Category: 2019

Funeral service for Patriarch Mesrob II to be held on March 17

Chakhmakhchian Vatche
Panorama, Armenia

The funeral service for Archbishop Mesrob II Mutafyan, the 84th Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, will be held on Sunday, March 17, at Istanbul’s St. Virgin Mary Church.

He will be buried at the Armenian cemetery in the Sisli district of the Turkish capital, like all the previous Armenian patriarchs, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople said on Facebook.

Patriarch Mesrob II Mutafyan passed away Friday at Intanbul’s Holy Savior Armenian Hospital after a long illness. He was 63.

He began suffering from dementia in 2008 and has been in a vegetative state since then. Mesrob II was elected Patriarch in 1998, succeeding Karekin II. He had to withdraw from his duties due to his illness in 2008 and Archbishop Aram Atesyan was appointed to serve as Patriarchal Vicar for the Armenian community of Istanbul.

A new patriarch could not be elected as Turkish laws prohibit any elections while a standing patriarch is alive.

How repressive does a country have to be before it becomes a guilt trip for tourists?

Jirair Kafian
The Guardian, UK
March 9 2019

Catherine Bennett

Turkey’s latest attack on free speech is unlikely to affect its appeal to British sunseekers

Go on, visit Turkey. For “fun, joy, happiness and neverending journey”. Women are allowed – to judge by the country’s tourism website – to laugh there now. Will it be safe? One hears these stories. Be reassured, says the useful tips section, this is one of the safest countries in the world: “You’ll find the police helpful and friendly.” Well, the ones who are left since the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, dismissed a further 6,000 officers in last year’s purge.

There’s no section, as yet, dealing with the latest from the land of fun, joy and happiness: last week’s warning, by the minister of interior, Suleyman Soylu, to the effect that certain tourists could find themselves staying indefinitely. “Let them come and go to prison directly from the airport.”

But, to potential visitors whose question is now, “Does Mr Suleyman want to imprison me?”, the answer is probably no, not unless you’re a German Turk who opposes Erdoğan’s government. Or someone who has publicly approved or associated with those critics. Last year, Germany’s foreign office spokesperson, Maria Adebahr, warned the public: “Statements that are covered in Germany by freedom of _expression_ can lead to prosecution in Turkey.” She calls Suleyman’s current threat “not helpful”. German reports of Suleyman’s statement have since been rubbished by a Turkish spokesman, as “deliberately taken out of context and distorted”.

For safety’s sake, it might still be advisable for aspiring tourists not to go on social media and call Erdoğan a brutal enemy of free speech, even in a country that had pretty much succeeded, before he came along, in keeping its genocidal history – the murder of a third of the population of Armenia – out of the public eye. “Who, after all,” Hitler asked in 1939, “speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Not the British government, which still, unforgivably, prefers the daintier “massacre”.

For most tourists, then, there is no compelling reason not to holiday in Turkey, whether out of caution or principle, since German-level freedom of speech is also threatened in a variety of popular, reliably hot resorts around the world. Supposing tourism confers respectability, Turkey’s buoyant figures suggest exceptional decency. If the country is also, following Erdoğan’s sustained assault on freedom of _expression_, bidding to become a world leader in the persecution of journalists – and, it follows, in undermining the judiciary – it is still, at 157 out of 180 in last year’s Press Freedom Index, ranked above Vietnam and China, both as popular with tourists as they are hostile to the free exchange of information.

For further travel whataboutery, recall the Trump-scarred US press (no 45). It is a principle dear to many adventurous travellers that, since no government is perfect, no government, even those famed for exceptional tyranny, should be subject to a tourism boycott. Or hardly ever. After Aung San Suu Kyi’s intervention, in 1996, asking tourists to shun “Visit Myanmar Year”, with which the military junta hoped to sanitise its reputation, visitors, with encouragement from NGOs, complied. Instead of 500,000 visitors, only 251,000 arrived.

Since then, with her silence on the purging and murders of the Rohingyapeople, Aung San Suu Kyi’s example may have become more useful to the visitors and tourism organisers who argue that – given an ethical approach – tourism can always be justified.

While dictators and juntas come and go, the case for visiting their lands has barely changed since Aung San Suu Kyi did, in fact, thwart the junta, despite additional resistance from, among others, Lonely Planet. The liberating benefits of international tourism to the oppressed include, it is argued, conversations, as well as, sometimes, cash. An ethical contributor to Condé Nast Traveller has made a persuasive case for “travelling with a conscience”. In Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, she writes: “I attended the public funeral of a man who’d been killed by police, and talked with mourners as they walked behind the hearse through the congested, sweltering streets of Manila.” Not an obvious bucket-list item, perhaps, but they used to say the same about bungee-jumping.

