Author: Basmajian Ani

Turkish marasmus

Yerkir/arm
18 March 05

Last week the Turkish media were filled with extremely hostile
publications on Armenian-Turkish relations. Huriyet referred to a
publication in Washington Post where crimes against humanity committed
in the XX century were mentoined.

Among other states Turkey was mentioned in that artcile for having
committed the Armenian Genocide in 1915-1918 during which 1,5 milion
Armenian were killed.

The Washington Post article was based on sources provided by the
American Museum of Holocaust which had annoyed the Turks to a larger
extent because in this way they had deservedly been placed on one
level with Nazi Germany. CNN-Turk channel referred to the same article
noting that the American Armenian Diaspora was standing behind the
publication.

The Turkish Milliyet newspaper also published a similar artcile in
which the list of other genocides cited in the American article was
presented. Following the Armenian Genocide, the 1923-33 famine in
Ukraine that took lives of 7 million people, the Japanese massacres
of 300 000 Chinese people in 1937, the Jewish Holocaust of 1938-1945,
the massacres of Pol Pot regime in 1975-79, Bosnia and Rwanda were
mentioned. The Turkish NTV channel noted that the Armenian lobbying
groups in America are doing their best to achieve recognition of the
Armenian Genocide this year.

Turkiye newspaper also touched upon the article in Washington Post
noting that the newspaper is one of the most influential media in the
world. Turkiye newspaper stated that the insistence on the Armenian
Genocide is â”a political lieâ”.

The newspaper reiterated the official Turkish position adding that no
Turkish government had ever pursued discriminatory policies against
any national or religious groups, including the Armenians.

According to the Turkiye newspaper, even though 200 000 Armenians were
killed during deportations, this can by no means be compared to the
crimes committed by the West that has committed so many â”massacres
and acts of violenceâ” in the past 90 years that should be ashamed
of its acts.

One of Turkeyâ’s most recent expressions of hostility is the
hampering of the terms for plants and animals through exclusion of
Armenia and Kurdistan. As noted in Yeni Shafaq newspaper, scholars
from some Turkish universities have been engaged in these efforts.

We do not intend to analyze manifestations of Turkeyâ’s anti-Armenian
inferiority complex. Let us just remind the famous incident of the
late XIX century when Sultan Abdul Hamid banned usage of H2O formula
because he saw an obvious hint of personal insult in it. You should
consider seeing a doctor, gentlemen…

After all this Milleyet is still surprised at the suggestion of
France’s main parliamentary force and its leader Sarcosy to vote
against the EU Constitution and Turkey’s membership in the EU.

Another Turkish newspaper, Sabah, published an anti-French article
suggesting that France that is speaking about the Armenian Genocide,
should itself be ready to recognize the genocide committed on May
8-22, 1945 in Algeria. Sabah believes that the actions of the French
in Algeria caused the death of 10-45 thousand people according to
different estimates.

The Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanianâ’s answer to the
Turkish Prime Minister Erdoganâ’s appeal to solve the issue of the
Armenian Genocide through a dialog of historians has also caused a
wide response in the Turkish media. On the next day after Oskanian’s
statement the Turkish media such as Milleyet, NTV and others, were
merely citing his words referring to the Armenian sources.

However, several days later an anti-Armenian hysteria was launched in
the Turkish media. Zaman newspaper wrote that the Turkish scholars
are always ready to enter a dialog with their Armenian colleagues.
The Turkish scholars voiced their disappointment that this dialog
had failed obviously referring to the planned Vienna Armenian-Turkish
Platform.

Turkish Daily News published an article by ex-member of the
Turkish-Armenain Reconciliation Committee, former diplomat Gundus Aqtan
that analyzes the possibilities for the recognition of the Armenian
Genocide in Germany. Aqtan believes Germanyâ’s current leadershipâ’s
support for Turkeyâ’s EU membership is favorable for the Turks.

At the same time he points out that the anti-Turkish moods in Germany
tend to intensify. Analyzing the position of the German opposition
Christian-Democrats Aqtan notes that it aims at presenting the events
of the World War I from the point of view of confrontation of Muslims
and Christians. Aqtan thus notes that it is neccassry to analyze the
facts presented in the German Christian-Democrats’ formula from a more
”scientific” point of view.

