Armenian News,,, A Topalian 6 editorials

Panorama, Armenia

Oct 14 2019

Foreign Ministry: Northern Syria is home to 3,000 Armenians

The Armenian Embassy in Damascus and the Armenian Consulate General in Aleppo are working in an emergency mode, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan told a briefing on Monday, referring to developments in the wake of the Turkish invasion of northern Syria.

She noted that the Armenian diplomatic mission is in constant contact with the community structures in Qamishli and northern regions of Syria. “All possible measures are being taken to assist all our compatriots who have expressed a desire to move from the northern regions,” the spokesperson said. “We receive operational information from our diplomatic mission about the condition of our compatriots on the ground and the humanitarian situation in general.”

According to the official, the number of Armenians in northern Syria makes 3,000 people, who live mostly in Qamishli and Al-Malikiyah.

“To date there have been no military operations near these settlements, therefore the evacuation of Armenians from these two regions is not being considered either,” Naghdalyan added.

Turkey launched a military operation against Kurdish positions in northeastern Syria on Wednesday, October 9, days after US troops pulled out of the area.

ArmenPress, Armenia

Oct 12 2019

Ethnic Armenians release details about Turkish military invasion in Syria

 

Ethnic Armenians who moved from Syria’s Tell Abyad to Aleppo due to the Turkish military invasion, told about the situation in that region following the military operations.

 

Sargis Nazarian and Vanes Kecherian told Aleppo’s Gandzasar daily that they were in Tell Abyad for working purposes.

 

“Before the start of the war our work was very good. We were working and enjoying our job. When the Turkish attack started days before, a shot was fired towards Tell Abyad. The Turkish armed forces started opening shots towards Tell Abyad and nearby villages. Staying there was a matter of life and death. We could not stay there. We left everything there and moved on. At that time we spent a terrible night. The villages in Syria’s north-east near the Turkish border were hit by rockets”, Vanes Kecherian said.

 

Sargis Nazarian in turn stated that they have received a warm welcome in Aleppo.

 

“Now the situation is unclear, we are waiting”, Nazarian said.

 

On October 9 Turkish forces launched an offensive in Syria’s north-east.

 

The Armenian foreign ministry released a statement noting that Armenia condemns the military invasion by Turkey in north-east Syria, which would lead to deterioration of regional security, losses among civilians, mass displacement and eventually to a new humanitarian crisis.

 

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan

[Pashinian must have got under Aliev's skin as the Azeri  press has gone mad on attacking Armenian general]

RFE/RL Report

October 11, 2019

Aliyev, Pashinian Trade Barbs, Talk At Ex-Soviet Summit 

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian 
discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict after trading barbs during a summit of 
former Soviet republics held in Turkmenistan’s capital Ashgabat on Friday.

Aliyev started the tense verbal exchange at a plenary session of the summit of 
the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) by accusing Armenia of “glorifying 
fascists.” He noted that the former Armenian government erected in Yerevan the 
statue of Garegin Nzhdeh, an Armenian nationalist statesman who had fought 
against the Bolsheviks and later collaborated with Nazi Germany.

Pashinian responded by accusing Aliyev of distorting the history of Armenia and 
the Second World War.

“Ilham Heydarovich’s speech leaves one with a sense that [Adolf] Hitler played 
a secondary role and that the Nazi movement was led by Garegin Nzhdeh,” he 
said. “Yet the truth is that Garegin Nzhdeh fought against Turkish occupation 
of Armenia, against the genocide of Armenians and … also commanded, together 
with many Russian officers, a very important section of the frontline during 
the Armenian-Turkish war in 1918.”

“I think it’s inappropriate to use this [CIS] format for distorting history and 
adding some tension to the atmosphere of this important meeting,” added 
Pashinian.

Despite the public recriminations, Pashinian and Aliyev spoke with each other 
at a dinner in Ashgabat hosted by Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly 
Berdymuhamedov for fellow CIS leaders later in the day.

Pashinian’s spokesman, Vladimir Karapetian, told the Armenpress news agency 
that the two men discussed the Karabakh conflict and, in particular, 
“possibilities of reducing tensions” and “upcoming steps” in the negotiating 
process mediated by the United States, Russia and France. The conversation 
lasted for about two hours, said Karapetian.

