LEVON ARONIAN DEFEATS VESELIN TOPALOV
Noyan Tapan
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, NOYAN TAPAN. A unique chess tournament under the
title “Amber” started in Monte Carlo. 12 strongest chess-players
hold small competitions with one another. Each competition consists
of a “blind” and a quick game. After 2 tours 5 chess-players are
at once in the lead. They are: Levon Aronian (Armenia), Peter Leko
(Hungary), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Alexander Morozevich (Russia)
and Francisco Valekho (Spain). They gained 2.5 out of 4 possible points
each. Representative of Armenia, world cup-holder Levon Aronian drew
the game with Dutch Van Veli in the first tour (1 to 1) and defeated
world champion, Bulgarian Topalov in the second tour with a score of
1.5 to 0.5. The “Amber” tournament participants will play 22 games
in total. The winner and the other prize-winners will become known
on March 30.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ARMENIAN BOXERS WIN 2 PRIZES
Noyan Tapan
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, NOYAN TAPAN. Very strong boxers took part in
the memorial tournament after famous boxing specialist Felix Shtam
held in Warsaw. Nevertheless, 2 out of 5 members of the Armenian
national team taking part in the competitions succeeded in becoming
prize-winners. Gabriel Tolmogian, a boxer from Yerevan who performed in
the 54 kg weight category, took the second place and Samvel Matevosian,
a young boxer from Vanadzor, 69 kg weight category, took the 3rd palce.

WELCOME PLAYERS: A NEW DRIVE TO HELP REFUGEE SCHOLARS WILL BENEFIT NOT ONLY THEM BUT ALSO THE CAUSE OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Donald Macleod
The Guardian – United Kingdom
Mar 21, 2006
A long, painful journey brought Nahro Zagros from classically trained
violinist and lecturer in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to playing gigs in
Hull with a band called Yorkshire Kurd.
Soon he is off on another journey to Armenia to study the music and
culture of the semi-nomadic Yezidis. For, with help from the Council
for Assisting Refugee Academics (Cara), Zagros is doing a masters
degree in ethnomusicology at York University, researching how music
can display cultural identity.
The young Kurdish musician is one of about 60 currently being helped
by Cara, an organisation that originated in 1933 to help academic
refugees from Hitler’s Germany. Over the decades the countries of
origin have changed – South Africa in the 1960s, Iraq and Iran in
the 1980s and 1990s – but the need has remained.
Indeed, only a tiny fraction of refugee academics receive help. Last
week the president of New York University, John Sexton, was in London
to launch the UK network of Scholars at Risk, set up in collaboration
with Cara to try and reach more of them.
He told a meeting at the British Academy that by helping academics
under extreme threat, they were protecting their own academic freedom
against less dramatic, but real encroachments.
“There is a vital connection between the aggressive struggle against
the most extreme cases of denial of academic freedom – cases that
take the form of threats and harassment, loss of jobs, and even
imprisonment and physical harm – and the less dramatic, but constant,
struggle against gradual encroachments on our own academic vocations,”
said Sexton, whose university is home to Scholars at Risk.
Zagros found himself among the extreme cases when he was a music
lecturer at Iraq’s Institute of Fine Arts and conductor of an orchestra
that toured in the Middle East and Europe. He worked for a television
station owned by Uday Hussein and was pressured into becoming involved
in events run by Uday.
Following a short visit to Kurdistan to see his relatives, he was
imprisoned for nearly six months in 2000. He fled Iraq shortly
afterwards.
Dispersed to Hull, he sought out other musicians and formed Yorkshire
Kurd, playing gigs to raise money for refugees and giving workshops
and performances in local schools to promote diversity. They have
also performed at festivals in Britain and abroad, playing a fusion
of Middle Eastern music, swing jazz, eastern European Gypsy music and
Jewish klezmer. “We like to combine all these great tunes and show
people we can work together and promote integration through music.”