It should be reminded that Aqtan had made numerous anti-Armenain
statements when he was a member of the Turkish-Armeanin Reconciliation
Committee. He left the Committee when the American Center for
Transition Justice concluded that the term ‘Genocide’ is applicable
to the tragic events of 1915.

–Boundary_(ID_uCwUfG/rOra0PODsdgRc2g)–

Leopold’s ghost vies with spirit of truth

Irish Times
Mar 19, 2005

A Belgian museum may, at last, be slowly coming to terms with the
country’s colonial past, writes Adam Hochschild

No country likes to come to terms with embarrassing parts of its past.
Japanese schoolbooks still whitewash the atrocities of the second
World War, and the Turkish government continues to deny the Armenian
genocide. Until about 1970 the millions of visitors to Colonial
Williamsburg in Virginia saw no indication that roughly half the
inhabitants of the original town were slaves.

Until recently, one of the world’s more blatant denials of history had
been taking place at the Royal Museum of Central Africa, an immense,
chateau-like building on the outskirts of Brussels. It was founded a
century ago by Belgium’s King Leopold II who, from 1885 to 1908,
literally owned the Congo as the world’s only privately controlled
colony.

Right through the 1990s the museum’s magnificent collection of African
art, tools, masks and weapons – among the largest and best anywhere,
much of it gathered during the 23 years of Leopold’s rule – reflected
nothing of what had happened in the territory during that period. It
was as if a great museum of Jewish art and culture in Berlin revealed
nothing about the Holocaust.

The holocaust visited upon the Congo under Leopold was not an attempt
at deliberate extermination, like the one the Nazis carried out on
Europe’s Jews, but its overall toll was probably higher.

Soon after the king got his hands on the colony, there was a worldwide
rubber boom, and Leopold turned much of the Congo’s adult male
population into forced labour for gathering wild rubber.

His private army marched into village after village and held the women
hostage to force the men to go into the rain forest, often for weeks
out of each month, to tap rubber vines. This went on for nearly two
decades.

Although Leopold made a fortune estimated at well over $1 billion in
today’s dollars, the results were catastrophic for the
Congolese. Labourers were often worked to death, and many female
hostages starved. With few people to hunt, fish or cultivate crops,
food grew scarce.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled the forced-labour regime, but
deep in the forest they found little to eat and no shelter, and
travellers came upon their bones for years afterwards. Tens of
thousands more rose up in rebellion and were shot down. The birthrate
plummeted. Disease – principally sleeping sickness – took a toll in
the millions among half-starved and traumatised people who otherwise
might have survived.

Leopold’s murderous regime was exposed in its own day by a brave band
of activists including Roger Casement, American, British and Swedish
missionaries, and a hard-working British journalist, E.D. Morel. Any
historian of Africa knows the basic story, and many have written about
parts of it.

In 1998 I finished a book on the subject, King Leopold’s Ghost, which
was published in Belgium and drew furious denunciations from royalists
and conservatives. The foreign minister sent a special message to
Belgian diplomats abroad, counselling them on how to answer awkward
questions from readers.

Asked if the museum planned changes, a senior official of the Royal
Museum of Central Africa replied that some were under study, “but
absolutely not because of the recent disreputable book by an
American”.

The museum’s current director, Guido Gryseels, caught between pressure
from human rights activists on the one hand and rumoured strong
pressure from the government and the royal family on the other,
several years ago appointed a commission of historians to study the
Leopold period and determine just what did happen.

The move won favourable news coverage, but was in essence an odd
one. Usually commissions take evidence and hear witnesses; they don’t
study the distant past.

Under Gryseels, the museum has gradually begun rewording signs on its
exhibits, and several weeks ago it opened a new exhibit, “Memory of
Congo: the Colonial Era”, accompanied by a catalogue, a thick,
lavishly illustrated coffee-table book of several dozen scholarly
articles.

