TASS, Russia Thursday 8:58 PM GMT Russia intends to cooperate with Armenia to solve humanitarian tasks in Syria YEREVAN August 2 Russia is waiting for Armenia to make further practical steps in the humanitarian operation in Syria, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Alexander Fomin said on Thursday at a meeting with Armenian Foreign Minister Zograb Mnatsakanyan. YEREVAN, August 2. /TASS/. Russia is waiting for Armenia to make further practical steps in the humanitarian operation in Syria, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Alexander Fomin said on Thursday at a meeting with Armenian Foreign Minister Zograb Mnatsakanyan. "We are grateful for the support of Russia’s efforts in the restoration of a peaceful life in Syria and the provision of help to the people of this country. Armenia sent humanitarian supplies there four times already, and we’ve got a wide experience of cooperation with the Armenian side," Fomin said. "Armenia is our ally and a key partner in the Trans-Caucasian region. We are successfully cooperating with you both bilaterally and in international structures, chiefly in the CSTO," the deputy minister stressed. He noted that Russia is heavily supporting the consolidation of the Armenian armed forces. The Armenian foreign minister noted that the country’s foreign policy remains unchanged: it is cooperation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Bilateral cooperation between Russia and Armenia includes several spheres, the main of which is the sphere of security, he said. "We’ve got a new area of cooperation - Syria, in which the historically large Armenian diaspora is living," the foreign minister stressed.
Category: 2018
Senior Russian MP lambastes Armenia’s decision to take part in NATO drills
TASS, Russia Thursday 1:59 PM GMT Senior Russian MP lambastes Armenia’s decision to take part in NATO drills MOSCOW August 2 Head of the State Duma (lower house of parliament) Commission for legal support to the development of the Russian military-industrial complex Vladimir Gutenev has said that Armenia’s participation in the Noble Partner exercise of the NATO members and the alliance’s partners raises numerous questions. MOSCOW, August 2. /TASS/. Head of the State Duma (lower house of parliament) Commission for legal support to the development of the Russian military-industrial complex Vladimir Gutenev has said that Armenia’s participation in the Noble Partner exercise of the NATO members and the alliance’s partners raises numerous questions. He recalled that the Noble Partner 2018 drills kicked off at Vaziani military base located in Georgia. More than 3,000 military servicemen from 13 NATO’s member-states and partners, including Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, are expected to take part in them. "The North Atlantic Alliance’s desire to allure Russia’s strategic partners in its ranks has long ceased to be a secret. We can see, however, that Serbia, which receives aid from us within the framework of military-technical cooperation, despite being surrounded by NATO countries, pursues a more balanced policy than Russia’s neighbors, which are dependent in terms of ensuring their national sovereignty. In light of that, it is strange to see Armenia, a CSTO member, taking part in the exercises of the military-political alliance whose members not only make aggressive statements about Russia but also expand the area of their military presence," Gutenev told TASS on Thursday. He noted that "the countries closely cooperate in the security area." According to the lawmaker, "Russia provides assistance and preferential supplies as part of military-technical cooperation and, as a guarantor of peace in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, sometimes suffers economic losses." "We have already seen people with pro-Russian rhetoric coming to power in a number of countries, including Ukraine. However, they later changed their countries’ foreign policy vector, which sparked military coups. At the same time, we continue to believe that [Armenian Prime Minister] Nikol Pashinyan is a pragmatic politician who has a balanced approach to interstate cooperation issues," Gutenev added. Nevertheless, it is necessary to evaluate specific steps by that country’s leadership while making important strategic decisions, including on assistance and military-technical cooperation, the lawmaker noted. "This assessment should be based not so much on assurances of friendship. It should be linked to the stance on cooperation with our strategic adversaries, while voting in the UN, the OPCW and other international organizations," he stressed.
Milton Keynes woman’s sponsorship of Armenian girl has transformed her family’s life Suzanne Smith with Nora and her mother Naira
Milton Keynes Citizen
Aug 2 2018
Milton Keynes woman’s sponsorship of Armenian girl has transformed her family’s life
A Milton Keynes woman who has sponsored a wheelchair-bound Armenian girl for the last eight years has written a blog about her experience, as the UK has held its first Global Disability Summit.
Suzanne Smith helped change the life of Nora, who lives in a mountainous region of Armenia, where UNICEF says more than half of all children with disabilities and their siblings live in poverty and face social exclusion.
Suzanne, who has also fundraised to help the 16-year-old and her family, sponsored her through World Vision. Here you can read Suzanne’ blog.
Before travelling to Armenia last autumn, little did I know that a cow and a wheelchair could make a difference to an entire family. But then I met Nora, and my perception forever changed.
My first impressions on meeting Nora were that life had been neither fair nor kind. At the age of 16, she should have been a thriving girl eager to explore the world. Instead, that inquisitiveness typical of teenagers had been suppressed by the isolated life Nora led owing to physical disability. She was completely dependent on others and rarely left her house in the mountainous town of Alaverdi.
Living with disabilities can be challenging in Armenia, where many disabled children are hidden in their homes and face social exclusion. According to UNICEF, more than half of all children with disabilities and their siblings here, live in poverty.
In Nora’s case, social exclusion, coupled with her family’s poor financial circumstances, meant that as the eldest of four children she lacked adequate care and was not able to live a fulfilled life.
This is why children’s charity World Vision ear-marked her for support under its “child sponsorship initiative.” This sponsorship model is unique and revolutionary in the charity sector, as it couples children in need with donors abroad, allowing them to form relationships virtually; and meet when possible.
World Vision’s “child sponsorship” model goes beyond supporting one child, as it also funds projects that provide children and their communities with life-saving food and medicines, as well as access to healthcare and education.
This is why eight years ago, I became Nora’s sponsor.
H
ow sponsorship can change lives
When I visited Nora, I could see her family struggled financially. Her mother, Naira, was struggling to find employment in the old mining town of Alaverdi. Instead, she was mooting an idea of investing in a dairy cow so that she could generate some income by selling milk and cheese.
If this could be described as a pipe dream, then think of the other big distraction that occupies every Armenian’s mind: the simmering tensions between the country and its neighbour to the East, Azerbaijan.
A 30-year-old conflict over territories contested by both Armenia and Azerbaijan has claimed thousands of lives and displaced more than one million people. Although a truce was signed in 1994, fighting has continued.
For Nora, these political tensions have already robbed her of her father – a soldier deployed near the border with Azerbaijan for most of the year.
Making a difference
Upon my return back to the UK, I resolved to do more to help Nora. With the support of friends and family I began to fundraise for a much-needed replacement wheelchair for her.
Poorly-maintained roads and lack of ramps in Alaverdi mean it’s quite difficult for disabled people to move from rural areas to the nearest cities.
Together with the World Vision Alaverdi Programme Office, and the local authority, we secured Nora a new wheelchair.
Naturally, this has helped Nora travel more freely. She now attends school and various youth clubs in the area.
I am also told that she is steadfastly overcoming her fears and realising that she can make all her dreams come true. Having found renewed hope and strength, Nora is now working hard to become an IT programmer.
Receiving help from the local authority enabled me to use the funds I raised to buy a cow for Nora’s family. Naira is now able to make cheese and butter, which the family eat and sell. The money that they earn from the sales has helped ease their burden.
Not alone
Sponsoring a child has been a blessing and a life-changing experience for me. It not only enabled me to make a difference to the family of a vulnerable girl in Armenia, but it also created a unique bond with an extraordinary child who is facing tremendous challenges.
Meeting Nora and seeing the reality of her life was very emotional, but also eye-opening – I cannot even begin to think how different her life would be, if she wasn’t registered as a sponsored child.
After my experience, I can confidently say that sponsorship really works. Even if we think we cannot make a difference with just a few pounds per month, we help bring about true and long-lasting changes in many people’s lives.
Sponsorship is a meaningful tool to help children overcome challenges and reach their full potential, and I wish more fortunate people would do more to help transform young people’s lives.
If you want to know more about World Vision sponsorship,
Gulbenkian art dynasty entangled in $1.4m ‘fraud’
The Times, UK
Aug 2 2018
Gulbenkian art dynasty entangled in $1.4m ‘fraud’
by Valentine Low
In the arts world, it is one of the best known philanthropic names, up there with Rothschild, Getty and Tate.
However, the Gulbenkian family name, which usually brings to mind the world-famous museum in Lisbon, is about to be dragged through the courts after one of its members was accused of fraud over a million-dollar art deal.
Angela Gulbenkian, an art collector, is being sued in the High Court in London over a deal that went wrong. A buyer from Hong Kong claims he paid her nearly $1.4 million for a sculpture that never materialised. Mathieu Ticolat, an art adviser and director of Art Incorporated, has launched a claim to get either the sculpture, a 81kg (179lb) spotted yellow pumpkin by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, or the money back.
Ms Gulbenkian, 36, is a German who married a great-great-nephew of the oil tycoon Calouste Gulbenkian, whose fortune has funded the multibillion-pound private foundation and museum that bears his name. In 2016 she set up a company in London, FAPS-Net, with a German art adviser, Florentine Rosemeyer, who has since left.
Art Incorporated said that it entered into a contract with Ms Gulbenkian last year to buy Yellow Pumpkin from an anonymous seller for $1.375 million (about £1 million). The company’s lawsuit says that FAPS-Net claimed to be acting on behalf of the owner. “Those representations were false and the defendants knew them to be false or did not believe them to be true,” it said. No defence has been filed yet but Ms Gulbenkian is understood to be resisting the claim.
The dispute raises issues of how much buyers and sellers know about who they are dealing with when transactions are channelled through intermediaries. Christopher Marinello, of Art Recovery International, who is working with Art Incorporated, told Bloomberg: “People are buying expensive art and are not doing due diligence on people they are buying the art from.”
Born Angela Maria Ischwang, Ms Gulbenkian grew up in Munich and studied politics and history in London, where she opened a marketing firm. She married Duarte Gulbenkian, a football agent, and moved to Lisbon in 2016. Some of those who have had dealings with her formed the incorrect impression that she was connected to the Lisbon-based Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, which distributes money for the arts, social welfare, education and science and is valued at about (EURO)3 billion. The foundation said: “Angela Gulbenkian has nothing to do with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation or the museum.” Mr Ticolat told Bloomberg: “I got fooled by the name.”
Ms Gulbenkian’s Instagram account describes her as “Fine Art Collector | Gulbenkian Art Collection”. In an interview with a Portuguese financial newspaper, Jornal de Negocios, last year she talked about bringing new artists to Lisbon although she said that she did not want to interfere with the foundation. Talking of the Gulbenkian name, she said: “In the art world this name opens doors, but doesn’t close deals.” It is understood that Ms Gulbenkian has denied presenting herself as acting for the foundation.
Ms Rosemeyer, who is now an independent art adviser in Munich, said: “In the spring of 2017 I heard through contacts that one of Yayoi Kusama’s statues might be for sale. I put Angela Gulbenkian in touch with those contacts. I did not have anything further to do with this deal and received no updates from Ms Gulbenkian. I was shocked to learn of the allegations now being made against Ms Gulbenkian.”
According to Bloomberg Ms Gulbenkian has said that she offered to get the sculpture to Mr Ticolat before the case was filed. She had spoken to the owner, who was prepared to transfer the work, but Mr Ticolat did not want a deal.
Mr Ticolat’s team denies these claims and say that she was not able to procure the piece because it had been sold. Bloomberg also reported that Ms Gulbenkian had said that she had been arranging for the money to be repaid, although representatives of Art Incorporated claim not to have seen evidence of this.
An all-consuming passion
· Calouste Gulbenkian (1869-1955) was an Armenian who played a major role in developing oil in the Middle East – particularly Iraq – around the turn of the 20th century.
· He amassed a huge fortune, which he used to build up an art collection that he kept in a private museum at his home in Paris.
· An art expert said in 1950: “Never in modern history has one man owned so much.”
· In his lifetime he was said to have collected more than 6,400 pieces of art, from antiquity to the 20th century.
· When he grew tired of an object he would give it away, exchange it or use it in part-payment for something else.
A Family’s 400-Year-Old Musical Secret Still Rings True
New York Times
Aug 3 2018
A Family’s 400-Year-Old Musical Secret Still Rings True
By Lara Pellegrinelli
Aug. 3, 2018
The surest route to a drummer’s heart? Cymbals.
“You can have all the swirling harmony in the world,” the drummer Brian Blade said, “but only the cymbals can put you over the top of that mountain you’re trying to climb. The tension is the beauty of it, like riding a wave until you need it to crest.”
Mr. Blade, who is best known for playing with the country music singer Emmylou Harris and the jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter, said he thinks of his cymbals as an extension of himself, though he also gives credit for his distinctive sound to the instruments he plays: Zildjians. He has endorsed the brand for 20 years, just one in a long, diverse roster of musicians to do so.
Zildjian was incorporated in the United States in 1929. But the company’s relationship with drummers, and drumming itself, dates back much further: 400 years to be precise, to 1618, when a secret casting process resulted in the creation of a new bronze alloy for the court of Sultan Osman II, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire.
“My father always said that the name is bigger than any one person in the family,” said Craigie Zildjian, the company’s chief executive officer (the first woman to have the job), a member of the family’s 14th generation of cymbal makers. “In other words, you have this little piece of 400 years. Don’t screw it up.”
For the 3,000 or so years before 1618, cymbals had evolved very little. The earliest evidence of them can be found on pottery fragments from Hittite Anatolia dating to the Bronze Age. Metallic percussion was long part of the military music for Turkic tribes including the Seljuks, who migrated to the Middle East in the 11th century. (Some “had horns, others pipes and timbrels, gongs, cymbals and other instruments, producing a horrible noise and clamor,” reads a description of battle during the Third Crusade.)
The sound quality of these boisterous instruments might have left something to be desired by the 17th century, an age of Ottoman musical refinement. It was then that Avedis I, a 22-year-old Armenian metal smith and aspiring alchemist, learned that mixing ample tin into copper would produce a rich, robust sound. But he faced a formidable problem. “It’s a very brittle alloy,” Paul Francis, Zildjian’s director of research and development, said. “It will shatter like a piece of glass.”
Then Avedis I made a music-altering discovery — still carefully guarded by the family — that involved forging a metal so flexible it could be repeatedly heated, rolled and hammered into the finest instruments. “He was looking for gold,” Mr. Francis said. “As far as I’m concerned, he found it.”
Osman II thought so: He granted the young artisan permission to make instruments for the court and gave him the Armenian surname Zildjian (meaning “son of cymbal maker”). The family set up shop in the seaside neighborhood of Samatya in Constantinople, where metal arrived on camel caravans and donkeys powered primitive machines.
Those working in Zildjian’s shop produced cymbals for the mehter — monumental ensembles with double reeds, horns, drums and other metallic percussion that belonged to the empire’s elite janissary military corps. The Zildjians likely also did business with Greek and Armenian churches, Sufi dervishes and the Sultan’s harem, where belly dancers wore finger cymbals.
“Military music was a branch of their classical music,” Walter Zev Feldman, the author of “Music of the Ottoman Court,” said. Although mehter ensembles were known in the West for playing in battle, they also performed courtly suites for its rulers, like those by Solakzade Mehmed (1592-1658), who wrote under the name Hemdemi.
Every morning before prayer, and every evening after prayer, ensembles gathered to play from castle towers, including one above the gardens of Topkapi Palace. Hand-held cymbals measuring a foot or so in diameter probably marked the rhythmic cycles, which Mr. Feldman said “are among the most complex in the world: cycles of 24, 28, 32 and even 48 beats.”
It’s no wonder that composers like Gluck and Mozart wanted to emulate a Turkish style with busy, glittering percussion. Precisely what Ottoman music they heard is an open question, though. A handful of European rulers adopted mehter ensembles or sent their kapellmeisters to Constantinople to learn the tradition, but the composers more likely were exposed, Mr. Feldman said, to “klezmorim, local Jewish musicians, in places like Prague and Berlin, who had learned the Ottoman repertoire.”
What came to be known simply as “Turkish cymbals” were assimilated by European orchestras and, in the first half of the 19th century, into new military and wind band styles that thoroughly integrated West and East. Meanwhile, the janissaries, having assassinated one too many sultans, were outlawed and executed in 1826 — as were their mehter musicians. The Zildjians lost a significant portion of their market.
Avedis II built a 25-foot schooner to transport the first cymbals physically bearing his family’s name to London for the Great Exhibition, the first world’s fair, in 1851. His brother Kerope assumed the company helm in 1865, establishing a line of instruments named K Zildjian in several sizes and thicknesses that are still prized by percussionists today.
Those old K’s — which possess the “sound of two gladiator swords meeting,” in the words of Armand Zildjian, Craigie’s father — can be heard in the Philadelphia, Cleveland and Metropolitan Opera orchestras, among others. Gregory Zuber, the Met’s principal percussionist, said, “It’s a tradition that’s been handed down from player to player” and that can be heard in the tremendous, exposed crashes that heighten the drama of the 19th-century operas.
In America other musical forms began to shape, and be shaped by, the cymbal’s evolution. Avedis III, a Boston candy maker who left Turkey before the Armenian genocide, was reluctant to take over the family business when it was thrust upon him by his uncle Aram in 1927. But he changed his mind after checking out the growing dance band scene: “I saw the possibility that even if there wasn’t a market we could create one,” he recalled in a 1975 interview with The Armenian Reporter.
According to Jon Cohan’s book “Zildjian: A History of the Legendary Cymbal Makers,” drum shops and catalogs in the 1920s were likely to carry only so-called Oriental cymbals, American ones made of brass and nickel silver, and the weighty K’s from Constantinople. Avedis III sought out swing drummers, like Gene Krupa, and learned that they preferred Turkish cymbals but wanted them to be thinner and more responsive — “paper thin,” as Krupa put it.
The new instruments Avedis III developed and trademarked under his name had the crispness to cut through the sound of a big band. And, paired in hi-hats, cymbals took over the time keeping responsibilities from the laboring bass drum, a technique pioneered by Jo Jones of the Count Basie Orchestra.
“It gave you that upbeat that puts the snap in a dancer’s foot: down, chit; down, chit,” said Mr. Blade, who uses 1940s-era Avedis Zildjians in his drum kit. By the mid-1930s, celebrities including Chick Webb, Buddy Rich and Lionel Hampton were coming to the Zildjian factory in Quincy, Mass., to pick out their cymbals, with help from Avedis’s fine ear.
His experimentation producing novel cymbal types — swish and sizzle, bounce and crash — would inspire a new generation of musicians to utilize a broader sonic palette. The bebop drummer Kenny Clarke led the pack by keeping a flexible, furiously paced, highly individualistic beat, probably on 17-inch Zildjian bounce cymbal. That instrument, later named a ride, became a cornerstone of modern drumming.
Touring the factory, which now sits in a leafy industrial park in Norwell, Mass., is the drummer’s equivalent of stumbling into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. “We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams,” Mr. Francis, the director of research and development, said, quoting the movie, as he led the way on a recent visit.
A line of Gen16 products attempts to create an electronic cymbal that looks and feels like a real cymbal instead of a drum pad. A low-volume practice cymbal that looks like mesh is selling well among drummers in Asia who live in apartments with thin walls.
The lobby has the feel of a show room, with kits on display that belonged to Travis Barker (Blink-182), Tré Cool (Green Day) and Ginger Baker (Cream), along with a replica of Ringo Starr’s. “We all know what happened in 1964,” Mr. Francis said, referring to the British Invasion. “We had 90,000 cymbals on back order.”
A lounge gives drummers a place to try out their instruments or simply hang out while waiting for an order. Some, like Joey Kramer of Aerosmith and the famed session musician Steve Gadd, prefer to watch from the factory floor.
Metal glows hot from the furnace, and rolling machines spit out silvery pancakes of zinc-oxide-coated bronze, collected with coal shovels. Armand Zildjian modernized the factory using robots to remove the most burdensome physical labor and offer greater precision in tasks like hammering. (His younger brother Bob broke from the company 1981 and founded his own cymbal manufacture, Sabian, in Canada.)
Today, each instrument still passes through the hands of dozens of highly skilled workers. “Paper thin” is not measured by tiny calipers, but by lathe operators shaving off golden ribbons and checking to make sure their work falls within a certain range on digital scales.
The head cymbal tester, Leon Chiappini, who has worked at the factory for 57 years, listens to each one multiple times with a standard in mind and pairs them. But like drummers, no two are exactly alike.
more photos at
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Sports: Simonyan: Pyunik’s achievement means progress for Armenian football
MediaMax, Armenia
Aug 3 2018
Simonyan: Pyunik’s achievement means progress for Armenian football
Pyunik owner Artur Soghomonyan has talked with Mediamax Sport about the historical achievement of the club, the enormous work the team has done, and future plans.
“Pyunki’s achievement means progress for Armenian football in general. The team worked as one and fought to get where they are now. Reason number one is that they have a professional, ambitious manager.
Both Vardar and Tobol have higher ratings. We knew we could only beat them with teamwork, not individual brilliance, and that’s what we did.
We hope this is not our ceiling and our progress will be ongoing. Now we are preparing for the game against Maccabi, whom we host on August 9.
We couldn’t beat Tobol with the fans’ support. They gave us a wonderful atmosphere in the stadium. It was a big encouragement for the players, as many of them are still young.
The players realized they had no right to lose. I hope this success will bring more people to the stadium. The next round and opponent will be difficult, so the game promises to be entertaining again.
I promised Pyunik would be able to get into the group stage within 3-5 years and I remain committed to that goal. The manager and I are working together to strengthen the squad to make it happen.
For now, we signed many foreign players, but we anticipate that in the near future the core of the squad will be made of local footballers. We want to develop Armenian football.
Manager Talalaev is very strict. It took time for players to get used to it and see the professional that he is. The manager has helped them play better and believe in themselves.
I am very optimistic about Armenian football. I hope Artur Vanetsyan will head our football federation. I met with him, he has great ideas, but of course, he will need the clubs’ support. We understand his work in the National Security Service is more important, but football would get so much from him.
We hope to get to the final stages of 2022 World Cup or Euro 2026. We’ll be relying on the new generation of Armenian footballers, they will be able to do that.
Armenian kids are talented. We just need to work with them, and one day Armenia can play well and reach finals like Iceland, Croatia and Denmark.”
Turkish Press: Ara Güler: Visual chronicler of Turkey
Daily Sabah, Turkey
Aug 4 2018
HAKAN ARSLANBENZER
ISTANBUL
Ara Güler from the lens of Steve McCurry.
Since the invention of the camera in the early 19th century, people have been arguing whether photography is art or not. Some believe that photography is not art because it does not “elevate the imagination,” but it is a mechanical recording of its object. On the other hand, many people think that photography is a new art due to the fact that it captures more than the surface of its object.
Though most photographers think of themselves as artists, some old school masters refuse to be seen as artists. Ara Güler, one of the most famous Turkish photographers, always says that he is a photojournalist, not an artist. He thinks his photography is documentation, not art. I believe he says so because of two reasons. First, he met great painters as Picasso and Dali in his youth. Güler might have developed an understanding of the artist figure following them. Second, he may have decided to avoid any arguments about the description of his job.
Whether an artist or a photojournalist, Ara Güler has witnessed rare moments in Turkey and abroad with the help of his camera.
Early life
Ara Güler was born Aram Güleryan on Aug. 16, 1928 in Beyoğlu, Istanbul. He is a member of the Armenian minority in Turkey. His mother’s name was Verjin. His father Dacat was a pharmacist, who migrated to Istanbul from a village of Giresun in the Black Sea region, at age six in order to get a proper education.
Ara Güler graduated from the Armenian Getronagan High School in 1951. During his high school years, Güler worked in film studios and took stage acting courses from the famous director Muhsin Ertuğrul. He was eager to get a job as an actor. However, he found a job as a reporter in 1950. Indeed, he had a camera gifted by his father, which he used for his work at the “Yeni İstanbul” newspaper. His first photo news assignment was the Atatürk statue in Gümüşsuyu, Beyoğlu, which was broken by an extremist group.
He also wrote some short stories and essays in Armenian for the periodicals of the Armenian minority.
After high school, Güler enrolled at the Istanbul School of Economics, from which he never graduated. Instead, he decided to become a full-time photojournalist.
Turkish correspondent
Güler covered many stories with the help of his camera. Working for the press, he never saw himself as an artist. On the other hand, he had a clear tendency to take photos with effective scenery. Sometimes, he played with the scenery to help to evoke more than just the surface of an incident.
A work by Güler, bearing witness to old Istanbul streets.
In 1953, Güler met Henri Cartier-Bresson and Romeo Martinez and became a member of Magnum Photos.
From 1954 to 1962, Güler worked as the chief of the photo segment of the “Hayat” magazine in Turkey. In 1958, he began working as the Near East photojournalist for some international publications including the “Time Life,” “Paris-Match” and “Der Stern.” In other words, he was the Turkish correspondent for the European photo community.
In 1961, Güler was named among the best seven photojournalists in the world by the “Photo Annual Anthology” published in London. The same year, he was admitted, as the only Turkish member, to the American Society of Media Photographers.
These connections helped Güler visit many countries and meet and take photographs of many prominent public figures and artists of the Western world including Winston Churchill, Indira Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, Arnold Toynbee, Alfred Hitchcock, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and many more.
Self-made master
Ara Güler has been praised by many Turkish and Western institutions and associations beside the unending interest of the media in his life and work. He opened and joined many solo exhibitions in many capitals of the world. The New York Museum of Modern Art exhibited his works at the “10 Masters of Color Photography” event in 1968. Another exhibition in Cologne, Germany followed that. His works on art and artists were used in books and periodicals.
Güler also photographed many artists in Turkey. His works were used in Turkish books as well. Yet, his fame in Turkey was dependent on another side of his. His black and white photographs of 1950s Turkey, especially of the old districts of Istanbul are shocking because of their lively atmosphere. As a born Istanbulite, Güler was well aware on how to photograph the city. From an old cemetery with children playing amid the graves, to old ladies praying at the “Old Mosque” in Edirne before the vast “Allah” calligraphy in Arabic letters. His photos were destined to endure decades because of the things they implied. His photo of three old men chatting on short chairs on the wall of an old coffee shop has become one of the emblems of the nostalgia for the old Istanbul. Or, the photograph of a boy with bread and milk is something defined as the photography of happiness.
Not all of the works of Ara Güler are as deep as the aforementioned ones. Yet, he used his camera as a collector and witness of true moments of prominent public figures and ordinary people at the same time. His vision includes not a historical but a nostalgic documenting enthusiasm.
Though an Orthodox Christian, Ara Güler is one of the best photographers of the Islamic architecture of Turkey. He does not show the grand mosques as statuesque places but religious monuments with ordinary daily life and people around them, as they are.
Azerbaijani Press: Zatulin: Armenia Will Suffer if Russia’s Opinion Is Ignored
Turan Information Agency, Azerbaijani Opposition Press
August 2, 2018 Thursday
Zatulin: Armenia Will Suffer if Russia’s Opinion Is Ignored
Moscow / 02.08.18 / Turan: Armenia’s “great friend”, First Deputy Chairman of the RF State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs Konstantin Zatulin believes that if Armenia does not choose the interests of Russia, it can lead Armenia to internal and external problems. He expressed this opinion on the air of the Radio Ekho Moskvy.
“Armenia will have to think about what choice Prime Minister N. Pashinyan will make, since if this choice is not in favor of meeting some of Russia’s concerns, then Russia’s criticism of the Prime Minister’s actions can lead to a variety of outcomes, both external and internal political,” he said.
Zatulin also added that Armenia cannot fail to take into account that today its security is guaranteed in many respects by membership in the CSTO, the presence of the Russian military base and the supply of arms from Russia.
“In this case, in relations with Russia, this is fraught with a loss of confidence at a high level, because words are words, and actions are actions. This arrest of the CSTO Secretary General (Y. Khachaturov) cannot but damage the image of the organization itself,” Zatulin noted.
Earlier, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the actions of Yerevan, in particular, the arrest of former President Robert Kocharian and the bringing to trial of CSTO Secretary General Yury Khachaturov. S. Lavrov said the persecution of their predecessors by the new political leaders of Armenia cannot but disturb Moscow.
Azerbaijani Press: Armenian politician calls for return of occupied lands to Azerbaijan
AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Aug 3 2018
Armenian politician calls for return of occupied lands to Azerbaijan
3 August 2018 11:00 (UTC+04:00)
By Naila Huseynli
Member of the Armenian National Congress Zoya Tadevosyan stated the necessity of Armenia’s withdrawing from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan. She made this statement during the recent meeting with reporters.
Tadevosyan noted that the occupied seven regions around Nagorno-Karabakh, which the Armenian side calls “liberated” territories must be returned to Azerbaijan if the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict requires this, the Armenian media reported.
“In fact, you are well aware, and everyone understands in this audience that those are occupied territories,” she said.
The Armenian politician stated that the territories occupied during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are not the territories of “Karabakh”.
In reply to the journalists’ question whether this statement means that these territories are occupied, Tadevosyan answered with the question: “Are these the Armenian lands?”
As to question whether she thinks that they should be returned, Tadevosyan stated that “None of you need to take offense at me, but I do not decide this. This issue has always been raised by [OSCE Minsk Group] co-chairs, and generally discussed at the negotiating table. Dear journalist, do not take offense at me and demand something for which I am not responsible for. If the issue is about the settlement through the return of territories, then, of course, this is correct.”
Tadevosyan commented on the fact that the Armenian side considers these territories to be “liberated” and not occupied. She stated that this is the position of the Armenian side, while the international community holds a different opinion on this issue, considering them captured or occupied.
On another question, whether she asked the opinion of the people of the separatist regime in Nagorno-Karabakh about this issue, Tadevosyan responded: “I did not ask anyone about anything, I’m stating the fact.”
Earlier, the leader of the Armenian National Congress party that Tadevosyan represents now, Levon Ter-Petrosyan lost his presidential post because of his views on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.
Armenia still remembers Ter-Petrosyan’s speech at the ANC congress in December 2016, when he said that delaying the settlement of the conflict will further weaken Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and the next decision will be even worse than what is on the table today.
Armenia occupied 20 percent territory of Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. Dozens were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the Armenia’s armed aggression.
The ceasefire in 1994 froze the conflict. Unfortunately, Armenia continues to violate four UN Security council resolutions on immediate withdrawal of its armed forces from occupied territory including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions of Azerbaijan.
Negotiation and mediation efforts have failed to produce a permanent solution to the conflict due to Armenia’s unconstructive position on the issue.