Armenian News... A Topalian... Commenting on the virus that is corruption, Mahatma Ghandi once said: “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”

PanArmenian, Armenia

Aug 6 2018

Armenia named 39th among best European countries for business 

Armenia has been included in the report titled Best European Countries for Business 2018 compiled by the European Chamber (EuCham).

EuCham ranks and analyzes all 46 European countries according to their economic environment. The ranking is the result of the analysis based on internationally recognized indexes of the World Bank and Transparency International. EuCham thinks that business integrity and transparency play a strategic role.

In the report, Armenia is ranked 19th among 46 European countries with a score of 54. Neighboring Georgia comes in the 18th spot, while Azerbaijan lags behind in the 45th position and is followed only by Ukraine (46th).

Nordic countries are still on the top of the list: Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, followed by UK, Switzerland and Germany.

Panorama, Armenia

Aug 7 2018

Armenia’s Investigative Committee handles 551 corruption cases in first half-year

Armenia’s Investigative Committee has investigated a total of 551 criminal cases on corruption crimes in the first half of 2018 against the 332 similar cases of the same period last year.

The majority of the corruption cases (164 cases) investigated by the committee in the mentioned period referred to squandering and misappropriation through power abuse, the Investigative Committee told Panorama.am. 

The rest of corruption investigations launched by the committee referred to abuse of official powers, abuse of power and transgression of authority or administrative dereliction, official forgery, bribe taking and giving, commercial bribe, bribing the participants and organizers of professional and commercial sports competitions or shows and other corruption offenses.

The committee says from January to June 2018, 47 corruption cases with 102 defendants were submitted to court with indictment. Out of those, 20 cases with 45 defendants were investigated by the General Military Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee. 

Asbarez.com

August 72018

But What About Levon?

BY HAIG KAYSERIAN

Commenting on the virus that is corruption, Mahatma Ghandi once said: “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”

Now to the title of this article: “But what about Levon?”

From the outset, let’s declare unequivocal support to the relentless fight against corruption and misuse of power, embarked upon in the Republic of Armenia. This is a battle supported by new Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and carried out by the Special Investigation Service, the National Security Service and related authorities.

The recent, high-profile arrest of Armenia’s former President Robert Kocharian was a true indicator of how far these investigations are willing to go in order to weed out corruption at its roots. If he is proven to have misused his power (after all, corruption comes in many flavors), Kocharian deserves to have the book thrown at him.

And while authorities are working on a cure of this virus called “corruption,” let’s not forget that the initial outbreak that spread the epidemic into the halls of power in Armenia started with the country’s first President: Levon Ter Petrossian.

In his recent interview on Al Jazeera, Prime Minister Pashinyan said the greatest achievement of his unprecedented movement was restoring the “voice” of the people.

His predecessors (presidents under the previous Constitution), Serge Sargsyan and Robert Kocharian successfully kept that “voice” away from the people, by overseeing elections rampant with questionable practices, highlighted by the charge levelled against Kocharian – of “overthrowing the constitutional order” during events surrounding the 2008 election, when he allegedly mobilised the armed forces against protestors. The ensuing clashes resulted in 10 deaths.

While investigators and the Constitution are ultimately the ones who can determine Kocharian’s level of guilt, there is no doubt that both he and Sargsyan kept that “voice” away from the people. Not a single election that elected or re-elected them to their roles, was reviewed as free of irregularities.

However, let’s make no mistake. The person who originally took that “voice” from the people was none other than Levon Ter Petrossian—the Godfather of “election doctoring” in Armenia; the pioneering architect of “crushing the will of the Armenian people”; the mastermind behind tactics that would become contagious—after all, both Kocharian and Sargsyan worked in his administration before succeeding him in the office of President.

Don’t just take this author’s word for it (as the author of another article, “Levon the Virus,” there’s no question where I stand), but do read these excerpts from what Human Rights Watch wrote following the 1996 elections, which Ter Petrosian apparently won: “Demonstrators marched to the parliament, where the Central Election Commission (CEC) was housed, and broke through gates to demand a recount. In the process they beat Speaker Babken Ararktsian and Deputy Speaker Ara Sahakian.”

“In response, police brutally beat demonstrators and later arrested at least twenty-eight opposition leaders and supporters and CEC staffers. Among them, according to credible reports, Aghassi Arshakian, Kim Balayan, David Vartanian, Gagik Mgerdichian, and Aramad Zarkaryan, were brutally beaten; the latter required hospitalization for a fractured skull and broken nose and ribs. Attorneys for some of the detained, notably ARF leader Ruben Akopyan, were not permitted access to their clients.”

