Category: 2021

Exquisite book in Tehran’s Armenian Museum

Rose Khoyetsian
IRAN FRONT PAGE
Dec 28 2021

ByIFP Editorial Staff
December 28, 2021

An old manuscript restorer says there is an exquisite book in the Armenian Museum in Tehran of which there are only seven similar copies in the world.

Rima Ojaghian, a veteran restorer of old manuscripts at the National Library of Iran who studied in France, told the Mehr News Agency about the old books kept in the Armenian Museum in Tehran.

“I restored these books, which are mostly Bibles, ten years ago. These books are now kept in the Armenian Museum. One of them is exquisite because there are only 7 books similar to it in the world. This book contains prayers that Armenians recited in churches,” she said.

She said that the pattern of the cover of the book is driven from the miniatures inside.

“This book was discovered in ancient Turkey in the early 1700s and was in poor condition when it was delivered to me. I had to clean it 5 times. I even had to wash it. If I remember correctly, this book was hidden in old jars. No other copies of this book were ever made. Similar books are now kept in Armenian libraries,” Ojaghian added.

“This book features the Armenian binding style to the audience. In the past, men used to sew the pages. I tried to bind this book with about 1500 pages in the same old style; even the headband and the tailband on both sides of the book were restored,” she explained.

The type of endband and binding shows well that the Armenians sewed the pages of paper, covered them with wood and closed the book in a certain style to prevent the destruction of the pages, Ojaghian stated.

She added that these books are now kept in two showcases of the Armenian Museum in Tehran.

Perspectives | Dam building on the Kura-Aras and water tensions in the Caucasus

Talar Tumanian
 eurasianet 
Dec 28 2021

Nareg Kuyumjian Dec 28, 2021

Lake Azat, near Yerevan, was built in 1976. (iStock)

Among many other threats, global climate change promises unprecedented water variability in the South Caucasus. The region is facing increasingly erratic rainfall and snowmelt, which is endangering drinking supplies, agricultural output, and hydropower generation.

This is made still more complicated by the fact that the region’s water flows across the borders of countries with already tense relations.

The region receives the large majority of its fresh water from the transboundary Kura and Aras rivers, which both originate in Turkey and flow into the Caucasus. As the most upstream actor, Turkey has responded to climate-induced water variability by building dams that can capture as much of the water supply as possible before it flows outside its borders. This dam development is coming at the expense of downstream water users in the Caucasus.

Usually, when talking about Turkey’s dam development, the Tigris-Euphrates river basin gets most of the attention. Over the past 50 years, Turkey's State Hydraulic Works (known by its Turkish acronym DSI) has built 22 dams and 19 hydropower plants on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as part of its multi-billion dollar Southeast Anatolia Project (GAP). The GAP’s effect on downstream rivers has left large parts of Syria and Iraq in severe drought, increasing Ankara’s leverage over its Middle Eastern neighbors and particularly threatening Kurdish political movements in Syria, among other strategic geopolitical considerations.

Similar effects could be in store for the South Caucasus.

Over the last two decades, the DSI also has been damming water resources on both the Kura and Aras rivers. On the Kura, DSI is pursuing the Kura Project Master Plan, which was launched with the aim of increasing irrigated lands in the Ardahan province, near the border with Georgia, from 3,000 to 51,000 hectares. As shown in the map below, the plan envisages five major dams along the upper Kura. The Besikkaya Dam (map; 4) is expected to be the largest upstream dam on the Kura at 107 meters and with a carrying capacity of 211.6 million cubic meters. This has particularly raised concerns both among local activists and downstream in Azerbaijan.

Caption: Dam (completion date): (1) Demirdoven (1995); (2) Soylemez (planned) ; (3) Durancam (NA); (4) Besikkaya (planned); (5) Karakurt (2020); (6) Bayburt (2003); (7) Koroglu (2017); (8) Kayabeyi (2015); (9) Gurturk (planned); (10) Arpacay/Akhuryan (1980); (11) Arpi (1951); (12) Kaps (planned); (13) Surmalu (planned); (14) Tsalka (1946); (15) Aparan (1968); (16) Algeti (1983); (17) Azat (1976); (18) Vedi (2021). (map by @carte.ophile)

According to activists in the province of Ardahan, Besikkaya would divert 70 percent of the Kura’s water flow to the Coruh River, a transboundary river shared by Turkey and Georgia. The direct impact of the dam on the region’s agriculture and ecology has led activists to oppose construction. Climate-induced water shortages have already led to economic decline in the largely agricultural province, giving Ardahan the third-highest rate of population loss among 81 Turkish provinces between 2000 and 2020.

