Author: Elizabeth Jabejian

Swedish genocide scholar emphasizes the importance of proper attention of the international community to the Armenian phobic policy of Azerbaijan

Elizabeth Jabejian
Arminfo, Armenia
Marianna Mkrtchyan

ArmInfo.Artsakh Human Rights Defender Artak Beglaryan held a meeting with Swedish genocide scholar Svante Lundgren.

The press service of the Artsakh ombudsman's office told ArmInfo that  Beglaryan welcomed Lundgren's decision to familiarize himself with  the history of Nagorno-Karabakh and the peculiarities of the  conflict.  At the same time, he noted the importance of the interest  of foreign researchers to Artsakh, the genocidal actions of  Azerbaijan, which in turn will lead to increased awareness about  Nagorno-Karabakh.  The NKR Ombudsman briefly described his  activities, the human rights situation in Artsakh, as well as the  Armenian-phobic manifestations of Azerbaijan.

In turn, Lundgren expressed support for the struggle of the people of  Artsakh for freedom, noting the importance of a peaceful settlement  of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well as the proper attention of  the international community to the Armenian phobic policy of  Azerbaijan. 

Armenia Interpol: Azerbaijan attempts fail toward taking advantage of organization’s channels

Elizabeth Jabejian
News.am, Armenia
Armenia Interpol: Azerbaijan attempts fail toward taking advantage of organization’s channels Armenia Interpol: Azerbaijan attempts fail toward taking advantage of organization’s channels

09:57, 23.03.2019
                  

YEREVAN. – The Interpol has a major mechanism in the fight against the attempts at manipulations and abuses.

Ara Fidanyan, Head of the National Central Bureau of Interpol in Armenia, told the abovementioned to Armenian News-NEWS.am. He noted this when asked about Azerbaijan’s attempts to make use of the Interpol for political objectives.

“Azerbaijan is truly attempting to make use of the Interpol’s channels to resolve certain political issues,” Fidanyan said. “But the Interpol has a major mechanism for the prevention of such type of approaches.

“To this day, Azerbaijan’s attempts to somehow take advantage of Interpol’s channels have failed, since all of their attempts have been prevented on time. We, on our part, are also taking certain [respective] steps.

“There are special lists of persons for whom Azerbaijan can presumably attempt to issue a Red Notice through Interpol’s channels, [and] proceeding from its political objectives, [but] in connection with which we are conducting monitoring on a regular basis.”

Sports: Bosnia and Herzegovina national football team boss: Armenia have much to prove

Elizabeth Jabejian
News.am, Armenia

Robert Prosinečki, head coach of the Bosnia and Herzegovina national football team, has publicized his squad that will face Armenia in the UEFA Euro 2020 qualifiers.

 Also, Prosinečki expressed a view on the Armenian national team. 

“The national team of Armenia are not the team that will fight for qualification, but they have much to prove,” press service of the Football Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina quoted the Croatian football specialist as saying. “It will not be easy.” 

The first Bosnia and Herzegovina vs. Armenia Euro 2020 qualifying round match is slated for March 23.

 

Issue of restoring the trilateral format of negotiations is a kind of litmus test

Elizabeth Jabejian

Issue of restoring the trilateral format of negotiations is a kind of litmus test

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20:23,

YEREVAN, MARCH 11, ARMENPRESS. Head of the Information and Public Relations Department of the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Artsakh Artak Nersisyan commented for ARMENPRESS on the recent statements regarding the restoration of the full format of negotiations.

-On 9 March, the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group issued a statement urging the sides to refrain from demanding unilateral changes to the format of negotiations without consent of the other party. Earlier, on 6 March, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry made a comment on the impossibility of changing the negotiation format approved by the 1992 Helsinki decision of the OSCE Ministerial Council, without reaching consensus of the OSCE participating States. In addition, according to official Baku, “the decision provides that Armenia and Azerbaijan act as parties to the conflict, while the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of Nagorno-Karabakh do so as interested parties”. How would you comment on these statements?

-It is not the first time that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan demonstrates a lack of institutional memory and complete ignorance of the process of peaceful settlement of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict, as well as the documents adopted within this framework.

First, the decision of 24 March 1992 of the CSCE Helsinki Additional Meeting does not mention any communities. The document lists as interested parties “elected and other representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh”.

Secondly, the issue of the format and status of the parties to negotiations has been the subject of lengthy discussions that went through a certain path of development. As early as in 1993, in the documents discussed within the framework of the Minsk process, Nagorno Karabakh was indicated as a full party to the conflict. Final clarity on this issue was introduced at the CSCE/OSCE Summit in Budapest in 1994. According to the concluding document of the Summit, the parties to the conflict are those who confirmed the cease-fire agreed on 12 May 1994. The agreement on full cease-fire and cessation of hostilities was concluded between Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia. On 26-27 July 1994, Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed an additional agreement, in which they confirmed “their commitments to the cease-fire until the conclusion of a large political agreement”.

