PanARMENIAN.Net – Members of the Armenian community of France paraded a banner that read “Karabakh/Artsakh is Armenia” during a match between Olympique de Marseille and Azerbaijan’s FC Qarabag on Thursday, February 17.
FRA Nor Seround posted pictures and videos from the match, showing community members waving said banner and Armenian tricolors.
The organization staged a similar campaign back in 2014.
Famous composer and Honored Artist of Armenia Levon Chaushian has passed away at the age of 75, the Composers Union of Armenia said on Friday, extending its condolences to the composer’s family and fans.
Chaushian was born in 1946 in Yerevan. In 1969 he graduated from the Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory, majoring in composition in the class of Edvard Mirzoyan. In 1970 he studied piano with Georgi Sarajev. In 1972 he completed his post-graduate studies.
Chaushian participated in many music festivals and got numerous diplomas. In 1988 his String Quartet No. 3 was performed at the International Festival in Leningrad.
From 1986 to 1991, he was the vice-president of the Composers Union. Since 1994, he served as the chairman of the Armenian Composers Assembly, established by him.
His works were performed in the U.S., Belgium, France, Switzerland, Hungary, Portugal, Bulgaria and Greece.
In 2021 Levon Chaushian was awarded the Movses Khorenatsi Medal.
Hikaru Nakamura defeated Levon Aronian in tiebreaks to win the first leg of the FIDE Grand Prix in Berlin on Thursday, ChessBase reported.
The hard-fought final match had seen two draws in the classical games. In the two rapid encounters that broke the tie, Nakamura showed better nerves in the last stage of the games to take home the title, 13 Grand Prix points and €24,000.
This victory has propelled Hikaru to 1st place in the FIDE Grand Prix Series 2022. The next stages will take place in Belgrade (Serbia) and Berlin (Germany), FIDE said.
After the three tournaments, the two best players of the series will qualify for the Candidates Tournament. The winner of that event will challenge current Champion Magnus Carlsen in the next World Championship match.
Chairman of Armenia’s Union of Judges Alexander Azaryan urges the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), a state body overseeing Armenian courts, to take measures to hold Minister of Justice Karen Andreasyan to account for his “offensive” remarks about judges.
In a statement on Friday, he accused the minister of “labelling” judges and downgrading the authority of the judicial power in his recent interviews in violation of the rules of conduct for civil servants.
“Karen Andreasyan’s statements hurt the dignity of courts and judges and violate the basic rules of etiquette,” he stated.
“They are so politically motivated that raise doubts over the impartiality of the public service provided by Andreasyan by virtue of his office. Moreover, they run counter to the requirements of Armenia’s Criminal Procedure Code,” Azaryan said, citing several articles of the Armenian laws.
He urged the SJC to raise the issue of bringing the minister to account in order to “deter his illegal behavior”.
In an interview to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on February 15, Andreasyan stated at least 40 of the country’s judges are “corrupt” and must go.
The Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) National Assembly on Friday released a statement on the occasion of Revival Day. It reads as follows:
“The events that took place in Artsakh (formerly the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast) in February 1988 fundamentally changed not only the subsequent chronicle of not only the indigenous Armenian people living here, but also other peoples of the former Soviet Union.
Tens of thousands of people, using the liberal and democratic ideas proclaimed in the USSR, sought to restore historical justice through peaceful rallies in Stepanakert and other parts of the region—the unfulfilled dream of several generations to reunite the Armenian region with Armenia.
The movement, which is gaining momentum day by day, initially adopted a peaceful solution to the problem raised by legal and political means, which was unequivocally confirmed on February 20 at the 20th special session of the former representative body, the regional council of people’s deputies. The historic decision adopted to withdraw the NKAO from the Azerbaijan SSR and reunite it with the Armenian SSR signaled a new stage in the Artsakh national liberation struggle: the Karabakh movement, the civilized determination of the people of Artsakh to advance legally.
Unfortunately, the leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR was not able to use the unique opportunity to resolve the issue correctly, and as a result, the region found itself in a web of temptations for long-term instability and for Azerbaijan to resolve the issue by military means.
