Author: Chaltikian Arsine

TURKISH MP SAYS TURKEY NOT TO RATIFY PROTOCOLS

Yerkir
18.02.2010 15:17

Yerevan (Yerkir) – The Zurich protocols can never be ratified in
the Turkish parliament after the decision of Armenian Constitutional
Court, Turkey’s former ambassador to Washington, former head of Foreign
Ministry’s executive office, MP from CHP Shukru Elekdagh has told APA.

"While reading the decision of the Armenian Constitutional Court,
we see that Kars and Moscow treaties are not effective for them.

Secondly, Armenia will not give up its activity to "prove" the
"genocide" against Armenians in 1915. Thirdly, the historical
commission envisaged in the protocols has no authority to investigate
the events of 1915. For Armenians, Turkey’s eastern provinces are
"Western Armenia". It is claimed that establishment of relations
between Turkey and Armenia are not connected with Karabakh problem.

The text of the protocols signed between Turkey and Armenia are open
for comment," he said.

KAZAKHSTAN TO DEFINE FORMULA OF BEHAVIOR IN KARABAKH SETTLEMENT

news.az
Feb 17 2010
Azerbaijan

"By results of the two visits to Kazakhstan will try to work out a
formula of conduct."

Kazakhstan will try to work out a formula of behavior in support of
the efforts that have been taken by many parties for the settlement
of Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Roman Vasilenko, chairman of the
committee of international information of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry,
said while commenting on the visit of the OSCE chairman and Foreign
Minister of Kazakhstan Kanat Saudabayev to Azerbaijan and Armenia,

"By results of the two visits to Kazakhstan will try to work out a
formula of conduct", said Vasilenko.

The OSCE chairman visited Azerbaijan and Armenia within the framework
of the South Caucasus tourney held on February 14-17 and is currently
in Georgia.

AFTER 11 YEARS’ INTERVAL OSCE SUMMIT IS LIKELY TO TAKE PLACE IN LATE 2010 IN KAZAKHSTAN

Noyan Tapan
Feb 16, 2010

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 16, NOYAN TAPAN. Armenia supports Kazakhstan’s
President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s initiative to hold an OSCE summit in
late 2010 in Kazakhstan. RA Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian stated
at a February 16 joint press conference with OSCE Chairman-in-Office,
Kazakhstan’s State Secretary-Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev. He
mentioned that Armenia also supports the idea of holding an informal
consultation of OSCE member states’ Foreign Ministers in July in
Kazakhstan.

K. Saudabayev, in his turn, noted that 11 years have passed since
the last OSCE summit in Istanbul. New challenges and threats emerged
in that period, many of which changed the traditional perception of
war and enemy, in particular, international terrorism. Protracted
conflicts have not been solved, either, on the contrary, new ones
have appeared, Afghanistan is as before a source of international
terrorism and supplier of drugs, there are problems of European
security and new architecture. "These are the issues that should
become a subject of discussion of OSCE member-states’ leaders,"
the OSCE Chairman-in-Office considers.

PURCHASE AND SALE TRANSACTIONS OF MILLION 865 THOUSAND CONDUCTED AT NASDAQ OMX ARMENIA OJSC ON FEBRUARY 16

Noyan Tapan
Feb 16, 2010

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 16, NOYAN TAPAN. Purchase and sale transactions of
million 865 thousand at the weighted average exchange rate of 381.55
drams per dollar were conducted at Nasdaq OMX Armenia OJSC on February
16. According to the press service of the Central Bank of Armenia,
the closing price was 381.5 drams.

A WAR FOR NAGORNO-KARABAKH: A HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO OF HOSTILITIES BETWEEN YEREVAN AND BAKU
by Konstantin Chuprin

WPS Agency
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
February 15, 2010 Monday
Russia

HOW CAN AZERBAIJAN SOLVE THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH PROBLEM IN A MILITARY
WAY?; President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev frequently announced a
possible military solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem in case
of ruining of the negotiation process. There are no reasons to doubt
that the armed forces of Azerbaijan have a plan of operation for
taking of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent territories controlled by
Armenian armed forces.

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev frequently announced a possible
military solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem in case of ruining
of the negotiation process.

There are no reasons to doubt that the armed forces of Azerbaijan
have a plan of operation for taking of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent
territories controlled by Armenian armed forces.

