Author: nina hovnanian

HAK condemns Armenian president’s speech

Armenian National Congress (HAK) Party has issued a statement, in
which it condemned the speech that Armenian President, Chairman of the
Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) Serzh Sargsyan made against Gagik
Tsarukyan, the leader of Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK).

“At the sitting of HHK’s political council on February 12 Serzh
Sargsyan made a long speech whose content creates a new situation in
Armenia’s internal political life.

The leader of Prosperous Armenia Party Gagik Tsarukyan was the only
subject of that speech. Accusing him of a thousand crimes, Serzh
Sargsyan demands – in fact, by means of threats – that Tsarukyan
should quit politics and engage only in business. This demand in
itself is a flagrant violation of the Constitution of Armenia. Each
citizen has the right to engage in politics and there are no
provisions or authorized bodies that restrict or forbid him/her to do
it. So Gagik Tsarukyan has as much right to engage in politics as
Serzh Sargsyan has.

The following ‘accusations’ of Serzh Sargsyan form the basis of the
dilemma facing Gagik Tsarukyan:

1. Unverified rumors have been circulating for years about billions of
drams of unpaid taxes, with those billions stolen from elderly
people’s pensions and young people’ education right being hidden under
the guise of the so-called scanty ‘philanthropy’. I urge the Armenian
prime minister to instruct the appropriate bodies to verify in detail
the authenticity of these rumors and present them openly to everyone.

2. Rumors are also circulating about the creation of a professional
mechanism of concealing the numerous criminal offences”.
Serzh Sargsyan then instructed the Government and law enforcement
bodies to verify the authenticity of such ‘information’, and he in
fact instructed the ‘Republican Party of Armenia’ faction to start the
process of stripping Gagik Tsarukyan of his parliamentary deputy
mandate.

So it turns out that Serzh Sargsyan, while being aware of that,
forgave him for years, in his own words, ‘sponsored’ and ‘raised’ him,
and only now he decided not to tolerate it anymore, considering it a
mistake. This, however, raises questions and serves as a basis for
some natural conclusions:

a) If such ‘information’ was being spread ‘for years’, why wasn’t it
verified on the first day? It turns out that that Serzh Sargsyan
abused his office to cover up ‘Tsarukyan’s crimes. How much does it
become the office of the country’s president? In other words, if Serzh
Sargsyan attaches a label of ‘criminal’ to Gagik Tsarukyan, he is at
least in the position of ‘a person who knows, but does not report’.

b) If, while being aware ‘for years’ of such ‘information’, Serzh
Sargsyan cooperated with Prosperous Armenia which made part of the
ruling coalition, and until recently he proposed that the same
Tsarukyan should come to power by becoming prime minister, and later
Armenian president – following the ‘constitutional changes’, then why
did he suddenly start to speak from a diametrically opposite position?

c) If, nevertheless, this was not detected on time, then Serzh
Sargsyan’s speech and threats are nothing other than an overt order
about a political reprisal against the opponent, although it is
presented as a measure to liberate the country and people from
Tsarukyan as a representative of the ‘criminal-oligarchic’ class. The
accusations that are made a priori against Gagik Tsarukyan can also be
made – accusations are ten times as much and with obvious facts –
against 90% of HHK’s ‘elite’.

Serzh Sargsyan’s speech is vulnerable from the legal, political, and
moral aspects. HAK views it as an unsuccessful attempt by the ruling
regime to distract public opinion from own sins. People know quite
well who is to blame for the current troubled situation in the country
and they will eventually hold the real criminals accountable,” HAK
said in a statement.

14.02.15, 15:51

US Official News
February 14, 2015 Saturday

European MPs Demand Fair Trial for Men Jailed in Armenian-Occupied
Nagorno-Karabakh

New York

New York County Lawyers’ Association has issued the following news release:

Members of Parliament from 24 European nations have signed a motion
calling for two men jailed by an internationally unrecognised court in
Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh to be given a fair trial under
Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The two, Russian citizen Dilgam Asgarov and Azerbaijani citizen
Shahbaz Guliyev, were apprehended by the Armenian Army in the
Armenian-occupied Kalbajar region of Azerbaijan in June last year and
then convicted of murder by a “court of first instance of the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic”.

The motion, before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe, was signed by 46 MPs and calls for their fair trial, given
they were convicted in a “Republic” that is an “unrecognised
separatist regime”, which is not a signatory to any international
treaties that “guarantee either human rights or the rule of law”.

The 46 signatories include MPs from Ireland, Spain, Italy, Finland,
Ukraine and Croatia.

The motion was tabled on February 5th by Azerbaijani PACE delegate
Elkhan Suleymanov, who said the two men could only be legally tried by
an Azerbaijani court, given the alleged offence took place in
internationally-recognised Azerbaijani territory. He said the
additional charge of illegally entering Nagorno-Karabakh is void for
the same reason.

Asgarov was sentenced to life imprisonment and Guliyev to 22 years. A
third man, Hasan Hasanov, was shot dead at the scene.

Suleymanov has questioned the actions of the Armenian Army who,
despite answering to Yerevan, chose to hand the men over to the
so-called “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic”, which has not been recognised
by any United Nations member state, including Armenia.

“This is a deliberate action, not a coincidence. The Armenian side
wants to insure itself from being involved in any international
responsibility by distancing itself from this issue,” he said.

Had the men been able to access the Azerbaijani legal system, there
would have been no “first instance” court and they would have had the
protection of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was
signed by Azerbaijan in 2001. At the time Baku warned that “it is
unable to guarantee the application of the provisions of the
Convention in the territories occupied by the Republic of Armenia
until these territories are liberated from that occupation.”

That occupation continues to this day, despite numerous resolutions
calling for Armenia’s immediate withdrawal by the United Nations,
European Parliament, the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) and other international bodies.