Further, Ter Petrosian also brought in the military in 1996, as Kocharian is charged to have done in 2008… and much more.

Human Rights Watch again: “In the wake of these events, police detained about 200 more individuals believed to have participated in the demonstration, President Ter-Petrossian banned public demonstrations and called in army troops to patrol Yerevan, and the Procurator General announced his intention to press charges of attempting violently to overthrow the government against Vazgen Manukyan and seven other opposition leaders. Police closed the offices of the National Democratic Union (Vazgen Manukian’s party), the National Self-Determination Association (a tiny opposition party), the Union of Constitutional Rights (a nationalist party), and Artsakh-Hayastan (an organisation for the promotion of Karabakh issues).”

Amnesty International also wrote about these incidents in great detail at the time: “A Reuters television producer reports that she saw armed people in camouflage dress break into the building, and drag people out while punching and kicking them: at least seven severely beaten men were taken away in a police van. Inside the building four women were said to have been among those attacked by the uniformed men. “

For more on the voting processes which led to the protests described above, let’s read the following from Human Rights Watch: “…in the majority of districts without international observers, no local observers were allowed, dead people and minors miraculously appeared on lists of voters, soldiers were bused in with orders to vote for Ter-Petrossian, and ballot boxes were reportedly stuffed. The elections failed to win the approval of the OSCE ODIHR Election Observer Mission, which concluded that ‘very serious breaches’ in the voting raised concern ‘for the overall integrity of the election process’.”

There are some familiar trends here, right?

Those of us following more recent Armenian elections have heard of this stuff. Calling on the military, beating protestors, busing in voters, raising the dead to vote on election day, ballot box fraud…. All of this began with the 1996 outbreak of the corruption Virus we can call Levon, which was passed on to those who followed Ter Petrosian like the epidemic that it was.

Not only did Ter Petrosian do all of the above, he also banned opposition parties, jailed or expelled their leaders from the country, closed their offices and … there was something else… Oh yeah, he offered to hand the liberated territories of Artsakh to Azerbaijan.

To some, Levon Ter Petrossian might be much or slightly better, or much or slightly worse than those who followed him as leaders of Armenia. To others, it might be of great or little significance that he was the first to use his power and resources to steal the will away from the people.

Regardless of our opinions, the people of Armenia are owed his day in court to respond to what was witnessed by local and international observers alike. While Pashinyan is proving himself as a brave battler for freedom from the corrupt, his past relationship with Ter Petrosian (Pashinyan ran his 2008 campaign) is being thrown in his face by commentators.

Make no mistake, we all want Pashinyan to be successful as the leader who oversaw the end of the cycle of corruption in Armenia. It was Henry Kissinger who once quipped that “corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.” Most of us believe that Pashinyan is in that ten percent!

But there is something called “selective anti-corruption measures” that the Prime Minister would prefer not to be accused of. Even though he has long spoken about justice for what happened on the streets of Yerevan during the Kocharian election in 2008, authorities need to cast their nets wider.

A former Governor and party chieftain in Nigeria, Professor Oserheimen Osunbor was asked about Muhammadu Buhari’s performance as his country’s President, after his anti-corruption measures were being criticised as “selective”.

Osunbor answered: “A selective anti-corruption war for Nigeria, if that be the case, is far better than no anti-corruption war at all. However, government must strive to be fair to all and ensure that the anti-corruption war does not spare anyone.”

Let’s agree with that when applied to Armenia – solving the corruption and abuse of power that followed Levon Ter Petrossian will make Armenia a better place. However striving “to be fair to all” and ensuring the “anti-corruption war does not spare anyone”, requires us to ask: “But what about Levon?”

Moving forward, then. Duxov!

RFE/RL Report

Yerevan Responds To Russian Criticism

August 01, 2018

Sargis Harutyunyan

Armenia again ruled out a change of its traditional foreign policy orientation 

on Wednesday when it responded to Russia’s criticism of serious accusations 

levelled against former senior Armenian officials.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that the high-profile 

criminal cases contradict the new Armenian government’s earlier assurances that 

it has “no intention to persecute its predecessors for political motives.” “In 

the last few days, we have repeatedly conveyed our concerns to the Armenian 

leadership,” he said in what was rare criticism of Yerevan publicly voiced by 

Moscow.

Lavrov referred to the prosecutions of former Armenian President Robert 

Kocharian, former Defense Minister Mikael Harutiunian and former Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Khachaturov, the current secretary general of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The three men are facing coup charges stemming from the March 2008 post-election unrest in Yerevan.

