Category: News

The sitting of the Council of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council will take place in Yerevan on May 20. The heads of government of the EEU member states will participate in the meeting.

A wide range of issues related to integration processes will be discussed.

The participants of the sitting will be hosted by President Serzh Sargsyan.

Photo: Getty Images

 

The ruling AK Party in Turkey has picked Binali Yildirim as candidate for leader, a fortnight after a reported dispute with the president prompted the prime minister to quit, the BBC reports.

Mr Yildirim, who is currently transport minister, is seen as a leading aide to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had apparently objected to Mr Erdogan’s plan to beef up his own power.

The president was known to be seeking a more “closely aligned” prime minister.

And, in a speech on Thursday, Mr Yildirim made clear he would work “in total harmony” with the president and all other levels of the AKP.

Mr Yildirim, 60, will be confirmed as the new leader of the AKP at an extraordinary party congress on Sunday. The party leader automatically takes on the role of prime minister.

Although Mr Erdogan’s son-in-law, Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, had been mentioned as a possible candidate, his name did not feature among the top three men in a survey of MPs and party members.

Liverpool suffered a dramatic second-half collapse as Sevilla claimed the Europa League for the third season in succession with a superb comeback, the BBC reports.

Jurgen Klopp’s side looked on course to secure the prize of Champions League football – on offer to the winners of the competition – when Daniel Sturridge’s magnificent strike with the outside of his left foot gave them the interval lead.

The good work was wrecked in the first 17 seconds of the second half when Kevin Gameiro turned in Mariano Ferreira’s cross to put Sevilla level.

Liverpool, who were denied a clear first-half penalty when Sevilla’s Daniel Carrico clearly handled as Roberto Firmino tried to weave past him, never recovered.

Coke’s fine 64th-minute finish confirmed Sevilla’s superiority and he added a contentious third from close range, which was initially disallowed but was then given as Liverpool slumped to their second final defeat this season after losing to Manchester City in the Capital One Cup.

 

 

 

The anniversary of the Genocide of Pontic Greeks was commemorated in Armenia today. A delegation headed by Vice-Speaker of the National Assembly Edward Sharmaznaov visited the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial today to pay tribute to the memory of Pontic Greeks and pray for the peace of their souls.

The Armenian National Assembly unanimously condemned the Greek Genocide in 2015.

“Greeks understand the Armenian pain and the Greek MPs were among the first to visit Yerablu Pantheon and Artsakh after the four-day military actions unleashed by Azerbaijan,” Sharmazanov said.

Head of the Chairman of “Patrida” organization of Greeks in Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh Edward Polatov noted that the same genocidal country stood behind the April military actions. He stressed that the international community should condemn the genocides committed at the turn of the 20^th century instead of closing its eyes.

Greek Ambassador to Armenia Ioannis Tayis praised the condemnation of the Pontic Genocide by the Armenian Parliament last year.

The participants stressed the need to combine efforts to fight Turkey’s denialism.

Senior House Foreign Affairs Committee member Brad Sherman (D-CA) on Wednesday called on the State Department to conduct a “Leahy Law” investigation of Azerbaijani war crimes committed during the April 2-7 attacks against Nagorno-Karabakh, and urged an immediate suspension of military aid to Baku, citing the Aliyev regime’s ongoing attacks on Armenia and Artsakh, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

“We echo Congressman Sherman’s call for a thorough Leahy Law investigation of Azerbaijani atrocities,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.  “The leaders of our State Department would clearly be derelict in their duties if they did not adhere to the spirit and the letter of the Leahy Law, a statute enacted not only to prevent international atrocities, but also to protect us, as Americans, from having our tax dollars used by foreign forces to commit human rights atrocities.”

In a May 18th letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Rep. Sherman urged that “pursuant to your obligations under 22 U.S. Code § 2378d (d) to seek out and evaluate credible information about human rights abuses by foreign security forces, you quickly and thoroughly investigate allegations that the Azerbaijani armed forces committed human rights abuses during the conflict with Nagorno-Karabakh from April 2 – 7.”  He went on to urge that U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan be immediately suspended, arguing that “the Aliyev government continues to launch cross-border attacks against Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, regularly threatens to renew hill-scale hostilities, and refuses U.S. and international calls to pull back snipers. Azerbaijan neither needs nor deserves American military aid.”

On 19 May Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan visited a section on the republic’s southern borderline, got acquainted with the course of the service and situation there, gave corresponding instructions towards the realization of the set tasks.

Defense minister Levon Mnatsakanyan, chairman of the “Yerkrapah” Volunteers Union organization’s board Manvel Grigoryan, other officials accompanied the President during the visit.

At 90, Turkish Armenian Yetvart Kovan prepared a comrehensive Turkish-to-Armenian dictionary which includes words, idioms and renowned book titles known to everyone in Turkey, Daily Sabah reports. 

The most comprehensive Turkish to Armenian dictionary has been published: “Deyimlerle Türkçe’den Ermenice’ye Güncel Sözlük” (Contemporary Turkish to Armenian Dictionary with Idioms).

The dictionary’s writer, Yetvart Kovan, 90, spoke to Anadolu Agency (AA) and said that he published a dictionary for commerce and economic terms in 1996. “I always thought about publishing a dictionary that would be available for Armenians in Turkey as well as people who are interested in the Armenian language. This time, I studied more extensively and worked on idioms because idioms are rigid phrases, and they are easy to remember. Hence, I searched for the overlapping Armenian idioms for Turkish idioms by using articles in newspapers. It is not an ordinary dictionary as I enriched the text with idioms and useful information. My aim was to attract the attention of the reader and make it easy for people to read.”

