Author: Vardanian Garo

AAA: PRESIDENT OBAMA’S PLANNED TRIP TO TURKEY IS AN OPPORTUNITY

armradio.am
18.03.2009 17:46

"As President Barack Obama plans his trip to Turkey next month, we
would like to express our support for this decision," said Armenian
Assembly of America (Assembly) Executive Director Bryan Ardouny. "An
irreversible trend has commenced in Turkey and President Obama’s
visit presents a unique opportunity for the President to reinforce
this message, as well as his own statements reaffirming the historical
truth of the Armenian Genocide."

The Assembly wholeheartedly agrees with President Obama, Vice President
Biden and Secretary of State Clinton that the Armenian Genocide is an
historical fact that must be affirmed. As then Senator Obama stated
"America deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian
Genocide and responds forcefully to all genocides."

The Assembly looks forward to change in Washington, including the
repudiation and reversal of the Bush Administration’s doctrine
that disallowed State Department officials to publicly acknowledge
the Armenian Genocide, and what our own U.S. Ambassador to the
Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, described as a campaign of race
extermination.

The Assembly is encouraged by the recent signs of rapprochement between
Turkey and Armenia, and commends Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan
for his bold actions. Normalization of relations and Turkey’s lifting
of its 15-year long blockade of Armenia should not be held hostage
to U.S. reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide.

OMBUDSMAN URGES TO AVERT VIOLATIONS

A1+
05:56 pm | March 18, 2009

Politics

In a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Central Electoral
Commission (CEC) Garegin Azaryan, Human Rights Defender Armen
Harutyunyan urges to take measures to avert the violation of rights
of civilians Sedrak Baghdasaryan and Vachagan Hakobyan during the
upcoming election to the municipal council.

Baghdasaryan and Vachagan Hakobyan have been nominated by the
Heritage Party and run for the city council. The CEC has refused
their registration grounding its decision by the fact that neither
of them has resided in Yerevan over the last three years.

Sedrak Baghdasaryan and Vachagan Hakobyan have informed the Ombudsman
that "their flats were aliened for the state needs." Following a
government decision, they were forced off their flats and have had
no abode ever since.

In his letter Ombudsman Armen Harutyunyan reminds the CEC that
under an April 18, 2006, decision the Constitutional Court found
the government decision contradicting the corresponding laws, hence
anti-constitutional.

Note that Sedrak Baghdasaryan heads the "Victims of State Needs"
NGO and Vachagan Hakobyan -"Protection of the Right to Property" NGO.

"CAUCASIAN NEIGHBORHOOD: TURKEY AND THE SOUTH CAUCASUS" BOOK WAS PUBLISHED IN YEREVAN

PanARMENIAN.Net
18.03.2009 21:53 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Caucasian Institute in Yerevan hosted "Caucasian
neighborhood: Turkey and the South Caucasus" book presentation. The
book features regional relations and the Role of Turkey in the
Caucasus, as well as the problems of acknowledged and acknowledged
states in the South Caucasus. The book includes analytical articles,
created by Turkish, Azeri, Armenian, Georgian, Abkhazian, NKR and
South Ossetian scientists at the conference initiated by the Caucasian
Institute from Aug. 1-4 in Istanbul, Caucasian Institute Director
Alexander Iskandaryan stated.

DEFENDERS IN CASE OF SEVEN BOYCOTT THE TRIAL

PanARMENIAN.Net
17.03.2009 16:16 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Case of Seven attorneys of the accused declared
that they will no longer participate in the trial, which does not mean
they’re renouncing their clients. "It’s impossible to work in current
situation. We feel as if we’re providing only physical presence in
court. We do not want to participate in the farce and inequity,"
the attorney of the accused Suren Sirunyan, Varduhi Elbakyan stated.

"We got an impression that the Armenian courts have no other business
besides Case of Seven trial. Armenian legal system is a machine making
up new laws aimed against the accused," Grigor Voskenchyan’s attorney
Stepan Vskanyan said.

Hovhannes Arsenyan, the attorney of the accused: Myasnik Malkhasyan,
Alexander Arzumanyan and Sasun Mikaelyan, resented court’s rejecting
Sasun Mikayelyan’s petition for a right to engage another attorney.

According to the attorneys, on Dec 19 the court needed an excuse
to postpone the case for 14 days, so the recent acceleration of the
trial is incomprehensible to them. They declared they can’t keep up
with this accelerated schedule.

The attorneys expressed their views on Shant Harutyunyan’s case,
which was suspended because of his being announced mentally challenged,
and emphasized that the court had no right to suspend the case without
psychiatric examination results.

ALMOST PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS?