After the Budapest Summit, in response to attempts by the Azerbaijani side to speculate again on the topic of the parties to the conflict, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Hungarian Foreign Minister László Kovács made a special statement at the meeting of the OSCE Senior Council in Prague on 31 March 1995, where he “confirmed previous OSCE decisions on the status of the parties, i.e. the participation of the two State parties to the conflict and of the other conflicting party (Nagorno-Karabakh) in the whole negotiation process, including in the Minsk Conference”.

The Prague Summary of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office is very clear and leaves no room for arbitrary and tendentious interpretations by the Azerbaijani side of OSCE decisions regarding the negotiation format.

 The authorities of both the Republic of Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia do not raise an issue of creating a new, non-agreed format of negotiations. It is about restoring the full-fledged negotiation format as set out in the OSCE Budapest Summit decision of 1994. This decision was approved by consensus by Heads of State and Government of the OSCE participating States, including Azerbaijan and the Minsk Group co-chairing countries.

We have repeatedly pointed out that the issue of restoring the trilateral format of negotiations is a kind of litmus test, demonstrating the degree of readiness for real progress in the peaceful settlement of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict. Opposition to restoring the most effective negotiation format can be interpreted as a commitment to the status quo.

It is regrettable that the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group do not show due principledness to restore the trilateral negotiation format consistent with the decision of the OSCE’s highest body.

Baku not to help create atmosphere for talks on Karabakh – Armenia’s foreign ministry

Elizabeth Jabejian
TASS, Russia
March 9 2019
Baku not to help create atmosphere for talks on Karabakh – Armenia’s foreign ministry

YEREVAN March 9

HIGHLIGHT: Statements by Azerbaijan’s different officials concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis have noticeably toughened which cannot help create the atmosphere required for negotiations, Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

YEREVAN, March 9. /TASS/. Statements by Azerbaijan’s different officials concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis have noticeably toughened which cannot help create the atmosphere required for negotiations, Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.

"Recently, statements made by officials at different levels of Azerbaijan’s executive power over a solution to the Karabakh crisis have noticeably toughened. Particularly, they stress the possibility of using the force or threaten to use it – a military solution, which is reprehensible. This rhetoric cannot help create the atmosphere needed for the talks," the Armenian foreign ministry said in a statement.

According to the statement, Baku allegedly pledges to use force but no details are given.

"Moreover, against the background of a meeting between the two countries’ leaders [Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev], Azerbaijan initiates an offensive military exercise and fails to notify of it in advance, regardless of international commitments," the statement says.

"Armenia has reiterated that it cannot accept this attitude as well as coercion to negotiation at gunpoint," the statement says.

Baku’s stance

On March 5, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov said that Yerevan’s "latest statements" were derailing the negotiating process on Nagorno-Karabakh. As an example, Mamedyarov cited the words of Armenia’s National Security Service head Artur Vanetsyan concerning a settlement program for Nagorno-Karabakh. During his visit to the area, Vanetsyan said the settlement program "will become the key security guarantee" for Armenia.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry reported that a major military exercise, involving up to 10,000 military personnel, would take place in the country on March 11 through 15.

History of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

The highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh (Mountainous Karabakh) is a mostly Armenian-populated enclave inside the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan. It was the first zone of inter-ethnic tensions and violence to appear on the map of the former USSR in February 1988. Then, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region declared independence from Azerbaijan, a republic within the Soviet Union at the time. In 1992-1994, hostilities broke out in the region between pro-Baku forces and Armenian residents, which resulted in the Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto independence. In 1994, a ceasefire was reached but the relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been strained since then.

Since 1992, the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) co-chaired by Russia, France and the US have been holding talks to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.

To evict the media, Yerevan Municipality resorts to the help of the Police

Elizabeth Jabejian
Arminfo, Armenia
Feb 28 2019
Alina Hovhannisyan

ArmInfo. The control service  of the Yerevan City Hall discovered discrepancies between the actual  and fixed in the contracts of the territories that are leased or used  by them on a gratuitous basis, some organizations located in the  building located at Buzandi 1/3.

 In this building are the media, which wants to evict the mistress of  the building in the face of the city hall.According to a report  provided by the mayor's office, the results of the study revealed  obvious offenses. The data was transferred to the 6th Division of the  RA Police on Combating Organized Crime.Recall that a number of  Armenian media outlets, which are located in the building at 1/3  Byuzand, located on the balance of the Yerevan Municipality, received  a notice from the city administration, in which they were  unreasonably invited to leave the occupied territories as soon as  possible. Similar notifications from the State Property Management  Committee of the Ministry of Economic Development and Investments of  the Republic of Armenia were also sent to the current media at 28  Arshakunyats and Isahakyan.Note that in the building at 1/3 Buzand,  there are the editorial offices of the newspaper Hraparak, A1 +  channel, ARKA news agency, Hetq news agency of investigative  journalism, Ayely.am portal. 

