Armenian News... A Topalian 7 editorials

Christianity Today

Nov 1 2019

Armenian Orthodox Leader: ‘We May Forgive One Day, But We Will Never Forget.’

 

Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, on what comes next after US House recognizes Armenians’ “legitimate claim” of genocide.

Interview by Jayson Casper in Beirut

The Armenian Orthodox Church is one of the oldest Christian denominations in the world. According to tradition, Armenia was evangelized by Jesus’ disciples Bartholomew and Thaddeus. In 301 A.D., it became the first nation to adopt Christianity as its official religion.

An Oriental Orthodox denomination, the Armenians are in communion with the Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopian, and Malankara (India) churches. They differ with Catholics and Protestants over the 451 A.D. Council of Chalcedon decision to recognize Christ as one person with two natures: human and divine. Oriental Orthodox Christians declare Christ has one nature, both human and divine.

The Armenian Church is governed by two patriarchs, entitled Catholicos. One, Karekin II, is Supreme Patriarch for all Armenians and sits in Armenia.

CT interviewed Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, which was once located in modern-day Turkey but since the Armenian Genocide relocated to Antelias, Lebanon, five miles north of Beirut. His jurisdiction includes the Armenians of the Middle East, Europe, and North and South America.

Aram I discussed the genocide, the US House of Representatives resolution this week to finally

 recognize it, and Armenians’ desired response from Turkey.

How do you respond to the US resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide?

Yesterday I made a statement welcoming warmly this action taken. I believe it is very much in line with the firm commitment of the United States of America in respect to human rights. The rights of the Armenian people are being violated. After more than 100 years, we tried to bring the attention of the international community that the Armenian Genocide is a fact of history.

Whether we call it genocide or massacre or deportation, the intention is important. The intention of the Ottoman Turkish government at the time was to destroy [and] eliminate the Armenian people for political reasons. The presence of Armenian people in the western part of present-day Turkey and [historic] Cilicia was an obstacle to their project of pan-Turkism.

This is our legitimate claim: that the international community make a visible, tangible manifestation of their concern in respect to human rights, and recognize the Armenian Genocide. It was carefully planned and systematically executed by the government at the time.

Our people all around the world warmly greeted this action of the House of Representatives. It is our firm expectation that the Senate will reaffirm their decision.

Christianity Today

Nov 1 2019

Will US Genocide Resolution Satisfy Armenian Christians? 

The Middle East diaspora appreciates the House’s recognition at last. But what they really want is repentance.

Jayson Casper

Armenian Americans breathed a sigh of relief this week when the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved Resolution 296 to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

Around 1.5 million Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1923, as the defeated Ottoman Empire transitioned into the modern Republic of Turkey. Less than half a million survived.

The resolution also mentions the Greek, Assyrian, Chaldean, Syriac, Aramean, Maronite, and other Christian victims who lived in Asia Minor and other Ottoman provinces at the time.

If the House legislation is passed in the Senate and signed by President Donald Trump, the United States will be committed to commemorate the genocide, to reject its denial, and to educate people about it in order to prevent similar atrocities in the future.

But if Armenian Americans are finally pleased, the diaspora in the Middle East—much closer to the Turks and the lands taken from their ancestors—demurs.

“It certainly heals some small aspect of our century-long national wound,” said Paul Haidostian, president of the evangelical Haigazian University—the only Armenian university in the diaspora—in Beirut, Lebanon.

“There is some sense of relief. But it should not be exaggerated.”

Nor should it be underestimated, he told CT. All Armenians will welcome the “historic” resolution, though it comes “very late.” But few expect the US Senate will act similarly, as the term genocide has long been rejected by the Turks. “Because it involves Turkey, there is politics involved,” said Haidostian.

“But it is important to call things by name.”

Armenian Orthodox Leader: “We May Forgive One Day, But We Will Never Forget.”

The 405–11 tally reversed what had long been an uphill battle in American politics to even present recognition of the Armenian genocide for a vote.

Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California and co-sponsor of the bill, worked 19 years on its behalf. Pressure against the resolution from Turkey, a NATO ally of the US, quashed previous efforts in 2000 under Bill Clinton, in 2007 under George W. Bush, and in 2010 under Barack Obama.