A1+
06:09 pm | March 17, 2009 | Social

First president Levon Ter-Petrosyan will head the list of candidates
of the Armenian National Congress during the upcoming elections for
Yerevan city council to be held on May 31 along with Republican
candidate Gagik Beglaryan, Health Minister from the "Prosperous
Armenia" party Harutyun Kushkyan. The remaining candidates remain
unknown.

"A1+" took a small survey to find out what citizens have to say about
the upcoming elections, the candidates and what they expect from them.

Many citizens of Yerevan are not too excited about the upcoming
elections and say that the elections are going to be falsified again.

"We’ll see falsifications, people will get beaten and I am even afraid
that there will be more murders because the majority of people will
say no to falsified elections and will come out to the streets with the
hope of restoring justice," said mathematician Varuzhan Hayrapetyan.

Construction worker Arshak Mansuryan says that Gagik Beglaryan is
just the man for the office of mayor because the Kentron district
flourished and construction boomed during his years as district head.

Hovhannes Zakoyan said that these elections are going to be just
like the presidential elections because Levon Ter-Petrosyan is one
of the candidates.

"Levon Ter-Petrosyan changed the rules of the game and the authorities
are confused."

Many citizens think that the "Heritage" party shouldn’t think twice
about joining Levon Ter-Petrosyan because the votes will match and
nobody can falsify the elections.

Most citizens say that Levon Ter-Petrosyan will win in the upcoming
elections for mayor by a majority of the votes and that will give
him the opportunity to become president of the country once again.

"BJNI MINERAL WATER" COMPANY TO SPREAD MESSAGE

Panorama.am
17:31 17/03/2009

The General Director of "Bjni Mineral Water" Company L. Harutyunyan
sent a message to the General Prosecutor of Armenia, the Chief of
Police, the Defender of Human Rights, the President of State Revenues
Committee and the mass media. It is said that "Bjni Mineral Water"
Company has applied numerous times to the state service of Binding
Implementation of Judicial Acts to get the materials of court order,
but the service rejects to provide them. "We guess that the reason
of not providing the materials is obvious – the money has not been
paid," says the message. "We are sure that no bank transfer has been
conducted. And this is the reason why the sum (which should be paid
before 19.02.2009) has not yet been transferred to the state budget. It
is interesting why the service has not transferred the money to the
state budget. And why the service rejects to provide materials of
the court order. We ask the General Prosecutor’s Office to verify
whether the service received cash money, who has brought the money
to the service," is written in the message.

JUDICIARY AND STATE BEHIND ALIENATION OF NON-MUSLIMS

Today’s Zaman
March 16 2009
Turkey

Turkey’s non-Muslim communities have been alienated, and it was done
by the state and judiciary, said the writers of a new report revealing
the facts behind the real estate ownership problems of non-Muslim
foundations dating from the Ottoman period.

"In the 1930s, it became evident that pushing or directly forcing
the few non-Muslims left in Turkey to abandon the country was an
explicit state policy," said Kezban Hatemi, the co-author of the
report, titled "The Story of an Alien(ation): Real Estate Ownership
Problems of Non-Muslim Foundations and Communities in Turkey," which
was released on Saturday as part of the democratization program of
the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV). Speaking
at a panel discussion convened to make the report public, Hatemi was
referring to various restrictions and conditions imposed through a
series of laws, acts and practices.

One example she gave was the Civil Code of 1926 that pruned minority
rights granted in the Treaty of Lausanne, which adopted the principle
that the status granted to Muslim citizens in terms of religious
rights and liberties should also be granted to non-Muslim citizens.

"Only a short while after the Treaty of Lausanne, it became obvious
that the state did not intend to implement the rights it was
supposed to give," she said, citing other discriminatory laws and
practices including the most detrimental one, the 1936 Declaration,
in which non-Muslim foundations were given the status of "affiliated"
foundations and placed under the guardianship of the Directorate
General for Foundations (VGM), which "played a crucial role in
implementing repressive policies" imposed on non-Muslim foundations.

"More than 30 [pieces of fixed property] of the Armenian community
were seized, on the unlawful basis that they were acquired after
1936. The Tuzla Armenian Children’s Camp is one of the most striking
and heartbreaking examples of the seizure of properties from the
Armenian non-Muslim foundations," she added, pointing out that Hrant
Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist murdered in 2007, was among the
first group of children who built the camp, which he later managed
with his wife for many years.

Dilek Kurban, co-author of the report, said that when Turkey became
a candidate for European Union membership, it became evident that
it was not possible to sustain this state policy toward non-Muslim
communities. Kurban started filing lawsuits with the European Court of
Human Rights after exhausting avenues within the Turkish legal system.

"It was no longer easy for the bureaucracy to take over the assets of
non-Muslim foundations, and the government was expected to take legal
action to return or pay indemnity for seized assets," Kurban said.