Without Cara, he says, he could not have resumed study at York and
researched the Yezidis, a group of Kurds from Turkey who took refuge
in Armenia in the 1880s. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
a combination of unemployment and resurgent Armenian nationalism is
threatening their culture, says Zagros.
There are plenty of other stories to tell – the Iranian professor
of paediatrics, the Iraqi medical lecturer, both now establishing
themselves in this country, for instance. Applications for refugee
status in the UK are falling, but pleas for help from academics
continue to increase, says John Akker, executive secretary of Cara. He
estimates that of the 10,000 refugees in Glasgow, nearly 1,000 have
a substantial academic background.
Cara has recently been given pounds 500,000 over five years from the
Lisbet Rausing charitable fund to help with grants to scholars. With
the Scholars at Risk network, Cara is planning how universities
could use their services in such areas as HR, student services,
language centres, accommodation, welfare, childcare and international
activities, to help.
So far 15 UK universities have joined. Birkbeck College London,
Cambridge, Leeds Metropolitan, London South Bank University, York,
Glasgow Caledonian, London University, Wolverhampton, Kent and
Universities UK are represented on the board. The Open University,
Luton, School of Oriental and African Studies, Sunderland, Ulster and
Lincoln are members, and University College London, London School of
Economics, Keele, Manchester, King’s College London, and Oxford are
expected to join soon.
The payoff to Britain for sheltering academic refugees has been
spectacular. Of Cara’s former grantees, who included names like
Karl Popper and Max Perutz, 18 became Nobel laureates, 16 received
knighthoods, 71 were made fellows or foreign members of the Royal
Society, and 50 fellows of the British Academy.
But Sexton made a rather different case for the work of Cara and
Scholars at Risk -helping defend academic freedom against more
subtle pressures from outside the university, or even from political
correctness within academe.
“The race of our century will be a race between the university and
the madrasa; and it is important from the outset that we understand
the differences between the two,” he said.
“Xenophobes and ideologues seek to influence the research we undertake,
the books we write or the classes we teach. Thus, for example, in the
United States, research universities are pressurised to forgo stem
cell research, and pressed to meet externally defined ideological
quotas for faculty. And every university president at some point faces
enormous external pressure because a speaker deemed ‘controversial’
is coming to campus . . .
“For if not anchored in the causes and consequences of extreme threats,
our claims on behalf of academic freedom can too easily be construed
as petty disputes by a privileged elite demanding special rights
without corresponding responsibilities. Being able to locate the
complaints and warnings of those who fear government encroachment,
or attempts to quell disturbing speech or provocative research, along
the same spectrum that stretches to the more extreme and violent
forms of intellectual repression, forces a discussion of the central
importance of the principle of academic freedom. By seeing what happens
in societies where universities and scholars are put at extreme risk,
we come to better appreciate why we defend what we do and better
recognise the warning signs of the erosion of those freedoms.”
Cara, London South Bank University Technopark, 90 London Road,
London SE1 6LN Email: [email protected]
du
Iraqi musician Nahro Zagros fled his homeland after he was put under
pressure and imprisoned there Photograph: John Jones.

POPE BENEDICT, GREETING ARMENIAN PATRIARCH, RECALLS PEOPLE’S ‘TERRIBLE PERSECUTION’
AP Worldstream
Mar 20, 2006
Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute Monday to the sufferings of Armenians
because of their Christian faith and recalled their “terrible
persecution,” a reference to the 1.5 million who died in the early
20th century in what Armenia insists was genocide by Turkey.
Benedict recalled Armenians’ history as he welcomed an Armenian
Catholic patriarch, Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni, and Armenian pilgrims
to a Vatican audience.
Speaking about the Armenian people through the centuries, the pope
singled out the “sufferings which they underwent in the name of the
Christian faith in the years of the terrible persecution that went
down in history with the sadly meaningful name ‘metz yeghern,’ the
great evil.'”
Benedict was citing the term used by Armenians to refer to what they
say was genocide conducted by Turkey. Turkey vehemently denies that
the deaths were genocide and has harshly criticized countries which
call it as such.