Judging from the latter, the museum has pulled its head out of the
sand – but only part way. There are a few atrocity photos, but they
are far outnumbered by pictures of dancers, musicians and happy black
and white families. The catalogue is rife with evasions and denials.

The commission of historians, for instance, sets the loss of
population during the most brutal colonial period at 20 per cent. This
ignores the fact that in 1919 an official body of the Belgian colonial
government estimated the toll at 50 per cent. And that the
Belgian-born Jan Vansina, professor emeritus of history and
anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and widely
regarded as the greatest living student of Central African peoples,
makes the same estimate today.

One wall panel at the new museum exhibit raises – and debunks – the
charge, “Genocide in the Congo?” But this is a red herring: no
reputable scholar of the Congo uses the word. Forced labour is
different from genocide, although both can be fatal.

Most of all, it is strange to see the catalogue’s articles on the bus
system of Leopoldville, Congo national parks and the Congo visit of a
Belgian crown prince, but not a single piece on the deadly
forced-labour system.

Belgium is not alone in failing to face up to its own history. All
countries mythologise their pasts and confront the worst of it only
slowly. But once they do, there are positive discoveries as well as
painful ones.

The Royal Museum of Central Africa has figures it could
celebrate. Stanislas Lefranc was a devout Catholic and monarchist who
went to the Congo 100 years ago to work as a magistrate. In pamphlets
and newspaper articles he later published in Belgium, he spoke out
bravely against the cruelties he witnessed.

Jules Marchal, who died recently, was a Belgian diplomat in Africa
who, in his spare time, wrote the definitive history of forced labour
in the Congo, much of it based on years of searching files for
duplicate copies of documents that King Leopold had ordered
destroyed. Both men were shunned and ostracised in their
time. Confronting the past is not just about acknowledging guilt, but
rediscovering heroes.

Adam Hochschild is the author of King Leopold’s Ghost (Mariner Books,
1999) and Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an
Empire’s Slaves (Houghton Mifflin, 2005).

Armenian paper warns Karabakh leader against yielding to Moscow’s pressure

Haykakan Zhamanak, Yerevan
17 Mar 05

Text of Arman Karapetyan’s report by Armenian newspaper Haykakan
Zhamanak on 17 March headlined “Stepanakert under Russian pressure”

The recent statement made in Moscow by Abkhaz President Sergey Bagapsh
that it will become known in the next few days where and when the
presidents of the self-proclaimed republics of Abkhazia, South
Ossetia, Transdniestria and Nagornyy Karabakh will meet has caused
anxiety among some circles in Armenia and the Nagornyy Karabakh
Republic [NKR].

The point is that NKR President Arkadiy Gukasyan is in Moscow at the
moment in order to discuss the aforesaid issue. The presidents of
South Ossetia and Transdniestria may also be there, which means that
the presidents may have already met. However, for fear of being
labelled as a force fanning the flames of the conflict, Moscow does
not want to make it officially known that it has arranged such a
meeting. And so Armenia and the NKR are afraid that Gukasyan may yield
to Russian pressure and agree to take part in such a meeting and what
is even worse, may agree to host it in Stepanakert. The point is that
for many years already, Moscow has been trying to organize such a
meeting not somewhere else, but in Stepanakert.

The first reason is that as a state, the NKR is the most successful
among the four regions. Second, the NKR army has managed to take
control of several Azerbaijani districts, which has created some sort
of aura around it. On the other hand, unlike the other three, the NKR
has avoided having the image of Russia’s puppet, which does not please
Moscow, of course. So by assembling its puppets in Stepanakert, Russia
will get the legitimate role of a post-Soviet conflict manager and
will create a format allowing it to have a single tool to control the
conflicts.

However, what is good for Moscow is not acceptable for the Armenian
side. First of all, the Armenian side has always stated that it is
against drawing parallels between the four conflicts saying that each
conflict has its own peculiarities and history and should be given a
special solution. If the NKR joins the above format, it will therefore
admit that the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict is similar to the conflicts
in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdniestria, which will make our
difficult state even more difficult. Besides that, the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict is given probably the most serious international
negotiating format by the USA, Russia and France, which are directly
involved in this process.

