13:33, 8 April, 2022
YEREVAN, APRIL 8, ARMENPRESS. The Court of Cassation overturned Union of Yerkrapah Volunteers Chairman of the Board Sasun Mikayelyan’s guilty verdict in the March 1 case and acquitted him.
After the 2008 March 1 events, then-lawmaker Sasun Mikayelyan was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment on charges of organizing mass disturbances. He served 3 years in prison and was released under a pardon in 2011.
BOSTON, Mass. — Project SAVE Photograph Archives is excited to announce a presentation by Armenian photographer 4Plus Photography Collective co-founder Nazik Armenakyan whose photographs have appeared in The New York Times, Der Spiegel and Le Monde. Her presentation on Saturday, April 9 is part of Project SAVE’s brand new series “Conversations on Photography.”
“When I was living in Armenia, 4Plus struck me as one of the most innovative and high-quality initiatives there,” said Project SAVE executive director Dr. Arto Vaun. “They’re an all-female group of photographers whose work is consistently extraordinary and impactful. I’m so pleased to help introduce their photographs and mission to a wider audience.”
“Conversations on Photography,” which was launched last month, is a virtual forum where photographers, artists, archivists and researchers can present and discuss the impact, beauty and relevance of photography. The inaugural speaker was Tatiana Cole, the photograph conservator at the Boston Athenaeum.
Project SAVE is also working on a complete overhaul of its website and photograph database; the team is also preparing for the launch of the Project SAVE Artist Residency. “It’s an exciting time of change and transition for us,” Vaun said. “Project SAVE is growing both literally in terms of staff and photo collections, but also in terms of vision and scope. I’m looking forward to widening our reach and welcoming new supporters and lovers of photography.”
Syrian clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh vividly remembers watching the 2011 uprising in his homeland on TV from New York. The violent government response left many dead and began a huge exodus of refugees.
“I can’t describe the magnitude of that,” said Azmeh, who became an American citizen last year. “I wasn’t able to write for a year. I continued to play — that’s how I pay my rent. But it severely affected my creative process.”
Azmeh broke his unwanted hiatus by composing a single song, “A Sad Morning, Every Morning,” which he shared with visual artist Kevork Mourad, his longtime friend.
Mourad, an Armenian-Syrian American, animated the song, which can be found on YouTube. “A Sad Morning” was the cornerstone of what became “Home Within,” a unique collaboration of music and visual art created live onstage.
The La Jolla Music Society is bringing “Home Within” — one of two Silkroad Ensemble tours this season — to the Baker-Baum Concert Hall at La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on Sunday, April 3.
In an unusual format, Azmeh and five other Silkroad musicians will perform as Mourad works at an easel, with his drawings projected on the screen behind them.
“Syria inspired ’Home Within,’ but this project encourages investigating the larger concept of ‘home,’” Azmeh said. “Is home the place you grew up and have memories of? Or is it a place you’d like to contribute to?
“I’ve always said Syria belongs to all of humanity. The events in Ukraine, visually there are similarities. Tragedies do repeat.”
The Silkroad musicians accompanying Azmeh and Mourad are bassist Shawn Conley, cellist Karen Ouzounian, oud player Issam Rafea, percussionist Shane Shanahan and violinist Layale Chaker. Chaker and Azmeh are married and live in Brooklyn, N.Y. They take their 1-year-old son with them on tour.
Azmeh said it took about a year for him and Mourad to build the piece from the 3½-minute “Sad Morning.” Sections of the piece are improvised.
“I’m a collaborator,” said Azmeh, who on March 15 was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a member of the National Council on the Arts. “Part of it is driven by the clarinet, which is a single-line instrument. If I want to harmonize, I need another player.
“Music is unique in that we can all talk and listen to each other at the same time. I did write the music for this but gave time for the musicians to bring their own stories. Not just the musicians — Kevork will say something. I like to play with the fine line between composer and improviser.”