Benedict did not use the term “genocide” in his official remarks. His
predecessor, Pope John Paul II, called the deaths genocide but did
not declare any party responsible.
In 301, Armenia became the world’s first country to declare itself
Christian.

CHAIRMAN ON RETURN TO COUNTRY
ddp news agency
20 Mar 06
Berlin: After a demonstration by Turkish nationalists in Berlin [on
Saturday 18 March], Home Affairs Senator Ehrhart Koerting (Social
Democratic Party of Germany) has got his people to check the legal
consequences for Dogu Perincek, chairman of the Turkish Workers’
Party. On the sidelines of the demonstration, the politician denied
the genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, Koerting
told the Home Affairs Committee on Monday [20 March]. So that he
cannot give any “hate speeches” any more, the aliens authority is
now checking as a precaution whether Perincek could be expelled from
Germany if he enters the country again.
According to Koerting, 1,350 Turkish nationalists demonstrated in
Berlin on Saturday. They demanded, among other things, the rescission
of a Bundestag resolution of mid-2005, which recalls the “almost
complete eradication of the Armenians in Anatolia”. According to the
home affairs senator, only very few of the demonstrators came from
Berlin. [passage omitted]

GEORGIAN AMBASSADOR SAYS HIS COUNTRY INTERESTED IN RESUMPTION OF KARS-GYUMRI RAILROAD
ARMENPRESS
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, ARMENPRESS: Georgia’s ambassador to Armenia said
his country would spare nothing to have a railroad from Turkish Kars
to Armenian Gyumri resumed if it could force Turkey and Azerbaijan to
drop their plans to build a new road from Kars to Georgian Akhalkalaki,
a move protested by Armenia which says it would exacerbate Armenia’s
transport blockade imposed by Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Admitting his government’s failure to have any impact on Turkey
and Azerbaijan, the ambassador, Revaz Gachechiladze, said the old
railroad has become ‘a hostage’ of the Karabakh conflict and unsettled
Turkish-Armenian relations. Speaking to a news conference in Yerevan
the ambassador said his government would only welcome the reopening
of the Kars-Gyumri railroad.
He said Armenia too could become a transit country between Europe
and Asia like Georgia is and may benefit from it immensely.

PARLIAMENT THROWS AWAY OPPOSITION MOTION
ARMENPRESS
Mar 20 2006
YEREVAN, MARCH 20, ARMENPRESS: The Armenian parliament turned down a
motion by the opposition Ardarutyun (Justice) bloc to set up an ad
hoc commission to investigate reports of ballot-rigging during the
2005 November 27 constitutional referendum.
The motion was backed only by 20 votes of opposition lawmakers.
Parliament chairman Arthur Baghdasarian reacted by saying that chief
prosecutor’s office has opened 4 criminal cases to probe vote-rigging
on November 27 and promised to unveil fresh information as soon as
he received it. Baghdasarian also commended all parliament forces for
approving a set of changes to the election code which, he said, would
help set up such election commissions that would prevent election fraud.

AZERIS ARE SURPRISED HOW ARMENIANS MANAGED TO GET PHOTOS OF JUGHA RIFLE RANGE
By Aghavni Harutyunian
AZG Armenian Daily #050
21/03/2006
The Azeri printed media has responded to the recent publication
the photos that depicted the new rifle range that replaced the
Jugha medieval khachkars in the Armenian newspapers. In particular,
“Zerkalo” newspaper relentlessly denies the fact that over 10.000
medieval cross stones were gathered in the Armenian graveyard in Old
Jugha (Nakhijevan).
The newspaper poses two questions: firstly, they wonder whether the
news on destruction of the Armenian cross stones and construction of
military range on that territory are true. Secondly, they try hard to
understand how the Armenians managed to get the photos of the range,
if it belongs to the Azeri army.