It is possible to presume with a big degree of probability
that operation of the armed forces of Azerbaijan for taking of
Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijani territories outside of it controlled
by Armenian forces makes provisions for simultaneous offensive in
the following main directions:

– from Murovdag mountain ridge with a task to reach Kelbadzhar (by
airborne and mountain rifle units, provisions are definitely made
for operations of assault units from helicopters and most likely for
limited landing of special units on parachutes);

– towards Terter-Agdere and further along the Sarsang water reservoir,
Terter River and Murovdag ridge with reaching of the line of Tutkhun
and Bulandykhsu rivers and follow-up joining to the Azerbaijani forces
in the area of Kelbadzhar (strikes can be delivered in the joining
directions to the north and south of the Sarasang water reservoir);

– from the side of the Karabakh plain in the main direction of
Agdam-Khodzhaly-Khankendki (Stepanakert) along the Karkarchay River;

– from the side of the Milskaya plain in the directions of: Khodzhavend
– Shusha, Fizuli – Gadrut – Dzhebrail, Goradiz – Dzhebrail – Zangilan
(in the Geyanskaya steppe along the Araks River bordering Iran).

These strikes should split and fragment defense of the Armenian party
and be developed as fast as possible in depth to prevent delivery of
reserves from Armenia proper.

Further blows of Azerbaijani combined-arms groups should be directed
with equal speed in the directions of: Zangilan – Gubadly, Gubadly
– Lachin (along the Akera River) and Shusha-Lachin (joining blows
for the purpose of liquidation of the Lachin corridor vital for
Nagorno-Karabakh).

Cleaning up of the territory in the area of Gubadly-Lachin and
Istisu-Kelbadzhar between the Karabakh ridge and Karabakh highland
bordering Armenia will evidently be the final stage (after taking of
the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic proper).

There is no doubt that the offensive will be preceded by massive blows
of bomber and attack aviation, tactical missile systems Tochka-U
and long-range artillery at the most important nodes of the enemy
defense and its populated spots (including the blows for the purpose
of liquidation and expulsion of civilians, we should not have any
illusions about this).

It is obvious that the air force of Azerbaijan will try to "blind"
the air defense forces of the enemy using the anti-radar missiles
KH-58 purchased supposedly in Ukraine.

If the combat operations are confined to the internationally recognized
territory of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijan will use the main forces of
the first (Yevlakhsky) army corps and a part of forces of the fourth
(Gyandzhinsky) and second (Bakinsky) army corps formations, special
forces (airborne forces, special-purpose forces and mountain rifle
forces), air force and air defense forces.

It is possible to presume that the third (Shamkirsky) army corps, a
part of forces of the fourth (Gyandzhinsky) and fifth (Nakhichevansky)
army corps formations will be in the operational reserve with the
tasks of:

– for the third corps – coverage of the northwestern border with
Armenia;

– for the fourth corps – coverage of the Mingechivirsky (Mingechaursky)
directions;

– for the fifth corps – coverage of the border of the Nakhichevan
autonomy with Armenia.

The second (Bakinsky) army corps a part of forces of which will
definitely take part in the combat operations (a tank brigade and
artillery units) is given mostly the role of the strategic reserve.

For combat operations Azerbaijan can use (taking into account the
reserves) not less than 60,000 servicemen, 250-300 tanks, up to
300 light combat armored vehicles, 250-300 field artillery guns and
multiple rocket launchers, up to 50 combat airplanes and the same
quantity of combat and transport combat helicopters of the armed
forces of Azerbaijan.

In case of beginning of a full-scale Armenian-Azerbaijani war the
Armenian party, despite the air superiority of the enemy in the air,
will most likely try to deliver a decisive blow in the direction
of Mingechevir (Mingechaur) and to block the northwestern group of
enemy forces (the third and fourth army corps formations) between the
Mingechivirskoe (Mingechaurskoe) water reservoir, Murovgdag ridge and
Azerbaijani-Georgian border (along the Iori River) and to defeat the
first army corps and to reach the line of the Kura and Araks rivers
through the Milskaya plain. It will also try to block attempts to
attack the Armenian territory by forces of the fifth army corps of
the Azerbaijani army (along with this, special attention will be paid
to defense of the Zangezurskoe direction).

If the Armenian party managed to bring these intentions into
life this will mean a military defeat of Azerbaijan and status of
Nagorno-Karabakh will be confirmed on the terms of Yerevan. However,
probability of such a turn of events is not quite obvious.

Of course, duration of hostilities and fate of the parties will be
determined by interference or non-interference (which is extremely
unlikely) of powerful third countries.

All this will lead to a very serious international crisis into which
Russia will definitely be involved.