Azmeh, who performed in San Diego in 2019 with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, acknowledged that the tragic situation from which “Home Within” springs “puts me back in deep emotions every time we play it. We hope it will open a window to investigate more. Our job to create art, but also to document history.”
“I hope someone in the audience is from Ukraine,” he added. “The concert ends on an optimistic note. I believe we can rebuild something. Art can heal the human soul.”
Azmeh and Mourad are longtime members of the Silkroad Ensemble, the performing part of Silkroad, which was founded in 1998 by acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He saw the history of the ancient Silk Road trade route linking Asia and Europe as a model for exchanging ideas and innovations.
Silkroad has four music-oriented components: creation of new music, social impact initiatives, educational partnerships and the Silkroad Ensemble, a diverse collective that performs worldwide.
In 2017, the ensemble won a world music Grammy Award for the album “Sing Me Home,” which features Azmeh as a clarinetist and composer.
“Silkroad is a collective of communicators who think larger than themselves,” Azmeh said. “Whether they play, dance or do spoken word, they are all thinkers trying to make sense of the world.”
When: 7 p.m. Sunday, April 3
Where: Baker-Baum Concert Hall, Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, 7600 Fay Ave., La Jolla
Information: (858) 459-3728, ljms.org ◆
TEHRAN- Iranian Energy Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian and Advisor to Armenian Prime Minister Artashes Toumanian put emphasis on the necessity of expanding cooperation between the two countries in the field of energy in a meeting at the place of Iranian Energy Ministry in Tehran on Monday.
During the meeting, Mehrabian also stressed the need to prepare the conditions for the meeting between the president of Iran and the prime minister of Armenia.
The minister further introduced the capabilities of Iranian companies active in the field of technical and engineering services and the scope of activities of these companies around the world, as well as construction and repair of power plants, construction of hydropower plants and other cases, and suggested bilateral meetings to introduce capabilities and cooperation capacities of the two countries.
The advisor to the prime minister of Armenia, for his part, mentioned the important issues of bilateral cooperation, and discussed constructive decisions for the development of trade and economic cooperation, as well as cooperation in the field of energy.
Toumanian also met Iranian Oil Minister Javad Oji at the place of Iran’s Oil Ministry on Monday.
During the meeting the two sides stressed the expansion of long-term cooperation in the field of energy between the two neighboring countries.
MA/MA
11:26, 29 March, 2022
YEREVAN, MARCH 29, ARMENPRESS. Canada is expected to call on Tuesday for improving global rules governing air accident investigations, telling a virtual safety forum that such changes are needed in cases like the 2020 downing of a Ukrainian jetliner, Reuters reported citing a government source.
Canadian Transport Minister Omar Alghabra is to tell the Safer Skies forum that the rules need reform in cases where the main country investigating a crash caused or participated in the downing of the aircraft, the source said, according to Reuters.
Armenian President receives Chargé d'Affaires of Embassy of Iraq
12:21, 31 March, 2022
YEREVAN, MARCH 31, ARMENPRESS. President of the Republic Vahagn Khachaturyan received Chargé d'Affaires of the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq in Armenia Suhailan M. Khaleel Al-Joubouri, the Presidential Office reports.
Chargé d'Affaires Suhailan M. Khaleel Al-Joubouri congratulated Vahagn Khachaturyan on assuming office and wished him fruitful work.
President Khachaturyan attached importance to developing economic relations with Iraq and activating interaction in various fields.
They highly appreciated the role of the Armenian community in Iraq in the development and expansion of relations between the two countries.
Tigran Abrahamyan, an Armenian MP from the opposition With Honor faction, says that many people have no idea of the territorial and strategic significance of the village of Parukh and the adjacent Karaglukh height in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) partially occupied by Azerbaijani forces at this point.
"During its recent advance, Azerbaijan managed to occupy a territory in the Karaglukh area that is many times bigger than the entire administrative territory of Parukh,” he wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
Abrahamyan underscores that various sections of the Karaglukh mountain “pose a bigger strategic threat that Parukh.”