U.S. JEWISH GROUPS BACK AZERBAIJAN DESPITE RIGHTS CONCERNS

RFE

WASHINGTON — Azerbaijan has long lauded its relations with pro-Israeli
groups that advocate on its behalf in Washington, a bond rooted in
Tel Aviv’s rapport with the former Soviet republic that touts itself
as a haven for the Jewish people in the Muslim world.

And amid mounting international criticism of Azerbaijan’s human
rights record, U.S.-based Jewish organizations are standing firm in
their support of Baku, which they see as a linchpin of stability in
a region replete with governments hostile to Israel.

“Our message is clear and consistent: Azerbaijan is an important
strategic partner for the United States and the West, as well as
a valued friend of Israel and the Jewish people,” American Jewish
Committee (AJC) executive director David Harris last week following
a meeting in Baku with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

“In an increasingly turbulent world, Azerbaijan’s contributions to
regional stability, energy security, counterterrorism operations,
and religious tolerance are all things to be valued,” Harris added.

The 75-minute private meeting on February 2 followed a flurry of
recent public relations activities in Washington to highlight Baku’s
public embrace of its Jewish population and strategic ties with Israel.

These efforts are part a broader lobbying campaign by oil-rich
Azerbaijan to bolster its credibility as an important strategic partner
with the United States on issues such as energy, counterterrorism,
and Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea territory in March 2014.

At the same time, Western officials say the human rights situation
has deteriorated precipitously in Azerbaijan, where numerous rights
activists, journalists, and government critics have been arrested in
the past year.

Speaking at a January 30 panel discussion in Washington, Samad
Seyidov, chairman of the international and interparliamentary
relations committee in the Azerbaijani parliament, swiftly pivoted
to his country’s friendly record toward Judaism and other religions
in response to a question about alleged human rights abuses committed
by the government.

“I wanted to remind you that in Azerbaijan today, Jewish people and
Azerbaijani people, Muslim people and Christians, they are living
in peace,” Seyidov said, adding that Azerbaijan has a Jewish member
of parliament.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov lays a wreath during
a ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance at the Yad Vashem Holocaust
memorial in Jerusalem in 2013.

Kenneth Bandler, a spokesman for the AJC, said in e-mailed comments
that the issue of human rights “did come up” at the organization’s
recent meetings in Baku, but he declined to provide further details,
citing the “private” nature of the conversations.

Azerbaijan’s Jewish population totals more than 9,000, according to
the country’s most recent census in 2009, though other estimates have
put that figure as high as 30,000. The nation of around 9 million
people is also home to several synagogues.

Azerbaijan has made no secret that it values U.S.-based Jewish
organizations as a key lobbying lever in Washington ever since Baku
and Tel Aviv began cultivating ties the 1990s — a rapprochement
widely seen as aimed at countering Iran’s influence in the region.

In 2000, then-Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev “for acting in our
favor” by trying to persuade U.S. lawmakers to repeal a 1992 ban on
direct aid to Baku due to its conflict with Armenia over the disputed
region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

A 2006 quoted an Azerbaijani Embassy official in Washington as saying
that “Jewish organizations made a certain contribution” to a U.S.

waiver on the embargo enacted after the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks as Washington sought Baku’s help for counterterrorism
operations in Afghanistan.

Azerbaijan’s outreach to Jewish groups in the United States continues
as part of a lobbying campaign that it has ramped up in Washington
in recent years.

U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act filings show that the Podesta
Group, a lobbying firm that Azerbaijan pays $60,000 per month,
contacted pro-Israel advocacy groups such as the America Israel
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs in the second half of 2014.

The Podesta Group declined to comment when contacted by RFE/RL.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s partnership with Israel — which includes
energy and arms trade greatly valued by both sides — was highlighted
in several op-eds in Washington newspapers in recent months.

In November, the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call published co-authored
by Mark Levin, executive director of the Washington-based National
Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, titled Muslim Azerbaijan:
Bucking The Anti-Semitic Trend In Europe.

“With a new Congress taking shape, now is the time for Congress’ many
friends of Israel to learn more about Azerbaijan…. Once they do,
they will see that Azerbaijan is an example for other countries to
follow with respect to supporting Israel,” wrote Levin.

The Washington Times ran a sponsored article on January 28 titled
Azerbaijan’s Rich History With Jewish Settlers Opened Door To Israel
Alliance.”

The same day, it published by former U.S. Congressman Dan Burton,
who serves as chairman of the Azerbaijan America Alliance. In the
piece, Burton calls Azerbaijan a “strong defense and economic partner
to Israel” and quotes Israel’s ambassador in Baku as saying that
“tolerance in Azerbaijan is an example to the entire world.”

Media reporter that Burton’s position with the Azerbaijan America
Alliance was omitted from the original piece. The Washington Times
later updated the op-ed to include the affiliation.

While senior U.S. officials and lawmakers have criticized Azerbaijan
for what they call a crackdown on critics, including the jailing of
independent investigative journalist and RFE/RL contributor Khadija
Ismayilova, leading American Jewish groups have portrayed Baku’s
rights record as a symptom of democratic growing pains.

“Full democracy and transparency can take decades to develop,” Harris
of the AJC was as saying in December. “And if these were the sole
litmus tests for foreign relations, then both the U.S. and Israel
would have far fewer partners.”

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, that continued
rapprochement between Baku and Jewish communities could be an effective
approach to improving human rights in Azerbaijan.

“Countries that have demonstrated friendship to their Jewish
communities — even though their records on human rights issues and
other things are not perfect, and we know that — we have to try
to encourage them to change, but at the same time to recognize the
progress that has been made and the importance of the relationship
with them,” Hoenlein told the news agency.

Richard Kauzlarich, a former U.S. ambassador to Baku, said Azerbaijan’s
tolerance toward Jewish communities is indeed a positive and a “good
example” to the rest of the Muslim world.