A court in Yerevan sanctioned Kocharian’s pre-trial arrest but granted 

Khachaturov bail on July 27. Harutiunian is believed to have fled Armenia 

recently.

Reacting to critical statements from Moscow, the Armenian Foreign Ministry 

spokesman, Tigran Balayan, said the criminal proceedings are part of the new 

government’s efforts to establish the rule of law and combat corruption. “These 

processes are not connected with Armenia’s foreign policy and should not be 

misinterpreted,” he said in written comments to the Arminfo news agency.

“In this regard, we reaffirm our foreign policy priorities which are … aimed at 

further strengthening Russian-Armenian allied relations and increasing the 

effectiveness of cooperation within the CSTO and [Eurasian Economic Union] 

frameworks,” added Balayan.

In a clear reference to Khachaturov’s prosecution, Lavrov said that Yerevan is 

putting “the normal work” of Russian-led alliances of ex-Soviet states at risk. 

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry described as “unprofessional” an Armenian 

proposal to the CSTO to replace Khachaturov by another, presumably Armenian, 

official.

Pro-Western political analysts in Yerevan denounced the Russian reaction, 

accusing Moscow of interfering in Armenia’s internal affairs.

“Unfortunately, Russia is making a serious mistake not just by alleging 

politically motivated prosecutions in Armenia but also saying what the Armenian 

authorities should do,” one of them, Stepan Safarian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian 

service (Azatutyun.am).

Another analyst, Stepan Grigorian, said the Kremlin feels that Russian 

influence in Armenia is declining following the recent wave of mass protests 

that brought down the country’s previous government. “I think that Russia was 

wrong to react,” he said. “It’s interference, it’s pressure on our courts and 

law-enforcement bodies.”

RFE/RL Report

Government Tries To Attract More Doctors To Provincial Hospitals

August 02, 2018

Naira Bulghadarian

The Armenian government approved on Thursday scholarships for medical students who will agree to work in understaffed public hospitals outside Yerevan after graduation.

Such students will be able to continue their studies in medical colleges free 

of charge. The government will finance 123 places for them in the upcoming 

academic year.

“Under agreements to be signed with us, they will pledge to work for five years 

in [regional] hospitals chosen by us so that those vacancies are filled,” Health Minister Arsen Torosian said during a cabinet meeting in Yerevan.

In Torosian’s words, hospitals in small towns across the country need a total 

of 300 doctors at present. They are far less attractive to doctors and 

university graduates than medical institutions in Yerevan.

Provincial hospitals have been suffering from not only staff shortages but also 

a lack of modern facilities. This explains why many people living outside 

Yerevan prefer to undergo treatment in the capital.

Zina Avdalian, a resident of a village in the central Aragatsotn province, said 

she was transferred to the Armenia Medical Center in Yerevan recently after 

spending two months in a local hospital where her health condition 

deteriorated. Another Aragatsotn villager, Anahit Suchian, told RFE/RL’s 

Armenian service that she regularly receives treatment at the sprawling center 

for the same reason.

RFE/RL Report

Red Cross Officials Visit Armenian Captive In Azerbaijan

August 03, 2018

Azerbaijani authorities have finally allowed representatives of the 

International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit an Armenian man who 

was detained by them after crossing into Azerbaijan on July 15.

The Azerbaijani military claimed to have captured the 34-year-old Karen 

Ghazarian while thwarting an Armenian incursion into Azerbaijani territory.

The Armenian Defense Ministry flatly denied the alleged incursion attempt, 

insisting that Ghazarian is a civilian resident of Berdavan, a village in the 

northern Tavush province located just a few kilometers from the Azerbaijani 

border. It said he has a history of mental disease.

The Armenian authorities have repeatedly called for Ghazarian’s release. They 

have also asked the ICRC to visit him in custody.

“Last night representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross 

visited Karen Ghazarian,” the wife of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, Anna 

Hakobian, announced on Friday. “He was safe and sound.”

“They passed on to Karen a letter from his mother,” Hakobian wrote on Facebook. 

“Karen said, for his part, that all is normal with him.”

According to the Armenpress news agency, the ICRC office in Yerevan confirmed 

the information.

The Azerbaijani authorities have so far given no indications that they are 

ready to free Ghazarian soon.

At least two Armenian nationals are known to be currently held captive in 

Azerbaijan.

One of them, Zaven Karapetian, was captured in June 2014, with Baku similarly 

claiming to have thwarted an Armenian incursion. Yerevan dismissed that version of events, saying that Karapetian is a civilian resident in Vanadzor, an 

Armenian city around 130 kilometers from the border section which he crossed 

for still unknown reasons.

