Category: News

The informal meeting of OSCE Foreign Ministers in Potsdam tomorrow will discuss the Karabakh issue, OSCE Chairman-in-Office, German Foreign Minister Frank Walter- Steinmeier has said in a statement issued ahead of the meeting.

“In the crisis-ridden world of today, the OSCE is perhaps more important than ever – in crisis management in eastern Ukraine, Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh and other conflicts in Europe as well as in the maintenance of peace and security,” he said.

Mr. Steinmeier added that reference will be made to the strengthening of fundamental freedoms and democratic standards and will address new challenges such as international terrorism or the consequences of flight and migration.

An important issue on the agenda is the arms control. “I think now is the right time to gain a momentum for more transparency, risk prevention and confidence building here,” the OSCE Chairman-in-Office said.

The Nagorno-Karabakh Forum will be held in Uruguay on Friday, September 2, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the declaration of independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic,  reports.

“The Nagorno-Karabakh Forum in Uruguay is a space composed of social activists, academics and legislators that aims to enrich and promote the country’s position of support for a peaceful resolution in the conflict involving the Republics of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and threatens the stability of the entire South Caucasus,” said the Armenian National Committee of Uruguay, the organizers of the initiative.

According to the organizers, the members of the forum will develop and publish investigations and organize discussions on the issues pertaining to Nagorno-Karabakh.

The forum, which is sponsored by the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia, will be attended by Robert Avedisyan, Permanent Representative of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic to the United States, who will read a message sent by President Bako Sahakyan supporting the initiative.

Other participants include Senator Rafael Michelini, Senator Ruben Martinez Huelmo and Deputy Daniel Radio, Deputy Susana Pereyra, Deputy Pablo Abdala, Belela Herrera, theformer Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay, Historian Gerardo Caetano and Oscar Lopez Goldaracena, lawyer and human rights specialist.

“This forum is a contribution to the understanding and the search for a peaceful solution from the South American region,” said Alfonso Tabakian, Director of the Armenian National Committee of South America. “It is composed of renowned personalities from different areas of Uruguay, which will be a bridge so that the public opinion in that country could approach the topic and understand the reality of the conflict without the defects or pressures that may present in the diplomatic tensions or blackmailing by the economic powers,” said Tabakian.

“We are convinced that given the solidarity and democratic characteristics of the Uruguayan people, they will understand the issue and will support the struggle for the sovereignty of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

On January 4, 2015, the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry issued a statement pleading for international recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh and its right to self-determination.

 

 

 

The situation at the border is relatively calm, the number of shots has decreased, Armenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan told reporters today.

He said the Armenian side refrains from responding to shots from the Azeri side to avoid tension.

The Minister stressed however, that the Armenian side is always ready to rebuff any assault. “We’re always alert and are always ready to resist any ‘storm’,” he added.

Seyran Ohanyan said that the process of installation of video devises at the border that had started in 2013, has intensified after the military actions in April this year.

“The four-day war showed that the installation of engineering equipment all along the defense line creates conditions for the conduct of contemporary military actions,” the Minister said.

He said more intensive work is being carried out at sections that have undergone changes.

By Harut Sassounian
The California Courier

On July 13, two days before the coup attempt in Turkey, Professor Halil Berktay of Istanbul’s Sabanci University answered six written questions on the Armenian Genocide posed by El Pais, Spain’s largest newspaper. But when El Pais did not publish his answers, Dr. Berktay decided on August 15 to post his interview on a Turkish website, Serbestiyet, under the title: “With or without the coup, genocide was and is genocide.”

Berktay, a liberal Turkish scholar, told El Pais that he has repeatedly recognized the Armenian Genocide ever since 2002. He described the genocide as “the near-complete extermination and annihilation of Ottoman Armenians,” acknowledged that for his honest views on the Armenian Genocide, “especially before 2002, and even afterwards (though no longer by the government), there has been a huge amount  of informal, extra-legal pressure, blackmail, threats or other forms of psychological terror brought to bear on people like me, which I and others have all had to face.”