So if the NKR joins Moscow’s “self-proclaimed” format, it will be a
slap in the face of the other two OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and the
[OSCE Minsk Group] format in general. This would play into the hands
of Azerbaijan which never misses a chance to accuse the OSCE Minsk
Group of inefficiency. Inefficiency is not, however, the real
point. The real point is that the other post-Soviet conflicts whose
formats, as we have already said, are inferior to the format of the
OSCE Minsk Group, are regarded by the international community as an
internal affair of a state: the conflicts in Abkhazia and South
Ossetia are internal problems of Georgia and Transdniestria of
Moldova. This is not the case with the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict,
which is still regarded as an international problem. But there is a
big danger that it will stop being an international problem.

Hence, the aggravation of the NKR’s relations with the especially
attentive international community would help Azerbaijan put the
Nagornyy Karabakh conflict on the same level as the other three
conflicts, which is unacceptable and would mean a setback for the
1988-1989 situation. This is the problem Arkadiy Gukasyan is now
facing in Moscow. Of course, logic says that he should not accede to
Moscow’s proposal, but as far as we know, the Russian Foreign Ministry
is exerting huge pressure both on Armenia and the NKR.

Some even say that this will be a precondition for Vladimir Putin’s
visit to Armenia. In this light, it seems that Armenia might have been
used by Gukasyan as the first target for pressure. This may keep
Armenia away from the puppet format. One cannot say for sure yet if
Armenia is succeeding in doing so. This does not, however, make
Gukasyan’s role less important – for at least formally he has the
right to have a final say on the matter.

EXPERIMENTAL CENSUS

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
14 March 05

According to the NKR government decree issued on November 16, 2004, on
March 21-30 an experimental census will be taken in Stepanakert, the
village of Noragyugh, Askeran region and the village of Nerkin
Horatagh, Martakert region. The personal data is confidential and
will not be published.

AA.
14-03-2005

PanArmenian News
March 15 2005

GERMAN AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA DID NOT COMMENT ON ISSUES OF IMPACT OF
GERMAN-TURKISH RELATIONS ON PROMOTION OF GERMANY-ARMENIA RELATIONS

15.03.2005 03:32

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ German Ambassador to Armenia Dr. Heike Renate
Peitsch did not comment on issues, referring to the impact of the
German-Turkish relations on promotion of Germany’s relations with
Armenia, Regnum news agency reported. She also refrained from
comments on Germany’s position over lifting the blockade of the
Armenian-Turkish border and recognition of the Armenian Genocide in
Ottoman Turkey within the context of prospects of Turkey’s accession
to the EU, as well as prospects of Bundestag passing a respective
resolution taking into account the position of the Democratic and
Christian-Socialist Unions of Germany (CDU/CSU). It should be
reminded that these `aiming at contributing to rapprochement between
Turkey and Armenia, as well as clearing out the share of the German
Reich participation in those tragic events’ made a proposal in
Bundestag `to commemorate the Armenian Genocide victims.’

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
March 14 2005

Universal Postal Union opposes stamp publication for separatist Upper
Garabagh

Baku, March 11, AssA-Irada

The Universal Postal Union has regarded Armenia’s publication of a
postal stamp on behalf of the self-proclaimed `Upper Garabagh
Republic’ as unacceptable. The Union has forwarded a letter
supporting Azerbaijan’s position to its member-states, says the
Foreign Ministry spokesman Matin Mirza.
The document says that since Upper Garabagh is an integral part of
Azerbaijan, publication of such a stamp is out of the question.*

Ode on a Grecian urn
By NECHAMA VEEDER

The Jerusalem Post
Mar. 12, 2005 17:52 | Updated Mar. 12, 2005 22:00

There’s always been a problem of lack of visitors,” says Fawzi Ibrahim,
curator of the Rockefeller Museum. But the dearth in museum guests
has never been more pronounced than in the past four years of violence.

There are always a few guests in the museum, perhaps up to 20,
Ibrahim says, and things did pick up during the summer season and last
Christmas. But the visitors, who might include archeology students,
the occasional east Jerusalem resident or even a stray tourist,
never come in droves.