Three residents of other Tavush villages strayed into Azerbaijan in 2014. Two 

of them were branded Armenian “saboteurs” by the authorities in Baku and died 

shortly afterwards.

EurasiaNet.org

Aug 6 2018

For Armenians, they're not occupied territories – they're the homeland

As Armenian settlement in the sensitive territories grows, it becomes more difficult to imagine a peace deal with Azerbaijan. Some say that's the point.

Joshua Kucera Aug 5, 2018

When Alexander Kananyan moved to Kelbajar in 2000, it was “completely destroyed,” he recalls. There was no electricity or telephone service, and he had to walk up to 40 kilometers to catch any sort of transportation. 

But the hardships were worth it for the sense of meaning it gave him. In the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces had captured this territory from Azerbaijan. At that time, Kananyan – an ethnic Armenian who grew up in Georgia speaking no Armenian – was studying theology in Rome. 

“There was a certain sense of guilt that others were fighting and dying while I was studying,” he said. “And I felt that the settlers, who were returning an Armenian presence to these liberated territories were in a way successors of those who liberated these territories and returned them to the bosom of the Armenian nation and state.”

Moving to Kelbajar “created unbelievable difficulties for everyday life,” he said. “But I felt like I was fulfilling a mission.”

The war with Azerbaijan ended in a ceasefire in 1994 and Armenian forces controlling about 14 percent of what had been Azerbaijani territory. Most of that was the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, but it also included seven districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, including Kelbajar. 

Unlike Nagorno-Karabakh, the population of which had been about three-quarters ethnic Armenian when war broke out, the seven surrounding territories had had a negligible Armenian population, instead populated mainly by Azerbaijanis and Kurds. As a result of the war they were emptied of their population and about 618,000 Azerbaijanis remain displaced from the conflict, according to United Nations figures, the large majority of those from the seven districts. 

 .

Armenian control of these seven territories was initially conceived as a temporary measure, as a buffer zone to prevent Azerbaijani attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh; they were eventually to be given back to Azerbaijan as part of a comprehensive peace deal to resolve the conflict. 

But as time has passed, that notion has faded, replaced by the conviction that these are integral parts of the Armenian homeland, never to be surrendered.

Kananyan estimates that 10 years ago, only about 30 percent of people in Karabakh would have refused to consider territorial concessions to Azerbaijan in the name of peace. Now, he said, the number is 100 percent. “If someone goes out on the street and says we need to give something up, either people will look at him as if he's lost his mind, or maybe he'll even be beaten,” he said. 

“In the mid-2000s, people who were against any territorial concessions were on the margins,” said Tigran Grigoryan, an analyst based in Nagorno-Karabakh. “Now it's the opposite.”

The stakes are high: If Armenia doesn't concede any of the territories, a peace deal with Azerbaijan is impossible. And if a peace deal is impossible, Azerbaijan will likely feel that its only resort is a full-scale war to take back the territories. 

But to most people in Nagorno-Karabakh, that's worth the risk.  

“Liberated” or “occupied”

The terminology about the seven districts reflects their contested status. Azerbaijanis call the territories “occupied,” while Armenians prefer “liberated.” Diplomats working on the issue either use “occupied” or, if they are trying to be more sensitive to Armenian concerns, “adjacent.” (Armenians also use the name Karvajar or Karvatchar for the name of the district instead of the Azerbaijani Kelbajar.)

As Armenians have grown more reluctant to give up the occupied territories, development there has gathered speed. Olesya Vartanyan, a Tbilisi-based analyst at the International Crisis Group, who has extensively studied the territories' settlement, told Eurasianet that over the years the process has become more and more official. 

“For about a decade [after the ceasefire], people went to these villages with no structured governmental support, but mainly at the call of patriotic Armenian organizations,” Vartanyan said. “They were very poor, but were still able to start rebuilding houses, roads, electricity lines, schools with their own money.” The majority of the settlers were from parts of Azerbaijan that remained under Azerbaijani control after the war, but many were from Armenia proper who “were also interested in fertile lands – something many do not have in the neighboring mountainous regions of Armenia.”

Those early efforts were mostly ad hoc, but starting in the early 2000s, the Nagorno-Karabakh authorities began to establish police and other government offices in the territories, including Kelbajar. Diaspora organizations, too, stepped up their activities, including by setting up new villages. 