Answering a question from El Pais: “why does Turkey refuse to review the past?” Dr. Berktay responded: “Back in the 1980’s and 90’s… the denialism of the past was based on ancestor worship or ideological allegiance to Unionism and Ataturkism. What had happened to the Armenians in 1915 was seen as a black blot for Turkish nationalism. Also, while it was not committed by or under the Kemalist Republic, because the Republic had ended up inheriting the mantle of a territory ethnically cleansed of the Armenians, it was in the nature of an inadmissible impurity for the desired lily-white legitimacy of the Kemalist Revolution. So a taboo was placed on it; it became part of the unmentionable and undiscussable. Here and there a few academics, mostly living and working abroad, did speak up. They were lonely voices in the wilderness.” Berktay then added: beginning in 2000, “things began to change,” with an increasing number of Turkish scholars speaking out on the Armenian Genocide.

The most interesting part of Bertkay’s interview is his stated reason for the Turkish government’s reluctance to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide: “It may be that the Turkish government does not know what might happen if it were to go ahead and say yes, it was genocide. What would Armenia likely do or demand? Is it going to ask for material compensation, or even land? That is what the Dashnaks as radical Armenian nationalists have been saying all along: Three R’s, as they put it, Recognition, Reparation, Restitution (of land). Certainly the last is something that no Turkish government can possibly ever concede. It is very likely, therefore, that before they take any further step, they would like Armenia to show its hand. Conversely, as long as Armenia keeps its cards close to its chest, recognizing the genocide as genocide will have to wait.”

A careful reading of the Professor’s above statement indicates that he finds the return of lands to Armenia by Turkey not possible, but does not rule out reparations. In my view, while Armenians rightly claim their historic lands, they are willing to accept reparations as an initial step.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Berktay’s answers is his explanation of Turkey’s reasons for refusal to face its sordid past: “Faced with the peculiar challenge of recognizing the Armenian genocide, large sections of the Turkish public as well as the AKP keep asking, and will keep asking: Why us? And why only us? Are all nations being asked to atone for their past equally stringently? Or is it just Turkey? Meanwhile, what about what ‘they’ did to ‘us’ in the first place? If we recognize the Armenian genocide, will they, too, ever so slightly recognize the tragic plight of the Muslim Turks of Crete, mainland Greece, Bulgaria or Serbia? Who speaks for the Turk? Do we have any friends in the world?”

While I do not agree with some of Berktay’s explanations, I cannot expect him to have the same position on Armenian issues as I do. After all, he is a Turk, but a righteous Turk, which is not what one can say about Turkish leaders and large segments of Turkish society that still deny the historical facts of the Armenian Genocide!

Berktay has taken a great risk by posting his answers on the Armenian Genocide on the internet, particularly in the current brutal atmosphere since the July coup attempt when tens of thousands of innocent Turkish citizens have been summarily arrested and thrown into jail!

President Serzh Sargsyan received today the delegation headed by the President of the Japan-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship League, Seishiro Eto.

Welcoming the first visit of the delegation to Armenia, the President of Armenia underscored that Japan holds a special role in Armenia’s relations with the countries of East Asia, and our country is striving to develop multifaceted and mutually beneficial cooperation with the friendly Japan. Serzh Sargsyan expressed hope that the visit of the delegation headed by Seishiro Eto will become a new impetus for the development of the interparliamentary relations between Armenia and Japan and will elevate the Armenian-Japanese cooperation in that area to a qualitatively new level.

At the meeting, the parties noted with satisfaction that the official visit of President Sargsyan conducted to Japan in 2012 which according to them opened new opportunities in the expansion and deepening of bilateral cooperation.

President of the Japan-Armenia Parliamentary Friendship League Seishiro Eto stressed the importance of parliamentary diplomacy in the interstate relations, expressed readiness to do his best to invigorate the ties between the members of the two Parliaments and promote the strengthening of the Armenian-Japanese interparliamentary relations and to translate them into a solid base for the development of the economic relations between the two countries.

The parties discussed opportunities and potential of developing mutually beneficial partnership in different areas and in the framework of international organizations.

US singer Chris Brown has been arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon after a woman told police he had threatened her with a gun, the BBC reports.

Beauty queen Baylee Curran told the LA Times Mr Brown had pointed the gun at her face after she had been admiring his friend’s jewellery.

Mr Brown came out of his home after a stand-off with police on Tuesday.