What’s more, Azerbaijani environmentalists also have pointed to the Besikkaya Dam as a threat to their country’s water security. The dam threatens to lower the level of the Kura in Azerbaijan, thus endangering water supplies for irrigation and drinking water.

Turkey also has substantially increased its dam-building efforts on the upper Aras river. Compared to the projects on the Kura, Turkey has built a greater number of dams on the Aras, though with a lower capacity. From 2012 to 2014, Turkey constructed six hydropower plants on the Aras and is currently planning eight more.

Among the completed projects, the Karakurt and Alp-Aslan 2 projects in the Kars and Mush provinces, respectively, stand out for their proximity to the Armenian border. Downstream actors have already voiced concerns about the Karakurt Dam, which has reduced the Aras’ flow by 1.6 billion cubic meters.

More and potentially larger projects are still in the queue. Among these, the recently announced Soylemez Dam particularly stands out. With a planned height of 113 meters and a carrying capacity of 1.4 billion cubic meters, the project would create the fourth-largest reservoir in Turkey. According to Turkish press reports, construction of the dam is planned to begin in Koprukoy, near the city of Erzurum, as early as 2022.

The consequences of this upstream dam would be felt most strongly in Armenia’s Ararat Valley, the source of 36 percent of Armenia’s agricultural yield. In fact, many of the 21 dams that Armenia is itself planning target exactly that issue, by expanding irrigation capacity for farms in the valley. Compared to those in Turkey, Armenian dams are smaller in scale, with the reservoir of the largest planned project, Kaps, projected at a capacity of 70 million cubic meters, one-twentieth the size of Soylemez.

Georgia has likewise upped its game on dam-building, planning 40 hydropower plants in the coming years. With hydropower representing about 80 percent of its current electricity mix, Georgian dam projects have focused on bolstering the country’s energy independence by reducing its need for gas from Azerbaijan. Of late, the environmental impacts of dam development have made these projects increasingly controversial. But, to date, no major projects have been planned or built on the Kura. The only exception is the Gurturk Dam (map; 9) which is planned to be constructed where the river crosses the Turkish-Georgian border.  

Azerbaijan, the country furthest downstream in the basin, might have something to do with Georgia’s lack of dam development on the Kura. Geographically speaking, Azerbaijan is the most vulnerable to upstream dam development: 76.6 percent of its water originates outside its borders. Accordingly, Azerbaijan has actively negotiated with Georgia over water quality and supply. Baku has been seeking a water treaty with Tbilisi since at least 2013, and efforts are currently underway to finalize a bilateral agreement on how to manage the Kura, under the aegis of the European Union. And while Azerbaijan has sought cooperation on water with Georgia, water has been a key driver of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

But even as it has attempted to fight against upstream development, Azerbaijan has by far the highest dam capacity on the Kura-Aras: 21,587 million cubic meters, compared to about 10,000 million among Turkey, Armenia, and Georgia combined. The country is home to the four-largest reservoirs in the basin: Mingachevir (1.57 billion cubic meters), Shamkir (268 million cubic meters), Khudaferin (161 million cubic meters), and Aras (135 million cubic meters). This clear imbalance in water catchment, paired with climate-induced water variability, will likely place water on the regional agenda for decades to come.

Water usage on the Kura-Aras is currently regulated by Soviet-legacy central planning norms not well suited to the variability that climate change poses. In the post-Soviet era, outdated treaties signed bilaterally between Turkey and the USSR don’t take into account downstream interests and pose enforceability challenges. Instead, dam development in the basin has been left to direct state-to-state negotiation.

Turkey has benefited the most from this hydroanarchic status quo. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey has built the largest dams in the region and has been the least compliant with international water law among the Kura-Aras basin countries, failing to participate in five of the eight international agreements regulating regional water use. In fact, Turkey was one of only three countries to vote against the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention, which serves as the primary source of international water law.

As dam-building and climate-induced water variability continue to stress regional resources, the countries around the Caucasus will look for ways to use – or avoid – international law to effectively manage the Kura-Aras basin.

And as the region moves toward a new status quo following last year’s war, hydropolitics will likely be a vital agenda item in any negotiation format.

 

Read part 1 of this series.

 

Nareg Kuyumjian is a recent graduate of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service with a B.S. in International Relations and a certificate in Eurasian, Russian and Eastern European Studies. 

Russian defense chief lauds peacekeepers’ role to normalize Karabakh situation

Alex Nanijanian
 TASS  
Russia - Dec 28 2021
Life is gradually returning to the region, Sergey Shoigu noted

MOSCOW, December 28. /TASS/. The Russian peacekeeping contingent fulfilled the complex tasks of disengaging the conflicting parties in the Nagorno-Karabakh area and is currently accomplishing planned missions in the region, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at the ministry’s conference call on Tuesday.

