Institute for War and Peace Reporting, UK
June 30 2006

Turkish Food Ban Reflects Political Concerns in Armenia

Turkish food has remained popular in Armenia despite the hostile
diplomatic relationship, but it has been banned ostensibly for health
reasons.

By Arpi Harutiunyan in Yerevan (CRS No. 346, 30-June-06)

`Don’t buy Turkish sunflower seeds,’ Nelly told her friend Armine as
they stood in a shop in Yerevan. `I’ve heard they cause sterility.’

`Are you serious? `The Turkish ones are so tasty,’ said Armine, still
wavering. In the end, she reconsidered, `All right, give me two packs
of Armenian seeds.’

Fears that Turkish food products could cause various illnesses and
disorders have grown into a wave of hysteria in Armenia that seems to
be as least politically driven as it is based on real health
concerns.

Officially at least, the sale of Turkish foodstuffs has been illegal
since May, when the Armenian trade and economic development ministry
imposed what it said would be a temporary ban on certifying food
products imported from Turkey.

Some Turkish-made grocery products can still be found in the shops
and markets, but officials say they have either been smuggled into
the country, or brought in legally as part of travellers’ normal
duty-free allowance.

At a political level, the relationship between Armenia and Turkey is
coldly hostile – their shared border is sealed and they have no
diplomatic relations. Ankara cut off all ties with Armenia because of
that country’s role in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan,
with which the Turks enjoy a good relationship based on their common
ethnic background.

Yet for the last 15 years, imported Turkish foodstuffs – transported
via Georgia – have continued to account for a sizeable chunk of
groceries sales in Armenia.

There seems to be little scientific reason to single Turkish
foodstuffs out now, since many of the problems – variable standards
and some cases of contamination – apply to domestic products and
other imports.

Officials in Armenia deny they are singling out Turkish products. But
government officials and consumers’ rights groups have mounted a
concerted campaign culminating in the certification ban and calls for
a boycott.

The state agency for state quality control concluded this year that
some Turkish goods `violated consumers’ rights’ and were at variance
with Armenian law.

Trade ministry spokesperson Anahit Khechoian said the move to bar
Turkish products was prompted mainly by customer complaints about
`suspicious foodstuffs of unknown origin’. But the ministry has also
offered another explanation – that the ban is to prevent the spread
of the deadly bird flu virus.

A non-government organisation called Protection of Consumers’ Rights
claimed to have found that five out of ten food imports they tested –
nine from Turkey and one from Iran – contained harmful ingredients.
In particular, the group said it discovered bacilli in some products
and unacceptable levels of yeast in others.

Biochemist Anahit Davtyan says bacteria get into foodstuffs made in
unhygienic conditions or stored at the wrong temperature, and can
cause dysentery and other infectious diseases including typhoid.

Abgar Yeghoyan, the head of Protection of Consumers’ Rights, made
dark hints that contamination could be introduced deliberately by
Armenia’s enemies.

`Food safety is one element of national security,’ he said. `Given
the region we live in and the laws we have, there’s no guarantee we
won’t be poisoned.’

The head of the trade ministry’s standards office, Robert Dayan,
suggested that the gap left by `questionable’ Turkish imports would
be filled by `high-quality Armenian goods’.

Some consumer advocates, though, say Armenian-made products need
closer inspection as well, since many lack proper labelling and have
quality problems.

`We’ve been talking incessantly about the foodstuff safety problem,
but the first thing we should worry about is the local produce,’ said
Armen Poghosyan, who leads the Consumers’ Association. `If I were to
assess the extent to which food safety is guaranteed on the Armenian
market, I’d say quite seriously that there are virtually no
guarantees.’

In one recent incident in early in June, bottles of an Armenian brand
of mineral water suddenly started exploding one after another in a
Yerevan shop. Customers and sales staff rushed out of the shop to
avoid the flying glass. In this case the problems was traced to
faulty bottle manufacture.

Poghosyan’s association says that a study conducted in November 2005
found that 64 per cent of locally-produced food items lacked proper
information about contents, nutritional value and expiry date.

Rather than deal with wider quality problems, officials may have
found it simpler to blame Turkish imports because of underlying
emotive issues about the country’s politics.

One indication of this was a recent scandal in which it was claimed
that a brand of Turkish chocolate on sale in the shops was actually
being made by a subsidiary based in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan
with which Armenia is still technically in a state of war.

To add insult to injury, an Armenian confectionary producer ran TV
advertisements warning that the offending chocolate bars contained
vegetable fats, rather than milk as stated on the label.

Arpi Harutiunyan is a reporter at Armenianow Weekly.