At the same time, Azerbaijan’s official message “has gotten more
developed in terms of trying to deflect some of the questions that are
obviously difficult to answer,” such as human rights, added Kauzlarich.

“Pointing to this, religious tolerance for them is another plus in
the dialogue on things like human rights, which aren’t as pleasant,”
he said.

TURKEY IS READY TO OPEN BORDER AFTER LIBERATION OF OCCUPIED REGION OF AZERBAIJAN

13 February 2015 – 1:07pm

Turkey is ready to open its border with Armenia in return for Yerevan
ceding from at least one occupied region of Azerbaijan, Turkish Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said at a meeting with representatives of
national minorities.

Armenians who live in Turkey are a part of the country as well, and
relations between Ankara and Yerevan should not adversely affect them,
he said.

According to Davutoglu, Turkey intends to work to resolve the
difficulties in relations with Armenia, Trend reports.

This proposal was perceived negatively in Armenia. The deputy director
of the Caucasus Institute, Sergey Minasyan, told Vestnik Kavkaza that
the current Armenian leadership will never agree to such a deal.

“These conditions are absolutely unacceptable. Such proposals were
repeatedly voiced by the Turkish side, and before they had not spoken
about “at least one area”, but about “at least one village”. It is
clear that there will be no positive response to it,” Minasyan said.

He noted that Armenia is currently divided into two camps on the
issue of opening the border with Turkey. “There is a mood in Armenian
society that Armenia does not need an open border with Turkey as
long as Turkey does not recognize the 1915 events as genocide of
Armenians and will not make any other overtures to Yerevan. There
are other moods in Armenian society, but the most prevalent is the
first option,” the deputy director of the Caucasus Institute said.

Meanwhile, the political scientist Togrul Ismail drew attention to
the fact that in this way Turkey wants to show its willingness to
improve relations with Armenia.”But for that, Armenia should abandon
its aggressive foreign policy, to go to the peace talks, at least
partially withdraw from the occupied territories. In other words,
Turkey has made a political gesture to Armenia and it is waiting for a
similar gesture from the Armenian side. Initially in 1993 the borders
were closed in protest against the occupation by Armenian military
units of the territory of the Kelbajar district, and it is necessary
to open them, whatever progress has been made in the peace settlement.

Turkey must see a concrete result in this case first,” he explained.

“Alas, there is no result yet. The Armenian side constantly demands
negotiations without preconditions, but Armenia has made such a
thing, that the conditions we are talking about are not advanced,
but are just normal for dialogue. It should withdraw from the occupied
territories, move away from an aggressive foreign policy, to drop the
charges against neighbors of various genocidal events. To behave like
a normal country, improving relations with its neighbors. And now we
have a sort of whim of the state against all its neighbors: Armenia
has territorial claims on Turkey and Azerbaijan and Georgia. This
is not serious and does not meet current international standards,”
Togrul Ismail concluded.

AZERBAIJAN UPSET WITH THE ARMENIA & ISSUES A WARNING!

OikoTimes, Greece
Feb 13 2015

APA.AZ REPORTS – Azerbaijan’s Public Television and Radio Broadcasting
Company (ITV) has issued a statement on the song named “Don’t Deny”
the Armenian representatives would sing in the 2015 Eurovision Song
Contest.

The TV channel reacting to song named “Don’t Deny” that the Armenian
representatives dedicated to the “genocide” said that Eurovision is
a song contest:

“This contest can’t be a victim of any country’s political ambitions
and converted into a political arena. The Public Television and Radio
Broadcasting Company state that if the news is confirmed, we will
also take appropriate steps in the contest,” said the statement.

The reports disseminated on February 12 said that the Armenian singer,
who lived in Armenia and 5 continents, would sing a song named “Don’t
Deny”, that is about the “genocide”.

Toumani Take II

Friday, February 13th, 2015

BY GAREN YEGPARIAN

Circumstances in the form of community reactions, discussions, and
commentary obligate me to revisit a topic I did not much want to
address in the first place since it gives the culprit what she craves
and needs to achieve her untoward desires/goals, ATTENTION.

I will start by apologizing to all those who read my December 2014
piece, “Soul-Searching, or Self Serving” for not being clear enough
about THE key aspect of my discussion of Meline Toumani’s book “There
Was and There Was Not: A Journey Through Hate and Possibility in
Turkey, Armenia, and Beyond.” My concern is how she and her publisher
are marketing, positioning, publicizing, and pushing (much like drug
dealers do) this book. I almost don’t care about its contents and
contentions. Whether what she argues and posits is brilliant or
bullshit is irrelevant to me since as it is the marketing angle that
troubles me deeply. This should have been evident from the fact that I
was concerned about this book long before it saw the light of day,
based on promotional material about it.

I had to clarify this since countless people, even those who agree
with me, have criticized me for commenting about the book and
advocating that others NOT buy it, without first having read it,
myself. Anyone reviewing my earlier piece will see that the only
content of the book I address is what she herself read aloud at the
Abril Bookstore event held for the book. The rest is about how it’s
being “sold” to the public.

A related, and odd, aspect of the criticism I have received is the
“surprise” of people at my recommending NOT getting this without
reading. Funny, isn’t it? I thought that was why we had book reviews
and signing events for authors and their publications, so we, as the
reading public, get a chance to sample the writer’s wares and decide
based on that whether to purchase or not. After reading the reviews
Toumani herself provides links to, and listening to her in person and
on radio interviews, I concluded buying this book is a bad decision
and said so. Why should that surprise anyone?

Let’s move away from the defensive nature of the paragraphs above.

Since December, much discussion has attended this book, its author,
her motivations, etc. These have occurred on hikes, online, and
everywhere in between. Two pieces well worth reading are Chris
Atamian’s and James Russell’s, Mahdotz Professor of Armenian Studies
at Harvard University. Peter Musurlian’s original piece is also worthy
of your attention.