“The Azerbaijanis used Parukh as a staging post, and immediately after the invasion they built bypass roads to break through to various parts of Karaglukh, set up and fortify positions, ensure uninterrupted supplies for themselves and then create new problems for the livelihood of Artsakh,” he stated.
“If Azerbaijan gets away with it and does not withdraw its troops to their initial points, an unprecedented situation will be created to break the backbone of the part of Artsakh that is currently under our control,” the lawmaker said.
16:51,
YEREVAN, MARCH 29, ARMENPRESS. Secretary of the Security Council of Armenia Armen Grigoryan will pay a working visit to Brussels on March 30 and Vilnius in the next two days, his Office said.
Mr. Grigoryan will have a number of meetings during the visit.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said that the nation is eager to establish diplomatic relations with Turkey and open the borders with the neighboring country in an interview with Turkish news agency Anadolu on March 15. His statement came days after Mirzoyan met his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum that was held on March 11–13. The meeting was reported to be “productive and constructive.”
The meeting in Antalya was the first sit-down meeting between the two countries’ foreign ministers since 2009 and is part of mutual efforts to establish diplomatic ties that have been severed since the early 1990s.
For the first time in the history of the two countries, both Turkey and Armenia are willing to set aside the Armenian genocide and disputes over the Nagorno-Karabakh region that have soured their diplomatic relations for decades. Turkey has refused to recognize the 1915 events as a genocide, and it also supported Azerbaijan during the Second Karabakh War between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020.
Although Turkey was among the first countries to recognize Armenia’s independence in 1991, the relations between the two countries severed in 1993 when Ankara closed its borders as a gesture of Turkish solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war. At the time, Azerbaijan lost control over the Nagorno Karabakh enclave and seven adjacent territories.
In 2008, when Turkey and Armenia signaled their mutual interest in mending ties, the process was stalled due to Azerbaijan’s staunch opposition. As a result, the Zurich protocols — also known as “football diplomacy” — failed, leaving the two countries even further apart diplomatically.
The results of the second Karabakh war changed the fabric of their diplomatic relations. With Azerbaijan having restored control over the seven territories around Nagorno Karabakh, previously lost to Armenia, “Turkey began to signal its readiness for new talks with Armenia,” the International Crisis Group wrote in an analysis previewing the new stage in normalization.
The first round of talks was held in the Russian capital Moscow on January 14, 2022, raising hopes for normalization, including possible border opening.
The latter could impact economic, social, and cultural relations between the two countries and their citizens, according to officials in Armenia's capital Yerevan. “The opening of the borders will have a positive impact on regular communication between the two countries, trade and economic relations, people-to-people contacts and, in general, stability in the region,” Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said on March 14. He added that, according to polls, most Armenians approve of the normalization.
A recent poll by the International Republican Institute published in January 2022, 90 percent of Armenians think Turkey is the greatest political and security threat to Armenia. In an interview with Global Voices, James De Witt, director of the IRI Armenia Program, said, “Armenian society blames Turkey for the lost war [in 2020] and sees it as a continuation of [Turkey’s] policy of genocide.”
Following the January talks in Moscow, Istanbul and Yerevan resumed charter flights on February 2, 2022, and met for the second time in Vienna on February 24, where both sides reiterated their commitment to continue negotiations aimed at fully normalizing relations. The reopening of flights was welcomed in Turkey. Speaking to reporters, following the first meeting in Moscow in January and the decision to resume flights, Garo Paylan, a member of parliament from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey, said the resumption of flights was “an important step” urging the politicians “to have this window of opportunity result in peace.”
“There may be problems, but we can have diplomats on both sides, open borders, launch regional economic programs that will benefit both sides [as well as] the people of Armenia and the people of Turkey,” Paylan, who is from an Armenian family in Istanbul, was quoted as saying on February 15.
Already, TABDC estimates the trade volume between Turkey and Armenia could reach USD 1 billion in three years, in addition to tourism revenue if the borders were to open.