It is also necessary to presume that this crisis may lead to
aggravation of the situation on the borders of Georgia with South
Ossetia and Abkhazia. In any case, threats of Baku to solve the problem
of Nagorno-Karabakh by the military way are voiced regularly and have
until recently been intended mostly for internal consumption.

If these threats come true, unilateral unleashing of war will
inevitably place Azerbaijan into a position if not aggressor than
at least the party to blame for the new war with consequences
unpredictable for it.

ARMENIAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS: ARMENIA SUPPORTS CONDUCTION OF OSCE SUMMIT AT THE END OF THE YEAR

ARKA
Feb 16, 2010

YEREVAN, February 16. /ARKA/. Armenia supports the proposal of
Kazakhstan on the conduction of OSCE summit at the end of 2010,
said Edward Nalbandyan, Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs.

"We also welcome the idea of conduction of informal meeting of OSCE
Foreign Affairs Ministers in July in Kazakhstan. During informal
discussions the agenda of the summit will be more accurate", said
Nalbandyan during the meeting with Kanat Saudabayev, Chairman of OSCE.

Kanat Saudabayev will visit Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan on
February 14-17, 2010. On Monday Saudabayev arrived to Yerevan with
two-day visit. He met with Serzh Sargsyan, President of Armenia and
Hovik Abrahamyan, Speaker of Armenian National Assembly.

Saudabayev reminded that already 11 years passed from the last OSCE
meeting in Istanbul. During this period many new challenges and
threats appeared in the world.

"One of the threats is terrorism. Unfortunately a number of conflicts
are not solved yet. New conflicts appeared. Afghanistan continues to
remain supplier of drugs and terrorism. There are also issues related
to the structure of European security", said Saudabayev.

These issues should be discussed by OSCE. Norsultan Nazarbayev,
President of Kazakhstan considered that representation of Kazakhstan
should chair OSCE meeting.

VAN GOVERNOR VISITS ARMENIAN PAVILION AT EMITT

news.am
Feb 15 2010
Armenia

East Mediterranean International Travel and Tourism Exhibition
(EMITT) has finished in Turkey. Sixty countries, including Armenia,
participated in the exhibition.

The Turkish Tourism Agency reported that a delegation headed by
Governor of visited the Armenian pavilion and held a talk with
representatives of the Armenian tourist industry. The sides discussed
prospects for cooperation.

Referring to Van Governor Munir Karaoglu, NEWS.am reported that the
Armenian church Surb Khach (Holy Cross) on Akhtamar Island is to be
re-opened for religious ceremonies on September 12, 2010. Mr. Karaoglu
stressed that was a final decision.