But all this is playing into what I have become convinced is Toumani’s
game of making a name for herself. There’s nothing wrong with that…
unless it is done at someone else’s expense. In this case that
“someone else” is us, the Armenians, worldwide. How she’s doing this
is typically self-serving, depraved, and almost nefarious.

On the most obvious level, she’s playing to those who can’t see beyond
their immediate, comfortable, urban-cloistered existence. These are
people who go into fits of near-hysteria if they encounter something
labeled (rightly or wrongly) as hate. There are also the types who
think, and often advise Armenians and others to, “just get over it”
since it “all happened so long ago” and somewhere else. Read the book
reviews and listen to her interviews. You’ll see. I provided quotes in
my first piece.

But it gets worse. Toumani is cynically playing the part of the
“misunderstood” and “unappreciated” “martyr” of the Armenian
community. Her faux avant-garde arguments appeal to otherwise
forward-thinking and constructively-inclined people, taking advantage
of their being insufficiently informed about Armenian issues.

Remember, even if all her complaints were valid, she’s making them
just to sell books and earn acclaim. She is using legitimate
expressions of concern about her doings to make herself out a martyr
so she sells books. Without referring to me by name, she mockingly
referred to my advising people not to get the book, without having
read it. She is playing the “they’re picking on me” game.

A worse example of Toumani’s depraved approach is a question and her
answer about what happened in Abril Bookstore at her book’s event. She
flat-out lies when Leonard Lopate, her host on an interview, near the
end of their discussion asks her “Weren’t you heckled at an Armenian
bookstore in Los Angeles?” and she confirms that she was. Please see
Merriam-Webster’s definition of “heckle” below. What really happened
was she interrupted the questions being posed by Levon Marashlian,
Peter Musurlian, and I– whom she describes in the interview as “three
fellows who represent the far extreme nationalistic segment of the
Armenian Diaspora”! There is video-taped proof of this. Unfortunately,
that documentation is unavailable to us. I asked the owner of Abril
Bookstore for the footage. He refused, citing his advance-promise to
Toumani that it would not be publicized. She has made an unwitting
accomplice of a fellow Armenian (honorably keeping his word), who
otherwise provides an excellent service to our community. I can only
presume that she anticipated her own boorish behavior and didn’t want
the truth to come out.

Also, doesn’t it make you wonder how Lopate knew about her alleged
heckling? To me, it is evident that she planted that “information”
with him so that here again, she could play the victim. You can see
how she is using that “victimization” to curry favor and pity with her
audiences to get them to buy her book. And, it is all about selling
her book. Her publisher must be doing a great job, since she has in
the last two months even been reviewed in The Economist and The New
York Times and has become a finalist for the 2014 National Book
Critics Circle Award– how many Armenian-themed books have managed to
secure such visibility?

This kind of exposure and praise, her ability to fund a lengthy
sojourn in Turkey, and the very premise of her “personal; journey”
have many people wondering who’s backing her and why. To me this
smacks of conspiracy mongering, but I feel compelled to report what I
have been confronted with.

As I often do, I will point out some good news on this front as well.
A friend apologized to me recently, saying that he’d purchased the
book already, not knowing about its flaws. This, coupled with most of
the comments people have posted to online versions of articles
discussing Toumani and/or her book, shows that, at least in our
community, the majority “gets it” about what a damaging piece of work
a decade of Toumani’s life has produced. It’s even possible that
Toumani may yet recognize her misguidedness, assuming she can overcome
her arrogance. I assert this based on her response to a question in an
interview with Nayat Karaköse of “Agos” (Hrant Dink’s publication).

When asked, “You write about how Diaspora Armenians are full of
hatred. Most of the reactions are related to this. Did you hesitate
before openly writing about the hatred?” she replied, in part, “It has
surprised me how much people focus on that word, and it bothers me.
The US media were really fixated on this word, too…” and that she has
recalibrated her response to such queries. This is what some of us
have been trying to convey to Toumani and her few hangers-on. She is
playing in the American political arena, where some forces are arrayed
against the interests of Armenians. The “hatred” fetish I mentioned in
my first article fits into the narrative that those forces use against
us, typically to subtly undercut arguments advocating Genocide
recognition. She has been living in denial of the morass into which
she has naively waded with her book.

I will not address Toumani and this book of hers any more because she
is unworthy. I don’t want to publicize her. To further discuss it is
falling into the trap usually used by Turkey’s denialists– the
creation and maintenance of endless debate, effectively mental
masturbation, to postpone addressing the substance of the issue in the
hopes that over time, more Armenians, like Meline Toumani, will
succumb to self-hate, self-doubt, and simple fatigue leading to their
exit from the struggle to restore full justice for the Armenian nation
and distancing themselves from their Armenian roots.

I repeat my call to NOT buy this book. And, should your non-Armenian
friends mention it to you, enlighten them about it. Explaining that it
is an example of a pathetic human being trying to “make it” at the
expense of others. It is an example of someone (ab)using her
community, expecting the community’s support (purchasing books and
speaking kindly of her “work”), and giving nothing back except
degrading descriptions of that community.

Definition of heckle:
– to interrupt (someone, such as a speaker or performer) by shouting
annoying or rude comments or questions
– to harass and try to disconcert with questions, challenges, or gibes: badger

CORRECTION: In my piece last week, I erroneously wrote [email protected] as
the URL for the cross-country bike ride being organized on the
Genocide’s centennial. The correct address is LA2DC.org. Apologies for
any confusion and inconvenience this may have caused.

