Tatul Hakobyan Will Co-ordinate ANI Centre

18:04, January 2, 2015

Tatul Hakobyan, who is a journalist and a specialist on the conflicts
in the Caucasus, will co-ordinate the activities of the
newly-established ANI Foundation for Armenian Studies.

“ANI is being set up at a time when a gap is being felt in objective
and comprehensive publications on the domestic political life,
demographics, the economy, border communities, the region, and
Homeland-Diaspora affairs in Armenia and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh).
We aim to filling that gap with our work,” Hakobyan said.

ANI will prepare reports on current issues pertaining to Armenia’s
domestic and foreign policy, economy, agriculture, as well as the
Diaspora – including communities in the former Soviet Union –
Armenia-Turkey relations, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The
centre will organize conferences, round tables, releases of relevant
books, and various other projects related to Armenian Studies.

“There is sometimes a lack of critical thought based on the Armenian
agenda in the Homeland and the Diaspora. ANI will attempt at providing
its own input in that regard by presenting not just ideas and
proposals, but also approaches to reasonable and feasible solutions,”
Hakobyan said. He emphasized that the publications by ANI must be of
benefit for institutions and individuals in the Diaspora to have more
involvement and investments in Armenia’s border communities, to begin
with in order to develop the villages immediately bordering
Azerbaijan.

He said that ANI will closely follow goings-on in Armenia-Iran and
Armenia-Georgia relations, given that, upon membership in the Eurasian
Economic Union, the co-operation between Armenia and its two immediate
neighbours will receive a different context and character.

Before joining ANI, Hakobyan had two decades of experience in
journalism at the Ankakhutyun,Yerkir, and Azg newspapers, the RadioLur
programme at the Public Radio of Armenia, the English-language
Armenian-American weekly Armenian Reporter, the Civilitas Foundation
and its onlineCivilNet broadcasts. From 2005 to 2012, he was
associated with the Armenian-language service of SBS Radio, based in
Sydney, Australia. Hakobyan has been the Yerevan correspondent for the
Armenian-language Aztag daily of Beirut since 2005.

Tatul Hakobyan was recognised as the journalist of the year by the
Yerevan Press Club in 2005 for his reports on the region. He also
received an award from that organisation in 2009 for his bookKarabakh
Diary: Green and Black. Another book by Hakobyan – Armenians and
Turks: From War to Cold War to Diplomacy – was awarded the Haigashen
Ouzounian Literary Prize by the Tekeyan Cultural Association in 2014.