"We managed to calm the situation there by introducing our peacekeeping forces and now steps are underway to carry out planned work. Now this work can already be called planned. Life is gradually returning to the region. Peace and calm are increasingly present there," Russia’s defense chief said.

As Shoigu said, "a large amount of credit here goes to all those who were engaged in the provision of medical and humanitarian aid." "And, of course, to all those who are on watch at peacekeepers’ posts round the clock."

The Russian defense chief expressed his gratitude "to all the commanders, servicemen, privates and sergeants who are on duty in Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria and at our other bases abroad."

"But especially in these two areas. All that existed, say, a year ago in Karabakh, when the situation was extremely difficult and dramatic, was overcame by the efforts of our supreme commander-in-chief who held these negotiations and this work round the clock," Shoigu stressed.

During the conference call, the Russian defense chief also thanked army engineers for constructing more than 3,000 facilities over the year.

Nagorno-Karabakh authorities slam Pashinyan for ‘dangerous’ statements

Samvel Nahapetian
Dec 28 2021
 28 December 2021

ByAni Avetisyan
Stepanakert. Photo: Ani Avetisyan/OC Media.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statements about a future, conflict-free Nagorno-Karabakh shared by Armenians and Azerbaijanis left a bad taste in the mouths of Armenian opposition figures and Nagorno-Karabakh officials.

Armenian opposition figures and Nagorno-Karabakh officials criticised Pashinyan for statements he made regarding the status of Nagorno-Karabakh in a 24 December press conference.

Pashinyan dedicated a good portion of his two-hour online conference to discuss the conflict surrounding the disputed region. He claimed that after coming to power, he was given a ‘heritage of negotiations’ that made it impossible to solve the conflict and have Nagorno-Karabakh remain under Armenian control. 

Pashinyan also spoke about the former Azerbaijani population of Nagorno-Karabakh, saying the issue of the rights of the Azerbaijanis living in the region ‘has never been disputed by any government or negotiator’.

He recalled that Armenia’s third president, Serzh Sargsyan, would say ‘Artsakh [Nagorno-Karabakh] will never be a part of Azerbaijan’, but he did not say that  ‘his negotiations were about the fact that Artsakh needs to remain Armenian’ — implying that the end of the conflict meant Armenians and Azerbaijanis would live in the territories of the former Soviet Oblast together. 

‘I will go on and say that I don’t agree with that either because Artsakh couldn’t have been a completely Armenian land’, Pashinyan said. 

The Prime Minister posited that legislation and referendums in Nagorno-Karabakh would take into account quotas representing Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

‘In that context, could the Azerbaijanis of Nagorno-Karabakh, in turn, increase their right to self-determination? And in this case, what kind of relations could have arisen?’ Pashinyan asked.

According to Pashinyan, dramatic changes in the negotiation process occurred in 2016 — before and after the April Four Day War. He said that the final resolution suggested at the time was the transfer of the conflict’s file from the OSCE Minsk Group — Russia, France, and the United States — into the hands of the United Nations Security Council, which recognised Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan in its 1993 resolutions.

The PMs statements came in stark contrast to his actions before the 2020 war. In a 2019 visit to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian Prime Minister stated that ‘Artsakh is Armenia, and that’s it’ — and yet, Pashinyan did not pay any visit to the region since the end of the Second War in late 2020.

Waves of criticism and accusations from prominent Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh political figures followed his latest statements.

‘Only the authorities of Artsakh are allowed to speak on behalf of the population of Artsakh’, Nagorno-Karabakh President Arayik Harutyunyan wrote in a Facebook post the same day.

Harutyunyan said the ‘full recognition of the right of the Armenians of Artsakh to self-determination’ was Nagorno-Karabakh’s main ‘benchmark’ and ‘is not subject to reservation and concession’.

‘If any Armenian wants to support Artsakh, they must take into account the will and goals of the Artsakh Armenians. Otherwise, they should just not hinder.’

On 27 December, the Nagorno-Karabakh Parliament held a special session in which they described Pashinyan’s statements as ‘worrying and dangerous’ and dismissive of  the ‘Armenian origin of Artsakh’.

‘The fate of Artsakh has never been, and will never be, the monopoly of any political force’, parliament said.

The parliament called back to the 1992 decision by the Supreme Council of Armenia, which defines Armenia’s attitude towards Nagorno-Karabakh, and stresses Armenia’s duty to ‘support’ and ‘protect’ the Nagorno-Karabakh, and to ‘consider any international or domestic document, where the Nagorno Karabakh Republic is mentioned as part of Azerbaijan to be unacceptable’.