Similar media reports (including ArmInfo news agency), operating at  Arshakunyats 2 and Isahakyan 28 (press houses), which are on the  balance sheet of the State Property Management Committee at the  Ministry of Economic Development, received similar notifications. 

Asbarez: Are There Any Turks in Turkey?

Elizabeth Jabejian
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February 15, 2019

Garen Yegparian

BY GAREN YEGPARIAN

I’ve wanted to write this piece for a long time, but there’s a set of information that would make it more complete which I have not been able to find (more on this later). So, after putting it off for more than a year, I decided to give it a go anyway.

To start, I played a game with myself by listing how many different nationalities living in Turkey today I could name. I came up with this list: Albanians (Arnawoot), Alevis, Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Azerbaijanis, Bosnians (Boshnaks/Bosniaks), Bulgarians, Circassians (Adyghe and Kabardian as I sybsequently learned), Greeks (including Pontic Greeks), Jews, Kurds, Laz, Macedonians, Turkmens, Zaza (Kurds), and miscellaneous Eastern European stock converted to Islam by the Ottomans who settled in post-Ottoman Turkey, often in the homes left vacant by Armenians who were murdered or exiled. I’m not even including the more ancient peoples who dwelt as Armenians’ neighbors to the west and have since disappeared, nor the various nations represented by their business-based diasporas.

Of course, I missed some: Abazins, Abkhazians, Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Gagauzes, Georgians, Ossetians, Pomaks, Romani/Roma/Gypsy, Karakalpaks, Tahtaci, and one source described “minorities of West European … the Levantines (or Levanter, mostly of French, Genoese and Venetian descent) … present in the country (particularly in Istanbul and İzmir) since the medieval period”. These two lists, together, are what I could find, in what I can only describe as a “stingy” environment. There are probably many more. Obviously, Ankara wants the world to believe that everyone living in Turkey is a Turk. This is a very clever bit of wordplay, since the Republic of Turkey’s constitution defines the country’s residents in that way. Ankara certainly doesn’t want awareness, neither worldwide nor among its own citizens, of the large number of nationalities that pan-Turkist and Ataturkist policies aim to subsume and render “Turkish” over time. In fact, the last census they gathered information about aomething as simple as languages spoken, not national identity, was in 1965.

The CIA seems hell bent on assisting Ankara. Its “The World Factbook” gives these statistics for Turkey’s demographic diversity: “Turkish 70-75%, Kurdish 19%, other minorities 7-12% (2016 est.)” That is not only terse, but extremely misleading. Even so, it tells us that roughly one-third of the population is NOT Turkish. Let’s proceed from here, assuming that that two-thirds is, indeed Turkish. This is where the demographic time bomb that terrifies Ankara is ticking away in plain view.

Turkey fertility map 2015

There are many articles out there about how Turkey’s population, like much of the rest of the world, is getting older. They also address the brain drain of the country’s most talented youth departing for Europe or America, especially since the abortive 2016 coup that enabled Erdoğan to consolidate his power to the point of “choking” the young generation, further prompting them to leave. But this is NOT the biggest fear of Turkey’s current leaders.

Take a look at the accompanying map of Turkey and its provinces. The red, yellow, and light green colors indicate where net fertility (basically, birth rates) are highest. You’ll notice they are in the predominantly Kurdish-populated parts of the country. The more heavily “Turkish” parts of the country have lower birthrates, often BELOW replacement levels. “Replacement level” is defined as the average number of children that must be born to a woman to maintain a constant population. In developed countries, this figure is 2.1. But it can be as high as 3.4 in some developing countries because of higher mortality rates. So let’s say for Turkey it is somewhere in between, 2.7. You can see the western and northern parts of the country are well below this level. What this means is that in a few generations, “Turks” could well become a minority population in Turkey.

But even the “Turkishness” of today’s Turks is really suspect, ambiguous, and ultimately meaningless. Really, how many Turks arrived from the Altai Mountains and Central Asia into Anatolia and the Armenian Highlands? This is the information I lack referenced above. I have not been able to find or compile a table that indicates years of arrival of successive waves of Turkic invaders, how many they were, and what the population of the territories concerned was in that year. With those numbers, we could really tell what proportion of the overall number of Turks today can really be seen as Turks. The rest would be Armenians, Assyrians, Greeks, and everyone else who lived there before the invaders came.

Ask your “Turkish” contacts. What are they REALLY when it comes to their roots? It might trigger some reflection, soul-searching, and reassessment of their identity. Or, in the case of the large number of racists to be found among Turks, it will give you the mischievous pleasure of driving them to great irritation.