Azerbaijan has overcome hatred, allowing an Armenian football player enter Baku

15:17, 14 February, 2015

YEREVAN, 14 FEBRUARY, ARMENPRESS. An unprecedented event has taken
place in Azerbaijan, which has declared all Armenians as enemies.
Armenian member of the S-17 Russian national football team David
Ghazaryan has been allowed to participate in the match to be held in
Baku. This is what secretary of the Football Federation of Azerbaijan
Elkhan Mammadov told journalists today, mentioning that “that football
player was substantially investigated”, as “Armenpress” reports,
citing the Azerbaijani faktxeber.com.

“He is Armenian, but he is a citizen of Russia. We appealed to the
corresponding bodies. There won’t be any problem with that,” he said,
mentioning that the necessary measures will be taken to ensure the
Armenian football player’s safety in Baku.

Tsarukian Urges Regime Change as Tensions Escalate

Friday, February 13th, 2015

Prosperous Armenia Party leader Gagik Tsarukian
ARF Calls for Calm and National Unity

BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN

YEREVAN–The war of words escalated in Armenia Friday as two one-time
allies, President Serzh Sarkisian and the Prosperous Armenia Party
leader Gagik Tsarukian, publicly attacked each other with the latter
calling for immediate regime change after the president lashed out on
Thursday and relieved Tsarukian from his post in the National Security
Council.

Responding to the president’s unusual remarks during the Republican
Party of Armenia’s executive council session on Thursday, during which
Sarkisian called Tsarukian’s political activities a “circus,” calling
him ignorant and incapable of leading, the Prosperous Armenia Party’s
leader called on the citizens of Armenia to mobilize and take to the
streets and change the current regime through early presidential
elections.

“I am taking up the gauntlet and am going to fight till the victory,”
said Tsarukian at an emergency meeting with senior PAP officials. “A
new situation has surfaced since yesterday and it requires a solution.
I believe that the only solution is a complete regime change through
early presidential elections,”

Tsarukian said that his remarks were directed at the people of Armenia
and not at one individual. This was in contrast to Sarkisian’s
statements Thursday, where he claimed that his remarks were directed
at one person: “a pseudo-political phenomenon called Gagik Tsarukian.”

The apparent war declared by the two powerful political figures in
Armenia has escalated the political turmoil and threatens the fragile
domestic situation in the country, which continues to be threatened by
attack from Azerbaijan and aggravated tensions along the border.

In his remarks, Sarkisian leveraged his executive powers to direct
various state institutions to investigate alleged tax evasion and
criminal conduct by Tsarukian. In his turn, Tsarukian welcomed the
investigation and said he would expose the Sarkisian regime’s actions,
which have resulted in the growth of Armenia’s foreign debt and has
forced Armenian citizens to abandon their homeland. He also accused
Sarkisian and his supporters of stealing “billions of dollars” from
the people

What sparked this tension was Tsarukian’s remarks last week at a
conference of non-ruling party members where he called for regime
change and accused Sarkisian of using the upcoming Constitutional
reforms as mechanism to continue his rule and ensure that his party
remains in power. Earlier this week, Artak Khachatrian, a member of
parliament from Tsarukian’s Prosperous Armenia Party was beaten,
kidnapped and then dumped on the street. PAP officials accused the
government of staging the attack.

In his remarks Friday, Tsarukian alleged that Sarkisian had offered
him the ceremonial presidency envisioned under the new constitution in
return for his and his party’s support of the reforms being advanced
by the regime. Tsarukian said that he “categorically” rejected the
president’s “anti-state” proposal reiterating his claim that the
reform process was a means for the authorities to remain in power.

Following his statement, Tsarukian, who did not specify a date for a
public rally, met with former president Levon Ter-Petrosian and the
leader of the Heritage party Raffi Hovannisian to discuss next steps
in their campaign to overthrow the regime.

Meanwhile, speaking with Yerkir.am Friday, the political
representative of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Bureau Armen
Rustamian warned that the recent political tensions have entered a new
and dangerous stage and called for national unity in the face of
growing tension on Armenia’s borders and the upcoming centennial of
the Armenian Genocide.

“The growing political debate is entering a new stage of heightened
intolerance, personal attacks, and dangerous confrontations. This
greatly undermines the security of both the country and its people,”
said Rustamian.

He went on to say that the recent statements of both the Prosperous
Armenia Party and the Republican Party confirm the ARF’s grave
concerns about the political landscape of the country. He stressed
that the separation of business and politics and the proper
implementation of the rule of law are necessary in the social and
political life of Armenia.

“In these difficult and dangerous times full of both internal and
external challenges, socio-economic problems and a tense border
situation, each of us has the responsibility to approach these issues
in a sober, mutually tolerant, and highly political manner. Today,
when our borders are under constant enemy attack and we as a nation
prepare to commemorate the Centennial of the Armenian Genocide, we are
all required to show the world that we are united as a people. We [the
ARF-D] are convinced that the present tensions and conflict are not in
the best interest of our state and nation. We instead call for wisdom,
calm and unity,” concluded Rustamian.

This quickly unfolding scenario in Armenia threatens the tenuous calm
in the country. Neither Sarkisian nor Tsarukian have the right to
speak about the other’s amassed wealth, because both men, who not long
ago drank from the same cup, have leveraged their vast resources to
“win” elections and both are responsible for the dire socio-economic
situation that is dragging the people of Armenia to ruin.

Rustamian’s call for calm and national unity is prudent and welcome.
The ruling regime and the president must understand that they cannot
intimidate factions or individuals who are in opposition. At the same
time, opposition forces that are seeking change and often speak in the
name of Armenia’s population, must abandon the tired rhetoric of
demanding regime change and actually put forth viable alternatives
that clearly outline their vision for change and set them apart from
that of the regime they want to topple.

In the end, the people of Armenia remain the victims of this ongoing
power plays. Sarkisian and Tsarukian publically calling each other
thieves is not going to provide relief to the lay Armenian citizen who
long ago has lost hope for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
that the current Constitution of Armenia claims to guarantee.