Aliyev and Pashinian held five face-to-face meetings between September 2018 and 
May 2019, raising hopes for a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. 
Their first meeting was followed by a significant decrease in ceasefire 
violations in the conflict zone. There have been no signs of further progress 
in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks in the last few months.

Born in the Russian Empire in 1886, Nzhdeh was one of the prominent military 
leaders of an independent Armenian republic formed in 1918. In 1920, he mounted 
armed resistance against the republic’s takeover by Bolshevik Russia in Syunik, 
a mountainous region in southeastern Armenia.

Nzhdeh was one of several exiled Armenian leaders in Europe who pledged 
allegiance to Nazi Germany in 1942 with the stated aim of saving Soviet Armenia 
from a possible Turkish invasion after what they expected to be a Soviet defeat 
by the Third Reich.

Nzhdeh surrendered to advancing Red Army divisions in Bulgaria in 1944 after 
reportedly offering Josef Stalin to mobilize Armenians for a Soviet assault on 
Turkey. In 1948, a Soviet court sentenced him to 25 years in prison on charges 
that mainly stemmed from his “counterrevolutionary” activities in 1920-1921.

Speaking at the Ashgabat summit, Pashinian portrayed Nzhdeh as a victim of 
Stalin’s political repressions. “Nzhdeh died in the Vladimir prison [in 1955,]” 
he said. “Many prominent Soviet figures died in the Vladimir prison and [writer 
Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn was in the Gulag. Do we consider everyone imprisoned 
from 1937 through the 1950s political prisoners?”

Nzhdeh was rehabilitated in Armenia after the republic’s last Communist 
government was removed from power in 1990. He is widely credited with 
preserving Armenian control over Syunik. He is also revered by many Armenians 
as the founder of a new brand of Armenian nationalism that emerged in the 1930s.

Former President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) has 
espoused his Tseghakron ideology, which puts the emphasis on armed self-defense 
and self-reliance, ever since it was set up in the early 1990s.

Senior HHK representatives, who are highly critical of the current Armenian 
government, were quick to praise Pashinian’s reaction to Aliyev’s remarks. 
“Nikol’s response was appropriate,” the former ruling party’s deputy chairman, 
Armen Ashotian, wrote on Facebook.

Armenpress.am

14 October 2019

UK cancels appointment of A. Gogbashian as new Ambassador to Armenia, names interim Chargé d’Affairs

The British Embassy in Yerevan has said that Alan Gogbashian will not be taking up the role of the UK’s Ambassador to Armenia for “operational reasons”.

Gogabashian was named as the next UK Ambassador to Armenia in August and was expected to assume office in September.

“Mr Alan Gogbashian will no longer be taking up the role of Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Yerevan for operational reasons. Mr Gogbashian will be transferring to another Diplomatic Service appointment. Mr David Moran has been appointed as Chargé d’Affaires with the rank of Ambassador in the interim, until a new Ambassador is appointed”, the British Embassy in Armenia said in a statement published on its official Facebook account on October 14.

David Moran is Head of Global Economic Issues Department in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO). David joined the FCO in 1985 and has previously served as Ambassador to Switzerland, Kazakhstan (2009 to 2012), Uzbekistan (2005 to 2007), and as Ambassador (non-resident) Liechtenstein and the Kyrgyz Republic. David also served in Nairobi, Moscow, Paris and Tbilisi, and in a range of policy and other roles in London. From 2008 to 2009 he was Deputy Director for Early Warning and Transnational Issues in the Cabinet Office.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan

Armenpress.am

14 October, 2019

Transparent and accountable: New website of Hayastan All-Armenian Fund launched

The new website of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund -himnadram.org, has launched today ahead of the Fund’s Telethon 2019.

The new website will make the Fund’s activities fully transparent and accountable to all Armenians and will allow to make online donations with the format preferred by the people.

“Everyone from any part of the world can enter into our website to see both the works we have carried out and the upcoming projects. We will hold fundraising during which we are putting a money goal before ourselves that we must collect 100.000 or 10.000 USD, and will collect that money in a short period of time and will implement the project. We also have a section for donation in our website which allows to make regular donations to the Fund, 1 USD monthly or daily. That money will be charged from the bank card every month and that particular person will receive a monthly report on what projects his/her donation has been spent”, Director of the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund Haykak Arshamyan said.

He also informed that the Fund has also expanded the cooperation with ACBA CREDIT AGRICOLE BANK and they will determine jointly on what to spend the collected money.

