Photo: Reuters
Polls have opened in a historic referendum on whether the UK should remain a member of the European Union or leave, the BBC reports.
An estimated 46,499,537 people are entitled to take part in the vote – a record number for a UK poll.
Polling stations opened at 07:00 BST and will close at 22:00 BST.
It is only the third nationwide referendum in UK history and comes after a four-month battle for votes between the Leave and Remain campaigns.
German writer and historian Michael Hesemann has been studying the Armenian Genocide for over 20 years now.
The historian has studied more than 3000 pages of the Vatican Secrete Archives related to the Armenian Genocide. He says all archives are open, it’s only necessary to write a letter to get access to the Vatican Archives of the period of Benedict XV until 1939.
“What I found is a very drastic, very moving eyewitness reports from monks and priests who managed to escaped the genocide, managed to escape to Constantinople and reported about what happened to the Armenian Patriarchate and the Pope’s Apostolic delegate, the Representative of the Pope in Constantinople,” Hesemann told reporters in Yerevan.
“Besides, we have the documentation of the attempts to stop the killing, to stop the massacres, to stop the deportation by the Apostolic delegate and the Pope himself, who wrote hundreds of letters to the Sultan, which the Apostolic delegate tried to present to eth sultan, but never got an audience for weeks. Only with the help of the Austrian and German Ambassadors he got the access to the Sultan, and the latter responded to the letter with a great delay. When he replied in November 1915, the greatest part of the deportation had already happened, and the Armenians were already in the Syrian deserts to die,” the historian said.
“It is also a story of deceit, a story of how the Turks tried to deceit the Pope about what was going on. So the Archives clearly document what Pope Francis called in 1915 the first genocide of the 20th century,”
Referring to the Turkish attempts to deny the Armenian Genocide, he said, all archives are open today, the Vatican , the American and German archives are open, and the only archives that remain partially closed are the Turkish ones.
According to him, all scholars in the world who have studied the archives will clearly say it was not only a genocide of Armenians, but also an extermination of the Christian element in the Ottoman Empire. It was a kind of ethnic or religious cleansing.
Pope Francis travels to Armenia June 24-26 in the footsteps of John Paul II who came here in 2001. Ahead of the visit the Vatican Radio remembers an earlier pope connected in a special way to this nation, to its darkest chapter.
By Veronica Scarisbrick
He’s Benedict XV elected to the See of Peter in 1914, so Roman Pontiff at the time of the Great War. And as historian Professor John Pollard, in his book ‘Benedict XV and the Pursuit of Peace’ writes:
“The Vatican’s relations with the Ottoman Government in Istanbul, had not been good for a long time, but they deteriorated further during the course of the war, due to the Turk’s treatment of Christian populations in their empire and most particularly, the massacre of the Armenians, who were considered disloyal. In April and May 1915 a campaign of what would now be called ‘ethnic cleansing’ was launched against the Christian, mainly Armenian, populations of Anatolia. In July the Apostolic delegate in Constantinople, Monsignor Dolci was instructed to protest against the massacres; the governments of Germany and Austria-Hungary were also asked to bring pressure to bear on their ally to stop the killings, and Benedict himself sent an autograph letter on the 10th of September to the Sultan who in his role as Caliph of Islam, was like the Pope a world- wide religious leader. By the end of the war it was estimated that over a million Armenians had died, either killed outright by the Turks or as a result of maltreatment by starvation”.
For the record on March 12, 1918 Pope Benedict XV sent a second letter to Sultan Muhammad V. But while his diplomatic endeavors may have fallen on deaf ears his humanitarian efforts in assisting Armenian refugees did not it seems. According to the Jesuit magazine ‘La Civiltà Cattolica’ at the time the Holy See: “mobilized a continual flow of financial aid and supplies in an era when there were no other international humanitarian organizations beyond the Red Cross and the Near East relief.” Significantly too, at the time Benedict XV opened the doors of his summer residence, the Apostolic Palace of Castelgandolfo, to young orphaned refugees from Armenia.
Proof of this is that on Saturday 25th of June when Pope Francis pays tribute to the fallen at the ‘Tzitzernakaberd’ Memorial complex dedicated to the fallen during the massacres of the Armenian population under the Ottoman Empire, which the people of this nation refer to as the ‘Medz Yeghern’ (Great Evil), he’ll be meeting with ten descendants of these same Armenian refugees. In the very place Armenians travel to in great numbers each year as Fr John Barker who heads the tiny Anglican community in Armenia tells Philippa Hitchen.
Photo: Sputnik/Alexander Vilf
Russia expects Turkey’s and Ukraine’s foreign ministers to take part in the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) meeting on July 1 in Sochi and is open to bilateral talks with the Turkish diplomat, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Nebenzya said Thursday, reports.
“We have invited all ministers and are waiting for everyone, including Turkey and Ukraine, but there is still no answer. I think it would be clear [who will take part in the meeting] this week or early next week at the latest,” Nebenzya told RIA Novosti.
