Category: 2024

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Jan 12 2024

JW.com 

Jan 11 2024

Jan 12 2024

On Thursday, , Archbishop Elpidophoros of America paid a special visit to Bishop Mesrop Parsamyan, the primate of the Eastern Diocese of America of the Armenian Church, to extend his warmest greetings on the joyous occasion of Armenian Christmas celebrated on January 6.

The visit was marked by heartfelt exchanges of warm wishes for peace, prosperity, and harmony among their respective communities. This momentous occasion not only strengthens the spiritual bonds between the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and the Armenian Church, but also exemplifies the spirit of reconciliation and the quest towards unity that transcends confessional boundaries.

Archbishop Elpidophoros was joined during this visit by His Grace Bishop Athenagoras of Nazianzos, Protopresbyter Nicolas Kazarian and Deacon Petros Gomez.

https://orthodoxtimes.com/archbishop-of-america-visited-bishop-mesrop-during-the-season-of-armenian-christmas/

Jan 12 2024

Jan 11 2024

By HANNA KANG 

Irvine is getting closer to erecting a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Armenian genocide within the Great Park.

Early plans for the memorial, approved by the Great Park Board on Tuesday, Jan. 9, include a potential location, the size of the memorial and how the memorial will be funded. City leaders unanimously approved the Orange County Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee’s proposal and directed staff to work with the committee in developing a schematic design and budget.

The proposed location is what will be called the Heart of the Park, a yet-to-be-completed area of the Great Park in its expansion over 300 acres of amenities. Because it is surrounded by a dense forest, the location will provide privacy and peace, said assistant city manager Pete Carmichael.

And the size of the memorial will be consistent and commensurate with the vertical and horizontal area provided within the surrounding forest, approximately 20 feet wide and 15 feet high, said Lauren Jung, the city’s senior management analyst.

The Orange County Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee, comprised of 11 members representing various Armenian organizations from around the county, hopes for construction to begin in the first half of 2026 and be completed in 2027, according to a staff report.

The Heart of the Park, where the memorial will be located, is slated for initial grading beginning this year with subsequent construction starting in 2026. That area “is a mix of quiet contemplation and social interaction,” Carmichael said.

The committee is in the process of incorporating as a nonprofit in California and requesting nonprofit status with the IRS to fundraise for the cost of the memorial’s design and construction, said chairperson Kev Abazajian.

Per city rules regarding monuments and memorials, the project proponent must foot the bill for the project while the city is responsible for the daily maintenance and upkeep of the memorial.

Abazajian said he anticipates the state designation to be made within the month while the 501(c)(3) designation may take a couple more months.

The process of homing an Armenian genocide memorial in Irvine began in 2022 after a video surfaced in which Mayor Farrah Khan appeared to joke and laugh with representatives of local Turkish groups, among them a man who has been outspoken in denying the genocide.

Khan, at the time, said the genocide was not a topic of conversation and the video was released out of context. Members of the Armenian community met with Khan, and she said she would support finding a place in the city for a memorial.

“Irvine is home to people from all over the world, including many like Armenians, who have faced a devastating genocide. We currently have Armenian community members whose family members are facing forced displacement in Armenia, Azerbaijan and in Jerusalem,” Khan said. “This is one of the ways that we, as a city, can provide a safe space for people to reflect on the past and strive to do better in the future.”

An estimated 1.2 million Armenians died during the genocide that began in 1915 in the Ottoman Empire, widely considered to be the first genocide of the 20th century, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. While most historians — and the White House — agree the deaths that occurred constitute a “genocide,” the Turkish government has denied a genocide occurred, contesting the estimated death toll.

In February 2023, city leaders directed staff to work toward the dedication of a memorial within the Great Park to the Armenians who died, according to the staff report, and in September, the Great Park Board adopted a policy dictating how the city considers requests for monuments and memorials within the park.

“Out of something horrific and divisive, something beautiful can come out of it,” said Garo Madenlian, a member of the Orange County Armenian Center.

Madenlian said the city moving forward with a plan for the memorial means a lot to the Armenian community in Orange County since many are descendants of genocide survivors.

“My grandparents were orphaned in the Armenian genocide,” he said. “This is really important for us to remember and never forget.”