End of the Ottoman empire

February 13, 2015 3:49 pm
Mark Mazower

How the decision to enter the first world war led to political
collapse, bloodshed and the birth of the modern Middle East

Defeated Turkish soldiers on the march in Palestine c1917

efore the first world war, the term “Middle East” was virtually
unknown. The Ottoman empire had ruled for centuries over the lands
from the Sahara to Persia but did not refer to them as part of a
single region. Coined in the mid-19th century, the phrase became
popular only in the mid-20th. It reflected the growing popularity of
geopolitical thinking as well as the strategic anxieties of the
rivalrous great powers, and its spread was a sign of growing European
meddling in the destiny of the Arab-speaking peoples.

But Europe’s war changed more than just names. In the first place,
there was petroleum. The British had tightened their grip on the
Persian Gulf in the early years of the new century, as the Royal Navy
contemplated shifting away from coal. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company
opened the enormous Abadan refinery in 1912. The British invasion of
Basra — a story of imperial hubris and cataclysmic failure that Eugene
Rogan weaves superbly through The Fall of the Ottomans — thus marked
the beginning of the world’s first oil conflict.

Second, there was the British turn to monarchy as a means of securing
political influence. The policy began in Egypt, which British troops
had been occupying since 1882. Until the Ottomans entered the war,
Whitehall had solemnly kept to the juridical fiction that Egypt
remained a province of their empire. After November, that was no
longer possible and the British swiftly changed the constitutional
order: the khedive Abbas II, who happened to be in Istanbul at the
time, was deposed and his uncle, Husayn Kamil, was proclaimed the
country’s sultan. In this way the British unilaterally declared an end
to almost four centuries of Ottoman rule in favour of a puppet who
would allow their continued control of the Suez Canal.

This was not the only way the British could have taken over: Cyprus,
for instance, they simply annexed. But the Egyptian strategy was less
of a slap in the face to the local population and this kind of
imperial improvisation became the template for the region after 1918,
when Hashemite princes were placed in charge of one new kingdom after
another for no very good reason other than their likely subservience
to British wishes. A fine system it was most of the time too, at least
for the British, and it is not surprising that when the Americans took
over in the region during the cold war, they did their best to keep it
going.

Rogan, director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College,
Oxford, and author of The Arabs: A History (2009), has written a
remarkably readable, judicious and well-researched account of the
Ottoman war in Anatolia and the Arab provinces. The Fall of the
Ottomans is especially good on showing the fighting across multiple
fronts and from both sides of the lines, and it draws effectively upon
the papers, memoirs and diaries of soldiers and civilians. The Basra
notable Sayyid Talib, the Armenian priest Grigoris Balakian and the
Turkish corporal Ali Riza Eti provide perspectives that rarely make it
into mainstream narratives of the first world war.

They depict fighting of extraordinary intensity — from the trenches of
the Gallipoli peninsula, where Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) made his
name, to the mountains of the Caucasus, where thousands of Ottoman
soldiers froze to death. We see the plight of the Armenians in all its
grimness but also the starvation that swept across much of Syria as
the war ended. Between the fighting on multiple fronts, the deaths
from massacre and starvation, and the almost complete dislocation of
economic life across swaths of Anatolia and the Arab provinces, the
war that ended Ottoman rule also destroyed many of the institutions
that had sustained it.

In the second world war, Turkey made sure it remained neutral. Could
not the empire have done so in 1914? When hostilities broke out that
summer across Europe, the Young Turk triumvirate in Istanbul did stay
out of the conflict for a few months, holding back until deciding to
throw their lot in with the Central Powers.

This decision precipitated the disastrous campaigns — along the Suez
Canal, in eastern Anatolia against the Russians, and in the
Dardanelles in defence of the capital Istanbul — that nearly destroyed
the empire completely. By April 1915, the Russians had crushed Enver’s
Third Army in the east and the British were landing thousands of
troops on the Gallipoli peninsula. It was at this moment of maximal
threat that the Young Turk leadership took the decision to massacre
Anatolia’s Armenians, a story Rogan tells with sensitivity, insight
and judiciousness.

The ongoing political controversy over the genocide — Rogan rightly
deploys the word but does not make too much of the dispute, consigning
it to an excellent endnote — has overshadowed some critical historical
questions. The basic point is that the war created a crisis of
legitimacy that was especially severe in the Ottoman lands. Imperial
tax-raising power was limited and the Ottoman bureaucracy did not have
the capacity to organise a proper rationing system. This weakness
forced it to rely much more than other states on political
intermediaries and thuggish, well-armed irregulars. At the same time,
the prospect of defeat made the Young Turk leadership ever more
suspicious of vast swaths of the population irrespective of religion —
Ottoman loyalists, refugees settled from Albania, Bosnia and all the
other lost lands of the Balkans, and, perhaps above all, the Arabs.

Rogan documents the wartime repression in greater Syria in particular,
which alienated so many notables. Meanwhile, starvation claimed a
staggering 300,000-500,000 lives in Syria and Lebanon alone. The sense
of social collapse is palpable and must have been intensified by
something that Rogan does not discuss — the influenza of 1918-1919,
which may have cost Iran alone up to one-fifth of its population. The
losses in greater Syria and Iraq were probably just as devastating.
This story of the war’s impact on social life across the region still
awaits its historian.

Territorially, the ending of the Ottoman empire created the present
Middle East. The new republic of Turkey eventually won independence
for itself, primarily in its Anatolian heartland. Elsewhere, the
former imperial provinces were handed over to the war’s victors by the
new League of Nations and ruled under fictions of conditional
sovereignty that they called mandates. With the exception of the as
yet non-existent Israel, the map of the region that emerged in the
1920s looks much as it does today. Yet drawing boundaries round the
conference table was one thing; coping with the catastrophic
repercussions of four years of war was quite another. Helping us to
understand the difficulties the states of the Middle East have endured
since then, and the challenges they continue to face, Rogan’s book
takes us back to the moment of their birth, a moment in which one
imperial order collapsed and gave way to another.

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920,
by Eugene Rogan, Allen Lane, RRP£25, 512 pages, published in the US in
March by Basic Books

Mark Mazower is a professor of history at Columbia University and
author of ‘Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews’
(Harper)

Congressional Documents and Publications
February 12, 2015

House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging
Threats Hearing: “Azerbaijan: U.S. Energy, Security and Human Rights
Interests.”

Testimony by Richard Kauzlarich, Adjunct Professor, School of Public
Policy, George Mason University, (Former American Ambassador to
Azerbaijan)

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES DOCUMENTS

Introduction

Mr. Chairman, I thank the Subcommittee for the opportunity to comment
on Azerbaijan. I have had over two decades of experience with the
South Caucasus — as a senor Foreign Service Officer and Ambassador, a
think tank and intelligence analyst, and an academic teaching at the
graduate level on the geopolitics of energy security. I was U.S.
Ambassador in Azerbaijan for three years and have been back several
times to observe elections and to train local non-government
organization (NGO) representatives in conflict resolution skills.

I commend the Committee for holding these hearings. Azerbaijan and US
relations are at a critical point because of human rights violations
and the conflict with Armenia regarding Nagorno-Karabakh.

Background

The period of engagement with Azerbaijan since the breakup of the
Soviet Union has been a remarkable success for US diplomacy. From my
first visit to Baku in 1992 until today, many positive changes in our
relations have taken place. This despite the unfair limits imposed on
US Government (USG) assistance by Section 907 of the Freedom Support
Act of 1992 (FSA907), and the intense conflict with Armenia over the
Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

Both Azerbaijani officials and some US-based analysts argue that the
US lacks a coherent policy toward Azerbaijan. I disagree. For two
decades, the United States has pursued the following bipartisan policy
objectives in Azerbaijan.

. Support the Government of Azerbaijan in maintaining its independence
and territorial integrity.

. End the military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan regarding
Nagorno-Karabakh and, through the Minsk Group process of the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), support
Azerbaijan and Armenia in achieving a peaceful, negotiated settlement.

. Encourage US commercial interests in the production and
transportation of Azerbaijan’s substantial energy resources to global
markets.

. Work for closer Azerbaijani relations with transatlantic
institutions such as the OSCE and North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO); and stronger economic relationships with the European Union
(EU).

. Strengthen the commitment of Azerbaijan to (1) implementing
internationally recognized principles of democracy and human rights;
while (2) adopting transparent approaches to governance that minimize
corruption.

Azerbaijan and its people have benefited from this US policy and those
similar policies of our European allies including Turkey.

. Thanks to USG political support and US energy companies pursuing
their commercial interests, the Azerbaijan energy sector has enjoyed
enormous success. From the signing of the Contract of the Century in
1994 to the completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline in
2005, US leadership has been critical. Azerbaijan has earned tens of
billions of dollars from these energy resources.

. The OSCE Minsk Group process has provided a venue for mediating
direct contacts between Baku and Yerevan to conclude peacefully this
tragic and painful conflict regarding Nagorno-Karabakh.

. Increased Azerbaijani engagement since the September 11 attack on
the US in the international community’s priorities of dealing with
international terrorism, and participating in NATO-led peace making
activities in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

This progress was not easy. FSA 907 prohibited direct USG assistance
to the Government of Azerbaijan — unlike its neighbors Armenia and
Georgia — in those early days when institutions and attitudes toward
good governance, democracy, and human rights were being developed.
Azerbaijanis saw this as unfair treatment of Azerbaijan especially
compared to Armenia.

Regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as the Minsk Group process
produced no results favorable to Azerbaijan, USG positions on
resolving the conflict were contrasted with USG positions vis-a-vis
the Balkans and more recently Ukraine/Crimea.

Finally US pressure to hold more democratic elections and observe
international human rights standards clashed with leadership desires
to preserve stability – as they saw it — and political power.

Times are Changing

Many observers have noticed deterioration in the tone and, in some
respects, the substance of US – Azerbaijan relations, especially since
the flawed Azerbaijani presidential elections in the fall of 2013.
Part of this reflects fundamental shifts in the global and regional
political and economic environment.

. The global energy markets have changed profoundly over the past two
decades. Global oil and gas production especially in North America has
reduced the significance of gas and oil from the Caspian region, and
in particular Azerbaijan. The potential energy resources in Azerbaijan
are not as great as they appeared in 1994. Gas has replaced oil as the
high demand (for energy security reasons) hydrocarbon. Unlike in the
1990s, energy development is being determined more on commercial terms
than political priorities as applied when the BTC pipeline was
developed.

. Despite the dedication of talented US Minsk Group negotiators,
neither Baku nor Yerevan has negotiated directly in a manner leading
to a peaceful settlement of this conflict. The leadership in Yerevan
and Baku has not prepared their respective publics to accept the
compromises that must accompany a negotiated settlement. Further there
have been attempts to hold the Minsk Group responsible for finding a
solution acceptable to one side and imposing it on the other side. The
longer the impasse in the Minsk Group continues the greater the risk
of resumed armed conflict. We are at such a point today.

. As the US and NATO drawdown in Afghanistan continues, the importance
of Azerbaijan and its neighbors in securing the northern supply route
to Afghanistan diminishes. Also Iran’s greater engagement in its quest
for a nuclear agreement with the West has reduced the security
priority accorded to Azerbaijan in that context.

. International support for the observance of human rights and
promotion of democracy in Azerbaijan has increased in recent years. At
the same time, Azerbaijani support for its international obligations
in this area has waned. From the US and Europe, private and official
voices have been raised about why after two decades of prosperous
stability in Azerbaijan, elections still are not conducted in a free
and fair manner, the number of political prisoners has increased,
religious freedom is restricted, and freedom of expression shut down.