In 2006, Nagorno-Karabakh adopted a new constitution that formally incorporated the seven territories into the de facto republic. Since 2007, when Bako Sahakyan became de facto president, settling “became a clear policy of the local leadership,” Vartanyan said. “Roads were built, many problems with electricity resolved, new schools built, houses repaired, and so on. All was done to support the existing population in the territories.” 

Azerbaijani officials have regularly objected to the gradual settlement of the territories. 

A 2016 report from the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs documented what they called “consistent measures undertaken by Armenia in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan with a view to further consolidating the current status quo of the occupation. Such measures include implantation of settlers from Armenia and abroad.” 

Infrastructure development projects in the occupied territories, the report continued, “facilitate their further repopulation with the ultimate goal of preventing the return of the Azerbaijani population to their homes, creating a new demographic situation on the ground and imposing a fait-accompli.”

Some backers of the settlements acknowledge that their motives are political. “The Artsakh struggle was a defining moment in modern Armenian history, shifting our narratives away from loss and toward victory, away from dispossession and toward reclaiming that which is rightly ours,” said Antranig Kasbarian, an official at the Tufenkian Foundation, one of the diaspora groups that has spearheaded development, at a 2015 fundraising event for another town in the occupied territories. (“Artsakh” is the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh.) “Our task now is to create facts on the ground – resettlement, economic development – that will consolidate our hard-won victories on the battlefield.”

“The potential is unlimited”

Settlement and development in the seven territories is still modest. The town of Kelbajar (capital of the district of the same name) now has about 600 residents, compared with the 23,000 it had before the war. But it has come a long way since Kananyan first moved here. The town has electricity and internet, and along the main street are a new school, a handful of shops, even a bank with an ATM. Most importantly, there is a new highway connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh, a joint project between government and diaspora groups, that passes through picturesque gorges about 18 kilometers from the town.

Along with these infrastructure developments, families are settling, and children are growing up with Kelbajar as the only home they have ever known. Harut Mnatsakanyan, Kelbajar's de facto governor, told Eurasianet proudly that the birthrate of Kelbajar is among the highest in the contested territories – of the region's 800 families, one-eighth have more than five children. “And there are a lot of families with six, seven, eight children,” he said. “We are now starting a program to build homes for large families.” The town's school has 135 elementary and secondary students, and a further 42 children in kindergarten.

Local authorities have ambitious plans for Kelbajar's further development. The de facto government now offers investors tax breaks and if they build in an area where there are no utilities or roads, the government will provide those services, the governor told Eurasianet. The authorities also are building hydropower plants in the district and Mnatsakanyan said there are plans to construct hotels to service tourists attracted to the area's stunning mountains and gorges.

While the population of the district is under 4,000 now, Mnatsakanyan said it could support orders of magnitude more. The population of the region was 70,000 before the war, he said, “and that's with the technology and economy of the 1980s. The economy is growing, fertility per square meter and other measures are growing, so we can use the territory even more intensively. The potential is unlimited.”

Mnatsakanyan is just 25. He grew up in the village of Khojaly, near Stepanakert, and was named governor in 2017 after a career in youth politics as the head of the student council at Artsakh State University and the head of the youth wing of the largest veteran organization in Nagorno-Karabakh. 

People of his generation, he said, are less inclined to compromise on territory. 

“Our fathers, the older generation, liberated part of Karabakh. And if for them, somehow, it was acceptable to give up some of this territory, because in their understanding it didn't used to be part of Nagorno-Karabakh, in exchange for peace so that their children don't experience war, because human life has a higher value – well, their generation is passing,” he said. “I was born in and live in a Nagorno-Karabakh where Karvajar and the other regions are a part of Nagorno-Karabakh. For my generation – and we are already taking official jobs – not one territory is under discussion.”

Marine Soghomonyan first moved to Kelbajar in 2003 from a small town in the Kotayk region of Armenia. “The economic situation in Armenia was bad. And here they gave me a free house, free utilities,” she said. 

She is now the director of the town's youth and cultural center that hosts an instrumental music ensemble, three dance groups, and a choir. When she first arrived, the cultural center was “only walls,” still in ruins from the war. But it was reconstructed with diaspora aid and, on the day Eurasianet visited, was hosting visitors from the U.S.-based diaspora charity group Ararat Foundation, which is sponsoring another renovation. “It's not going to be up to European standards, but not bad,” Soghomonyan said. 

It's impossible to imagine giving Kelbajar back to Azerbaijan, she said. “Our countrymen spilled so much blood here for this territory – who could give it back? What was the point of that war, what was the point of those deaths?” And it was likewise impossible, she said, for the former residents to move back. “People would kill each other again,” she said. “There were victims on their side as well as ours – who could live with their enemy?”