As a result of the February 20 decision expressing the will and desire of the absolute majority of the population of the region, Artsakh rightly became a symbol of the pride and national awakening of all Armenians. The wave of the Karabakh movement spread all over the world; and as a result of the organized struggle of all sections of the Armenians, the two Armenian republics were formed in the early 90s of the last century.
The Republic of Artsakh, proclaimed on September 2, 1991 and formed in accordance with the requirements of international law and domestic legislation, was a conscious stop on the road to a united Armenian state.
Our people have paid a very high price in the struggle for the freedom and independence of Artsakh. Thousands of Armenians sacrificed their lives during the 1991-94, 2016 four-day, and 2020 44-day wars. The Republic of Artsakh exists today and continues its struggle for international recognition thanks to the self-sacrifice of those brave people. Our homage to their immortal memory.
In the last 34 years, we have come a long way in establishment and development, victories and failures, and during that time the idea has been strengthened that the future of Armenian Artsakh is guaranteed only in the prospect of living freely and independently.
Expressing the collective will and view of the people of Artsakh, the National Assembly of the Artsakh Republic:
Reaffirms its commitment to the historic decision of February 20, 1988 and its determination to defend its right to live freely in its homeland;
Draws the attention of international stakeholders—and, first of all, the parliaments of the [OSCE] Minsk Group Co-Chair countries—to the fact that the Armenian people of Artsakh have struggled for centuries to preserve their identity, created material and cultural values, which today are endangered as a result of the occupation of some territories of the Artsakh Republic by Azerbaijan;
Calls on the Minsk Group Co-Chairs to take immediate steps, in accordance with the mandate received from the OSCE, to resume the negotiation process on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Lasting peace and stability in the region can only be achieved by respecting the fundamental rights and freedoms of the people of the Artsakh Republic. That is why the Armenians of Artsakh started their liberation struggle in 1988 and are ready to continue it with the determination to reach the final goal.”
The leadership of Azerbaijan intensively continues the slithering toponymic occupation of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and Armenia.
During a videoconference with Azerbaijan’s regional leaders, country’s President Ilham Aliyev said that businessmen should focus on the “liberated territories” and set up businesses there, according to Azerbaijani media.
And by “liberated territories” he means Artsakh and Zangezur.
Zangezur is one of the regions of Armenia, and the Azerbaijani-Turkish tandem has set its sights on it. After the military aggression of Azerbaijan and Turkey in the fall of 2020, the Aliyev administration devised a sneaky move by creating a region in Azerbaijan called “Eastern Zangazur,” shortly called “Zangazur.” In other words, they are instilling in both ordinary Azerbaijanis and Western politicians who do not understand much about regional issues the notion that “Zangazur is a native Azerbaijani land.” There is no need to explain that in this way, grounds are being prepared for Azerbaijani territorial claims.
Aliyev, however, always resorts to this sly move. By using Azerbaijani toponyms, the president of that country voices territorial claims against Armenia on a regular basis.
In recent weeks, as Russia positioned more than 130,000 troops along the Russian-Ukrainian border and the United States warned of an imminent Russian invasion, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has emphasized his support for Ukraine. The Black Sea neighbors have become critical trade and defense partners during Erdogan’s time in office, signing free trade agreements in the billions of dollars and lucrative weapons production deals. Turkey also controls Ukraine’s only waterway to the Mediterranean—the Bosphorus—critical for the country’s connection to the global market.
The Turkish president underlined the importance of the partnership and the Ukrainian autonomy that facilitates it in an interview with the Turkish broadcaster NTV on Jan. 26.
“I hope that Russia will not make an armed attack or occupy Ukraine. Such a step will not be a wise act for Russia or the region,” he said.
This is a sentiment Erdogan has long repeated, particularly since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, which Turkey still does not recognize. This is done ostensibly in the name of the Crimean Tatar community there, which Turkey views as part of a larger Turkic brotherhood. Crimea was a part of the Ottoman Empire until 1783, when Russia invaded the peninsula and subsequently settled ethnic Russians and displaced ethnic Crimeans there.