To facilitate reading, Kovan provided the pronunciation of Armenian words in Latin lettering, which is a first in Turkish-Armenian dictionaries. “Contemporary Turkish to Armenian Dictionary with Idioms” is roughly 900 pages and features 30,600 lines, including words, sentences and phrases. Kovan explained the reason for the dictionary’s size is that the pronunciations of the Armenian words added extra pages to the dictionary. He also included English equivalents of some words and phrases, believing that they also will help.

Apart from words and idioms, he also included translations of renowned book titles, such as “Sinekli Bakkal” (The Clown and His Daughter), “Çalıkuşu” (The Wren), “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Three Musketeers,” to encourage people to read more books. “Furthermore, I added the mottos of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, such as ‘Our true mentor in life is science’ and ‘Justice is the foundation of the state’,” Kovan said.

Kovan retired seven years ago after closing his public accountant office and had been working on the dictionary ever since. He said he wanted to make use of his free time and began studying dictionaries, but mostly focused on the Turkish Language Association’s (TDK) online dictionary. “There are Turkish-Armenian dictionaries that were written 100 years ago, and they are very hard to read now. I wanted to include contemporary phrases, words and idioms in my dictionary,” he said.

Kovan graduated from the Private Pangalti ArKovan worked as a certified public accountant for years.

Kovan’s dictionary is in Western Armenian, but he used Eastern Armenian equivalents of some words for a more thorough understanding.

“Unfortunately, the tradition of reading, writing and speaking in Western Armenian has weakened in Turkey as well as in other European countries,” Kovan said. “Turkish-Armenians speak Turkish in their homes and schools. Apart from being the official language of the Republic of Turkey, one of the main reasons for Armenians to speak Turkish is that Turkish became much easier following the alphabet reform. There are certain difficulties in grammar and writing in Armenian, so people find it easy to speak and write in Turkish.”

On May 18, a permanent exhibition on the Armenian Genocide was opened at the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum. This exhibition is a joint effort of the Riga Ghetto, Baltic International Tolerance Center and the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute. The AGMI design group has performed the design works.

The work was assisted by a representative of the Armenian community of Latvia, businessman Mkhitar Mkhitaryan.

For the organization of this exhibition the AGMI has donated original exhibits. AGMI director Hayk Demoyan, the leader of the “Shamir” congregation, Rabbi Menahem Barkahan, representatives of the Armenian community of Latvia were present at the opening of the exhibition.

The event featured the ambassador of Israel to Latvia and the Patriarch of the Lutheran Church. Hayk Demoyan awarded Franz Werfel’s medal to the Riga Ghetto Museum and the gold medal named after Fridtjof Nansen to Mkhitar Mkhitaryan.

By Marc Woods

Germany is set to vote on branding as genocide the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks a century ago.

It’s a diplomatic nightmare for Germany, and for Europe. Turkey has agreed to stop the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean from its territory and take back from Greece any who succeed in crossing. There are questions over whether it will work and whether it’s even legal, but it’s exacted a high price for doing so, including visa-free travel for its citizens. It can do so because it holds all the cards: the migration crisis has shaken Europe to its foundations.

But Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, unpredictable and authoritarian, is quite capable of taking the huff about this. One of his recurring complaints about Europe is that it’s a Christian club, profoundly lukewarm about Turkey’s application to join it. A resolution in Germany pinning guilt for the genocide firmly on Turkey might just be the last straw.

And just to be clear: Turkey did commit genocide.

Article Two of the UN Convention on Genocide of December 1948 describes genocide as carrying out acts intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.

In 1915-16, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered in their homes or in camps in circumstances of extreme brutality. Women were gang-raped, set on fire and thrown over cliffs. Men had horseshoes nailed to their feet. They were sent on death marches across the desert where they starved or died of thirst or were beaten to death when they fell behind.

Turkey has consistently denied, in the face of all the evidence, that there was a systematic programme of extermination. It has, subtly and not-so subtly, sought to eradicate all traces of the Armenians from the places they once lived.

Questioning the official account of the genocide in Turkey is risky. Turkey’s most internationally famous novelist, Orhan Pamuk, made an off-the-cuff remark to a Swiss interviewer in 2005. Discussing freedom of expression in Turkey, he said that “a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in this country and I’m the only one who dares to talk about it”. The backlash was instantaneous, even though he didn’t use the banned word ‘genocide’. The press attacked him fiercely, he received death threats and had to go into hiding. Pamuk was threatened with prosecution, though the charges were dropped.

Journalist Hrant Dink, who also wrote about the genocide, was shot dead in January 2007 by teenage ultra-nationalist, Ogun Samast, who was jailed for 23 years in July 2011 for the crime.

Even Pope Francis has to walk on diplomatic eggshells. Last year he referred to the killings as “the first genocide of the 20th century”, resulting in the recall of Turkey’s ambassador to the Vatican, and his visit to Armenia next month will be another flashpoint.

Britain has declined to describe the events as genocide as it regards good relations with Turkey as more important.

But here’s the thing. If Germany had refused to recognise its responsibility for the Holocaust, no government would accept that it had a right to a place at the European table. It would still be an international pariah. In fact, it has unshrinkingly and painfully acknowledged what it did in a way that Turkey never has.

Turkey’s guilt is unquestionable. It owes it to the few survivors still living and to the descendents of those who escaped to acknowledge it. It owes it to history, too; and it owes If it does not, it can never be fully accepted into the community of Europe, whether it joins the EU or not.

In spite of the refugee crisis, in spite of the horrors unfolding on the other side of its border with Syria, in spite of the authoritarian crackdown on dissent and a renewed offensive against Turkish minority – all factors that would lead many diplomats to say that the less this boat is rocked the better – Germany’s parliament is doing a good thing. Whether it will sway Erdogan himself, or Turkish public opinion, is a different question. But the truth must be told.