The committee has planned for April a small commemoration of the start of the Armenian genocide, April 1915, which may take place at the project site.

“We are excited to move something like this forward of this gravity,” said Councilmember Mike Carroll, who also chairs the Great Park Board.

Staff is set to return in March with the schematic design and budget, Jung said.

https://www.ocregister.com/2024/01/11/for-irvines-great-park-an-armenian-genocide-memorial-is-in-the-works/ 

Jan 12 2024

Jerusalem, Jan 12 (EFE).- Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Friday criticized Turkey’s history, saying “we remember the Armenians,” after its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced that his country would send documents to the International Court of Justice in The Hague that support the charge of genocide brought by South Africa against Israel.

“The President of Turkey Erdogan, from a country with the Armenian genocide in its past, now boasts of targeting Israel with unfounded claims. We remember the Armenians, the Kurds. Your history speaks for itself. Israel stands in defense, not destruction, against your barbarian allies,” Katz said in a message directed at the Turkish leader on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

The Armenian genocide refers to the systematic extermination of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire during World War I through massacres, death marches, and deportations.

The Turkish government maintains that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be called genocide, and many countries seeking good diplomatic relations with Turkey have avoided acknowledging the events as genocide.

Israel does not recognize the events as genocide, and this is the first time a senior Israeli official has described the events as such.

Israel has been accused of genocide by South Africa before the UN’s top court, which held its first hearing in The Hague on Thursday and Friday, with the Israeli legal team accusing South Africa of “hypocrisy.”

Katz said South Africa is violating the Genocide Convention by supporting “the Hamas terrorist organization, which calls for the elimination of the State of Israel”.

Turkey has expressed “satisfaction” with South Africa’s complaint from the outset, and a Turkish parliamentary delegation is in The Hague to follow the trial.

“I believe that Israel will be convicted there. We believe in the justice of the International Court of Justice,” the Turkish president said.

Turkey is a historic ally of Israel, but after the Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Erdogan denounced Israel’s response of massive bombardment of Gaza as a “war crime,” and Israel withdrew its ambassador from Ankara at the end of October. EFE

sga/ics/mcd

Reuters

Jan 12 2024

ANKARA, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Turkey is providing documents for a case brought by South Africa against Israel at the U.N.'s top court on a charge of committing genocide against Palestinian civilians, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.

Speaking to reporters in Istanbul, Erdogan said that Turkey would continue to provide documents, mostly visuals, on Israel's attacks on Gaza.

"I believe Israel will be convicted there. We believe in the justice of the International Court of Justice", Erdogan said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz described Erdogan as the president of "a country with the Armenian genocide in its past", and that he was targeting Israel with "unfounded claims".

Israel is not among the more than 30 countries that have formally recognised the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 as genocide. Turkey, established in 1923 after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, has always denied there was a systematic campaign to annihilate Armenians.

        Jan 12 2024

By JERUSALEM POST STAFFJANUARY 12, 2024 16:18

Foreign Minister Israel Katz slammed Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan in an X, formerly Twitter, post on Friday afternoon, as Turkey backed South Africa's accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. 

Katz posted, "The President of Turkey @RTErdogan, from a country with the Armenian Genocide in its past, now boasts of targeting Israel with unfounded claims. We remember the Armenians, the Kurds. Your history speaks for itself. Israel stands in defense, not destruction, against your barbarian allies."

Katz's comments come as Israel's recognition of the Armenian genocide remains murky

Jan 12 2024

After several decades of conflict and thousands of dead, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic of ethnic Armenians has ceased to exist. Last year, Azerbaijan successfully launched a surprise attack to take it by force. Hundreds of residents were killed, and many more were injured.

The Azerbaijanis declared victory and forced more than 100,000 Armenians to leave the area. (Azerbaijan denies this but the allegation has support from the European Parliament.)

These refugees now reside in the Armenian mainland. While the government is doing what it can to assist them, it is struggling with an expensive new problem at a time of limited budgets.

Even before the events of September 2023, the government was facing issues with unemployment and poverty. These problems will become even more challenging given this new influx to the country of 2.8 million people.

And their presence adds to the challenges for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan following a major strategic defeat. While Armenia did not enter the conflict (because it would have lost) the erasure of Nagorno-Karabakh has angered nationalists.