In 1944, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the violent deportation of hundreds of thousands of the remaining Crimean Tatars, an incident Erdogan and many of his supporters liken to the 2014 invasion and annexation by Putin’s Russia. The plight of this community has been a rallying cry for Erdogan in his attempts at pan-Turkic diplomacy and has enabled the strengthening of Turkey’s relationship with Ukraine. In remarks on Feb. 3, he said the Tatars were “kinsmen” who form a “historical bridge of friendship between our countries.”
Erdogan traveled to Ukraine himself in early February to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and deepen Turkey’s trade and defense ties with the country. He has offered to act as a peace broker between Moscow and Kyiv. By all appearances, the Turkish president has signaled solidarity with Kyiv in case of a conflict, even selling drones to Ukrainian government forces fighting Russia-backed separatists in the Donbass region.
But that signaling is likely as far as Turkey is willing to go. Despite standing on opposite sides of conflicts around the world—in Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine—Turkey is deeply reliant on its relationship with Russia. The two countries maintain a “competitive cooperation,” according to Asli Aydintasbas, a journalist and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Turkey relies on Russian natural gas for more than 40 percent of its total natural gas needs and is likely to import more in the wake of a four-year deal signed between the Russian gas giant Gazprom and Turkey’s Botas. Especially in the face of a domestic energy crisis, as prices rise and Iran cuts supply to the country, and Turkey’s ever-worsening relationship with its Western allies due to the country’s human rights abuses, Erdogan is unlikely to threaten a tenuous Russian alliance, even for Turkey’s NATO allies.
Turkey’s support for Ukraine reflects an unease with what seems to be Russian expansion in the Black Sea region. The Ukraine-Turkey relationship is also undergirded by the significant bilateral defense and economic agreements inked by the current Turkish government. Turkey, as of 2021, is the largest foreign investor in Ukraine, with $4.5 billion in annual investment—and trade between the two countries totaling over $5 billion. During their recent meeting in Kyiv, Erdogan and Zelensky signed a free-trade deal that they say will boost trade to $10 billion and vastly expanded defense cooperation.
Ukraine is also a critical partner for Turkey in the production and sale of military weaponry. Since 2018, Turkey has sold Bayraktar TB2 drones to Kyiv, the same equipment that helped enable the Turkish-backed Azerbaijani victory in Nagorno-Karabakh. During their February meeting, Erdogan and Zelensky signed a deal to co-produce Bayraktar TB2s at a production facility in Ukraine that will also include a training facility for Ukrainian pilots.
Bayraktar TB2s have been used in the Ukraine conflict since October 2021, when the Ukrainian government was trading blows with Russian-backed separatists in Donbass. Despite this clearly agitating Russian President Vladimir Putin—he called Erdogan shortly after the drones were deployed—Ankara has not signaled it will stop supplying drones to Kyiv.
“These are revolutionary systems and tactics,” said Matthew Bryza, a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan and now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “The fact that they decided to sell them to Ukraine at this tense moment is a powerful sign.”
But the Bayraktar TB2s might not be as effective if the Russians pursue a more traditional invasion with heavy weaponry, like that which is being massed on the border.
Turkish and Ukrainian defense cooperation extends beyond Bayraktar drones. After a previous meeting between the two leaders in October 2020, the countries charted a path toward joint production of a range of defense and security technologies, including more drones and jet engines, a sector in which Ukraine excels. This was widely seen as a move to counter Russia’s power in the Black Sea region, but it also greatly increased Turkey’s defense production capacity for domestic use and export.
Therefore, Turkey would stand to lose a key component of its fledgling defense industry by sacrificing its relationship with Ukraine to appease Putin. Failure to support Ukraine could also lead to the loss of lucrative defense sales to the country, such as the 2020 agreement for Turkey to supply Ukraine with naval defense vessels. As Bryza put it, “This is a business opportunity for Turkey that has national security implications.”
Support for Ukraine also has the effect of ingratiating Turkey with its Western NATO allies, in particular the United States. The United States and many other NATO allies have criticized Turkey for its human rights violations since the attempted coup in July 2016, including the ongoing imprisonment of prominent figures such as Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas and philanthropist Osman Kavala and the jailing of hundreds of journalists and opposition figures.