Assuming that compassionate funeral-crashing does transform routine into ethical tourism, you can still foresee problems of scale. Not merely because the supply of street funerals of innocent victims of authoritarian murderers is probably limited – although you could try Venezuela – but in pure organisational terms. How many coachloads of foreigners can reasonably attend one funeral? Plus, pressure of time. Is this, or indeed, any other extended form of anthropological exposure, how city-worn escapees to the sun would prefer to use the time designated “at leisure”? But either way, you can see how the justifications of individual guilt-tripped travellers to various autocracies can also be deployed by the organisers of industrial-scale all-inclusive tourism to morally indefensible dictatorships – that is, exactly the sort worth boycotting.

That Turkey combines the current terrors and imprisonings and arrests, its secular reversals and authoritarianism with a role as the UK’s third-favourite holiday destination, arguably owes much to the mind-broadening thinking that features ethical funeral-going. “Holidays to Turkey won’t break the bank,” chirped Thomas Cook last April, “and you’ll get incredible value for money with top quality All Inclusive hotels.” It is surely a further tribute to the destination that Erdoğan had enough confidence in these attractions, or their insulation from his state of emergency, to purge a further 18,632 state employees at the start of the season, including police officers, the military, teachers, academics.

As much as he is turning away from the west, it’s hard to believe that Erdoğan, presiding over a sagging economy, would be entirely content with the loss of legitimacy, as well as cash, if the hotels emptied, pending some restoration of democratic norms. What if these tourists chose, since boycotts can bring results, to go elsewhere?

All the more so if they went instead – as I warmly recommend – to Armenia.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/10/turkey-how-repressive-does-a-country-have-to-be-before-it-becomes-a-guilt-trip-for-tourists








Fr. Hampartzoum of the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem passes away

Dabaghian Diana
The Jerusalem Post


Fr. Hampartzoum of the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem passes away 

   

By Hagay Hacohen
Fr. Hampartzoum Chief Dragoman of the Armenian Patriarchate and a member of the St. James Brotherhood passed away on Sunday.

He spent more than four decades at the service of his church as a celibate priest, after being accepted into the order in 1979 by the late Archbishop Dirayr Mardikian.

His last position was that of Chief Dragoman, translator, a title bestowed on those who could speak Arabic, Turkish, and Persian, as well as European languages.

First recorded in the 13th century, the word became an honorary position for those who facilitate communication between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East.  

The funeral services will begin on Tuesday afternoon and will continue until Wednesday morning during Divine Liturgy. Services will be held Tuesday, March 12 at 4 p.m. and Wednesday morning at 9 a.m., at St. James Cathedral. 



Sant’Egidio shares the sorrow of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Turkey for the loss of Patriarch Mesrob II

Maral Takmazian
Sant’Egidio
March 8 2019

Sant’Egidio shares the sorrow of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Turkey for the loss of Patriarch Mesrob II. Dear friend of the Community, he died after a very long and painful disease. Just a few days ago, he received the visit from some of his fellows at the Armenian hospital, in Istanbul. He spend a full year in Rome studying, as priest first, then as Bishop. When in Rome, together with Sant’Egidio, he promoted the visit and the provision of humanitarian aid to the population of Yerevan, affected by the earthquake in 1988.

As young priest and then as Bishop, he spent a year of study in Rome and organized together with the Community of Sant’Egidio the visit and relief to the population of Yerevan hit by the earthquake in 1988. He took part in numerous editions of the Prayer for Peace in the Spirit of Assisi and intensively worked and prayed for the unity of Christians. We shall remember his enthusiasm for the Liturgy and the preaching, his passion for tradition and the spiritual of which he was a son, his hope in the younger generations and the openness to the encounter with the other. Moreover, we shall recall his meetings in Rome with John Paul II and in Istanbul with Benedict XVI. He has helped to love the history, the wounds and the hopes of a great Church, and in the debt of this friendship, the promise of future closeness is renewed. He has always sustained the love for the Armenian Church, with its wounds and hopes. In the name of his friendship, comes the promise of a renewed future closeness.

Eurovision: Armenia’s Srbuk will be ‘Walking Out’ at Eurovision 2019

Emil Lazarian
Eurovision TV
 
 
 
Armenia’s Srbuk will be ‘Walking Out’ at Eurovision 2019
 
Posted at 20:21
 
As the 40th country to release its song for the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, Armenia gives us Srbuk’s entry. Srbuk will perform in the second Semi-Final on Thursday 16 May in Tel Aviv.
 
Watch the music video for Srbuk’s Walking Out: class=”m_9831642651477410gmail-text__Text-sc-1udwi1c-0-div m_9831642651477410ezhcFk” st1yle=”margin:0rem 0rem 0.93rem;line-height:1.4;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;font-family:Rubik,sans-serif;font-style:normal;font-weight:300″>

Armenia debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006 and reached the top ten with each of their first five entries, reaching their best result in 2008 when Sirusho finished in fourth place with Qélé Qélé. After failing to qualify from the Semi-Final in 2011 and not participating in 2012, Armenia were ever present again in the Grand Final from 2013 until last year when Sevak Khanagyan only finished 15th in his Semi-Final with Qami. In that period, Aram MP3 scored another fourth place with Not Alone in 2014.

Watch the video at the link: