Author: Jane Topchian

 

 

 

Ankara’s policy of supporting terrorism could not but work against Turkey itself one day, expert of Turkish studies Tiran Lokmagyozyan says.

“Although the masterminds behind the blast are not yet known, Turkey will try to use this in its anti-Kurdish struggle,” the expert told reporters today and added that “there are all prerequisites exist for making the conclusion.

He reminded that the authorities used the previous blast in Istanbul to incite the anti-Kurdish sentiments, while the attack turned out to be organized by the Islamic State.

According to Lokmagyozyan, the first blast in Ankara that left 100 people killed obviously plaid into the hands of the authorities, as it was directed against participants of an anti-Erdogan rally. He added, however, that the situation is different with the two subsequent blasts, probably coming from a different side.

“Those weaken Erdogan’s positions, because some people manage to organize such things in downtown Ankara, in the neighborhood of administrative buildings,” he said.

The expert noted that “in times of trouble Armenians face double threats – both for being Armenian and because of the unsafe situation in the country.” The concerns were later , editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based Jamanak daily.

Photo: AFP

 

An Emirates Airbus A380 jet has made what is believed to be the current longest non-stop scheduled commercial flight by distance, the reports.

The plane covered about 14,200km when it touched down in Auckland, New Zealand on Wednesday.

It was expected to be the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight by duration as well, but landed too early.

The return flight to Dubai left around 22:20 local time (15:20 GMT), according to New Zealand media.

The Auckland-Dubai portion was estimated to take around 17 hours and 15 minutes, but in the end took only 16 hours and 24 minutes, according to the New Zealand Herald.

The new route reportedly reduces the current travel time by three hours.

The inaugural flight was made by an A380, but the route will normally be operated by a Boeing 777-200LR.

Emirates said it expects “high demand” for the new route.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian has extended condolences on the death of the former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports. The letter reads:

Dear Madam Leia Boutros-Ghali,

It is with great grief that I learnt about the passing away of Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

He will always be remembered as one of the most remarkable figures in the international arena of the second half of the 20th century, as an outstanding statesman and brilliant diplomat, who led the United Nations at a critical juncture, who ably guided The International Organisation of La Francophonie, who put his vast knowledge and experience in the service of the peace, security and prosperity of the world with unreserved dedication.

I have an honor to personally know Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an extraordinary person. The meetings with him will be recalled by most cordial and warm memories.

I extend my deepest condolences to you, the family, friends, colleagues and all those who mourn the loss around the world.

With deep respect,
Edward Nalbandian

Massis Post – The noteworthy memoir, Goodbye, Antoura: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide (Stanford Univ. Press, 2015), by the late Karnig Panian, will be the focus of a program on Thursday, February 18 at the Armenian Society of Los Angeles in Glendale, CA. The event is organized by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) and co-sponsored by the Ararat-Eskijian Museum, Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society, Hamazkayin Jemaran Association, Nor Serount Cultural Association, and Tekeyan Cultural Association.

Featuring remarks by the author’s daughter, Houry Panian Boyamian, Principal of St. Stephen’s Armenian Elementary School in Watertown, MA, the event will also include presentations by Dr. Richard G. Hovannisian, Professor Emeritus of Modern Armenian and Near Eastern History, UCLA, and Adjunct Professor of History, USC, as well as independent researcher Maurice Missak Kelechian. Dr. Keith David Watenpaugh of the University of California, Davis, will provide comments via video, and Dr. Viken Yacoubian of Woodbury University and the Hamazkayin Central Executive Board will serve as Master of Ceremonies.

Born in the Anatolian village of Gurin, Karnig Panian was only five years old when World War I began. Four years later, American aid workers found him at an orphanage in Antoura, Lebanon. He was among nearly 1,000 Armenian and 400 Kurdish children who had been abandoned by the Turkish administrators, left to survive at the orphanage without adult care. He grew up to become an educator and vice-principal at Djemaran, the Armenian Lyceum, based in Beirut, Lebanon.

His memoir, Goodbye, Antoura, offers the extraordinary story of what he endured in those years—as his people were deported from their Armenian community, as his family died in a refugee camp in the deserts of Syria, as he survived hunger and mistreatment in the orphanage. The Antoura orphanage was another project of the Armenian Genocide: its administrators, some benign and some cruel, sought to transform the children into Turks by changing their Armenian names, forcing them to speak Turkish, and erasing their history.

Goodbye, Antoura was translated by Simon Beugekian and edited by Aram Goudsouzian. It includes a foreword by Dr. Vartan Gregorian and an introduction and afterword by Prof. Keith David Watenpaugh.

Panian paints a painfully rich and detailed picture of the lives and agency of Armenian orphans during the darkest days of World War I. Ultimately, Karnig Panian survived the Armenian Genocide and the deprivations that followed. Goodbye, Antoura assures us of how humanity, once denied, can be again reclaimed.

Copies of Goodbye, Antoura will be available the night of the lecture through a partnership with Abril Bookstore of Glendale.

Syria’s opposition insists it will not attend talks on a political solution to the war in the country despite the UN announcing they will begin on Friday, the BBC reports.

Opposition leaders say representatives will not travel to Geneva unless steps are taken to alleviate the plight of civilians under siege and bombardment.

But UN envoy Staffan de Mistura plans to proceed with indirect “proximity” talks with the Syrian government.

Photo: Getty Images

Henrikh Mkhitaryan is in a much better place at Borussia Dortmund than he was a year ago. He reflects on his season and his relationship with Thomas Tuchel with .

DW: You were, at that time, the most expensive new player for Dortmund, and still are, but things on the pitch just didn’t go as you wanted, did they?

Henrikh Mkhitaryan: As well as being me, it was also the team’s game which wasn’t working very well. Everyone was trying but in the end we couldn’t win or score enough goals to win. After the first half of the season, we were in the bottom places, which was horrible for us. Then in the second half of the season we started to play better, we had a little bit of luck and in the end we qualified for the Europe League. This year I can say that the first half of the season is good enough because we’re still in the German Cup, we’re the second in Bundesliga and in the Europe League we have to fight with Porto. We’re going to try and do everything for this to continue at the highest level, to also be ready for next season.

And this is because the performance of the whole team is better. But this is also because you play much better…

Yeah, of course I am really excited that I can score a lot, I can assist a lot and play good, but I’m also very excited because of the team game. This year we’re playing amazing football, everybody has started to like our football style. And I think they will continue to like this. So in the near future it will be really very good for us.

In the first couple of games you scored and assisted more goals than in the whole last season. So there is also a dramatic change – a positive change – in your play. How did you yourself experience this development?

At first, if we compare: Last year, I didn’t do too much. It was five or six goals in the whole season and seven assists. This season, the first few games were really very important for me because I got confidence in scoring and assisting. So now we have to continue like that. I have to continue like that because I’m optimistic and I’m going to do everything to do the best that I can.

At the end of last season you had even thought about leaving the club. But then Thomas Tuchel came and there was also this so-called “famous phone-call” from him. Is it right that he called you even before the training session started and asked you to stay?

I met him for the first time in March and he convinced me to stay. I wanted to stay also, because I had some things to prove to the people, to show that I deserve to be here. That’s why I am trying to stay this year also, to show all my qualities in helping the team to win a lot of games.

And Mr. Tuchel obviously knew that you could do better. We also talked to him and whenever he mentioned your name, he became very enthusiastic, saying the nicest things about you. There must also be something special between the two of you, right?

Yeah, of course we have a good connection and I’m very happy that I have the chance to work with him. Because really, from the first talk we had he told me that “Miki, I can bring you to a level of high-class.” And yeah, at one point I doubted it because I was not really confident that after a bad season he could make me a high-class player. But he did it and I’m thankful to him.

So what does he do?

He just gives you the confidence you need and he lets you to do what you can do. And that’s the whole reason that all the team’s players are all shining this year.

Because he gets to you, he talks to you…

Not only to me! He talks to all the players and he gets into the right conversation with them. He gives a lot of advice. He can tell you where you’re right, where you’re wrong and then you start to think about it all and at the end you realize that he was really right.

Will he be able to convince you to stay longer?

I hope so. If he did the first step, why not the second?

Because there are more rumors that you could leave the club…

Nah… They’re rumors, just rumors. That’s right.

So let’s end with a look ahead. If you look at the second half of the season, where do you see Dortmund? What do you expect?

I want to see us in the highest places because, really, with this kind of football we deserve to be at a minimum, in second place. So we’re going to fight to qualify for the Champions League for next year, then to go again to Berlin for the German Cup Final and in the Europe League, to go as far as possible.

Saudi Arabia has given Iranian diplomats two days to leave the country, amid a row over the Saudi execution of a top Shia Muslim cleric, the BBC reports.

The Saudi government announced on Sunday that it had broken off diplomatic ties with Iran.

Iran has accused Saudi Arabia of stoking tension in the region.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are the major Sunni and Shia powers in the region respectively and back opposing sides in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

The US has appealed for calm, calling for continued diplomatic engagement.

Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and 46 others were executed on Saturday after being convicted of terror-related offences.