While such external factors play a role in this deterioration, the
most critical factors flow from choices the Baku regime is making for
its own reasons, including:

. Frustration over the lack of Western support for the Azerbaijani
position on return of Nagorno-Karabakh to Baku’s full sovereign
control, while supporting Ukraine’s position on the return of Crimea
to Ukraine.

. Unfairness of FSA 907 while the USG provides economic assistance to
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh

. With the extraordinary growth of Azerbaijan’s energy revenue,
Azerbaijan now has the resources including financing and access to
technology that it depended on Western companies and governments to
provide in the 1990s. It no longer “needs” US and Western political
support in the energy arena.

. Lack of respect for Azerbaijan’s support for US/NATO efforts
especially in Afghanistan, the global fight against terror, and
standing up to Iran. Failure of the US to provide lethal capabilities
that Azerbaijan could use in its confrontation with Armenia.

. Concern about internal political instability and the imagined role
of US assistance and foreign NGOs and media outlets in supporting the
political opposition. Anti-regime demonstrations in Baku and elsewhere
in the country in 2013 called attention to corruption, mistreatment of
draftees in the Azerbaijani military, and unlawful detention and
arrest of opposition politicians, NGO representatives and reporters.

. In particular following the flawed Presidential elections in 2013,
the regime began attacking US officials for promoting anti-regime
activities. The persons targeted included congressional staffers, US
ambassadors (bilateral and Minsk Group co-chair), and finally the
President of the United States.

. The shutdown of US NGOs such as IREX and the National Democratic
Institute (NDI), and information services including Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).

This culminated with the December 3, 2014 polemic by Chief of the
Presidential Apparatus, Ramiz Mehdiyev. This document accuses the USG
of fomenting a color revolution in Azerbaijan through “fifth columns”
created by USG assistance to US NGOs and affiliated local NGOs.

End of the Heydar Aliyev Era

I have written elsewhere that I believe the Mehdiyev attack on the US
represents the end of the Heydar Aliyev (the current President’s
father) era – an almost two decade long effort by both the United
States and Azerbaijan to improve relations despite differences. During
that period there was a public profession from the Azerbaijani side of
cooperation with the US and support for internationally recognized
standards for democracy and observance of human rights.

More than anything else, the many USG statements about flawed
elections and human rights abuses, and critical assessments from some
European partners pushed official Baku over the top. I believe that
the Azerbaijani decision not to follow Georgia on an explicit path
toward closer association with the EU reflected official Baku’s
assessment that closer engagement with the EU would mean a brighter
spotlight on its unacceptable treatment of opposition figures and
independent media.

The regime is walking a line between being forced to join Russia’s
Eurasian Economic Union or rejecting the EU – Azerbaijan’s largest
market for natural gas exports. Yet, it appears that either Europe or
Russia is a more acceptable strategic partner for Azerbaijan than the
US as long as Washington advocates on behalf of the 90 plus political
prisoners, the NGOs, RFE/RL, and an independent Azerbaijani media.

What Can the US Do?

The US and Azerbaijan are in a different place than just five years
ago. There are new global and regional geopolitical realities. The
global energy picture in particular has changed making Azerbaijan and
the Caspian region less critical to US energy security needs.

Rather than trying to construct an abstract “strategic partnership,”
we need to establish a limited set of attainable goals. Progress on
these goals would determine whether a strategic partnership between
the US and Azerbaijan is realistic. These could be:

. Serious engagement between Armenia and Azerbaijan by a specific date
leading to a peaceful settlement of the dispute regarding
Nagorno-Karabakh, and resumed Track-II unofficial contacts between
Armenians and Azerbaijanis.

. Support for stability in Azerbaijan based on Baku’s movement toward
greater democracy and observance of internationally recognized human
rights standards.

. Freedom for the over 90 political prisoners.

Without progress in each of these areas, I fear:

. Resumption of armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

. Further internal suppression of the remaining liberal democratic
elements in the run-up to the 2015 Parliamentary elections in
Azerbaijan.

The US cannot allow that to happen. On the human rights front, there
are more political prisoners in Azerbaijan than in Belarus and Russia
combined. That is unacceptable. Years of diplomatic engagement have
not improved the situation. Recently it has become markedly worse than
anything I have observed in my experience with Azerbaijan.

If there is no progress toward release of all these prisoners then the
USG should consider imposing travel and other sanctions on those
officials responsible for the arrest and continued detention of NGO
activists and journalists.

I also believe that as long as there is a risk of surveillance and
possible detention or arrest of American citizens in Azerbaijan, the
Department of State should issue a travel warning for all Americans
planning to travel to Azerbaijan.

Why Should the USG Care about Human Rights in Azerbaijan?

Lately Azerbaijani officials have questioned why the US pays attention
to “minor issues” like abuses of human rights when there are far more
important areas of concern (e.g. European energy security, Iran,
Russia, cooperation on anti-terrorism) that the US should be
addressing.

Let’s set aside for the moment the obligations Azerbaijan has freely
undertaken in the UN, the Council of Europe, and the OSCE.

Human rights are a major US security concern. We support, as we have
for two decades, the independence and territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan. We are limited in what we can do, however, when the regime
in Baku suppresses liberal democratic institutions, arrests those who
peacefully oppose the lack of democracy and human rights in
Azerbaijan, and creates political and social space for other forces
that are more dangerous to real stability in Azerbaijan. Make no
mistake: radical Islamists are quickly filling the void. They not only
burn American and Israeli flags but also send recruits to fight in
Syria. When these fighters return to Azerbaijan they represent not
only a threat to Azerbaijan but to US security interests as well. That
is why human rights are not minor issues.

Thank you.

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