The representative of the Bank said they are cooperating with the Fund for a long time, and all payments are carried out by the Bank’s POS terminals.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan

Click on  https://www.himnadram.org/en

EurasiaNet.org

Oct 14 2019

Pashinyan allies lament slow pace of change in the new Armenia

The new government has an overwhelming mandate for change. But the prime minister’s fear of unpopularity has hamstrung his ambitious agenda.

Joshua Kucera, Ani Mejlumyan 

In August, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that a long-debated gold mine project would, after much deliberation, go ahead. But following an outcry by environmentalists, Pashinyan two weeks later walked back the announcement, and the fate of the mine is still up in the air.

In July, the government announced that it intended to ratify the Istanbul Convention, an international agreement aimed at protecting women from domestic violence. But after social conservatives, including the influential church, vocally objected, the government quietly shelved ratification. Its fate, too, is unclear.

Despite coming to power last year on the wave of a self-styled “revolution,” Armenia’s new government has since then been surprisingly cautious in its policy-making. Government supporters complain that the new authorities appear unable to make decisive moves, while promised legislative reforms in the judiciary, taxation, and other spheres have come far more slowly than expected.

Pashinyan is likely the most popular leader in Armenia’s recent history, with Armenians from all walks of life responding enthusiastically to his promise to rid the country of the rot he inherited from a succession of corrupt, authoritarian governments. But that popular mandate is a double-edged sword, as Pashinyan has been reluctant to use it to implement potentially painful reforms.

“Most of all he is concerned about his popularity and a lot of the shortcomings that you see happen because of that preoccupation,” said one government ministry official, speaking to Eurasianet on condition of anonymity. “He gets cold feet about difficult issues that the public will not support.”

“This fear of making mistakes, the fear of losing popularity is very strong,” one NGO official who supports the new government told Eurasianet. “One of the biggest concerns that people have is that reforms are very slow. People voted for this government because of this revolutionary nature and people are waiting for dramatic changes to take place.”

Those dramatic changes, however, will inevitably require painful compromise. “For Nikol, you often hear this, it’s an ambition to be ‘first,’ ‘unprecedented,’ ‘never before me,’ to have this historical role,” the official added. “You can hear it in his speeches and the ways he addresses MPs. ‘We are the first, we’re unprecedented, there is no democracy like this in the world, the rest of the world should learn from us,’ and so on. This vanity is another incentive for gaining power. And that makes things difficult, because if you want reforms you need to do unpopular things, unfortunately.”

The paralysis is exacerbated by the top-heavy nature of Armenia’s new leadership. Pashinyan trusts only a small circle of allies, mostly those from his political party, Civil Contract, and those who were active in the protests that eventually brought him to power.

“The whole revolution was built around Pashinyan’s brand,” said one Western diplomat in Yerevan, speaking on condition of anonymity. “He’s very suspicious of those who didn’t march with him in the revolution and came on later. That impacts how much trust and communication there is between Pashinyan and some of his ministries.”

“His focus on his popularity does cause some cautiousness on his part,” the diplomat continued. “And not just on Pashinyan’s part, the people who work for him in the ministries and in his inner circle don’t necessarily feel empowered the way that they should to implement Pashinyan’s vision because they’re not always confident that they have direction from Pashinyan.”

Crowd-pleaser

One key example is judiciary reform. Entering office, Pashinyan placed a high priority on cleaning up the judicial system, filled with appointees from the former government, and on addressing the corruption and human rights violations committed by the former authorities. But that reform languished under Justice Minister Artak Zeynalian, who was an experienced and respected civil rights activist, but from another opposition party, Hanrapetutyun.

In the meantime, the government pushed for a series of high-profile trials against former senior officials, most notably ex-president Robert Kocharyan, billing them as anti-corruption measures. Those have been crowd-pleasing affairs but have done little to address the more systemic problems that the new government inherited.

“The people are very hooked on these individual, one-off anti-corruption investigations,” the Western diplomat said. “They get very excited when they see this guy or that guy under investigation or detained but that isn’t a comprehensive anti-corruption strategy.”

In June, Zeynalian was replaced by Rustam Badasyan, a 28-year-old who had previously served as Pashinyan’s personal lawyer. Since then, observers have noted an invigoration in the ministry. On October 10, the Justice Ministry rolled out a broad program of judicial, electoral, and constitutional reforms, as well as the creation of a body to investigate human rights violations under previous governments.