The singer has several convictions for violence, including a 2009 assault on his then girlfriend, pop star Rihanna.

Police went to Mr Brown’s home following the emergency call early on Tuesday from Ms Curran, who by that time had left the property.

Ms Curran told the LA Times that she and a friend had gone to Mr Brown’s house with a business associate on Monday evening.

She said she had been admiring the diamond necklace of a man who had been showing off his jewellery when the man got angry and told her to back away.

That is when she says Mr Brown pulled out a gun, pointed it at her face and told her to get out.

Co-Chairs of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Nagorno-Karabakh will hold consultations in Moscow on September 8, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday, TASS reports.

“They will discuss important issues of the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, special attention is planned to be focused on the progress of the implementation of the agreements made at the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement summits in Vienna and St. Petersburg,” she said.

Ten recipients of the Gratitude Scholarship program from Syria, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon will begin their studies at United World College (UWC) schools around the world in September. These students have been chosen based on their high academic performance. Each is either a refugee or displaced, living in extreme poverty, or living with the loss of a parent or a guardian. Seven of the students will attend UWC Dilijan in Armenia, an international co-educational boarding school which hosts students from more than 60 countries.

The Gratitude Scholarship program, valued over $7 million, is a joint undertaking of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative and the Near East Foundation. Over the duration of the program, 100 promising students from countries affected by conflict, displacement and poverty in the Middle East will benefit from the opportunity to study at one of the United World College international schools and colleges. The program was established to thank the people of the Middle East who offered shelter and food to those displaced by the Armenian Genocide a century ago.

The Co-Founders of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative have also announced the continuation of the Amal Clooney Scholarship. Now in its second year, the scholarship offers one female student from Lebanon free enrollment in a two-year international baccalaureate program at UWC Dilijan. The student is selected based on her exemplary academic performance and interest in the promotion of human rights and international issues. The scholarship was established to strengthen cross-cultural education and understanding, in honor of the scholarship’s namesake, esteemed international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.

“We are proud to offer education and international experience to deserving students from the Middle East, home to so many Armenians during the last century,” said Ruben Vardanyan, Co-Founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative. “By bringing together young people from across the world, we seek to promote international dialogue and understanding at an early age, when relationships are formed and values are instilled. Our hope is that this reinforces a sense of compassion, understanding and the willingness to help each other, even in the face of adversity.”

This year’s Amal Clooney Scholar was selected from more than 43 short-listed applicants for her stellar academic performance, positive energy and passionate sense of social responsibility, which she plans to put to good use by studying law at university.

“We are proud to be able to help empower our next generation of female leaders and humanitarians through this program,” Vardanyan added. “And we’re excited by the possibilities this scholarship holds for the young women of Lebanon and the region.”

The Aurora Humanitarian Initiative aims to advance collaborative social and philanthropic projects on behalf of the global Armenian community. Its flagship project is the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, a $1 million global humanitarian prize which honors those who put themselves at risk to enable others to survive. George Clooney, Co-Chair of the Aurora Prize Selection Committee, presented the inaugural Aurora Prize to Ms. Marguerite Barankitse during a ceremony in Armenia on April 24, 2016.

Nominations for next year’s Aurora Prize are open until September 9, 2016. Members of the public are encouraged to nominate inspiring humanitarians who are saving lives and advancing humanitarian causes in all parts of the world. To nominate an eligible candidate, please visit .

Photo: AP

 

A man named Vladimir Putin – who is not the Russian president – has been arrested in a Florida supermarket on trespassing charges.

The 48-year-old man, who shares the same name as the Russian leader, was arrested on charges of trespassing and resisting an officer without violence at a Publix supermarket in downtown West Palm Beach last week.

Police said Mr Putin was screaming at employees and refused to leave the supermarket. He then left and returned again to scream some more.

Mr Putin was asked to leave the property again but sat outside on its patio instead, 

A police report said Mr Putin initially refused to give officers his name.

Mr Putin appeared in court on Monday morning and was released with another court date set for September.

Deputy Foreign Minister for Consular Affairs Hassan Ghashghavi has said on Tuesday that Armenia will release eight jailed Iranians on Wednesday,  reports.