Financial Time – Dubai
Arshile Gorky at Tate Modern, By Jackie Wullschlager

Published: February 13, 2010 23:18 | Last updated: February 12 2010
23:18

American art’s favourite story is that of its own invention, which
gives special place to Arshile Gorky. The Armenian was the hinge that
swung Parisian surrealism into New York abstract expressionism, and so
to US dominance of visual culture. Philadelphia Museum’s extensive,
finely tuned retrospective, just arrived at Tate Modern, is therefore
a full-blown, triumphal affair and, as European museums possess only
half a dozen major Gorkys, a vivid, rare pleasure.
Britain’s sole example is Tate’s 1942 `Waterfall’, turpentine-thinned
lush green paint coursing down a canvas iridescent with natural forms
and body shapes, mimicking a cascade. Reproduction cannot convey the
effect: Gorky is one of those non-cerebral artists whose agenda is inseparable
from the way he applied paint to canvas. This show brings him alive as
painterly painter as well as art-historical pivot, fleshing out how
his impassioned, very American theme – the trauma and opportunity of
exile and immigration – is drawn into his every stroke.
Mid-20th-century America was full of influential émigrés – Léger,
Mondrian, Max Ernst – but they arrived middle-aged and fully
formed. Gorky by contrast reached Ellis Island as a teenager, fleeing
the Armenian genocide that claimed his mother (who died from
starvation), and he developed as an American painter. In their
free-wheeling energy, sense of space, all-over compositions and
liberation from classical order, the mellifluous late abstractions
here – the delicate oil and Conté crayon `Soft Night’, the lyrical
grey-cream `The Limit’, the fiery `Agony’ – could not have been made
by a European artist burdened with modernism’s formal ancestry.
Gorky’s paradoxical love affair with this heritage opens Tate’s
show. The first rooms, including Gorky’s Cézannesque `Pears, Peaches
and Pitcher’, his copy of a Matisse, `Antique Cast’, and the
schematised `Woman with a Palette’, recently discovered and echoing
Picasso’s 1920s nudes, read like an abbreviated history
lesson. Self-taught through 20 years’ absorption in the modern
masters, Gorky presented himself in New York as a Paris-trained
prodigy. But he never set foot in France=3B nor did he know
Russian. Born Vosdanig Adoian, he renamed himself Gorky to camouflage
his provincial roots, pretending instead glamorous kinship with the
Soviet writer Maxim Gorky.
In fact, the second Gorky was unaware that the first, too, had taken
the name as pseudonym, attracted by its meaning – Russian `bitter’. It
fits the painter perfectly, for the bitterness of loss threads through
his oeuvre. Tate acknowledges as much in the central, persuasive drama
of its hang: a face-off, through arches across five galleries, between
the velvet-black lines of erotic biomorphic creatures engaged in
frustrated battle in `Nighttime, Enigma and Nostalgia’, and the flat,
steely portrait `The Artist and his Mother’.
The abstract work muses on the unattainability of Armenia, and Gorky’s
sense of being an outsider in the west, sexually and socially. (`I
made a terrible mistake getting in with these Surrealist people,’ he
said.
`The husbands sleep with each other’s wives. The wives sleep with each
other. And the husbands sleep with each other. They’re terrible
people.’) The realist one is based on a proud, rigid photograph sent
by Gorky’s mother in Armenia to remind his father, long emigrated to
America, of the family’s existence.
Both works showcase Gorky’s technique through the 1920s and 30s of
building up then scraping away `hundreds and hundreds of layers of
paint to obtain the weight of reality’. It is hard not to see these
dense, pasted, smoothed-over surfaces as enactments of remembering,
forgetting, attempting to recover the irretrievable. `I place the same
colour or line until my soul comes out and my head aches,’ Gorky
said. Confident in making a mark repeatedly, he was also uncertain
that it would ever be right.
Stark as a Byzantine icon, `The Artist and his Mother’ illuminates
this entire show. Gorky’s instinct for modernist flatness lay – like
Warhol’s a generation later – in childhood exposure to hieratic styles
of Orthodox Christian art. The portrait is displayed here alongside
drawings dramatising how he simplified and monumentalised the
composition, his mother becoming a sadder, more remote figure at each
turn. In a later oil version in pallid pinks and salmons, softer and
more amorphous, she seems to fade away, famished or emotionally shut
down after manifold disasters.
Fixated on mother and motherland but cut off from the direct stimulus
of Armenian motifs, Gorky transformed recollection into fantasy. The
surrealist vocabulary of `Image in Kharkom’ and `Garden In Sochi’,
built around womb and breast shapes, fruits, leaves, patches of rock
or sky, fabulises his mother’s nurturing presence and the fecund
landscape of his father’s orchard. `How My Mother’s Embroidered Apron
Unfolds in My Life’, bathed in the apricot and violet hues of that rural
paradise, takes flight through a new gestural spontaneity as Gorky
dared improvise around these familiar elements in diluted washes of
liquid oil paint. Pigments run, blur, pool to create evanescent veils
of colour.
`I tell stories to myself while I paint … often from my childhood,’
Gorky explained. `My mother told me many stories while I pressed my
face into her long apron with my eyes closed. Her stories and the
embroidery on her apron got confused in my mind. All my life her
stories and her embroidery keep unravelling pictures in my memory.’
Even when rapture with the American countryside, and brief marital
happiness, intensified Gorky’s work in the 1940s, this vision remained
his chief source. In the sleepy, bucolic `The Plow and the Song’, a
vertical figure and female torso are entangled with hints of field, barn,
haystack. Looping sexually charged forms in `The Liver is the Cock’s
Comb’ suggest an Eden pierced with shafts of darkness, but also recall
the rich abstract ornamentation of Armenian carpets.
Surrealist high priest André Breton called this `the most important
picture done in America’. He told Gorky that `art must spring from a
source and that people who do not have a homeland do not contribute
much to culture’. Gorky, agreeing, said nothing of his own
origins. That secret inner life was surely his twin strength and
sacrifice. `No joy, no black despair ever wrung from him the admission
that he was born Vostanig Adoian,’ his wife Mougouch wrote after his
suicide in 1948. `He was the painter Arshile Gorky to the very limit
of his life … his entire personality a pure creation of the will to
paint.’
`Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective’, Tate Modern, London, to May 3,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, June
6-September 20,
Jackie Wullschlager on German artists
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010.