 For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.

https://oc-media.org/nagorno-karabakh-authorities-slam-pashinyan-for-dangerous-statements/

Turkish and Armenian envoys to meet in Moscow

Hovik Karapetian
Dec 27 2021

The Turkish foreign minister’s announcement constitutes the latest development in efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia.

December 27, 2021

Turkish and Armenian diplomats will meet in Moscow soon. 

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said today that the first meeting between special envoys from both countries will be held in the Russian capital. 

“Aside from the first meeting, we also want communication to be held directly,” said Cavusoglu, as reported by the official Anadolu Agency. 

The meeting will focus on re-establishing relations between Armenia and Turkey. The Armenian side requested the meeting take place in Moscow. Cavusoglu added that flights between Turkey and Armenia will soon resume, according to Anadolu. The diplomat did not say when exactly the meeting will take place. 

Turkey cut off relations and its borders with Armenia in 1993 after Armenian forces captured the city of Kalbajar from Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan. Turkey reopened its airspace to Armenia in 1995, but the land border remains closed. 

Relations between Turkey and Armenia have historically been tense. During the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians were murdered in modern-day Turkey. Many scholars, as well as the US government, recognize the killings as a genocide. 

More recently, Turkey backed Azerbaijan militarily in its war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region in 2020. The conflict ended in an Azerbaijani victory and a Russia-brokered cease-fire. Armenia was part of the Soviet Union and maintains a close relationship with Russia today. 

Despite ongoing tensions, Turkey has worked to repair its relations with Armenia this year. As part of this endeavor, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proposed a regional economic cooperation platform including Armenia. Earlier this month, Turkey named its special envoy to Armenia. Many obstacles remain to normalization, however, including opposition from some political parties in Armenia. 



https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/12/turkish-and-armenian-envoys-meet-moscow

Armenia leads by unemployment rates among countries of former USSR

Shushan Frangulian
Vestnik Kavkaza
Dec 28 2021
 28 Dec in 12:00

Armenia reported the highest level of unemployment among the countries of the former USSR in 2020, the reports of International Labour Organization and the World bank said.

At the same time, Armenia ranked 7th globally with 20 percent of population being unemployed, Sputnik reported.

"Armenia is followed by Georgia, where 12.1% of population is unemployed, and Ukraine with 9.5%. The unemployment rate in Azerbaijan was 6.3%, in Russia – 5.7%. The least number of unemployed citizens is in Turkmenistan with an indicator of 4.4%," the report said.

Azerbaijan Looms Over Turkey-Armenia Normalization Push

Adrine Hakobian
Dec 28 2021

Date

12/28/2021 9:00:29 AM

 

(MENAFN- Syndication Bureau) By Neil Hauer

In recent weeks, pronouncements that Turkey and Armenia are seeking to normalize ties for the first time in a generation has prompted at least some hope of reconciliation between the two. There is ample skepticism, for obvious reasons, over the possibilities of success, but the appointment of special envoys in each country devoted to the task seems to constitute some tangible progress.

But there is another external factor that is more likely to derail the process than even the century-long mutual recrimination between the two: The Baku-sized roadblock standing squarely between Yerevan and Ankara.

The longstanding enmity between Turkey and Armenia needs little introduction: a country is not likely to have good relations with the successor state of those who perpetrated a genocide against its people, especially when they continue to deny it (Turkey denies the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide). The two sides did enjoy a brief rapprochement after the Soviet Union’s collapse, as Armenia reemerged as an independent nation in 1991. This would be short-lived – Turkey promptly severed the nascent relations and sealed its border with Armenia just two years later in support of its Turkic ally Azerbaijan in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, a situation that persists to this day.

Two momentous events occurred last year that shook that state of affairs. First, and most obviously, Ankara stepped in with full military and political support of Azerbaijan as it reconquered most of the disputed territories held by Armenian forces following the war in the early 1990s. More interesting, however, is one of the externalities of that outcome: Armenia no longer controlled any of the seven regions of Azerbaijan around the former Karabakh province that it held until 2020. Turkey’s official rationale for severing relations (and keeping them that way) had always been Armenia’s occupation of those seven regions, not the Karabakh conflict itself. Suddenly, this precondition for restoring ties had become obsolete.

Feelers were put out earlier this year. A number of Turkish officials close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made statements that Turkey was ready to normalize ties with Armenia, while in Yerevan, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and others reiterated Armenia’s longstanding position of willingness to normalize without preconditions.

