By Hovhannes Nazareyan
This is part of the weekly series by #CivilNetCheck – an initiative that will look at the week’s fake news and dubious claims – circulating in Armenia (and about Armenia).
Green Card Applications
A February 14 piece published in Aztag, a Lebanese-based Armenian daily paper, read that around 160,000 Armenians applied for the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (DV Program), popularly known as the US green card lottery in 2019. The article noted that each applicant paid $325, amounting to a total of more than $52 million. These amounts are baseless. As #CivilNetCheck found out, there are no fees for applying to the program. Fees are only paid by a small minority of applicants who are selected for interviews at a U.S. embassy or consulate. The Diversity Visa fee is currently $330 per person and is nonrefundable, whether a visa is issued or not.
The data is released by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs. Interestingly, the 160,000 applications made in the fall of 2019 (for the 2021 program) was the lowest since 2014. The peak of Armenian applicants was in 2016, when the figure stood at 267,000. The figures for applications in 2020 and 2021 still have not been made public.
Armenian-Manufactured Sputnik Light Still Not Being Exported
In December 2021, Armenia’s Economy Minister Vahan Kerobyan announced that negotiations are underway to export Armenia-produced Sputnik Light vaccines to unspecified Middle Eastern and African countries. The single-dose vaccine was developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Russia. LIQVOR Pharmaceuticals began production of the vaccine in Armenia in September 2021. As of mid-February, Armenia has yet to export the Russian vaccine to any country. Negotiations are still underway with no results.
Armenian Businesses Owned by Turkish Nationals
To the surprise of many, Kerobyan, the Economy Minister, stated weeks ago that Turkish citizens own real estate and businesses in Armenia. #CivilNetCheck investigated this issue and revealed that Kerobyan is correct. Since 2005 Turkish citizens have acquired 83 pieces of real estate and are involved in numerous businesses in Armenia.
One such business, Murad Sar, owned by Saraylı Murad was founded in 2004 and produces unplasticized polyvinyl chloride (uPVC) profiles for windows and doors. It is a relatively large company, ranking 380th in the list of largest taxpayers in Armenia last year. Another noteworthy business, Yeraz Jewelry LLC, is owned by Beyhan Bağ, also a Turkish national who founded the company in 2018. It was involved in jewelry design, but is currently temporarily out of business. In September 2018 the Pashinyan government had permitted it to operate in a free economic zone for seven years, which entitles tax exemption privileges. Some of the Turkish citizens doing business in Armenia are ethnic Armenians from Turkey. One such case is Yervant Dink, the brother of the prominent Istanbul-based journalist Hrant Dink, who was murdered in 2007. He is the full shareholder of Grapounge LLC, which runs a bookstore in Yerevan and represents Oxford University Press in Armenia.
Fellow Armenian fact-checkers found that since Armenia’s independence, Turkish nationals have been involved in 139 businesses. Turkish citizens are currently shareholders in 72 businesses.
Kocharyan Correct, Pashinyan Wrong on 1999 OSCE Summit Declaration
In his February 17 press conference, former president Robert Kocharyan, who now heads the opposition Armenia Alliance, stated that the 1999 OSCE Istanbul Summit Declaration, which he signed, did not endorse the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, as it did for other countries. #CivilNetCheck found that the claim is correct. The declaration explicitly endorses the territorial integrity of several countries, including Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova and Russia, but not that of Azerbaijan.
Nagorno-Karabakh is mentioned only in Article 20 of the declaration, which does not mention territorial integrity—or any other principles—at all.
In contrast, Article 15 explicitly states: “Reaffirming our strong support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia, we stress the need for solving the conflicts with regard to the Tskhinvali region/South Ossetia and Abkhazia…”
Last June, during the election campaign, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had claimed that the Article 19 of the Charter for European Security, adopted at the same summit, foresees Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) within Azerbaijan. It has since been repeated by parliament speaker Alen Simonyan and the pro-government outlet civic.am. However, it is clear that the article does not mention Karabakh or any other disputed area or ethnic conflict, but sets out the principles for human rights, specifically of national minorities.