The diplomat explained that the format’s multilateral platform precludes bilateral meetings, but voiced readiness to hold talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
“I suppose that if the Turkish minister will be there, he would want to talk with our minister. The opportunity would be there, we are not running or hiding from anyone, and are open to all talks in this sense,” Nebenzya stressed.
President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman has suggested the country’s Chamber of Deputies to discuss a resolution on condemnation of the Armenian genocide, reports.
The issue was discussed during the President’s meeting with Chairman of the Chamber of Deputies Jan Hamáček, president’s spokesman George Ovčáček said on Twitter.
During a recent trip to Armenia President Zeman had promised to urge the Parliament to recognize the Armenian Genocide.
A group of Turkish Armenians laid a black wreath in front of the Armenian Patriarchate to protest against being denied the right to replace acting Patriarch Aram Ateşyan, who was appointed to the post by the state eight years ago when Archbishop Mesrob II Mutafyan had to withdraw due to illness, the reports.
“For exactly eight years, we [have not been able to] choose our patriarch due for various excuses. They are stalling the process with a made up, unheard of title,” writer Jaklin Çelik said on behalf of the group on June 22, defining the ongoing process as a fait accompli.
Çelik underlined that the seat of the patriarch was a 550-year-old tradition, representing the “existence and honor” of a nation whose roots go back some 3,000 years.
Mesrob II had to withdraw from his position in 2008 due to a deteriorating health condition, diagnosed as frontotemporal dementia (FTD). His seat remained vacant for two years amid debates of a reelection but current acting patriarch Ateşyan was hastily appointed to the position in 2010 through a letter from the Istanbul Governor’s Office.
“We do not want further interventions on our religious freedoms and we do not want our right to vote to be taken from us. Turkish Armenians did not and will not give the mandate of its future to anyone,” Çelik said, adding the person to take over the seat of the patriarch should be elected via a plebiscite, in line with tradition.
Following Çelik’s remarks, the group laid a black wreath bearing the inscription “We want to choose our patriarch” in front of the Patriarchate in Istanbul’s Kumkapı neighborhood.
Speaking to state-run Anadolu Agency, Tatyos Bebek from the Turkish Armenian community’s Thought Platform, called on the Turkish state to “fulfill its promises” by permitting an election.
Bebek said former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu had promised to allow an election if the community got a report proving the incapacity of Mesrob II, during a meeting with minority representatives.
“We swiftly got a report from court, designating the patriarch’s mental faculties were inadequate for management. However, the state did not fulfill its promise,” Bebek said, adding that the seat of the patriarch remained vacant in their eyes, as Ateşyan’s title as general proxy is non-existent in Armenian traditions.
“The state created this [title] and chose a proxy within a date – an appointed one, to be exact. We want to choose our own patriarch. And we want the state to keep its promise,” Bebek added.
Meanwhile, Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos cited reports that such a protest against the patriarchate had not been reported for at least 50 years. Agos reported the final straw was Atesyan’s letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, wherein he criticized a recent decision by the German Bundestag recognizing the World War I-era killings of Anatolian Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire as “genocide.”
Horizon Weekly – Keith Nahigian, a veteran Republican strategist, has been hired as a senior adviser by the Donald J. Trump campaign.
Keith and his brother Ken run Nahigian Strategies, a respected Washington, DC-based public relations and advocacy firm. He has been active in the leadership of many state and national campaigns, including those of Congressman Robert J. Dold, the Co-Chairman of the Armenian Caucus.
In the widely-read 2012 POLITICO campaign chronicle “Inside the Circus: Romney, Santorum and the GOP Race,” authors Mike Allen and Evan Thomas described him as “a veteran advance man sometimes called the ‘Armenian Fellini’ for his creative touch.”
Photo: Getty Images
The Bundesliga club have stood firm over the attacking midfielder but are now ready to sell to Jose Mourinho’s side if their asking price is met this summer, reports.
Borussia Dortmund are willing to sell Henrikh Mkhitaryan to Manchester United for €40 million (£30.7m), according to Bild.
United have already submitted a €36m (£27.6m) offer for the attacking midfielder and the Bundesliga club are now ready to sell if their asking price is met.
Mkhitaryan’s contract expires next summer but while the Armenia international has refused to sign a new deal, Dortmund have previously been adamant that the 27-year-old would stay with the club.
Mkhitaryan’s agent, Mino Raiola, has also claimed that United are Mkhitaryan’s “dream club”.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has called for sticking to the official statement on Nagorno-Karabakh and ignoring unseemly attempts to interpret the results of the trilateral meeting of Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents in St. Petersburg, reports.
“As is known, the presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have made a trilateral statement to reaffirm the agreements concluded at the latest Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Vienna on May 16, geared to stabilizing the situation in the area of the conflict,” Zakharova said in reply to a question from TASS.