Just outside town, in an idyllic river valley, a group of private investors is constructing a factory to produce mineral water. In Soviet times, there was a resort here, Istisu (“hot water” in Azerbaijani), featuring curative mineral-springs baths. “People came from all over the USSR to get treated here,” said the enterprise's director, Karen Yegishyan. 

Yegishyan moved to Kelbajar in 2004 to do his military service, and then stayed on. “Of course, the main reason was financial – I needed work, and there was work here,” he said. But he added that as the population has grown, there isn't much work for young people. Now, the factory will provide jobs for about 60 people, he said.

While discussions on doing something with the old Istisu site have gone on for years, there were always political obstacles due to the ongoing peace negotiations, he said. That is no longer an issue. “After 25 years, it's now clear, people understand that there is no longer a question, the land belongs to its true owners,” Yegishyan said.

Historical claims

The question of Kelbajar's “true owners” is of course a contentious one. Armenians point to the presence of the medieval Dadivank Monastery – just off the new road – and the many stone-carved khachkar crosses found in the area to bolster their claim that this is historic Armenian territory.

The population makeup of the region has ebbed and flowed, though, throughout the centuries. Kananyan, who has become Kelbajar's unofficial historian, said that in the 18th century the region went through a process of “dearmenization,” and that the last significant Armenian population in Kelbajar disappeared around 1780.

Under the Russian empire and the Soviet Union the region was populated mostly by Azerbaijanis and Kurds; some Armenians today see the Muslim presence as a deliberate Soviet policy to erase the Armenian heritage of the region. 

“They [the Muslims of the region] weren't doing anything there, they were just shepherds or even doing nothing at all,” said Elina Mkhitaryan, the head of the de facto government's department of resettlement and migration. “They were paid cash, in today's terms equal to $160,000 a year. For one family,” she said. “And they lived, as you know, as Muslims do – bluntly putting it, breeding, and in the end we got what we got.” (Mainstream Soviet history does not support these claims.)

This phase of Kelbajar's Armenian settlement began during the war with Azerbaijan. The capture of Kelbajar by Armenian forces in 1993 was one of the most controversial episodes of that war: 50,000 civilians were forced to flee over the mountains in the winter and several hundred died. The offensive occasioned the first UN Security Council resolution on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which demanded an “immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces” from Kelbajar. The episode also prompted Turkey to break off its nascent relations with Armenia; a quarter century on those ties have yet to be restored. 

“Honestly, it doesn't help … it interferes with the negotiations.”

Now, the occupied territories remain – at least in theory – part of the negotiation process between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Under the current working framework, Armenia would give at least some of the occupied territories back to Azerbaijan in exchange for some sort of special status for Nagorno-Karabakh itself. And diplomats working on the negotiations see the continuing development of the territories as an obstacle to reaching a deal. 

Settling civilians in an occupied territory is considered a war crime by the Geneva Conventions. Of particular concern has been the settlement of Syrian-Armenian refugees in the seven territories, though the numbers of those settlers are modest. 

While diplomats do not raise the issue of settling the territories publicly, it usually is brought up in meetings of the OSCE Minsk Group, the structure tasked with trying to mediate a resolution, one Western diplomat in Yerevan told Eurasianet on condition of anonymity.

“It's clear that the moment you are settling Armenians in the surrounding territories, you are making it difficult to possibly return certain parts of the surrounding territories to Azerbaijan,” another Western diplomat in Yerevan said. “So honestly, it doesn't help. And to bring investors there, and other economic activities, it's a sensitive issue and it interferes with the negotiations, with the efforts to resolve the conflict through the peace process.”

But the peace process is on life support, at best, not least because of overwhelming public sentiment among Armenians against the territorial concessions that would be required. That makes agreeing to such a deal tantamount to political suicide. 

The Pashinyan factor

Among those pushing for a diplomatic solution, however, there is some hope that newly elected Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – a leader with a strong popular mandate – could have the political capital to sell a deal, should he choose to do so.

“He potentially has the credibility and the backing of the population; if he manages to deliver on the domestic front, he would be the right person who could sell a deal to the population,” the second diplomat said. 

Pashinyan might also have more incentive to come to a deal, given that the old administration's business interests benefited from the economic effects of the lack of a peace deal, namely the closed borders with Turkey. “There could possibly be more flexibility because the interest in genuinely achieving peace for the country is greater, because there is no longer the economic interests of the former establishment that benefited from the closed borders, from the situation as it is,” the diplomat added.