`Colored picture of `Garden in Sochi’ (1943) shows Gorky’s fertile
surrealist vocabulary’

Armenia Solidarity
Nor Serount Cultural Association

c/o The Temple of Peace, King Edward VIIII Ave., Cathays Park, Cardiff
07718982732
[email protected]
The Majority of eligible Members of the UK Parliament have recognized
the 1915 Genocide

This week the number of MPs in the House of Commons who have signed
motions (called Early Day Motions) recognizing the 1915 Genocide of
Armenians and Assyrians has passed 250 this week, representing the
majority of all eligible MPs. Of the 646 MPs , only 495 of them are
eligible to express their own views on these motions, because the other
151 are part of the government or have other roles which preclude their
signatures.
The number of MPs who have signed (254 exactly) did so by signing
motions in 2007 and during this parliamentary year (2009-2010), put by
Dr. Bob Spink MP, an Independent MP, at our request. The current Early
Day Motion (number 287) contains a clause which states:: "This
House….condemns unreservedly denial and denigration of the memory of
the Holocaust, as well as of the 1915 Genocide of Armenians and
Assyrians in Turkey, and the politics of hatred and division which led
to these events" and also "….. and calls on hon. Members to respect
Holocaust Memorial Day and to ensure that the Holocaust, the 1915
Genocide and modern atrocities such as the 1988 Anfal Genocide are never
forgotten"
This UK-wide Recognition of Genocide follows the example of Welsh
MPs in 2006, and 2007, and Scottish and Irish MPs a few weeks ago.
Of the 349 Labour MPs (the party of Government), 225 are eligible
and 150 (two thirds ) have signed.
Also, the majority of all non-Conservative MPs have signed (222
Labour, Liberal Democrat, Irish, Welsh and Scottish Nationalist and
Independent MPs out of 442 total non-conservative voting MPs in
nparliament ) . Most Conservative MPs do not sign such motions without
the permission of their Party, and therefore do not express their own
opinions,
The figure of 635 Voting MPs discounts the 5 Irish Sinn Fein members,
who never took up their seats, not recognizing the authority of
parliament.
Armenia Solidarity Spokesman Eilian Williams said: ". The UK, and
the other countries of the European Union must now accept that Turkey’s
present borders are based on its succesful Genocide of its Armenian and
Assyrian population. The issue of Armenian and Assyrian Churches and
lands which were confiscated by the Turkish State in the 1923 "Law of
Abandoned Properties" should be given a high priority, before any
progress is made on Turkey’s accession to the E.U."

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 13 2010

Kazakhstan lends support to Turkish efforts for Caucasus stability

Photo: Foreign Minister Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu and his wife, Sare, are
greeted by students from the NurOrda Kazakh-Turkish High School during
a visit on Friday.

Kazakhstan has voiced its support for Turkey’s efforts to create
stability and a spirit of cooperation in the Caucasia region through
joint efforts by countries in the region.

On the last day of a three-day official visit to Astana at the
invitation of his Kazakh counterpart, Kanat Saudabayev, Turkish
Foreign Minister Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu had talks with Kazakh Senate Speaker
Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Friday.
The process of establishing the Caucasus Stability and Cooperation
Platform (KÄ°Ä°P), a process initiated by Turkey, was on agenda of talks
between Tokayev and DavutoÄ?lu, the Anatolia news agency reported. `We
consider Turkey’s proposal for Caucasus Stability and Cooperation
Platform as a positive idea and we support it,’ Tokayev was quoted as
saying by Anatolia.

Ankara’s proposal for the platform — which is aimed at bringing
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia and Turkey around the same table
— came after a regional crisis erupted following a Georgian military
offensive in its Russian-backed breakaway region of South Ossetia in
August 2008.

With the planned regional platform, Turkey aims to create an
environment in which regional partners will discuss and resolve
conflicts in the troubled Caucasus with a spirit of regional
ownership. Tokayev, meanwhile, praised DavutoÄ?lu as an active
diplomat, while underlining Turkey’s achievements in the foreign
policy arena. For his part, DavutoÄ?lu highlighted the importance
Ankara attaches to Kazakhstan’s one-year chairmanship of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which
formally began last month.

`Kazakhstan is a powerful country in its region. It is a symbol of
confidence and stability. I believe that your chairmanship will be the
stage for important developments in the region,’ DavutoÄ?lu said.
`Kazakhstan’s successes in the international arena make us happy too,’
he added, while expressing his satisfaction regarding his contacts
during the Kazakhstan visit.

13 February 2010, Saturday
TODAY’S ZAMAN ANKARA