The question seemed to be ready to move forward, but with one unspoken caveat on which all hopes of progress would rest: How much, if at all, would Turkey care to placate Azerbaijan?

For Baku, its strategy since the end of last year’s war has been one of unbridled pressure toward its defeated neighbor. In an effort to force Armenia to both abandon the Russian-guarded rump of Karabakh entirely and to allow unfettered access between Azerbaijan proper and its Nakhchivan exclave, Azerbaijan has closed Armenia’s main north-south road, occupied parts of its territory and launched offensives into Armenia proper.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly stressed that “the Karabakh conflict is over” and that “the Zangezur corridor will be opened,” two goals he clearly hopes Turkey will help him with. For a time, it seemed unclear whether Ankara was on board with this provocative strategy, as many months passed without official Turkish comment on Baku’s actions along the Armenian border.

That question, however, appears to have been decided. In the last two months, Turkish diplomats have started to reference Azerbaijan repeatedly when describing potential rapprochement with Armenia. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu provides the prime example of this, with statements that Ankara will “act together with Azerbaijan at every step” in its Armenia negotiations and referencing the final settlement of the Karabakh conflict (something that is not remotely on the horizon) as coming alongside Turkey-Armenia progress. Whatever happened behind the scenes, Erdogan’s administration apparently decided it would rather keep Aliyev fully onside rather than risk any serious progress with Armenia.

Baku has torpedoed this process before: In 2008, Yerevan and Ankara began a series of negotiations on reopening the border, with a few high-profile football matches between the sides, before Azerbaijani pressure on Turkey led to its collapse. This time, however, Turkey is even openly signaling that it will not engage Armenia beyond the limits Baku sets for it, however oppressive those may be. In the current case, Aliyev’s conditions for Armenia are both a clear non-starter for serious negotiations, and something the Azerbaijani leader appears unwilling to back down from. If Turkey is truly hitching its own process with Armenia to this wagon, it too will remain at the station.

At the moment of writing, there were still more seemingly hopeful, yet ultimately noncommittal, signs of progress on the horizon: Pashinyan and Aliyev agreed at a summit in Brussels to reopen the Soviet-era rail link connecting the two countries, another tenet of last year’s cease-fire agreement. Russia remains a wild card: it continues to publicly push for the reopening of transit links between Armenia and Azerbaijan, as well as for Turkish-Armenian normalization, but its sincerity is in question as the status quo of the region suits Moscow just fine. But until the railway ties are physically being laid across the Armenia-Turkey or Armenia-Azerbaijan border, all this remains empty talk and merely more verbal agreements for their own sake rather than anything tangible.

Neil Hauer is a security analyst based in Tbilisi, Georgia. His work focuses on, among other things, politics, minorities and violence in the Caucasus.

MENAFN28122021006092013299ID1103455599

Restoration of rail route to Azerbaijan "will cost Armenia $226M"

Adrine Hakobian
PanArmenian, Armenia
Dec 28 2021
December 28, 2021 – 13:57 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - The restoration of the Yeraskh – Julfa (Jugha) – Ordubad – Meghri – Horadiz railway on the territory of Armenia will cost about $226 million, Sputnik Armenia cited the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures as saying on Tuesday, December 28.

According to preliminary data, construction of the rail route with a length of about 45 kilometers in Meghri will cost some $221 million. A further $5 million will be required to restore the rail section near Yeraskh (about 1 kilometer).

At the same time, the ministry added that a feasibility study is necessary is necessary to determine the exact price of the new infrastructure.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in mid-December that at a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Brussels the sides have reaffirmed their agreement to build a rail route from Armenia to Azerbaijan through Nakhijevan.

Sports: Joaquin Caparros named Armenia’s Coach of the Year for the second time in a row

Alex Nanijanian
Public Radio of Armenia
Dec 28 2021
December 28, 2021, 12:52

 
Head coach of the Armenian national team Joaquin Caparros has been named Armenia’s Coach of the Year for the second time in a row.

Caparros received 90 points. Ararat-ArmeniaDmitry Gunko comes second with 54 points. Vardan Bichakhchyan, the manager of Yerevan’s Ararat is third with 45 points.


Sports: Varazdat Haroyan named Armenia’s Player of the Year

Toneyan Mark
Public Radio of Armenia
Dec 28 2021
December 28, 2021, 16:02

Armenia international Varazdat Haroyan has been named Armenia’s Player of the Year 2021.

The Cádiz defender received 92 points. National team captain Henrikh Mkhitaryan is second with 62 points, Eduard Spertsyan is the third with 60 points.

Head coach of the Armenian national team Joaquin Caparros was earlier named Armenia’s Coach of the Year for the second time in a row.