Still, the idea that Pashinyan could be a peacemaker is at this point still mostly wishful thinking. In the early days of his administration Pashinyan has been signaling a relatively hard line on negotiations with Azerbaijan. He has demanded that the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh authorities be brought into the diplomatic negotiations, a suggestion that Azerbaijan rejects.

And while Sargsyan still had some credibility remaining from his experience as a wartime commander, Pashinyan never participated in the war and so is more vulnerable to being seen as soft on Karabakh. During Pashinyan's campaign to become prime minister, members of Sargsyan's Republican Party tried to discredit him by bringing up old statements expressing willingness to concede some territories to Azerbaijan, though that position was not any different from Sargsyan's. 

So it remains to be seen if the new administration will take a different approach on Nagorno-Karabakh and the territories than did its predecessor. 

Pashinyan's team, including new Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, are having to get up to speed on the negotiations with Azerbaijan because the process was so closed under Sargsyan that even Mnatsakanyan – who had previously been Armenia's ambassador to the United Nations – was unfamiliar with the details. 

“He [Pashinyan] hasn't been exposed to a lot of the details of the negotiations and has a lot to learn. Under Sargsyan, the process was kept so close-hold,” the diplomat said. 

“Pashinyan has been saying, 'give me the rest of the year for domestic policy. And then once we're in a stronger position then we can actually get more into foreign policy,'” said Richard Giragosian, a Yerevan-based analyst. 

For most Armenians, however, talk of ceding the seven territories continues to be dismissed as naive at best, dangerous and treasonous at worst. 

“Whatever the Azerbaijanis call it, whatever the Minsk Group calls it, we call it our homeland,” said Mkhitaryan from the resettlement and migration department. She said Armenians resent outsiders' lecturing on the territories, and compared Armenia to Israel: a bulwark of Western values on the edge of the Muslim world. 

“In my opinion, a soldier [guarding the Nagorno-Karabakh de facto border] defends not only Armenia, not only Artsakh,” she said. “He also defends Great Britain, America, Europe, Greece. Everyone who understands that under a burqa could be a bomb.”

“There are a lot of places in the world where there are ongoing negotiations or unresolved territorial conflicts, but these people have to live their lives, they deserve a good life,” said Vardan Partamyan, the head of projects and external relations for the Hayastan All-Armenia Fund, an umbrella organization managing donations from the diaspora, including in Kelbajar. “You have what Argentina calls the Malvinas [which the UK calls the Falklands] – does Britain stop financing because Argentina wants it back?”

“There is not just a gap, but an abyss, between what is said on the diplomatic or governmental level and the reality,” said Kananyan, the local historian. “The reality is what you see here. And however strong the government might be, they don't have the means to make these people leave. If some general in Yerevan gives something away, then in Artsakh all the lower and medium-ranking officers are not going to carry out any order to give up territory. It's impossible. They live here.”

Joshua Kucera is the Turkey/Caucasus editor at Eurasianet, and author of The Bug Pit.

Commentary

Turkey Pressures Non-Muslim Leaders

Into Claiming They are not Pressured

By Harut Sassounian

Publisher, The California Courier

In a recent article, I wrote about the U.S. State Department’s annual

report on International Religious Freedom which stated that “all

religious groups that are not Sunni Muslim suffer discrimination and

persecution in Turkey…. Religious minorities said they continued to

experience difficulties obtaining exemptions from mandatory [Islamic]

religion classes in public schools, operating or opening houses of

worship, and in addressing land and property disputes. The government

restricted minority religious groups’ efforts to train their clergy….”

Immediately after this report was issued, the Turkish Foreign Ministry

rejected it calling the documented violations of religious rights “a

repetition of certain baseless claims.”

Turkish President Rejep Tayyip Erdogan sought a stronger rebuttal of

the State Department’s accusations against Turkey, even though he

usually ignores all complaints about his country’s flagrant violations

of the human rights of its own Turkish citizens as well as those of

its minorities and even Americans such as Pastor Andrew Brunson.

Erdogan immediately ordered his aides to orchestrate a joint statement

signed by all non-Muslim leaders in Turkey, claiming that their

religious rights are not violated. Since these non-Muslim leaders are

hostages in Turkey, they had no choice but to sign the petition that

was prepared for them by the Turkish government.