Other problems abound. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), 23% of households face food insecurity, and 54% are “at risk of falling into food insecurity . . . in case of shocks.” Meanwhile, the World Bank reports that unemployment stands at 12.6%. The poverty rate is meanwhile 27%. In other words, the refugees may be welcome but their presence presents a problem.

The WFP has attempted to combat these issues by increasing food availability. The organization is also working with the Geneva International Centre of Humanitarian Demining so that areas within Armenia can be cleared and returned to agricultural production.

The government has offered to assist some refugees, but it is determining how to help them assimilate while juggling with financial constraints.

Recently, the government stated that it would issue pensions to residents from Nagorno-Karabakh. The program, while welcoming to older people, underlines that the state can only assist the most vulnerable. The exact amount is yet to be determined. To add to these complications, the pension will only be provided until June.

Meanwhile, many refugees are largely accommodated in communal facilities that were not designed for habitation. Often lacking heating and the creature comforts they were forced to leave behind, many are struggling to make ends meet.

They have had assistance of $250 each and another $125 for rent, where needed. But these are hardly sufficient, especially in the capital Yerevan, which also accommodates Russian exiles. The refugees nonetheless say they have been moved by the warmth of their reception from fellow Armenians.

Grim as the situation may be, there is more positive economic news which bodes well for the medium term. In December, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected Armenian real GDP growth of 7% in 2023 and 5% this year, even as inflation falls.

The effective cleansing of Armenians is part of a long series of forced population movements between the two former Soviet republics. When the first Nagorno-Karabakh conflict broke out during the Soviet Union’s collapse, some 700,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia and as many as 500,000 Armenians left Azerbaijan.

Human Rights Watch says that the small numbers of Armenians now remaining should receive protection from Azerbaijan, but added that assurances from its officials were, “difficult to accept at face value after the months of severe hardships, decades of conflict, impunity for alleged crimes, in particular during hostilities, and the Azerbaijani government’s overall deteriorating human rights record.”

President Ilham Aliyev’s government seems far more concerned with the significant challenges of reintegrating the captured lands of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Some Azerbaijanis have already started to move into the area. But the integration program is far from clear.

There are numerous complications. For example, if Nagorno-Karabakh is to be integrated with the rest of Azerbaijan, then identification forms and other documents will need to be provided. How might residents obtain Azerbaijani citizenship, and what will the process entail? In addition, there are various societal matters that need to be addressed. For example, how to reopen schools and impose curriculums.

Azerbaijan may regard these as the problems of success, while Armenia deals with much tougher issues on the other side of the equation. Much needs to be done to address the numerous outstanding issues, not least the possibility of a future peace settlement to ensure the countries end the cycle of war.

Mark Temnycky is an accredited freelance journalist covering Eurasian affairs and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He can be found on X @MTemnycky

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

 

Jan 12 024

Exhausted, malnourished and traumatized.

That was how they arrived in Armenia last September.

Do you remember?

Do you remember those dreadful few days when almost 120,000 Armenian Christians fled their beloved homeland, Nagorno-Karabakh, to seek safety in Armenia?

They had already endured over nine months of deprivation and near-starvation, due to an Azerbaijani blockade. Then Azerbaijan invaded and seized the territory in which Armenians had lived for 2,500 years. Almost the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh crammed themselves into cars or other transport and joined the line to cross the narrow mountain pass into Armenia.

“On September 25, we left our house with seven people in our own car and were on the road for three days,” recalls Elizaveta, whose husband is hearing impaired. It was a journey that would normally take a few hours.

Elizaveta (left) and Hasmik with her baby born during the blockade – just three of the thousands of Christian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh whom your gifts are helping

How are they living now?

“We live by the grace of God, giving glory every evening and morning. It gives us strength to cope,” says grandmother Anahit.

Armenia is a poor country. Its government is struggling to help the refugees. But the Church, with funding from Barnabas, is supporting the neediest families – and giving them spiritual counsel too.

Elizaveta is using the money to buy food for her family.

Hasmik, a biology teacher, has used it to buy winter clothes and shoes for her children. The youngest is a baby born during the blockade.

Our project partner describes the positive effect on the refugees’ emotional wellbeing: “By providing financial aid and spiritual support, the program has brought hope, comfort and a sense of solidarity.