Tair Taghizade, press secretary of the Azeri Foreign Ministry, stated
that Azerbaijan has no official information that would prove that the
abovementioned range belongs to Azerbaijan. Taghizade also stated that
even if the information is confirmed one should not be surprised, as
any independent state has the right to carry out military arrangements
in its territory. Denying the fact of destruction of Armenian khachkars
without pressing any arguments, he said that the Armenian side tries
to deceive the international community.
While the Azeri Defense Ministry totally excludes that the range
belongs to the Azeri army. They added that they have certain doubts
about the territory as well, as the photos could be results of
montage. This brilliant idea occurred to retired colonel-lieutenant
Ouzeir Jafarov. He added that the range is situated in Meghri region
of Armenia, while the photos are shot from the territory of Iran. He
grounded the last factors with the supposition that everything was
done within the framework of Iran-Armenia cooperation.

GROWING INFLUENCE OF ISLAM ALIENATING ALEVIS, TURKEY’S ‘TRUE SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS’
Irish Times
Feb 20, 2006
AZG Armenian Daily
21/03/2006
TURKEY: Most Alevis wholeheartedly aligned themselves with Kemal
Ataturk’s secular revolution of the 1920s, writes Nicholas Birch
in Istanbul Remote, mountainous and poor, Tunceli has all the
ingredients of a typical, conservative eastern Turkish town. Except
that Tunceli is anything but typical. Few women under the age of 60
wear headscarves. The fine central mosque lies empty, even on Fridays.
Dominated by a medley of Marxist-Leninists, communists and socialists –
political groupings insignificant elsewhere in Turkey – local politics
has a distinctively cold war feel about it.
The key to Tunceli’s strangeness lies in the identity of its
people. Like around 20 per cent of Turkey’s population, they are
not Sunni Muslims, but Alevi, members of a sect whose beliefs are
distantly related to Shiism.
Not that the place of worship opened on the outskirts of town five
years ago in any way resembles the mosques of neighbouring Shia Iran.
Attended by men, women and children, the Thursday meeting at the cemevi
opens with a lament sung to the accompaniment of an amplified saz,
the metal-stringed lute played throughout Anatolia.
Later, the music gathers speed, and a group of young men and women
stand to perform a stylised circular dance. The ceremony ends with
the religious leader, in tears, describing the death of the Imam
Hussein at the hands of the Sunni Caliph’s army.
Persecuted by the Ottoman Sultans, most Alevis wholeheartedly aligned
themselves with Kemal Ataturk’s secular revolution of the 1920s. Many
continue to describe themselves as staunch Kemalists.
But Islam, all but banished in the early years of Republican Turkey,
crept back in with multi-party democracy in the 1950s. Its growing
influence continues to alienate Alevis.
“Do you know what is really meant by ‘how happy is he who can say
I am a Turk’?” asks schoolteacher Nuriye Bagriyanik, referring to
one of Ataturk’s most popular slogans. “How happy is he who can say
‘I am a Sunni Muslim.'”
She ascribes the resurgence of Alevi identity to ultra-nationalist-led
pogroms in the late 1970s in which well over 100 Alevis
died. Forty-five more were killed in a second bout of sectarianism
in the mid-1990s in Istanbul and the Anatolian city of Sivas.
The real triggers to Alevi activism came later, though, first with
Turkey’s improving relations with the EU. And then there was the
overwhelming 2003 electoral success of the Justice and Development
Party (AKP), a pro-western offshoot of traditional Turkish political
Islam.
“Every one of the AKP’s 360-odd MPs is a Sunni,” explains Tunceli
journalist Haydar Toprakci, adding that “it’s the Alevis, not the
Kurds, who are Turkey’s true second-class citizens”. His attitude is
shared by Izzetin Dogan, head of Turkey’s most influential Alevi group,
the Istanbul-based Cem Foundation.
