Monday, Armenian Government’s Pick For Constitutional Court Criticized • Anush Mkrtchian Armenia - Vahram Avetisian, Yerevan, July 23, 2020. Relatives of protesters killed during the 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan and supporters of former President Levon Ter-Petrosian have deplored the Armenian government’s choice of a candidate to replace one of the three Constitutional Court judges controversially dismissed last month. The government formally nominated Vahram Avetisian, a senior law professor at Yerevan State University (YSU), to the court last week and expects the Armenian parliament to confirm him in the coming weeks. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s My Step bloc enjoys a comfortable majority in the National Assembly. Eight relatives of the unrest victims and 50 current and former activists imprisoned during the 2008 crackdown on the Ter-Petrosian-led opposition issued at the weekend a joint petition urging the government to withdraw Avetisian’s nomination. In particular, the signatories, among them several senior members of Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress (HAK) party, argued that his father, Davit Avetisian, upheld prison sentences handed to opposition members and supporters when he served as a senior Court of Cassation judge from 2008-2016. They said that Vahram Avetisian cannot act independently and impartially also because he has never publicly condemned Armenia’s former ruling regime and its use of force against protesters who challenged the official results of the February 2008 presidential election in which Ter-Petrosian was the main opposition candidate. One of the signatories, Grigor Voskerchian, is a member of the HAK’s governing board who was arrested in 2008 and spent 18 months in prison. “My personal interest is to see an independent person elected to the Constitutional Court,” he said. “If [Avetisian] is appointed a Constitutional Court judge he will definitely deal with some issues related to his father,” Voskerchian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service on Monday. “If he doesn’t want to bear responsibility for [decisions made by] his father he should make a statement.” Avetisian dismissed the objections to his candidacy on Sunday, saying that they are fuelled by individuals motivated by their “parochial and factional interests.” In a Facebook post, the nominee said he finds it “pointless” to argue with them. Responding to the criticism, Pashinian’s press secretary, Mane Gevorgian, said the government’s decision to pick Avetisian was based on his professional background and track record. “Mr. Avetisian’s candidacy will be discussed in the National Assembly, and deputies will have a chance to ask all questions preoccupying the public and receive answers to them from Mr. Avetisian,” said Gevorgian. Lilit Makunts, My Step’s parliamentary leader, said she and other pro-government lawmakers will likely meet Avetisian next week and ask him to set the record straight. Makunts stressed at the same time that Avetisian has “no direct connection” with any of the politically motivated court verdicts stemming from the 2008 bloodshed and arrests. Pashinian played a key role in Ter-Petrosian’s 2007-2008 opposition movement and was among the ex-president’s political allies imprisoned in the post-election crackdown. He fell out with Ter-Petrosian after being released from jail in 2011. President Armen Sarkissian and an assembly of Armenia’s judges are due to name two other nominees for the Constitutional Court. The parliament approved last month constitutional amendments calling the gradual resignation of seven of the court’s nine members installed before April 2018. Three of them are to resign with immediate effect. Also, Hrayr Tovmasian must quit as court chairman but remain a judge. Tovmasian and the ousted judges have refused to step down, saying that their removal is illegal. They have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to have them reinstated. Azerbaijan, Turkey To Hold Joint War Games • Emil Danielyan Azerbaijan -- Azerbaijani and Turkish troops hold a joint military exercise, May 1, 2019. The armed forces of Azerbaijan and Turkey will start joint exercises on Wednesday two weeks after deadly hostilities on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border which led Ankara to promise more military assistance to Baku. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry announced on Monday that the “large-scale” exercises will involve warplanes and artillery and air-defense systems. It did not specify the number of soldiers that will take part in them. A ministry statement cited by Azerbaijani news agencies said ground forces of the two states will simulate joint operations in Baku and Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave from August 1-5. It said separate drills involving the Turkish and Azerbaijani air forces will be held in these and three other locations from July 29 through August 10. The ministry also said that the war games will take place in accordance with a Turkish-Azerbaijani defense treaty and an annual plan of bilateral military cooperation. It did not link them with the July 12 outbreak of heavy fighting at a western section of Azerbaijan’s border with Armenia which lasted for several days and left at least 17 soldiers dead. Turkey - Turkish and Azerbaijani flags displayed during joint exercises held by the air forces of the two countries near Konya, 3Ma32015. The Armenian Foreign Ministry expressed concern over the drills. A ministry spokeswoman said they are part of Baku’s “provocative actions” aimed at obstructing international mediators’ efforts to de-escalate the situation at the border and kick-start Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. Turkey has blamed Armenia for the flare-up and reaffirmed its full support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Yerevan has decried the Turkish reaction, accusing Ankara of trying to destabilize the region, undercutting international efforts to resolve the conflict and posing a serious security threat to Armenia. Immediately after the border clashes, a high-level Azerbaijani army delegation flew to Ankara for talks with Turkey’s top military and defense industry officials. Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told it that the Armenians “will certainly pay for what they have done” to his country’s main regional ally. Another Turkish official expressed readiness to supply Turkish-made military drones and missiles to the Azerbaijani army. Such statements fuelled speculation about a direct Turkish intervention in the Karabakh conflict. Successive Armenian governments have relied on a military alliance with Russia and, in particular, the presence of a Russian military base in Armenia to prevent such a scenario. The base has up to 5,000 soldiers mostly deployed along the closed Armenian-Turkish border. Analysts believe Moscow would strongly oppose Turkish military presence in a region regarded by it as a zone of Russian geopolitical influence. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Ankara to exercise restraint in its reaction to the upsurge in Armenian-Azerbaijani tensions when he spoke with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu by phone on July 23. Armenia - Armenian and Russian troops hold joint military exercises. The Turkish and Azerbaijani militaries have held joint exercises on an annual basis for the last several years. They will apparently combine ground troop maneuvers with air force drills for the first time. Russian-Armenian exercises are also held regularly. A military official in Yerevan said last week that an Armenian army regiment and the Russian troops in Armenia will take part in Russia’s Caucasus-2020 war games scheduled for September. In preparation for these drills, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered on July 17 a snap "combat readiness check" of some 150,000 troops deployed in Russia’s southern and western military districts bordering. Azerbaijani Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov telephoned his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoygu the following day to discuss the military event. Shoygu reportedly assured him that it is not connected with the latest escalation in the Karabakh conflict zone. Armenia, Azerbaijan Urged To Restart Peace Talks Armenia -- Armenian soldiers hold a military exercise in Tavush province bordering Azerbaijan, July 21, 2020. U.S., Russian and French mediators have urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to gear up for “serious substantive negotiations” on resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict after recent deadly clashes on their border. In a weekend statement, the three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group also welcomed the current “relative stability” along a section of the border where heavy fighting broke out on July 12 and left at least 17 soldiers from both sides dead. The hostilities largely stopped on July 16. The conflicting parties have since reported sporadic ceasefire violations mainly involving small arms. An Armenian army soldier, Ashot Mikaelian, was shot dead at the volatile border section early on Monday in what the Defense Ministry in Yerevan described as Azerbaijani sniper fire. “The Co-Chairs appeal to the sides to take advantage of the current reduction in active hostilities to prepare for serious substantive negotiations to find a comprehensive solution to the conflict,” read the statement. “The Co-Chairs stress once more that refraining from provocative statements and actions, including threats or perceived threats to civilians or to critical infrastructure, is essential during this delicate period.” “The Co-Chairs note that recent public statements criticizing the joint efforts of the co-chairing countries, and/or seeking unilaterally to establish new “conditions” or changes to the settlement process format are not conducive to resuming a constructive dialogue,” it said. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev lambasted the mediators and threatened to withdraw from further peace talks just days before the flare-up on the border between Armenia’s northern Tavush province and Azerbaijan’s Tovuz district. Aliyev specifically blasted their regular assertions that the Karabakh conflict cannot be solved militarily. Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian meets with OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, Yerevan,27May,2019 For his part, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said last Thursday that Karabakh must become a “full-fledged party to negotiations” mediated by the Minsk Group co-chairs. The remark led Azerbaijan to claim that Armenia is seeking to change the format of peace talks. Baku has long refused to directly negotiate with the disputed territory’s ethnic Armenian leadership. In their latest statement, the mediators -- Andrew Schofer, Igor Popov and Stephane Visconti -- expressed readiness to meet soon with Aliyev and Pashinian “or their designees.” Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, they have not visited the conflict zone or met Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders elsewhere, organizing instead two video conferences with the foreign ministers of the two warring nations. The American, Russian and French envoys also emphasized that they continue to stand for a Karabakh settlement the key elements of which they had laid out in a March 2019 statement. In that statement they said that “any fair and lasting settlement” must involve “return of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control; an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh providing guarantees for security and self-governance; a corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh; future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh through a legally binding expression of will.” Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL Copyright (c) 2020 Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Inc. 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.