While it would be easy for us to criticize these minority leaders for

misrepresenting the violations they are subjected to, this argument

should be balanced by the fact that they live under a brutal regime

that has no qualms about jailing and torturing not only the religious

leaders but also their community members. We should also be somewhat

gratified that Pres. Erdogan, despite his despotic nature, has

exhibited a rare sensitivity on the accusations against his country,

and has valued the statement issued by the non-Muslim leaders,

thinking that it would help Turkey look good in the eyes of the

international community.

As directed by Pres. Erdogan, the representatives of 18 non-Muslim

minority groups in Turkey submissively signed the joint statement on

July 31, 2018, claiming that their rights are not violated by the

Turkish government.

The statement falsely declared: “As religious representatives and

foundation directors of the ancient communities of different religions

and belief groups that have been living in our country for centuries,

we live our beliefs freely and we freely worship according to our

traditions. Statements claiming or implying that there is repression

are completely false. The various problems and times of victimization

in the past have reached solutions over time. We are in continual

communication with our state institutions, who meet the issues we wish

to advance with good intentions and a desire for solutions. We are

making this joint statement consciously out of the responsibility to

correctly inform public opinion.”

The signatories were the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomeos I,

Turkey’s Armenian Deputy Patriarch Archbishop Aram Ateshyan, Turkey’s

Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva, Syriac Ancient Community Deputy Patriarch

Mor Filuksinos Yusuf Chetin, Turkey’s Armenian Catholics Spiritual

Leader Archbishop Levon Zekiyan, Chaldean Community Deputy Patriarch

François Yakan, Turkish Syriac Catholic General Deputy Patriarch

Chorbishop Orhan Chanlı, Gedikpasha Armenian Protestant Church and

Denomination Foundation Spiritual President Pastor Kirkor Agabaloglu,

RUMVADER President Andon Parizyanos, VADIP and Yedikule Sourp Pergich

Armenian Hospital Foundation President Bedros Shirinoglu, Turkish

Jewish Society and Turkish Chief Rabbinate Foundation President Ishak

Ibrahimzadeh, Beyoglu Syriac Lady Mary Church Foundation President

Sait Susin, Sourp Agop Armenian Catholic Hospital Foundation President

Bernard Sarıbay, Istanbul Syriac Catholic Foundation President Zeki

Basatemir, Chaldean Catholic Church Foundation President Teoman Onder,

Bulgarian Exarchate Orthodox Church Foundation President Vasil Liaze,

Georgian Catholic Church Foundation President Paul Zazadza, and Haskoy

Turkish Karaite Jewish Foundation President Misha Orme. The joint

statement of these 18 non-Muslim leaders was widely disseminated to

all minority newspapers in Turkey, all Turkish media, and many

overseas publications.

Interestingly, on August 1, 2018, a day after signing their joint

statement, all 18 non-Muslim leaders were invited to the Dolmabahche

Official Reception Hall in Istanbul and had a four-hour luncheon

meeting with Ibrahim Kalin, Pres. Erdogan’s Spokesman. Erdogan himself

was initially supposed to attend this meeting, but was unable to do so

at the last minute.

While the joint statement was intended to conceal the many

difficulties experienced by non-Muslim institutions in Turkey, this

bluff was quickly exposed when the participants at the meeting

complained to Ibrahim Kalin about the multiple violations of their

religious rights.

For example, Archbishop Ateshyan reported to the local Armenian media

that he and Shirinoglu told Kalin about the properties that in recent

years were returned to Armenian community foundations, only to have

the decision reversed by a mayor or a government minister. They also

complained about the Patriarchate’s legal status and inability to

receive contributions as a result of which the Patriarchate suffers

from a serious financial hardship. Abp. Ateshyan suggested that either

the Turkish government allow the Patriarchate to receive contributions

or allocate a budget to pay its expenses. Abp. Ateshyan also brought

up the suspended elections of local church executive committees, and

the postponement of the Patriarchal election. The other participants

in the luncheon also complained to Kalin about their various

difficulties, contradicting their own signed statement that they have

no religious problems in Turkey. That is why the luncheon took four

hours.

Kalin, in turn, thanked the signatories on behalf of Pres. Erdogan for

their joint statement, making it obvious that it was a major public

relations coup for Turkey.

The only voice opposed to the joint declaration of non-Muslim leaders

was Garo Paylan, an Armenian Member of the Turkish Parliament, who

boldly stated: “They don’t allow us to elect our Patriarch, they don’t

permit us to open a seminary, they don’t give us the right to elect

the board members of our church foundations, and the community is

scared like a pigeon!”

The joint statement was clearly signed under duress. Ironically, the

minority leaders were pressured by the Turkish regime to claim that

they are not pressured. Only in Turkey.