As of February 2, Armenians and Turks can choose between the Turkish budget carrier Pegasus and the Moldovan budget FlyOne airlines for flights operating between the two countries three times a week.
Aybars Gorgulu, general director of the Istanbul-based think-tank Center for Public Policy and Democracy Studies, told Global Voices, the rapprochement between Ankara and Yerevan and the opening of the borders will have economic and social implications. “Particularly in the border cities such as Kars and Iğdır, commercial and touristic vitality will be experienced, and thus social reconciliation will be achieved over time,” said Gorgulu.
Echoing Paylan, Noyan Soyak, vice-chairman of Turkish-Armenian Business Development Council (TABDC), told Global Voices that open borders and the trade it entails will overcome the historical and political problems by bringing the two estranged nations closer. “Trade will be a factor to provide peace between the two societies, and it will also be another chance to re-introduce these two societies, which are living on the same land but are physically far from each other.
Soyak added that the Doğukapı Kars railway, which remains in good shape despite the closed borders, will create new opportunities for international projects such as the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, which promotes land-based transportation routes between Europe and China and is naturally aligned with unlocking the transit potential in the South Caucasia. “Geographical position of Azerbaijan on the Caspian shores and Armenia with the neighboring Turkey is very attractive for linking Eurasia’s two economic powerhouses: the European Union and East Asia,” Soyak said.
Additional attempts to thaw relations between the two countries are also visible. In early January, Armenia lifted an embargo on Turkish goods. Turkey invited Armenian officials to the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, where the two sides met in March 2022. Chances of Azerbaijan intervening as was the case in 2008 are also slim. In December 2021, officials in Baku reiterated the country won’t be an obstacle to the Ankara-Yerevan rapprochement.
But while leaders may be moving forward, doubters remain. Calling the new talks a top-down process, led by Turkish and Armenian political leaders, Thomas de Waal, the region’s top expert from Carnegie Europe, points out that both sides lack a strategy to win over doubters.
Philip Gamaghelyan, a long-time peace-builder from Yerevan, and the founder of the peacebuilding initiative Imagine Center for Conflict Transformation, agrees. “What we have today between Turkey and Armenia is a strictly official process with practically no grassroots support,” Gamaghelyan told Global Voices, adding, “the focus today is not on reconciliation at all but on ‘hard’ issues such as border and transportation links.”
The reality is exacerbated by the lack of peacebuilders on the diplomacy scene. Gamaghelyan told Global Voices the main reason for that was the transition of the former peace-builders to the government positions in Armenia and the lack of collaboration between almost absent Azerbaijani and Turkish peacebuilding civil society initiatives.
Aybars Gorgulu is more optimistic in his analysis. For Gorgulu opening of the borders, and establishment of diplomatic relations are just the beginning of a much longer process of reconciliation, including over such traumatic issues such as recognition of genocide. Gorgulu believes these and other issues can only be resolved within the process of normalization and people-to-people connections between Armenians and Turks.
The sentiments on the ground — at least in Turkey — attest to that. İlim Göktaş, one of the residents of Kalkankale village, who worked at Doğukapı (Eastern Gate) Train Station in Kars for six years back in the 1990s, told Anadolu Agency he hoped “the gate will open, peace and tranquility will come to the region, and our [local] economy will revive.”
https://globalvoices.org/2022/03/24/turkey-and-armenia-inch-closer-to-mending-ties/
16:02,
YEREVAN, MARCH 23, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Vahagn Khachaturyan received Executive Director of the My Step charitable foundation Mkhitar Hayrapetyan, the Presidential Office said.
Mr. Hayrapetyan introduced the President on the ongoing and future programs of the foundation. Particularly, the foundation’s activity in education, science and new technologies was presented.
The engagement of the Diaspora-Armenians into the foundation’s projects was emphasized.
The President of the Republic expressed readiness to assist the foundation’s programs, highlighting the implementation of qualitative educational projects.