Turkey has also been booted from the United States’ F-35 fighter jet program over its decision to purchase S-400 missile defense systems from Russia. The U.S. government is currently debating whether to sell F-16 fighter jets to Ankara. Staunch support for Ukraine and alignment with NATO could help thaw the relationship and lead to better relations with the West overall.
However, Erdogan is unlikely to go as far as he did in supporting Azerbaijan directly in its recent war with Armenia. The Erdogan-Putin relationship, Aydintasbas said, is one solidified not by institutions but by a “strong handshake” between two charismatic leaders who tend to shape the state in their image.
Onur Isci, a Russia expert at Bilkent University, attributes this alignment to a belief in Bismarckian realpolitik shared by the Turkish and Russian leaders. Putin and Erdogan, he says, can maintain overlapping and sometimes incongruous alliances because they think of diplomacy in terms of the state and what will directly benefit it.
Each government, in other words, is willing to be patient and wait for a solution to emerge that benefits it most. Often, that solution has pointed to cooperation with the other, leading to an unlikely alliance that serves to challenge the U.S.-led Western world order.
This balancing act has lasted through more than two decades of rule by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party. There was the bitter and brief Russian-Georgian War in 2008, in which after initially signaling support for its neighbor, Turkey changed tack and tacitly supported Moscow. Then, after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, an act that Turkey widely condemned, Ankara refused to obey sanctions imposed on Moscow by the United States, Canada, and the European Union. And even after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in 2015, the two countries were able to revive a working relationship because Erdogan issued an apology; the only sanctions levied by Russia that remained in place were on Turkish tomatoes.
This does not mean that the countries are not willing to retaliate for losses suffered. When 33 Turkish soldiers were killed by Russian-backed fighters in Syria in February 2020, Turkish forces responded by targeting 200 government sites with weaponry and drones and killed 309 Russian-backed Syrian government troops. After two Turkish soldiers were killed in September 2021, Turkey deployed forces to Idlib in northwestern Syria, just days before a meeting between Erdogan and Putin in Sochi. However, the relationship remains intact.
This unlikely balance is further supported by “levers,” as Dimitar Bechev, a Russia-Turkey expert and lecturer at the University of Oxford, described it. Each country can threaten to pull these to keep the other in line.
“It doesn’t take much,” he said. “There are pressure points.”
Putin can threaten a full-blown assault on Idlib, currently surrounded by Russian-backed forces, which could send millions of Syrian refugees over the Turkish border, creating a refugee crisis just before the planned June 2023 elections. Or Russia could threaten to cut off fuel to Turkey, on which it is deeply reliant, particularly in colder months and amid a nationwide natural gas shortage. Turkey could threaten to cut off Russian access to the Bosphorus under the wartime provisions of the Montreux Convention, though it is unlikely.
This balance of power and these threats of destruction all but ensure that if Russia invades Ukraine, and if NATO promises direct military involvement, Turkey will do all it can to avoid coming face to face with Russia.
Erdogan said on Jan. 26 that he is “ready to do whatever is necessary” to avoid war. He has openly offered to mediate the conflict, an offer that Zelensky has expressed enthusiasm for and which Russia, after an initial rejection, said it would consider. “If, as Ukraine, you can get a NATO member state, one that is helping you diplomatically by condemning the annexation of Crimea or by providing drones to the Donbass or by selling you new stealth frigates, that’s a pretty good mediator,” Bryza said. “There is no other NATO member state that Russia would even theoretically agree to be that mediator.”
The question is whether there is still time for mediation. Following his Kyiv trip, Erdogan also invited Putin to Turkey, per Turkish state media. The Kremlin accepted but said dates would be announced following the Beijing Winter Olympics—the same point at which many fear Russia could choose to invade Ukraine if its recent claims of de-escalation are not genuine.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/17/how-far-will-turkey-go-to-support-ukraine/
ArmInfo.. During the discussion at the Armenian Foreign Ministry, it became clear that the absence of refutation regarding some statements around the Armenian- Turkish process does not mean at all that these statements correspond to realities. Head of the Armenian Institute of International and Security Affairs (AIISA) Stepan Safaryan told ArmInfo.