The report also pointed out that the Justice and Development Party (AK
Party), which came to power in 2002, made several amendments to the Law
on Foundations in order to solve the problem. In February 2008, after
strong opposition from nationalist elements within Parliament, a new
law was enacted that endowed non-Muslim foundations with new rights,
such as the acquiring and disposing of assets and registering assets
in their possession. Even though the law falls short of returning
all assets that were seized and paying indemnity for assets that
have been transferred to third parties, the main opposition parties
objected to the law, appealing it to the Constitutional Court.

"It is important to look at which properties these are and to whom
they belong," Kurban said in apparent reference to a historical
building owned by non-Muslims that now belongs to the Workers’ Party
(Ä°P), whose leader was arrested last year for suspected membership
in Ergenekon, a clandestine terrorist organization nested within
state organs and charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

"I was fighting against a group for 15 years without knowing who
they really were. Thank God they are all in prison," Hatemi said,
again referring to the detention of some suspects for alleged links
to Ergenekon.

Part of the investigation has suggested that there may be links between
Ergenekon and the self-declared "Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate"
run by the Erenerol family. On behalf of the Fener Greek Orthodox
Patriarchate, based in what is now Ä°stanbul since A.D. 356, Hatemi,
an attorney, has long been asking the courts to return four churches
confiscated by the fake patriarchate in the mid-1920s.

The Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarchate once had 90 churches in Ä°stanbul
and on the islands of Gökceada (Imbros) and Bozcaada (Tenedos),
the deeds of which belong to the foundation of each church.

TESEV’s report indicated that as of November 2008, 24 foundations of
the Jewish community were included among the seized foundations, and
as of November 2007, 30 real estate parcels of the Armenian community
were seized. Two pieces of fixed property of the Catholic community,
a church and a building, were also seized.

Mahcupyan: Taxpayers should be concerned

Opening the panel discussion, TESEV’s democratization program director
Etyen Mahcupyan said since domestic avenues have been exhausted,
non-Muslim foundations moved their legal battle to Strasbourg. The
first ruling was made in a case filed by the Fener Greek High School
Foundation of the Greek Orthodox Community and the European Court of
Human Rights found Turkey in violation. In 2007, the court ordered
Turkey to return the seized property to the foundation or to pay
almost 900,000 euros. Other cases followed because of the non-Muslim
foundations’ successes.

"While non-Muslim foundations win in the European court, Turkey is
losing. And the money is paid out of the taxpayers’ pockets. All
Turkish citizens should be concerned about this," he said.

LEVON TER-PETROSYAN IS THE FIRST IN THE LIST OPPOSITION CANDIDATES TO ELDER’S COUNCIL

ArmInfo
2009-03-16 15:32:00

ArmInfo. First president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan is the first
in the list of the opposition candidates to the Elder’s Council and
to the position of Yerevan Mayor. The elections are scheduled for
May 2009, Levon Zurabyan, Head of the opposition Armenian National
Congress (ANC) Center Office, told media Monday.

He said ANC made a relevant decision on March 15. ‘Given the important
role of Yerevan as a political and economic center of Armenia, we
believe that victory in the elections will help us more effectively
fight for establishment of constitutional order and democracy in
the country. This will not be a fight against certain lists and
‘beglaryans’ but a fight against monopolized and criminalized system
and oligarchy’, L. Zurabyan said. He called these elections a second
round of the presidential election.

Moreover, he urged all the citizens of Yerevan to vote actively since
the ‘key of democratic victory is in the hands of the population’.

International math contest `Kangaroo’ to be held in Armenia on March 19

YEREVAN, March 13. /ARKA/. International mathematical contest
`Kangaroo’ is to be held throughout Armenia on March 19.

The contest is organized by `Ayb’ educational fund under auspices of
Armenian Ministry of Education and Science, says the press release.
General sponsor of the contest is Bank VTB (Armenia) closed joint stock
company.

`Kangaroo’ suggests logical and diverting problems to participants and
is held in about 50 countries involving over 5mln schoolchildren every
year.
The aim of the contest is to cultivate a comprehensive interest in math
ion children.

According to the press release, over 30,000 pupils from about 500
schools in Armenia are to participate in Kangaroo-2009 contest.

Such active participation and great number of participants is
unprecedented not only for Armenia, but also for all contest-holding
countries, the report says.

Prices are to be awarded to winners in all Armenian regions after the
results of the contest are summarized. `0–

Today’s Zaman , Turkey
March 13 2009

Obama’s choice to visit Turkey `timely’ and `smart,’ say analysts

US President Barack Obama is expected to visit Ankara and
İstanbul on April 6-7.

US-based analysts specializing in US-Turkish relations consider
President Barack Obama’s choice to visit Turkey shortly after taking
office as a timely and smart decision that will help improve the
bilateral relationship between the two NATO allies, while also
bringing benefits to each country vis-à-vis their relations
with the Middle Eastern countries.

Mark Parris, a former US ambassador to Turkey, describes Obama’s
decision as part of "a smart, timely series of moves on the part of
the new administration," while Zeyno Baran, a Turkish analyst at the
Hudson Institute, highlights the importance of the fact that Obama
will not visit Turkey as part of a Middle East tour, since this is,
according to her, "a clear sign" showing that he sees Turkey as part
of the European picture.

"I suspect that as his new foreign policy team settles in, they’ve
come to realize that some nations can help (or hurt) them more than
others, and they’ve realized it makes sense to make an early,
sustained investment in Turkey, rather than play catch-up later
on. They are right, of course," Parris, now a visiting fellow at the
Brookings Institution, replies when asked why he believes Obama has
decided to visit Turkey so early in his tenure as president.

For Ambassador Edward Djerejian, the founding director of the James
A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, Obama’s
choice to visit Turkey on one of his very first trips overseas as
president is "a very important decision underscoring the importance of
the US-Turkey relationship."

The visit, which has a great deal of symbolism, is also a signal of
the importance that Obama attaches to relations with the Muslim world,
Djerejian notes. "Turkey is a Muslim country that has a secular model
of governance and can be a very effective bridge between the East and
the West. This is an important step. Whatever he says in Turkey —
beyond the bilateral relationship, but to the Muslim world — will be
noted. This trip will be a major public diplomacy success," he
asserts.

President Obama will visit Turkey in the coming weeks, probably on
April 6-7. The global dispute over Iran’s controversial nuclear
program is expected to be one of the main issues on the agenda of the
talks, in addition to a possible Turkish role in the US troop pullout
from Iraq and Turkish contributions to international military efforts
to stabilize Afghanistan in the face of a rising Taliban insurgency.

For David Mack of the Middle East Institute (MEI), also a former
deputy assistant to the US secretary of state, the visit is a
recognition by the US and the Obama administration of Turkey’s
importance both as a NATO ally and as a progressive Muslim country
that has a very important relationship in the Middle East, in Central
Asia and the Caucasus. "It’s a big change from unilateralist
policies. He wants to deal in a more cooperative way with our
traditional allies and the new relationship with Turkey will be based
upon mutual respect and mutual interest," says Mack.

Armenian issue

James Holmes, head of the leading US business association the
American-Turkish Council (ATC), meanwhile, stresses how Turks are
basically apprehensive over the issues of Armenian resolution,
referring to the question of whether or not the Obama administration
views the 1915 killings of Anatolian Armenians committed by the
Ottoman Turks as genocide. How the Obama administration might deal
with any plans in Congress to revive a resolution describing it as
such is one thorny issue in the near future of bilateral relations
between Ankara and Washington.

"I believe this visit is ultimately positive for the handling of the
issue of the Armenian resolution. President Obama will certainly want
to deal with this issue and in his foreign policy he will want to
engage in processes that have the advantage of promoting Armenian-US
and Armenian-Turkish relations as well. And I think he understands
that this can’t be done if he engages in policies and actions that
have the consequence of alienating the Turks. And alienating the Turks
is a very easy thing to do if you mishandle the Armenian resolution,"
says Holmes.

"He [Obama] can put the Armenian diaspora in a position to recognize
that there is the political interest of the diaspora on the one hand,
and there is the political interest of the Armenian nation on the
other. The political interests of the Armenian nation are certainly in
reconciliation with Turkey. I think President Obama in the end will be
commended by the people of Armenia and the Armenian-Americans if he
can engage in a policy that results in a better position for Armenia
within the region," Holmes says.

13 March 2009, Friday
ALI H.ASLAN WASHINGTON

US lawmakers pressure Obama on Armenian issue

Several US lawmakers have written to President Barack Obama urging him
to follow up on campaign statements and label the 1915 killings of
Armenians as genocide.

The pressure on Obama comes ahead of an expected presidential trip to
Turkey, which has warned that such declarations by the United States
would damage relations.

Ronald Reagan was the only U.S. president to publicly call the
killings genocide. Others avoided the term out of concern for the
sensitivities of Turkey, an important NATO ally.

Four members of the House of Representatives urged Obama to make a
statement ahead of the 94th anniversary of the killings on April
24. "As a presidential candidate, you were … forthright in
discussing your support for genocide recognition, saying that ‘America
deserves a leader who speaks truthfully about the Armenian genocide
and responds forcefully to all genocides.’ We agree with you
completely," the letter said.

It was signed by Democrats Adam Schiff of California and Frank Pallone
of New Jersey, and Republicans George Radanovich of California and
Mark Kirk of Illinois. Washington Reuters

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