. The U.S.
Congress should adopt legislation both recognizing the Armenian
Genocide and urging the American people to apply the lessons of this
tragedy to the cause of preventing future genocides.
Finally, Turkey must be pressured to acknowledge its genocidal crime
against the Armenian nation, to come to terms with this chapter in
its history, and, consistent with the Genocide Convention and other
relevant international legal instruments, to make full reparations to
the Armenian people. We also support efforts to press Turkey to lift
its illegal blockade of Armenia and to end the mistreatment of the
Armenian population in Turkey.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The Washington Post
May 13, 2005 Friday
Final Edition
System of a Down: Some Very Heavy Metal
by Dave McKenna, Special to The Washington Post
There was a big-event aura Wednesday around the 9:30 club, where
System of a Down played a semi-surprise show.
Tickets to see the Southern California quartet, one of the few metal
bands that critics and kids root on with equal vigor, only went on
sale the morning of the concert. Many who made it inside had been on
or around the premises for more than 24 hours by showtime. Though
onstage for just 60 minutes, SOAD made the wait worthwhile,
delivering a performance as pummeling and cathartic as rock gets.
It helped that followers of the band are accustomed to waiting. SOAD,
formed in the mid-1990s by four Armenian American friends, is now on
a short club tour to publicize the upcoming release of not one but
two CDs, “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize.” SOAD’s 2001 CD, “Toxicity,”
sold millions of copies, produced multiple hit singles and left the
band poised to kick Metallica off the hard-rock throne. To take
advantage of that incredible momentum, SOAD released . . . nothing
new. Now, after a four-year wait, the band is throwing it all at the
fans over the next few months (just as Guns N’ Roses waited four
years before following its career-making smash, “Appetite for
Destruction,” with “Use Your Illusion” Vols. I and II).
For Axl Rose and the boys, the time off was a harbinger of implosion.
Yet based on the 9:30 club show, SOAD has emerged from its hiatus
prepared to assume control of the universe. Though most popular rock
acts avoid political screeds, SOAD is full of ’em, and the fans help
get the message out by memorizing and screaming along with every
word. The show opened with “B.Y.O.B.,” a new tune that rages against
the Iraq invasion. On it, vocalist Serj Tankian, whose wild hair and
beard give him the look of a guy who hasn’t worked since the
Renaissance Festival left town, got the audience to pump fists and
shout lines such as “Why don’t presidents fight the war? Why do they
always send the poor?” (SOAD has donated money and energy toward
creating awareness of the slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire during World War I.) The music is far more complex than most
metal. A typical SOAD tune mixes Middle Eastern phrases with
death-metal guitar — think the soundtrack of “Fiddler on the Roof”
done by the Dead Kennedys. Daron Malakian’s opening guitar solo on
“War?” set a “Hava Nagila” mood before bassist Shavo Odadjian and
drummer John Dolmayan kicked in with room-shaking bombast. Tankian
led the crowd in what sounded like a Gregorian chant in the midst of
“Aerials.” During “Toxicity,” the entire room screamed “disorder!”
over and over. On the floor of the club, where members of a sweaty
and tattooed horde had been throttling each other from the start, the
words seemed redundant.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress