Category: 2019

MediaMax, Armenia

May 8 2019

From Lebanon to Armenia

I played for Antranik SC’s basketball team in Beirut and Homenetmen BC. A year ago Secretary General of the Armenian Basketball Federation Artur Nazaryan traveled to Beirut and we had a meeting there. Artur offered me to contribute to development of basketball in Armenia, and my bother Toros and I agreed.

Before coming here, I called my Syrian-Armenian friends in Yerevan, Jano and Hrant. They said they wanted to play, and they helped me a lot. Later I started recruiting players for the club.

The name and purpose of Aragats

I wanted the club to bear the name of an Armenian mountain. We thought of “Ararat” first, but there’s already a football club of that name. “Aragats” was free to take. Our main objective is to win games; otherwise, what was the point of coming here from Lebanon? I’m happy Aragats BC is a part of development of basketball in Armenia, which is very important. We need a rapid growth of quality in order to have bigger achievements.

The importance of personal qualities

It is actually very difficult to find players, because money doesn’t decide everything and personal qualities are important. You have to be able to distinguish and choose the players who are also decent people. I had lots of help in this regard from Tigran Gyokchyan. Thanks to him, we recruited the players who eventually became champions.

Good management is the most important aspect of a top team. If management is poor, there will be no results. My experience helped me to find common ground with my players and create a good atmosphere in the team.

Lack of sponsors

Sponsorship is very important. It’s difficult for the club to have just one source of funding. I hope Aragats BC will pose significant interest for sponsors after becoming the champion of Armenia in such a short period of time.

Leagues A and B

The quality of League A was high this year, but I want to see it grow. In my opinion, it will take several years. Such things don’t happen overnight.
League B is useful, because it allows youngsters to get some game time and experience before joining League A teams. We’ll have an U18 championship too, which is good for players of school age.

No TV coverage

I cannot fathom why Armenian TV companies are not interested in basketball. It is so wrong. It is TV coverage that brings the beauty of different sports to the homes of the people.

If our games are shown on television, people will get interested and grow fond of basketball, invest in teams emotionally, and it will bring them to the basketball courts.

Lack of basketball courts

Basketball is at a very high level in Lebanon, in every city, and it’s very popular. There are over 50 basketball courts in Lebanon, while Armenia has just one, “Mika”. I think the Armenian government can afford building another court that complies with international standards.

Developing local talent

Armenia needs a good system in place to develop basketball. Armenian Americans coming to play here are just like other American players, whether Armenian, black or other, they just have the “ian” ending in their last name. They come here, make a career and move to other clubs. We need to train local kids and organize tournaments to help them progress.

We plan to open a school, but the coaching, methods, court – everything must be done at top level. With a good school, we’ll have good basketball in a few years.

New head coach and international tournaments

Tigran Gyokchyan, who’s been very helpful, might become the head coach next season. We are currently negotiating with him.

Aragats BC will compete in Hariri Basketball Championship in Beirut this September. We plan to compete in Dubai too, in February. Both tournaments are very tough, strong teams compete there. Aragats will have new players next season. I’ve already signed contracts with several players.

Making history for Armenia

My goal is to ensure that Aragats makes history for basketball in Armenia and wins European tournaments. That is I why I’ve moved here, that is why I work hard for this club.

Previously, Mediamax Sport covered Urartu, Artsakh, FIMA, and Artik.

Gohar Nalbandyan

Photos: Emin Aristakesyan

There is no lack of opportunities for discussions on Armenian-Russian relations in Armenia. In recent days, two such incidents have occurred. The first was the ban on the entry of Ukrainian Parliament member Mustafa Nayemi to Armenia by the border guards “at the request of a third country” during the border crossing at the “Zvartnots” airport, and the second was the outburst of laughter of the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev after the RA Prime Minister asked a question during the EAEU intergovernmental council session. Such public discussions regularly held on various occasions in relation to Armenian-Russian relations prove that there are significant concerns among citizens in this matter. Therefore, the government should take serious steps to get rid of them.

If the second incident can be explained by the lack of trust of a large mass of the public towards Russia, then the creation of unnatural obstacles by the Russian border guards who control the RA border in connection with the visit of a member of parliament of another country to Yerevan, is a direct blow to Armenia’s international credit. It is noteworthy that thousands of people responded to Mustafa Nayem’s post on his Facebook social network page, and hundreds of people posted the post on their own pages. In the comments under the post, the citizens of Ukraine, Russia, Armenia and other countries debate on the issue of our country’s dependence on Russia in the context of the achievements of the “velvet” revolution.

By the way, Hovhannes Igityan, deputy chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Foreign Relations, also responded to Nayem’s post. Asking for forgiveness and expressing regret for the incident, he also noted that what happened to Nayem at Zvartnots airport is not the first case against Ukrainian citizens and is related to the existence of a list by the Russian authorities prohibiting the entry of certain individuals. Armenia has to take into account the practical effect of the latter for now, because the principle of reciprocity applies. According to Igityan, if our country stops responding to such “lists”, then Russia will not respond to Armenia’s inquiries either and will turn into a country that shelters corrupt and criminal elements. “Recently, in Russia, the General of Justice of RA, accused of embezzlement and other abuses and on the run, was arrested. We hope that he will be extradited to us,” says Igityan.

What happened to Mustafa Nayem has caused intense reactions, because it is related to a problem to which Armenian officials find it difficult to give any clarification or avoid answering. And the problem is that the presence of the Russian border guards at the Zvartnots airport has never been argued and cannot be argued as a situation or reality arising from the interests of Armenia. In the case of the Armenian-Turkish border, where the existence of Russian border guards is justified by many as a factor of restraining Turkish military aggression, the presence of Armenia’s state interests along with geopolitical or other regional interests finds at least some reasonable explanation. In spite of all that, in the case of “Zvartnots” airport, we have been talking for years about the harmfulness and groundlessness of the presence of the Russian border guards, and the fact of the presence of the border guards themselves – violation of the sovereignty of our country, desubjectification, undignified attitude, etc. No logical explanation has ever been given as to why border guards from other countries should be standing at Armenia’s largest civil international airport and their country’s law enforcement agencies and special services should monitor the movement of people entering and exiting our country with entry ban lists.

It is obvious that after the “velvet” revolution, Armenia is trying to become an independent regional factor. From the point of view of the current government, the fact that Armenia is currently in the same foreign-political environment, under the same geopolitical realities and challenges, as it was a decade or two ago, should be taken into account. There is a place for the claim that, being politically insignificant and in the orbit of Russia, which is not subject to transformations, and in the situation of global confrontation between Russia and the West, Armenia can change the tactics of solving the same problems and achieving the same goals in the same situation.

However, the current problematic situation at the “Zvartnots” airport already forces everyone to pay attention to the somehow difficult Armenian-Russian relations and to speak out about the existence of a serious problem that has been burdened for decades in the country’s sovereignty. It seems that the RA leadership has a wide field to dodge the request to replace the Russian border guards with Armenian border guards. When fixing the presence of the Russian border guards in “Zvartnots”, they can justify their position by the inadmissibility of a new strategy to solve the problem and achieve the goals in the given situation, and in case of wanting to solve the problem, by changing the tactics. However, such explanations have no value in all cases when the phenomena surrounding us are the expression of objective reality, internally endowed with the power to develop independently.

From that point of view, the incident with the member of the Ukrainian Parliament showed once again that the problems of sovereignty accumulated in Armenian-Russian relations for years are self-sufficient and cannot be taken under the control of any superpower or force. Neither Russia nor Armenia can position themselves as if there is no problem of the unnatural presence of the special service of a foreign country at the Zvartnots airport. This problem exists and needs an urgent solution. The more the RA government tries to keep its distance and hide it, the more it will hit not only the credit of Armenia, but also the reputation of the RA political leadership in the eyes of our citizens, proving that not fulfilling the requirement of the RA Constitution to build a sovereign country becomes a threat to national security.

Of course, the “blockade” of “Zvartnots” airport will not be easy for us. There will be resistance either inside the country, with the silent or open intervention of the 5th column, or in the form of threats and obstacles from an external beneficiary. But we have no alternative, the state must recover by gaining sovereignty. And in that case, “Zvartnots” airport is the first stop of the Armenian plane of sovereignty.

Saro Saroyan

In all civilized countries, legality has been established as a result of a long and conscious struggle by society. Public solidarity in those countries was formed by establishing the rule of law, which in turn made it possible to achieve general development and progress. People gradually realized and attached importance to the recognition of their rights and their full protection, being convinced that only in this way can the privileges of the government be limited and the responsibilities of citizens be expanded.

The parallel development has always started from the moment when the public realized the common interest and tried to enshrine it legislatively. This is a continuous process and can never stop, as long as new realities and phenomena constantly appear in the course of human activity, which, as a result of broad public discourses, create the need for new regulations, laws or change some values, creating new models and their perceptions. In healthy public discourse, clashes of views, disagreements and approaches, the movement that continuously gives charges to the vitality of the society matures. In our time, the processes for reaching an agreement on public solidarity and general coexistence have accelerated and acquired a global character, in the context of much wider opportunities given by information technologies and new political tools.

However, the developments in Armenia move forward with a slightly different logic. The society, which found a certain strength in itself to correct the political upheavals, could not fully realize the significance of what it did, understand its role in the following steps, the importance of its degree of participation in the unfolding skirmish. A vivid proof of this is the repeated dramatic question “is this what we were fighting for?” People who “blocked the street” several times and chanted a few words with everyone in the square announce with a serious face that the revolution did not live up to their expectations. And what were those expectations and did anyone undertake the implementation of those expectations? In many cases, some people cannot even formulate what their expectations were in reality, moreover, they cannot outline any realistic way to fulfill those expectations. This is perhaps a consequence of the fact that a serious political discourse has never taken place in our country. The society has always shown evasiveness regarding the formulation of the most important problems for it and their possible solutions, as a result of which the most serious points voiced and clearly outlined from the platform, which were supposed to be implemented as a result of the revolution and actually become the cornerstone of the creation of a legal state, were pushed to the sidelines in post-revolutionary Armenia and remained suspended.

It is obvious that the society once again throws its share of responsibility in the establishment of the state over itself and delegates everything to the authorities, expecting that the latter will put everything aside with good intentions and undertake the establishment of the state.

Such behavior is characteristic of an infantile and indifferent society that is constantly waiting for “saviors”. It turns out that they made a revolution not to build a state with their own forces and ideas, but to find a “savior” and delegate the management of their destiny to him.

It is not difficult to predict how this will end.

Marina Muradyan