On a recent weekday, there were almost no signs of human life
throughout the vast halls, except for a stray security guard and a
visitor to the Antiquities Authority, housed in the same complex,
seeking Ibrahim’s help on his research project.

Although it is a fairly mild winter’s day, the lack of heating spreads
a chill through the 1930s-era, high walled structure. The museum is one
of Jerusalem’s oldest. When the British built the structure during the
Mandate era, they didn’t feel that the Jerusalem winters justified
central heating. Now, says Ibrahim, for the number of visitors,
“it isn’t worth it.”

On weekdays, guests must either travel to the museum by public
transportation or park in one of the nearby parking lots. The
Antiquities Authority parking, next to the museum, can be used on
Saturdays.

The parking problem, Ibrahim adds, “is another reason people don’t
come.”

But when it comes to the museum’s contents, Ibrahim becomes more
animated.

“There is the display from the Mandate era,” he lectures, now in his
element. “The policy is to leave the exhibits as they are. It is an
experience for those who are used to modern museums.”

Now run by the Israel Museum, the Rockefeller Archeological Museum
was opened in 1938. It houses antiquities unearthed in excavations
conducted in the country mainly during the time of the British Mandate
(1919-1948).

In 1925, after James Henry Breasted, founder and director of the
University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, visited Palestine, he
approached American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. for a
donation to build an archeological museum. Rockefeller agreed to
contribute $2 million.

The site chosen for the museum was known as Karm e-Sheikh, just
outside the Old City walls, and the cornerstone was laid in 1930.

Architect Austen St. Barbe Harrison, who designed the museum, combined
Western and Eastern elements.

The concept of integrating several wings in a single structure is
a nod to Western tradition. The exhibition halls, with high windows
that let in natural light, were designed to resemble a cathedral. The
library is reminiscent of medieval architecture.

>>From the Eastern and local building traditions, Harrison adopted
the use of stone carving and openwork techniques, the shapes of the
entrances, domed and vaulted ceilings, Armenian tiles and woodwork.

The tiles, as well as the meeting room’s ceiling, were designed by
Armenian tiler David Ohanessian, one of the region’s pioneer craftsmen.

The museum’s permanent exhibition, established by the first curator,
John H. Iliffe, displays artifacts in chronological order form the
Stone Age (about two million years ago) until 1700 CE.

Ibrahim also coordinates temporary exhibitions, such as the exhibition
of Image and Artifact and a display on the museum’s history, which
he says may now become a permanent feature.

Originally, the museum’s official name was The Palestine Archeological
Museum, but it has always been commonly known as the Rockefeller
Museum.

ARMRUSGASPROM TO EXPORT ELECTRICITY TO GEORGIA UNTIL MARCH 31

YEREVAN, MARCH 11, NOYAN TAPAN. The Director General of ArmRusgasprom
Karen Karapetian stated at the March 11 press conference that
ArmRusgasprom is currently conducting negotiations on the issue of
electricity export to Georgia with the United Georgian Distribution
Energy Company. According to a contract with the Georgian company,
which expires on March 31, ArmRusgasprom has been supplying electricity
to Georgia since October 16, 2004. Under the terms of the contract,
during the indicated period, over 100 mln kw/h of electricity will
be exported to Georgia. K.Karapetian said that the Georgian side has
made payments by 100%.

Turkish Daily News, Turkey –
10 Mar 2005

Semih Idiz: On and on it goes, where it stops everyone knows
Thursday, March 10, 2005

Officials in Ankara may be angry with Hansjorg Kretschmer, the EU’s
outspoken representative here. But Ambassador Kretschmer doesn’t act
in a void. He reflects the mood in EU capitals. The feedback that
Ankara got from Monday’s Troika meeting should have made this
patently clear. The shocking display of police brutality against
women in Istanbul over the weekend, on the other hand, showed that
Ambassador Kretschmer has a point.

We have a saying in Turkey: “He who speaks the truth will be driven
out of nine villages.” We say this for those whose remarks reflect
unsavory truths that people don’t want to hear. The government would
do well to approach the remarks by the EU’s representative as some
kind of an “early warning system” rather than trying to make them
disappear with angry ripostes.

The truth is that we Turks — let alone Europeans, not all of who
are sincere by any means in this — are asking if the government is
really up to the task as far as Turkey’s EU process is concerned. It
seems that Turkish right-wing nationalism, which has always had an
anti-reformist streak, is proving to be a harder nut to crack than
assumed. There can be no other explanation for the foot-dragging by
the government in the area of human rights.

Human rights continue to be considered by ultra-nationalists in
Turkey — including former ambassadors who are present-day
politicians in supposedly social democratic parties — as “a means
used by the wily West to undo our country.” Let us also recall that
rioting police — and I don’t mean “riot police,” even though those
who were rioting at the time were riot police — had marched
illegally in Turkey only a few years ago, chanting, “Down with the
EU!” and “Death to human rights!” It’s all there in the Turkish
papers of the day if anyone is interested.

After the display of unspeakable brutality against boisterous, but
nevertheless harmless, women in Istanbul over the weekend, one would
have expected the government to act immediately on its own, and not
because of the public outcry in Europe, in order to weed out those
responsible. One would have expected this because of the government’s
self-professed “reformism” and supposed vow to “show zero tolerance
to ill-treatment and torture.”

But this was not to be. We saw the almost instinctive approach come
into play here once again. This was the traditional attempt to make
excuses for policemen who are clearly driven by feelings of vengeance
and to shift the blame onto the victims of their anger. In other
words, the Kafkaesque, “if you are being tortured or beaten by the
state, there must be a good reason for it” argument was apparent once
again.

This alone is enough to vindicate those skeptics who argue
knowingly that it is all very well to enact laws and utter fancy
words relating to these, but the proof of sincerity will always rest
in the sphere of implementation. In other words, the sphere that
Turkey has historically failed in.

The famous “Gulhane Hatti Humayunu,” or the “Imperial Edict of
Gulhane,” was proclaimed in 1839. Among other things it also foresaw
equality between races and religions and was the first effort by the
declining Ottoman Empire to modernize itself socially in order to
drag itself out of the morass that it had fallen into as a tyrannical
and theocratic eastern monarchy. It failed miserably because there
was no real desire in the ossified imperial state apparatus to
implement it. Instead, the “interference by foreign powers” argument
was used as far as back as then to evade the responsibilities that
this edict pointed to.

In 1856, after the Crimean War against Russia during which the
British, French and Ottoman Empires were allied, “Turkey” — as it
was designated by the Europeans then — was invited to join the
“Concert of Europe.” Again the historic opportunity to modernize and
democratize — to the extent that was possible in any country in
those days — was squandered. In 1908 the “Young Turk Revolution”
aimed to end the brutal tyranny of Abdulhamid and was hailed by
Turks, Armenians and Greeks alike. It did not take long for that
revolution to deteriorate into a modern-day ultra-nationalist tyranny
under which all of these peoples of the empire suffered greatly and
without exception.

A historic moment of hope emerged for Turks with the advent of
Atatürk and his truly reformist program, which courageously made
Turkey take a quantum leap forward in order to catch up with the
civilized world. That hope was eventually overshadowed by traditional
political and social cynicism after his death, when government after
government proved that old habits die hard in Turkey.

In 1963 Turkey signed the Ankara Agreement with the EEC. Today we
are in 2005, and it needs no imagination to understand the
opportunities squandered by successive Turkish governments over the
four decades since that signing. In 1999 Turkey was “re-accepted” as
a candidate for EU membership. A visibly elated Prime Minister Ecevit
came back from the Helsinki summit proclaiming that Turkey would be a
member in three to five years. But he lost his EU enthusiasm
overnight, and it was only towards the end of his turbulent term in
office that he suddenly remembered the EU and the reforms needed for
this perspective to mature.

Given such a history it is natural for skeptics to wonder now if we
are merely seeing a repeat of all this. In other words, is the
Erdogan government reverting to the traditional habit of appeasing
conservative and ultra-nationalist elements deeply embedded in the
state apparatus rather than showing the leadership necessary to bring
European standards to Turks?

How, for example, can the government justifiably explain the
attempts at trying to protect the policemen who pumped a 12-year-old
kid with 13 bullets — in what many jurists say is a clear-cut case
of extrajudicial killing. How, for example, can this government
explain why its knee-jerk reaction was — and continues to be — an
effort to come up with excuses for the brutal policemen who
mercilessly beat up a women?

If the Erdogan government is truly sincere about being “reformist”
— and serious doubts have emerged over this — it should stop trying
to protect people who act as if Turkey is a police state, and —
what’s much worse — get away with this with impunity. If this does
not bother the government, then it must be true what some people say
when they argue that this EU business is merely a game being played
for political gain by the AKP at the expense of the sincere
expectations of a large number of Turks. In that case there is only
one song for us Turks to sing: “On and on it goes, where it stops
everyone knows~E”

–Boundary_(ID_GLoXtsCaOQAkAfSQsQ7Ntw)–

YEGHISHE AWARD

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR)
10 March 05

On March 5 the annual Yeghishe Award took place at the hall of
meetings of the NKR government. The Yeghishe Award of the NKR
government began in 1992, a hard time for the country, and a hundred
people have already been awarded. Among the laureates there were
people from different countries, of different nationalities.
Addressing the laureates, NKR vice Prime Minister Ararat Danielian
pointed out the role of people of culture in the accomplishment of
the state. The government of Artsakh does not overlook the
achievements in the spheres of literature, culture, science. It is
already a tradition to celebrate such victories, appreciate people
who contribute to the progress in the country. In literature the
prize was awarded to Maxim Hovhannissian (for his collection of short
stories â~@~Harar, Hararâ~@~]), Tatevik Soghomonian (for her
selection â~@~I am a Starâ~@~] and the collection of poems â~@~A
Non-Absent Lookâ~@~]) and Hovhannes Grigorian (for his collection
â~@~Half Timeâ~@~]). Samvel Karapetian was awarded for his work
â~@~North Artsakhâ~@~]. Levon Harutiunian was awarded for his
philological collection of Artsakh lore, and Mher Harutiunian
received the Yeghishe for his work â~@~Artsakh War and the Course of
the Defence Army in 1991-1994â~@~]. The theatre prize was awarded to
Samvel Virabian for his roles in a number of plays. In art Robert
Askarian was awarded for his works â~@~I am the Light of the
Worldâ~@~], â~@~Doors of Heavenâ~@~] and â~@~Nightâ~@~]. In
journalism Leonid Martirossian received the Yeghisheh for his series
of newspaper stories â~@~Karabakh Diaryâ~@~], Aris Grigorian for his
series of articles â~@~I am the Soldier of My Countryâ~@~]. Zakar
Keshishian was awarded for creating the choir â~@~Varandaâ~@~] and
his activity as a choirmaster. In answer to my question what future
plans Leonid Martirossian has, he said, â~@~Frankly speaking I do
not plan my work as a journalist. A journalist usually responds to
the events taking place in life. The motive for my participation in
the Yeghishe Award was the statement made at the meeting of the
journalists of Azerbaijan about the passiveness of the Armenian
journalists, and particularly those from Artsakh in the sphere of
information where we lost to the Azerbaijanis. I do not share this
opinion because the majority of my articles are on the problem of
Artsakh, the policy of Azerbaijan, the distortion of the issue of
Artsakh by Azerbaijan. I had a series of articles published in the
newspaper â~@~Golos Armeniâ~@~] in Russian, as well as in Moscow
press. I submitted my articles to the committee of awards and I am
happy to have won the prize.â~@~] The chairman of the Writers Union
of NKR Vardan Hakobian informed that the committee of awards extended
to the government the offer to increase the prize money to increase
interest in the awards. The government has accepted the offer, and a
corresponding program has already been worked out.

AA.
10-03-2005

–Boundary_(ID_aBy1JOJeLD6kmbHJjncDiQ)–