“Previous governments may have been cowardly on the Alevi issue, but
at least we could talk to them”, Mr Dogan says. “With the present
government, all contact has been lost.” Deteriorating relations
left his Cem Foundation with no alternative but to take the Turkish
Education Ministry to court over school religious classes that were
made obligatory after the 1980 military coup.
The curriculum teaches only Sunni Islam. Individual Alevis have taken
their complaints far further. Any day now, the European Court of
Human Rights is expected to rule on a landmark case brought by parents
demanding that their children be excused from religious education.
“The thought of going to court didn’t occur to me until one Ramadan,
when the religious teacher began insisting all Muslims should fast,”
parent Hatice Kose told Turkish daily Radikal. “My son said that
because everybody else in the class was fasting, he would too.” If
they fast at all, Alevis do so not during Ramadan, but Muharrem,
four months later.
In an apparent effort to stave off further legal cases, Turkey’s
education minister Huseyin Celik last week announced that the
curriculum had been changed to include a discussion of Alevi beliefs.
Izzetin Dogan describes the move as an attempt by the government
“to get Brussels on its side”. The ministry’s aim, he adds, “is to
present our beliefs as being no different from Sunni Islam”.
The fisticuffs over the school syllabus are, however, only the most
visible symptom of a much broader debate – not just confined to Alevis
– about the role of Islam in Turkish society.
Turkey is often described as a model of Muslim secularism. In fact,
the state keeps close tabs on religion, seeing it both as a threat
and a potential social cement.
As the well-known Istanbul theologian Zekeriya Beyaz puts it, “the
state promotes and protects religion while religion encourages people
to support the state”. The centre of the bureaucratic web is the
Diyanet, the powerful state body responsible for maintaining Turkey’s
80,000 mosques and monitoring their state-employed preachers. Sitting
in his elegantly furnished office in the outskirts of Ankara, Diyanet
head Ali Bardakoglu brushes off suggestions that his foundation is
a Sunni monopoly. “Every belief group is our partner,” he insists.
But then he goes on to argue that Alevis are actually Sunni. “It’s
not that we are opposed to cemevis,” he says, “but they are not an
alternative to mosques. ”
Ali Bardakoglu is a moderate. After the 1980 coup, led by generals
who saw Sunni Islam as an alternative to murderous clashes between
left and right, his predecessors complied in a campaign to build
mosques in 100s of Alevi villages.
The initiative was not a success, says Aykan Erdemir, a sociologist
specialising in Alevism. “Some imams gave up and left within months of
arriving, and others never left their homes. I’ve even heard stories
of preachers corrupted by the villagers’ beliefs.”
Attempts at forced conversion have now stopped. Even now, though,
Turkey’s few cemevis exist in a legal limbo, officially described as
cultural centres, not places of worship.
And while imams in state-funded mosques receive their salaries from
Ankara, Alevi communities pay everything from their own pockets.

CONGRESS DEDICATED TO 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF AGBU LAUNCHES IN ALEPPO
By Marietta Khachatrian
AZG Armenian Daily
21/03/2006
The 100th anniversary of AGBU is celebrated this year.
The Syrian branch of AGBU has recently initiated a conference for the
Armenian women of the Arabian states. Hranush Hakobian, chairwoman of
the Education, Science, Culture and Youth Affairs Commission at the
RA National Assembly, was the main speaker of the conference. 600
delegates participated in the conference. Mrs. Hakobian touched
upon AGBU activities in Armenia and Diaspora, the initiatives of
the organization’s youth branch, the relations between Armenia and
Diaspora. Next day Mrs. Hakobian met with the members of the Armenian
community. They discussed the current developments in Nagorno Karabakh
issue, the activities of RA parliament, as well as the life of the
Armenian young people in their motherland and other issues.
Within the framework of the meeting with the Syrian-Armenian young
people Mrs. Hakobian also touched upon the current developments
in Armenia. She was greatly impressed with the life of young
Armenians. She also visited “Mayranots” Gyulbenkian Center and Library
Hospital of Outstanding Oculist Robert Jebejian in Aleppo.