Author: Ani Basmajian

Following the recent large-scale act of aggression by the Azeri regime against the citizens of the Nagorno-Karabagh Republic (NKR/Artsakh), the Armenian Armed Forces demonstrated their determination and resolve in defending their ancestral homeland. As a result, the enemy suffered hundreds of casualties and approximately $170 million of loss in military hardware.

An all-Boston concert on Fri., April 29, will feature a number of artists and musicians from our community. All parties have donated their time and services, and the Armenian Cultural and Educational Center (ACEC) has graciously provided the Hovnanian Hall free of charge for this event, the reports.

The list of performers is growing, as is the list of the event sponsors. As of this writing, the event is co-sponsored by the ACEC, ARF “Sardarabad” Gomideh, Armenian Relief Society (ARS) “Leola Sassouni” and “Shushi” Chapters, the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) Greater Boston “Nejdeh” Chapter, Hamazkayin-Boston, Boston Homenetmen, St. Stephen’s Armenian Apostolic Church and School, and the Tekeyan Cultural Association.

The performers list includes Jasmine Atabekyan, the Arev Ensemble, the John Berberian Ensemble, Sevag Khatchadourian, Maroukhian Trio, Gegham Margarian, Meghri Choir, Shahan Nercessian, Markos Shahbazyan, and the Zangakner Children’s Choir.

One-hundred percent of the funds collected through this benefit concert will go directly to the NKR Ministry of Finance’s bank account to support fellow Armenians in need.

Tigran Hamasyan has been named winners of .

Tigran Hamasyan was named International Instrumentalist of the Year, Piano, for his Nonesuch Records debut album, Mockroot.

The ECHO Jazz awards are conferred by the Deutsche Phono-Akademie (German Recording Academy), akin to the Grammy Awards in the United States.

The organization has handed out the ECHO Music awards annually since 1992 and the ECHO Classic awards since 1994. The ECHO Jazz prizes are the latest addition, having launched in 2010, when Bill Frisell received the inaugural award for International Instrumentalist of the Year, Guitar.

The ECHO Jazz 2016 Awards ceremony will take place at Kampnagel in Hamburg on Thursday, May 26.

Thousands marched in Yerevan in memory of the soldiers killed along the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact over the past days.

The participants of the March of Silence visited Yerablur Pantheon to pay tribute to the memory of the fallen soldiers.

Russian Prime Minister said that “Turkish factor” in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict may be present, reports.

The “Turkish factor” in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict may be present, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday.

“There is a host of forces that are closely looking into the consequences of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for the situation in the Middle East and on Russia… All conflicts at a given time may in one way or another be a factor in political decisions. So I do not rule out that there are factors that are influencing the conflict from abroad. You mentioned the Turkish factor. The Turkish factor probably exists, at least because Turkey has expressed its position,” Medvedev said.

“In any case, at the moment… the truce has been declared, and it is maintained. If there are shootings, they are of a single character,” Medvedev said.

It is better to keep the conflict, than to to try to quickly resolve it at the cost of human lives, Dmitry Medvedev said.

“It’s better to maintain the situation as it is, than to shed blood,” Medvedev said.

The OSCE Minsk Group has issued the following statement today:

We, the representatives of the OSCE Minsk Group countries (Russian Federation, the United States of America, France, Belarus, Finland, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Turkey),  as well as the incoming Austrian OSCE Chair (2017) and the Serbian OSCE Chair (2015), strongly condemn the outbreak of unprecedented violence along the Line of Contact.  We extend our condolences to all affected families. We urge the sides to cease using force immediately.  There is no military solution to the conflict.

The deterioration of the situation on the ground demonstrates the need for an immediate negotiation, under the auspices of the Co-chairs, on a comprehensive settlement.

The representatives of the Minsk Group member states affirm their support for the Russian, American, and French Co-Chairs’ mediation efforts and welcome their plans to undertake direct consultations with the sides as soon as possible.

There are no citizens of the Republic of Armenia or ethnic Armenians on board the hijacked Egyptian airliner, the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports, quoting the Armenian Embassy in Cairo.

The Embassy closely follows the developments and will provide additional reports.

Most of the passengers on board a hijacked Egyptian airliner that was forced to divert to Cyprus have been freed, the airline says.

EgyptAir Flight MS181 was taken over after a passenger said he was wearing an explosives belt.

EgyptAir said negotiations at Larnaca airport had resulted in the release of all those on board, apart from the crew and four foreign passengers.

Latest reports from Cypriot media suggest there is just one hijacker who was motivated by “personal reasons” – his ex-wife is said to live in Cyprus – and may be seeking asylum, although this has not been confirmed.

Mr Obama has turned down Mr. Erdogan’s request to join him for the inauguration of a Turkish-funded mosque in Maryland, and the US president has no plans for a formal one-on-one meeting with his Turkish counterpart, who is a vital ally in the fight against Islamic State, US officials told

The White House is instead expected to have Vice President Joe Biden meet with Mr Erdogan.
Senior US administration officials said the decision not to meet Mr Erdogan while he is in Washington shouldn’t be taken as a slight because the two presidents met in November at the Group of 20 summit in Turkey, and spoke by phone in February.

“The president has been in such regular contact with few other world leaders,” said a senior U.S. administration official. “When it comes to the NSS, there is not a robust [bilateral] schedule, so it’s not as if Erdogan is being excluded.”

Delegations from 51 nations are expected to attend the summit, which begins Thursday. Mr Obama has only one planned one-on-one meeting—with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Turkey is at the center of the fight against Islamic State, the struggle to end Syria’s civil war, and the global refugee crisis, making Mr. Erdogan a key partner for Western leaders.

Mr Erdogan has alienated some allies by overseeing a crackdown on domestic critics and waging a new fight with Kurdish insurgents. The allies’ need to work with the Turkish president has tempered their public criticism.

“This is one of the least bright spots for Mr. Erdogan’s foreign-policy agenda, said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “He took a stellar personal relationship with the US president and look where it is today.”

The US and its allies need Mr Erdogan’s help in clamping down on Islamic State extremists leaving Syria and containing the migrant crisis stoked by the war in Syria.

Turkish officials have been trying for months to lay the groundwork for a meeting in Washington with Mr Obama.

Armenia welcomes Georgia’s support to the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group – the only format with an international mandate to mediate the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said at a joint press conference with his visiting Georgian counterpart Mikheil Janelidze.

Speaking about the Armenian-Georgian relations, Minister Nalbandian said the friendship based on mutual respect has been checked by time. “There are no problems between Armenia and Georgia, there are issues that can be solved with joint efforts,” Minister Nalbandian said.

At a meeting in Yerevan the Foreign Ministers of the two countries discussed issues related to the development of transport infrastructures, cooperation in the fields of energy, trade, finances, education and tourism.

“We continue the cooperation with Georgia to preserve the Armenian cultural heritage,” Minister Nalbandian said.

 

 

 

The Minsk Group Co-Chairs held a closed-door meeting on Nagorno Karabakh last week, featuring Western diplomats and experts from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Artsakh.

President of the Helsinki Initiative/92 Nagorno-Karabakh Committee Karen Ohanjanyan was one of the experts attending the Tbilisi meeting. Speaking to , the expert said “Azerbaijanis seemed concerned.”

“We learnt a very important thing, we got to know the position of Azerbaijan. Aware that they do not benefit from the attacks and are unable to win through military means, they lay the emphasis on the continuation of the negotiation process, they want Artsakh to join the talks,” Ohanjanyan said.

Attaching important to the meetings on the level of experts, Spokesman for the NKR President David Babayan said “Artsakh should participate in the development of any document.”

Political scientist Sergey Minasyan, who participated in the closed-door meeting on behalf of Armenia, said the meeting was different from all others as it featured no representatives of the civil society, only experts, including ones from Western countries.

“It became clear from the meeting that there is no real threat of change in the OSCE Minsk Group format, something Baku and Ankara long for,” he said.

Minasyan added that Turkey’s interference is now impossible also because of the Russian-Turkish crisis. “This country has lost the levers of interference not only in Syria, but also the South Caucasus,” he said.

Asbarez – On Tuesday night, undergraduate  student government bodies at both the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) overwhelmingly voted to divest over $74 million dollars of University of California bonds and investments in the Republic of Turkey for its continuous denial and perpetuation of the Armenian Genocide. UCSD and UCSB, within an hour of one another, became the seventh and eighth UC campuses to pass this resolution, respectively.

“Genocide and genocide denial go way past murder- it is a heinous act that aims to degrade an experience of a whole people and ethnicity,” remarked Seda Byurat, chairperson of the Armenian Genocide Centennial Committee (AGCC) at UCSD, during her presentation to the Associated Students government body.

The resolution at UCSD, titled “A Resolution to Divest from the Republic of Turkey to End the Perpetuation of the Armenian Genocide,” passed with a unanimous vote of 25-0-0 at the Price Forum Center at around 7:45 PM. It was presented and lobbied for by the UCSD AGCC and received overwhelming support from official UCSD student organizations. Student organization co-sponsors at UCSD included the Asian Pacific Islander Student Alliance, Black Student Union, Kaibigang Pilipin@, Movimiento Estudiantiol Chican@ de Aztlan, Muslim Student Association, Native American Student Alliance, Queer People of Color, Students with Disabilities Coalition, and Multicultural Greek Council.

The resolution at UCSB passed with an overwhelming 21-0-1 vote at the Flying A Studio of the University Center at around 8:25 p.m., and was presented and lobbied for by the UCSB ASA and Armenian students on campus.

“We need to act as Armenian diasporans and use the resources that we have as college students to do something. It is our duty as diasporans to fight for our global Armenian community,” said Sose Abraamyan, vice-president of UCSB’s Armenian Students’ Association. “I’m so proud of our divestment team at UCSB but also the Armenian Youth Federation and All-Armenian Student Association for giving us this opportunity.”

These resolutions are part of a larger initiative called #DivestTurkey, which calls on all institutions to divest from the Republic of Turkey until Armenian genocide justice is realized, which is spearheaded by the Armenian Youth Federation Western United States (AYF), which is a grassroots community organization dedicated to social justice and empowerment of youth, the All-Armenian Student Association, campus Armenian Students’ Associations (ASAs), and other local activists.

AYF Central Executive chairperson Gev Iskajyan stated, “The #DivestTurkey initiative began in order to connect and provide resources for university students and activists on campuses across America to divest all holdings in the Republic of Turkey’s government until reparations for the Armenian genocide are met and until genocide is no longer a profitable venture.”

Within 13 months, undergraduate student government bodies at UC Los Angeles, Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, Riverside, Santa Cruz, San Diego, and Santa Barbara, and the UC Student Association, the official voice of over 240,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students, have passed official resolutions calling on the UC to divest all financial holdings in the Republic of Turkey immediately and refrain from making any further investments in the Republic of Turkey in order to remove the UC’s complicity in the perpetuation of the Armenian Genocide.
“The AYF plans to continue building on the momentum of the #DivestTurkey initiative, working with colleges and universities in order to introduce similar resolutions in the coming weeks and months,” confirmed Iskajyan.