Category: 2022

Azerbaijani forces fired at Armenian forces along the southeastern part of the border between the two countries on Saturday morning, injuring one Armenian soldier, according to the Armenian Defense Ministry.

The Azerbaijani forces used a number of different firearms, including sniper rifles, according to the report. The injured soldier was seriously injured in the incident and the Armenian forces responded with unspecified “retaliatory actions.”

The incident comes about a week after Armenia and Azerbaijan both claimed that the other country had fired toward the border.

Last week, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry claimed Armenian armed forces fired on Azerbaijani forces in the Kalbajar District, adding that Azerbaijani forces took “adequate retaliatory measures.” The Armenian Defense Ministry denied the claims, calling it misinformation.

A day later, the Armenian Defense Ministry claimed that Azerbaijani forces fired on Armenian forces near the border, injuring an Armenian soldier. The Armenian forces carried out “retaliatory actions.”

The clashes came shortly before Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met in Brussels to continue peace talks between the two countries.

Earlier this month, Armenia’s Defense Ministry claimed that Azerbaijani troops had fired at Armenian military positions and at the Sotk gold mine in eastern Armenia, injuring one miner. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry denied the report, calling it “false and disinformation.”

Earlier that week, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry claimed that Armenian forces fired at Azerbaijani forces in the village of Zeylik, around 30 kilometers from the city of Ganga and nearly 40 kilometers from the border, adding that “adequate response measures” were taken by Azerbaijani forces. The Armenian Defense Ministry called the claim “misinformation.”

A week before that incident, Azerbaijan’s State Border Service claimed that a “sabotage group” of the Armenian Armed Forces attempted to infiltrate Azerbaijan and warned that it would take “more serious measures” if the incident was repeated.

On April 6, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to hold peace talks to address tensions over the Nagorno-Karabakh area.

In 2020, a war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and nearby areas, ending just over a month later with a new line of contact drawn and Russian peacekeepers deployed along the line. Sporadic clashes have been reported along the line since the war.

Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism has canceled a concert by Spanish-Armenian violinist Ara Malikian in Ankara on June 11 without specifying the reason amid outrage over local administrations’ bans on an increasing number of concerts across the country over the past two weeks, Turkish Minute reported.

More than a dozen events, including concerts and university music festivals, have been canceled by local administrations on various pretexts since mid-May in moves seen by many as attempts by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government to interfere in people’s lifestyles and to try to force its Islamic values on the nation.

In one of the latest incidents, a concert by Malikian, which was to be held at the Presidential Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall on June 11 as part of the “Cultural Road Festival” organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, was canceled on Thursday, with the people who bought tickets for the event informed about the cancellation with a message specifying no reason, according to local media reports.

The ban came after Malikian was targeted by Turks on social media due to earlier remarks defining the mass killings of Armenians over a century ago as “genocide,” although Turkey categorically rejects the 1915-16 killings of more than a million Armenians as genocide.

The recent bans on concerts across Turkey have drawn criticism from musicians, actors, bar associations and human rights activists.

“I can’t accept the increasing number of concert and festival cancellations, and the discriminatory and hateful statements about people’s lifestyles, particularly concerning female musicians,” famous Turkish pop singer Mabel Matiz tweeted on Friday.

Prominent Turkish actor Genco Erkal also said, addressing the ruling AKP, that they had “come to the end of the road” if they started to ban concerts in an attempt to silence the artists with various excuses.

Erkal was implying that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP would likely see a defeat in the general and presidential elections scheduled for 2023.

Public surveys show Erdoğan and his election ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), losing considerable public support.

Releasing a written statement on Friday, the İstanbul Bar Association said the cancellation of concerts and festivals was a violation of the constitution and aimed to “take away our right to live, our right to listen to the music we want and to attend the concerts of the artists we want … in short, our right to live freely and decide freely about our lives.”

The Diyarbakır Bar Association also issued a statement on the bans, saying that those responsible for the bans discussing the cancellations based on such differences as language, culture and lifestyle within the context of “national and moral values” would “undoubtedly deepen the social polarization.”

“It’s not possible to accept in a democratic order those who exercise public power and are in a decision-making position going beyond the limits of the law to ignore the freedom of _expression_ of the artists and target them due to their … language, clothing and musical styles,” they added.

“We don’t accept these outdated restrictions and prohibitions that have become systematic. We won’t allow you to prevent artists, especially female artists, from engaging in their professions as they wish in this country!” the Women’s Platform for Equality (EŞİK) also said in a statement on Friday.

TENS of thousands took to the streets of the Armenian capital Yerevan on Saturday demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian as tensions flared up once more.

The rally was one of the largest seen since daily protests erupted at the beginning of the month after Mr Pashinian announced a peace deal with neighbouring Azerbaijan in parliament on April 14.

Armenians are angered over his handling of the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Critics accuse him of downgrading the status of the disputed Armenian-majority territory.

The Armenian Interior Ministry said that 206 demonstrators were detained in Yerevan and several provincial cities on May 3 when mass demonstrations ignited again.

Huge protests had been triggered in November 2020 after the PM signed a ceasefire deal that ceded large swathes of Armenian-held territory to Baku in what was seen as a national humiliation.

Now church leaders and high-ranking retired officials have been camped out in tents in the central France Square demanding Mr Pashinian steps down.

Opposition leader and parliament vice-speaker Ishkhan Saghatelyan has previously described the PM as a traitor, saying the daily protests will force him to resign.

Demonstrations were also held in the city of Stepanakert in Nagorno-Karabakh on Saturday.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/tens-thousands-demand-armenian-pm-resigns-over-national-humiliation