– Yervand Zoryan, the founder and the director of Armenian Virtual College (AVC), which is sponsored by Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), visited Istanbul on Monday. Zoryan came together with the representatives of the Armenian schools in Istanbul and told the opportunities provided by the virtual college and the accomplishments it gained in a couple of years.

Yervand Zoryan founded Armenian Virtual College with the purpose of providing a solution for the problems of conserving the language and culture in the places where there are no Armenian schools. Launched in Armenia and other countries with dense Armenian population, this project offers virtual education in Armenian, Armenian culture and history and chess.

The students of the virtual college, who receive education in virtual classrooms, have the chance to come together with other students and discuss what they have learned. In this way, this project serves as a bridge between the various communities of Diaspora. Moreover, the college has an open e-book archive.

In the virtual college, there are programs for the ones who want to learn Western and Eastern Armenian and the courses can be followed in English, Russian, Spanish, French and Turkish. With this feature, AVC succeeded in reaching students all over the world in a short time. The education in Turkish is a great opportunity for Armenians in Turkey, who cannot go to Armenian schools, but want to learn Armenian.

Having students from 75 countries, AVC prepared multimedia e-books that are titled “Armenian Plateau” and “Explore Erivan”. These books can be downloaded to mobile devices for free. A course in AVC costs 200 dollars. There are scholarships available for the students with financial difficulties and the successful students can take other courses for free.

– Famous Istanbul-based photojournalist Ara Guler has cancelled an agreement, under which he was to transfer the archive of the photos he has taken over 70 years to Dogus Holding, cumhuriyet.com reported.

In accordance with the agreement signed on November 18 between Ara Guler and Dogus Holding closely connected with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, 3 million euros worth of the archive, the building of Ara Kafe, and a collection of photographic cameras and devices were transferred to a company set up by Dogus for the purpose of managing the archive and the property.
As a result of the transaction, Guler and his heirs were to be paid 50,000 liras a month. Guler would only have a 40% stake in the newly-established company’s shares.

Ara Güler is an Armenian-Turkish photojournalist, nicknamed “the Eye of Istanbul” or “the Photographer of Istanbul”. He is considered one of Turkey’s few internationally known photographers.

In the 1970s he held photographic interviews with politicians and artists such as Winston Churchill, Indira Gandhi, Maria Callas, John Berger, Bertrand Russell, Willy Brandt, Alfred Hitchcock, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso.Some critics consider his most renowned photographs to be his melancholic black-and-white pictures taken mostly with a Leica camera in Istanbul, mainly in the 1950s and 1960s, a golden age of photojournalism.

Güler’s work is collected by the National Library of France in Paris; the George Eastman Museum inRochester, New York; University of Nebraska-Lincoln Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery; Museum Ludwig Köln, and Das imaginäre Photo-Museum, Köln.

Turkey suspended bilateral relations with Paraguay and threatened to boycott trade with the country after the Senate unanimously approved on October 29 an official recognition of the Armenian Genocide, reports.

Turkey’s ambassador in Argentina,Taner Karakas, concurring in Paraguay and Uruguay, met with Senator Victor Bogado, of the ruling Colorado Party, who is Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Affairs. According to local reports, Karakas expressed “disagreement and concern on the declaration.”

After that meeting, Victor Bogado said on Thursday November 19 that he wouldpresent “an alternative project as a way of rectifying the position of the Senate.””Turkey was deeply concerned about the term ‘genocide’, given that this happened before the creation of the same Turkish state,” said Bogado.

Bogado also said that “the Senate declaration is nonbinding with the government’s position.”

Alfonso Tabakian, director of the Armenian National Committee of South America, emphatically said to Agencia Prensa Armenia that “the Turkish state, through its concurrent Ambassador to Paraguay, exerted unprecedented pressure bordering on blackmail on Paraguay, brutally exposing the authoritarianism of the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”

On November 24, the politician Rafael Filizzola Serra published on ABC newspaperan article titled “The Armenian Genocide and our dignity as a sovereign country,” in which he stressed that the decision of the Senate of Paraguay was “a sovereign decision consistent with the history of our country.”

“The unfortunate thing is that our diplomacy, rather than defending the sovereign authority of the Senate to speak, has taken steps to reverse the parliamentary statement,” he added. “Our diplomacy shows a supine ignorance of the current international position on the Armenian Genocide and historical facts found by the intellectual community.”

“The dignity of a country that suffered the extermination and that has a moral obligation to speak out against acts like this and many others, to ever happen again. And for justice, because crimes against humanity must not only be reported but also repared. Armenia deserves a fair compensation for everything it suffered, as well as our country.”

“I sincerely hope that Paraguay will not kneel once again to pressure and blackmail, and that our diplomacy is worthy of a sovereign country,” concluded Rafael Filizzola Serra.