But to many, the move came later than it should have.

“One of the biggest concerns that people have is that reforms are very slow. People voted for this government because of this revolutionary nature and people are waiting for dramatic changes to take place,” the NGO official said. “With this judicial reform, for example, it is lagging behind. They should have started it earlier, that’s for sure.”

“Pashinyan’s position is that it is too soon to move on this”

The grumbling about the slow pace has been widespread. A May poll from the International Republican Institute found that more than 60 percent of Armenians thought that political and economic reforms should be undertaken “quickly,” and Pashinyan has been forced to respond to the criticism.

“My impression and opinion is that quick reforms mean failed reforms,” he said in June. “In the early ‘90s, several brilliant reforms of strategic significance failed, only because their authors decided and wanted to introduce them in Armenia very quickly. And these reforms till now have not been implemented and till now Armenia bears the heavy consequences of the failure of these reforms.”

But many characterize the slow pace as the result not of deliberation, but of paralysis. The question of the gold mine, Amulsar, and of the Istanbul Convention on domestic violence, have been the two most contentious issues among members of the new government and parliament, said one source involved in the deliberations who spoke to Eurasianet on condition of anonymity.

That contention is hidden because of a policy in the ruling My Step coalition in parliament to hold internal debates to determine the coalition’s position, and then to vote unanimously, the source said. “That’s why your interviews before the vote and your actual vote can be two separate things,” the source said. “People who just see the sessions [of parliament] when the vote takes place think that this is just another [former ruling] Republican Party, when the order came from above and they unanimously executed it. It’s not like that now but it definitely looks like that from the outside.”

But the behind-the-scenes debates have complicated the decision making on both Amulsar and the Istanbul Convention.

The Amulsar gold mine has long been one of the most vexing issues for the new government. Work on the mine was begun under the previous government, and there were irregularities in studies showing it would not harm the environment. When Pashinyan came to power, he faced pressure from grassroots activists to reexamine the environmental impact. But Pashinyan also has made attracting foreign investment key to reviving Armenia’s economy, and backing out of the project – carried out by a company based in the U.S. and registered in the UK – would send a bad signal to other potential investors.

“The Amulsar issue was carefully reviewed by My Step experts, economists and lawyers,” the ministry official said. “Some people were very against mining, others were afraid of the obvious – that it would hurt investment.”

Pashinyan announced on August 19, via a Facebook video, that a long-awaited environmental report indicated that “the mine should be exploited.” But many Pashinyan allies, including government officials, publicly objected that his reading of the report was too optimistic and the prime minister two weeks later walked back the approval, asking the Environment Ministry to gather more data.

The Istanbul Convention has posed a similar dilemma: Many of the new senior officials support ratifying the agreement, as do Armenia’s partners in the West. But some of the convention’s provisions, such as a statement that gender is socially constructed and a requirement to implement the convention’s ideas in the education system, have given ammunition to opponents who seek to turn the country’s socially conservative population against it.

While the Convention was signed by the previous government, Pashinyan’s government publicly said it intended to work with parliament to complete ratification. But after pushback, including from the influential church, the My Step coalition decided to hold off.

“Is this the time, and is this an issue of primary importance right now?” asked the source close to the deliberations, paraphrasing the dominant thinking in parliament. “What would be the price of ratification? The ratings might fall drastically. That’s a concern. … Pashinyan’s position is that it is too soon to move on this.” Ratification will be taken up again next spring, “in the best-case scenario,” the source added.

But the source said some in the government disagree with those calculations: “We can’t just keep doing only reforms that please the majority of people and get praised for them. We have international obligations.”

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

Ani Mejlumyan is a reporter based in Yerevan.

Panorama, Armenia

Oct 12 2019

Carpet production grows in Armenia in January-August 2019

Armenia has seen a strong growth in production of carpets and carpet coverings in the first eight months of 2019, the latest statistics reveal. The country manufactured a total of 24.4 tons of carpets and carpet coverings from January to August this year, up by 44.4% times from the same period last year, Panorama.am learned from the Statistical Committee. It is noted that a total of 16.9 tons of carpets were manufactured in the country over the past eight months.

Meanwhile, Armenia produced 26.3 tons of carpets in 2018 which is 32.8% up to compare with the production levels of 2017.