Author: Talar Tumanian

Turkish policemen have broken the door of Sourp Kevork (St. George) Armenian Church in Mardin, Turkey, Ermenihaber.am reports, quoting Turkish Democrathaber website.

Hatun Jajur, who has voluntarily undertaken to clean the church, had left for a while and found everything turned upside down upon return.

“No only the main entrance, but also all other doors of the church were broken,” Jajur said.

The Church is one of . For 15 centuries the Church of St. George was the spiritual home of the large Armenian community in the Turkish city of Mardin. This Grade I registered historical building was founded in 420 AD and was in use until the Armenian genocide of 1915. In spite of its outstanding historical and cultural importance, this monument is currently in an advance state of decay.

Photo:  Donat Sorokin/TASS

 

The Russian military base in Armenia has received new Orlan-10 reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and started testing Navodchik-2 drones invisible from the ground, a Southern Military District spokesman told on Tuesday.

The drones are being tested at the high mountainous Kamkhud training range in Armenia by the servicemen who have undergone special retraining at the training facility in the Moscow Region, the spokesman said.

According to the spokesman, “reconnaissance units will use Orlan-10 UAVs for the first time to track extended and point targets in high mountainous areas”.

“The UAVs will be also involved in combat training of the military base’s units,” the spokesman added.

“The military base’s servicemen will also learn to deploy the Navodchik-2 reconnaissance system, prepare it for launching, use the catapult for aircraft takeoff and landing, the spokesman said.

The modern Navodchik-2 and Orlan-10 systems “will boost the volume of tasks accomplished in high mountainous areas in Armenia in the interests of reconnaissance and special units by five times,” the Southern Military District’s spokesman said.

The Russian military base is located in Armenia under an inter-governmental treaty signed between Moscow and Yerevan in 1995.

Germany-based Armenian professional boxer, WBO Middleweight Champion Arthur Abraham has received the Champion of Berlin Award for the fourth time in a row.

Photos from Arthur Abraham’s Facebook page

President Serzh Sargsyan and Mrs. Rita Sargsyan participated in the Constitutional Referendum.

They cast their votes at polling station 9/11 stationed at Yerevan school #24 after S. Spandaryan.

President Sargsayn did not respond to the journalists’ questions. “I’ll answer all questions only after the voting,” he said.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian had a meeting with the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Igor Popov, James Warlick and Pierre Andrieu and the Personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk on the sidelines of the OSCE Ministerial meeting in Belgrade.

The parties continued the discussions on the perspectives of furthering the process of peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

Reference was made to the issue of organization of a meeting between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Edward Nalbandian reiterated the Armenia’s commitment to continue to work with the Minsk Group Co-chairs to reach an exceptionally peaceful resolution of the Karabakh conflict.

Barev dzez: Armenian MP Garo Paylan greeted his colleagues at the Turkish Parliament in Armenians, Ermenihaber.am reports, quoting the Turkish Milliyet.

Addressing the Parliament, Paylan from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) referred to the killing of Kurdish lawyer and human rights activist Tahir Elci in Diyarbakir. He compared Elci with Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, calling him a “dove of peace.”

The Armenian MP strongly criticized the authorities. “There is dust on the state ‘three fingers thick.’ Our duty is to clean the dust, instead of hiding it.  We covered the murder of Hrant Dink, which led to the reoccurrence of the crime. Another “dove of peace” – Tahir Elci was killed,” Paylan said.

“Like Hrant Dink, Elci was committed to fighting for the sake of to peace, brotherhood and democracy. Both were killed. And this is the result of the dust that has covered the state,” he said.

 

Germany’s friendly with the Netherlands on Tuesday has been called off because of a “concrete security threat” against the city of Hannover.

Evacuation of the Hannover Stadium, which was hosting the match, began less than two hours before kick-off.

The city’s president of police Volker Kluwe told the BBC “there were plans for some kind of explosion”.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was set to attend the match at the 49,000-capacity HDI Arena.

Belgium’s friendly with Spain on Tuesday in Brussels was called off on Monday because of security fears in the wake of last week’s attacks inParis.

England’s match against France at Wembley on Tuesday night is going ahead, with tributes to be paid to the 129 people killed in Paris on Friday.

Photo by AP    

Egyptian authorities on Sunday projected the flags of France, Russia and Lebanon onto an ancient pyramid on the outskirts of Cairo in the wake of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night, The Mosocw Times reports.

The images were projected onto the Great Pyramid of Giza, the most ancient of the Seven Wonders of the World at more than 4,500 years old. A candlelight vigil was held at the foot of the pyramid in solidarity with the victims of the recent tragedies in the three countries.

Paris was targeted on Friday by coordinated suicide bombings and shootings in a wave of violence claimed by the Islamic State terrorist group. At least 130 people were killed in the attacks and hundreds more were injured.

A day earlier, twin suicide bombings in Lebanon’s capital Beirut killed 43 people in a Shiite neighborhood.

The attacks followed the crash of an Airbus A321 over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula late last month, in which all 224 people on board, mostly Russian citizens, were killed.

Western leaders have said the plane crash was likely caused by a bomb aboard the aircraft, but Russian authorities have said it is too early to draw any definitive conclusions.

Turkish jets have shot down an unidentified unmanned aerial vehicle near the Syrian border, the Turkish military said in a written statement on Oct. 16, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

“Today, an aerial vehicle of unknown nationality was detected inside our airspace on the Syrian border, and when it continued its movement despite being warned three times, our aircraft on patrol mission on the border fired and shot down the vehicle within the rules of engagement,” the statement posted on the Turkish General Staff’s official website read.

“The Turkish Armed Forces is executing its tasks with determination within the rules of engagement,” the military added in the statement.

Posecutors in Istanbul on Tuesday ordered the arrests of nine people suspected in the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, Daily Sabah reports.

Dink was one of the founders of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian Agos newspaper and was killed outside his office in Istanbul on Jan. 19, 2007.

Ogun Samast, who was aged 17 years at the time of the killing, was jailed for 23 years in 2011. He claimed he killed Dink for “insulting Turkishness”.

An earlier investigation showed that the prosecutors who worked on the case ignored serious allegations into the involvement of top police officers in the murder.

The prosecutors are accused of having ties with the Gülen Movement, a group whose widespread infiltration of the judiciary and police enabled them to influence cases or fabricate them for their own interests.