Category: News

Photo: Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee    

Asbarez – Senator Anthony Portantino’s legislation, SCR 25, which will install a sign at the Fair Oaks Avenue exit off Interstate 210 in Pasadena to direct the public to the Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial, passed the Senate Transportation Committee with unanimous support.

“Just a few short days ago, at the Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial we commemorated the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Hundreds of community members came to the memorial to pay tribute to the victims and to remember the lessons learned from the first genocide of the twentieth century. This kind of community commemoration makes accessibility to this memorial so important. I am proud to carry this legislation that will install a freeway sign to help direct visitors to the memorial, and I am happy to have the unanimous support of my colleagues along the way. Installing a freeway sign will help direct visitors, raise awareness about the Armenian Genocide and serve as a reminder that fighting crimes against humanity is an ongoing process that requires our continuous attention,” commented Portantino.

The Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial was unveiled in April 2015 in the northeast corner of Memorial Park in Pasadena to honor the martyrs of the Armenian Genocide and all victims of crimes against humanity. The monument is a site of religious and cultural commemoration for more hundreds of thousands Armenian Americans of Southern California and a source of community pride. It was constructed by the nonprofit Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee with unanimous support from the Pasadena City Council. Senator Portantino served on the board of the nonprofit prior to joining the State Senate.  He was the only non-Armenian to have served on the Board.

Sen. Portantino represents nearly 930,000 people in the 25th Senate District, which includes Altadena, Atwater Village, Bradbury, Burbank, Claremont, Duarte, Glendale, Glendora, La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta, La Verne, Lake View Terrace, Los Feliz, Monrovia, Montrose, Pasadena, San Dimas, San Marino, Shadow Hills, Sierra Madre, South Pasadena, Sunland-Tujunga, and Upland.

The Foreign Ministers of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan Edward Nalbandian, Sergey Lavrov and Elmar Mammadyarov held a meeting in Moscow today.

The parties continued discussions on furthering the negotiations on the settlement of the Karabakh issue. They stressed the importance of implementing the agreements reached in Vienna and St. Petersburg in 2016.

The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan expressed gratitude to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for the continuous efforts towards the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

The Ministers agreed to maintain discussions regarding all issues considered at the meeting.

After the trilateral meeting the Foreign Ministers of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan were joined by the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office.

The interlocutors exchanged views on the process of settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

The Bureau of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), meeting in Strasbourg today, resolved that it has no confidence in Pedro Agramunt as President of the Assembly.

It further resolved that Mr Agramunt is not authorised to undertake any official visits, attend any meetings or make any public statements on behalf of the Assembly in his capacity as President.

“The President chose not to attend the Bureau today, and has not presented a letter of resignation. As a result, and in the context of the current Rules of Procedure under which the President cannot be compelled to resign, the Bureau felt it necessary to take these steps,” said Sir Roger Gale (United Kingdom, EC), Senior Vice-President of the Assembly, after chairing the Bureau meeting.

“The standards and principles of the Parliamentary Assembly are more important than any individual member, and the integrity of our Assembly must be upheld,” he added.

Marouane Fellaini was sent off for headbutting Sergio Aguero as Manchester City and Manchester United fought out an attritional goalless draw at Etihad Stadium to leave their hopes of a place in the Premier League’s top four still in the balance, the BBC reports.

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho will be the happier after they extended their unbeaten league run to 24 games, a feat achieved without Fellaini in the closing stages after he was dismissed for a senseless headbutt on Aguero.

Argentine Aguero came closest for City when he hit the post early on and manager Pep Guardiola was left with an injury concern when keeper Claudio Bravo was taken off on a stretcher after injuring his calf catching a cross in the second half.

City substitute Gabriel Jesus had a later header correctly ruled out for offside as they remain in fourth place, with United a point behind in fifth as both sides have five games remaining.

 

 

 

Turkish historian Taner Akcam has recently uncovered a telegram, which, he says, will force the Turkish government seek new ways of denying the Armenian Genocide.

“Are the Armenians who were deported from there being liquidated? Are the troublesome individuals whom you have reported as having been exiled and expelled being exterminated or merely being sent off and deported? Please report back honestly,” reads the telegram sent from Ezrum by Behaeddin Shakir to Kharberd Governor Sabit Bey.

The document dated July 4th, 1915 consists of two parts – the actual text on top and the coded four-digit Arabic numbers on the bottom.

Taner Akcam, a history professor at Clark University in Massachusetts, says the telegram is important for two reasons. “First, it is written on a paper with the letterhead of the Ottoman Ministry of Interior. Second, separate from the text there is a decoded message on the bottom,” he said in a phone interview with .

The historian has compared the coding system with that of other documents from Ottoman archives and  found matches with 24 documents from the same month. The same words are coded the same way. “So there is no escape for Turkish authorities, there is no way to say these are forgeries. And this is a very crucial document in that sense,” Akcam said.

This telegram is well known in Armenian Genocide research and has been quoted in main indictments in Istanbul military tribunals. This was one of the most important evidences that helped convict Behaeddin Shakir and sentence him to death. However, most of the court materials vanished at the time and Turkey has since been building its policy of denial on the argument that the original documents from postwar military tribunals that convicted the genocide’s planners were nowhere to be found.

Taner Akcam knew the telegram was in a the archive of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem , but in the end found a film taken from the document in a private archive in New York. Thus, two stories need to be recalled to shed light on how the photo of the telegram ended up in the United States.

The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople was representing Armenians in military tribunals and had access to the court materials.  The judge presiding over the tribunals at the time handed the materials over to the Armenian Patriarch. With the Turkish nationalists about to seize the country in 1922 the Patriarch shipped a huge package of documents to Marseille and then to Manchester for safekeeping. The materials finally ended up in Jerusalem.

“Armenian Catholic priest, Krikor Guerguerian went to Jerusalem sometimes towards the end of 1960s. He filmed the materials there and a lot of other Ottoman documents one of which was this document.  He had a private archive, which was saved and secured by his nephew,” Taner Akcham said.

Despite the crucial importance of the document, the historian does not believe it will lead to changes in Turkey’s stance on the issue in the short-term perspective.

I’ve thrown a stone in the water, and waves go to the shore, it takes a long time until they hit the shore. The shore is the Turkish denialism. I don’t know when it’s going to hit the shore

Taner Akcam

According to the historian, the telegram is a strong evidence Ankara can hardly argue, but he’s confident that Turkey will find some excuses. He’s also confident that “Turkey will continue its denialist policy, but this will put the government in a very difficult position and will force it seek new ways of denying.”

Towards the end of the interview, Mr. Akcam emphasized one point. “As everybody knows successive Turkish governments would argue all the time that Armenian Genocide should not be politicized, that the Armenian Genocide should be left to historians. And I’m just really doing it. I’m a historian and regardless of the fact whether the Turkish government recognizes the genocide or not, I keep working on this topic, because as scholars, as academicians our job is to teach the young generation about the historic injustices, about mass atrocities in the past so that they are not repeated in the future.”

Taner Akcam believes that “it’s important for Turkey to face its history.” If Turkey faces its history and acknowledges the wrongdoing, it can develop a very good relation with Armenia and develop a democratic society,” he says.

A large explosion has hit an area near Damascus international airport, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says, the BBC reports.

“The blast was huge and could be heard in Damascus,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based monitoring group.

The airport lies about 25 km (15 miles) south-east of Syria’s capital.

The blast was reportedly followed by a large fire. There is no word on casualties. The cause is unclear.

 

The first stage of the negotiations between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union on the Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement (Common Aviation Area between the Republic of Armenia and the European Union) has been kicked off.

“The Common Aviation Area Agreement will help to enhance tourism & trade, allow more EU citizens discover beautiful Armenia,” Head of the EU Delegation to Armenian Piotr Switalski said at the opening of the negotiations.

“This is a beautiful day because the relations between Armenia and the European Union are getting a new positive impetus,” he said.

The negotiating group of the Armenian side will be headed by the Head of the General Department of Civil Aviation of the Republic of Armenia Sergey Avetisyan.

Negotiating delegation from the European Union side is headed by the Deputy Head of Unit for Aviation Agreements of the European Commission  Klaus Geil.

In the frames of this agreement the Republic of Armenia will join the EU Common Aviation Area, and as a result the parties will liberalize the market, providing the airlines with the opportunity to operate the routes without any limitations and enjoy equal opportunities of servicing a market with a population of 500 million.

The effective European standards will be introduced in the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian and foreign airlines will be provided with the opportunity to operate air routes based on commercial considerations without any limiting interference by the states.

We should note that on 1 December of 2016 the Council of EU Transport Ministers adopted a mandate that allowed the European Commission to start negotiations with the Republic of Armenia.

Pedro Agramunt, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) was banned from chairing the Assembly sitting as His Majesty King Felipe VI of Spain was addressing the sitting.

According to member of the Armenian delegation to PACE Samvel Farmanyan, Agramunt was banned from chairing the sitting under the pressure of PACE political groups.

Farmanyan is confident today is Agramunt’s last working day at PACE and expects the Spanish to resign tomorrow.

An Illinois couple married for 69 years have died with an hour of each other, family members tell US media, the BBC reports.

Isaac Vatkin, 91, was holding the hand of his wife Teresa, 89, as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease on Saturday, the Daily Herald reported.

Isaac died 40 minutes later. Family members said they took comfort in knowing they were together at the end.

“You didn’t want to see them go,” said grandson William Vatkin, “but you couldn’t ask for anything more.”

“Their love for each other was so strong, they simply could not live without each other,” said daughter Clara Gesklin at the couple’s joint funeral.

For nearly a century, members of the Dildilian family practiced photography in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and the United States. Unlike the best known Armenian photographers who practiced in Istanbul during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, the Dildilians worked primarily in Central Anatolia and on the Black Sea coast. The archive they left behind gives a vivid glimpse into provincial life at a time of rapid change and brutal tragedy, the reports.

“Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home” brings together over 200 extraordinary photographs from the Dildilian archive. It also includes text and notes written by Armen Marsoobian, a professor at Southern Connecticut State University who has organized exhibitions based on the collection in Turkey, Armenia, the U.S., and the U.K. He is the grandson of Tsolag Dildilian, the founder of the family business in Sivas in central Turkey in 1882.

Joined by his brother Aram, Tsolag’s photography business developed rapidly and he was able to open studios over a period of 30 years in towns like Amasya, Konya and Adana. The book features photos from these studios, as well as from the family’s travels across Anatolia. More than 900 photographs and glass negatives survived, along with family memoirs describing life during this tumultuous era. It is amazing that so many photos were preserved, and most of the ones reprinted in the book are in top condition.

Many Dildilians perished during the genocide of Armenians in 1915, but some family members were able to survive. Tsolag knew the commander of the local gendarmerie and had himself worked as a photographer for the Ottoman army. He and other family members were allowed to remain in Merzifon if they converted to Islam and assumed Turkish identities, which they did.

When the First World War ended in 1918, the surviving Dildilians reclaimed their Armenian identities with the hope of rebuilding their lives. But things got difficult once again with the Turkish War of Independence and they finally ended up leaving Turkey in November 1922.

“Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home” is a rich, moving chronicle of a vanished world.