On February 16, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Armenia’s Special Representative in the process of normalizing relations with Turkey Ruben Rubinyan met with representatives of the country’s scientific and expert circles at the Armenian Foreign Ministry. The discussion of the process and prospects for the normalization of relations with Turkey took place on the eve of the second meeting of the special representatives, which will be held in Vienna on February 24. The first meeting of the special representatives took place on January 14 in Moscow.
“I can only say that these statements have not been refuted due to the presence of many reasons, which in turn are due to many circumstances. For example, the same statement by Ankara about discussions with Baku has at least two interpretations. Does the “discussion” presuppose the coordination of positions or simply informing about the processes with Armenia? We remember very well how the Turks killed the Zurich process at the request of Baku, but we absolutely do not know what decision Turkey will take today in case of contradictions between its own regional ambitions and the interests of Azerbaijan. Those interests can either coincide or contradict,” he emphasized.
According to Safaryan, during the free, constructive, intense and sincere discussion, the experts asked Mirzoyan and Rubinyan questions and presented their own views on the Armenian-Turkish process. He also considered it important for the authorities to realize the need for discussions and consultations around this process. According to him, the general concern of the present representatives of the expert community was expressed in the form of doubts about the sincerity of Turkey’s motivation and its goals regarding the achievement of concrete results of the process with Armenia. As well as suspicions about the imitative nature of the process on the part of Ankara.
Noting that there are no specific documents on the negotiating table and the general uncertainty around the normalization process, the analyst stressed the need to develop answers to many questions and forecast possible scenarios for the development of the situation. In particular, he considered it strange that Turkey started the process without mentioning its traditional preconditions. In this light, he noted that at a certain stage of the negotiations, Armenia is likely to face problems. And already today it is necessary to think and calculate what and whose problems it will be. In this light, Safaryan considers it necessary to discuss all possible scenarios in order to develop our own steps, “red lines”, future actions in the negotiation process with Turkey.
“Since the process has just begun, neither we nor the authorities have answers to many questions. But it is important to emphasize that the government has a desire to compare its own versions and vision of the situation with the versions and vision of experts. So far, we have only agreed on the next meeting. The process is very complicated “and it needs to be laid on a solid, professional basis. In order to avoid mistakes in the future. It is also unknown whether the United States, the Russian Federation and the EU, which have already welcomed it, will take a unified position on the process in the future. Especially in light of the current deepening and aggravation of their relations,” summed up Safaryan
ArmInfo. People forcibly displaced from Artsakh are holding a protest in Yerevan. Residents of Hadrut and Shushi have gathered at Yerevan’s Republic Square, indignant at the Armenian authorities’ indifference toward them.
As a result of the 2020 war Hadrud and Shushi were occupied by Azerbaijani troops. The residents had to flee empty-handed.
“We have no housing, work or even cash allowances. The government has not paid us for two months. We want to return to Arstakh, but we have neither homes nor sustenance. We have come here, but none of the government officials is coming out to know why we are here,” the protesters say.
One of the protesters, Levon Airyan, said Armenia’s incumbent authorities “do not even know what hey want.”
“What peace treaty are you talking about? You did not declare war nor did Azerbaijan. Such a treaty must never be signed. It will be further capitulation committed to paper. So the enemy is in a hurry. And Armenia’s authorities are incompetent and do not know what they are doing. And the tragedy of the situation is that they are trying to invoke political reasons,” he said.
According to him, the Arstakh authorities should declare the statement on November 9, 2020, groundless. The protesters marched toward Armenia’s foreign office for a written answer to their inquiry.
14:59,
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 17, ARMENPRESS. On February 17, the President of the Artsakh Republic Arayik Harutyunyan convened an enlarged working consultation dedicated to the issues of specifying the status of the citizens involved in hostilities and various support works in the rear during the war unleashed against Artsakh in 2020, the presidency said in a press release.
The responsible persons of the sphere delivered reports on the topic, which was succeeded by concerned discussions.
The Head of the State noted that precise legal regulations are needed for the comprehensive solution of the issue, based on the results of studies and analyses.
Harutyunyan stressed that the service of each person should be properly evaluated and registered in a specific status, while excluding any abuse and arbitrary approach.
Chairman of the National Assembly of the Artsakh Republic Arthur Tovmasyan also partook in the meeting.