“The statement is available on all official websites,” she said. “I would ask one and all – I believe this is a collective request – to be guided by the original of the statement, and not the unseemly attempts to interpret the results of the meeting.”
In a trilateral statement adopted on June 20 the presidents of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia reaffirmed their commitment to the normalization of the situation along the engagement line in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In an interview to Azerbaijani television on June 22 the deputy chief of the Azerbaijani presidential staff, head of the foreign relations department Novruz Mamedov said that “from now on it is necessary to move towards step-by-step settlement of the conflict.”
In his opinion, this means “the liberation of five districts of Azerbaijan then of another two districts, the determination of the corridor and the establishment of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.”.
Photo: Karen Minasyan (AFP)
AFP – When a bomb destroyed his workshop in war-ravaged Syria, silversmith Levon Keoshkerian followed other Armenians heading with a heavy heart for their ancestral home in the Caucasus.
He now lives with his elderly mother in Yerevan, where he goes every morning to the outdoor flea market to sell the silver ornaments he rescued as he fled the divided city of Aleppo.
“All my life I worked to preserve and develop the ancient craft of Armenian silversmiths,” said Keoshkerian, 47, who came to the Armenian capital in 2015.
“Now I have returned to the blessed land where the tradition was born.”
His silver plates, chalices and jugs were crafted in Syria, but they are decorated with traditional Armenian motifs: birds, grapes and pomegranates.
Keoshkerian and his elderly mother are among some 18,000 members of the Syrian Armenian community who have resettled here since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011.
“For a long time we didn’t want to abandon our house and flee. We kept hoping that life would go back to normal,” Keoshkerian said.
“But after a bomb fell right on my workshop, we understood that we could not wait any longer.”
The craftsman drove his mother through Turkey and Georgia to Armenia, braving a difficult journey after Islamist fighters in Aleppo forbade him from selling silverware embellished with pictures of animals.
“Our trip to Armenia was no safer than living under constant bombing in Aleppo,” Keoshkerian recalls, citing shelling on roads, militia attacks on buses and harassment by Turkish border guards.
“But finally, my mother and I found safety here in Armenia, where we must start a new life from scratch.”
When war broke out in Syria, it was home to a small community of 60,000 to 100,000 Armenian Christians, many of whom lived in Aleppo.
Syrian Armenians were “long-established and law-abiding Syrian citizens — wealthy merchants, craftsmen, doctors,” said Firdus Zakaryan, head of an Armenian diaspora ministry commission overseeing the recent arrivals’ integration.
“They preserved the Armenian language and traditions, which helped them adapt to a new life in Armenia,” he said.
The Armenians are a small part of the tide of people fleeing Syria’s war in one of the worst refugee crises in modern history.
Almost half of the country’s population of nearly 25 million have been displaced, and four million people fled to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Europe.
Home to three million people, the ex-Soviet republic of Armenia has become home to the world’s third-highest refugee population per capita, according to the UN refugee agency.
But Syrian Armenians fleeing war today mourn the fact that their ancestors were themselves survivors of the Ottoman Turkish massacres during World War I — meaning their community has suffered displacement twice in just a century.
Armenian authorities have taken measures to make it easier for Syrians of Armenian descent to seek shelter here, including a visa waiver, but the impoverished country is struggling to cope.
“The government has simplified the naturalisation process, covered their health insurance costs, allocated educational funds and even subsidised housing until at least one family member finds a job,” Zakaryan said.
“But our small country can’t shoulder the burden alone, we need international financial assistance.”
The UN refugee agency is helping Armenia establish a microcredit scheme to help refugees set up businesses.
“We run courses to familiarise Syrian refugees with Armenian laws and tax regulations and provide those who plan to set up a small business with working tools and equipment,” UNHCR coordinator Anahit Hayrapetian said.
In a sign the community is eager to integrate, many Syrian Armenians have opened car service stations, bakeries and tailors’ shops in Yerevan and other cities, Hayrapetian said.
“Dozens of new Syrian restaurants and cafes have transformed Yerevan’s culinary scene,” she added.
Salbi Jabakhchuryan and her son Kaits who came from Aleppo in 2012 run one of Yerevan’s most popular restaurants, located right in front of the seat of government.
While their mastery of Armenian cuisine has been key to their success, they have had to tone down some of their recipes to adapt to local tastes.
“In our two restaurants in Aleppo, we used to cook hot and spicy dishes, but Armenians prefer milder food,” said Kaits, 28, pulling a freshly baked lahmajoon — a thin, crusty bread topped with ground meat — out of the oven.
“So, we adjusted,” he shrugged.
“In Syria we lived a hundred times better than here, we were respected, but here it is safe and nobody will hurt you just because you are Armenian,” his mother said.
“When we left Aleppo, we shut the doors of our house, but we kept the keys — just as our ancestors had when they fled Turkey during the Armenian genocide in 1915.”