During the Bush administration, nearly 70 percent of air supplies to the US military in Iraq went through Turkey’s Incerlik airbase.

According to Open Secrets, Turkey spent $13.4

 million to lobby against the bill in 2017–18.

“We cannot pick and choose which crimes against humanity are convenient to speak about,” said Schiff, as reported by Reuters. “We cannot be cowed into silence by a foreign power.”

If pro-Turkey politics played a role in preventing a US resolution on the Armenian Genocide in past decades, a new wave of anti-Turkey politics paved the way this past week.

Turkey’s incursion into Syria offended much

 of the US Congress. Following the genocide vote, the House also passed a sanctions bill against Turkey.

“While emotions run high,” the Turkish American National Steering Committee wrote in

 an email, House leaders are “manipulating the circumstances to introduce H.Res.296 for a floor vote soon.”

But parallels between the Armenians and present-day Kurds were obvious to many.

“Thank you, Congress, for voting overwhelmingly to officially recognize and reprimand the genocide of the Ottoman Empire,” tweeted Bassam

 Ishak, president of the Syriac National Council. “Let’s try to stop the new demographic change underway by Turkey in northern Syria.”

Similar was Toufic Baaklini, president of In Defense of Christians (IDC), who stated his own family had to flee when 250,000 Maronites were starved to death in Lebanon. IDC lobbied on behalf of the resolution, and in an op-ed before the vote panned the “massive misguided investment of American moral capital” in the US relationship with Turkey.

“By passing this resolution today, America has said clearly that we side with the victims of atrocities and will no longer ignore the Turk’s history of ethnic cleansing,” stated Baaklini.

Representative Anna Eschoo, a Democrat from California of Armenian descent, highlighted the religious aspect of the genocide.

“What all of the persecuted had in common was that they were Christians,” she tweeted.

 “This resolution not only honors and commemorates my ancestors who perished but all those who were lost in the first genocide of the 20th century.”

But another Christian, Representative Paul Gosar, interpreted the resolution differently. The Republican from Arizona voted “present” at the roll call, labeling it an attack on President Donald Trump.

He stated it was “war propaganda” to compare atrocities against the Armenians with what is happening with the Turks and Kurds today.

“As a Christian I stand with the Armenians, but I will not vote for a lie,” he stated.

The pattern of such discourse is upsetting to fellow Armenians, said Hrayr Jebejian, general secretary of the Bible Society in the Gulf. About 5,000 Armenians currently work in the United Arab Emirates, where they have two churches. Another 3,000 are in

 Kuwait, where they have a church and a school.

“The genocide is sacred for us,” he told CT. “But knowing American politics, it always looks to the Armenian issue as a bargaining chip.”

Jebejian still has pictures of the two dozen members of his family who were killed in Turkey. He also wonders if the House initiative will go any further. But he is grateful for the international attention it brings.

“It is better late than never,” he said. “But if it was condemned in those days, it would have prevented the many genocides that followed since.”

The Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) endorsed the US resolution.

“Remembering and educating about any genocide—Armenian, the Holocaust, Bosnia, Rwanda, and others—is a necessary tool to prevent future tragedies,” stated ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt, “and [it] begins with recognition.”

But recognition alone leaves much unaddressed.

“I am happy to see our massacre recognized,” Michel Kassarji, the Chaldean Catholic bishop of Lebanon, told CT. “But what can we do now? Will they give us our land and churches back?”

Kassarji’s bishopric doubled in size when 3,000 Chaldean families fled to Lebanon from Iraq and Syria. World Vision helps support his humanitarian efforts, providing a school for 175 children and aid to 125 widows.

But 200,000 Chaldeans were killed along with Armenians in the genocide, including his great-grandfather. Kassarji went back to Turkey a few years ago to his ancestral home of Diyarbakir. Not one Chaldean family remains. Nearby Mardin has one family, with a sole deacon caring for the historic church there.

But Kassarji’s question resonates with many Armenians in the diaspora.

“The map of the world is always subject to change,” said Megrditch Karagoezian, president of the Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East, speaking about “Western Armenia.”

“The dream is still there,” he told CT. “But how can it happen with no Armenians there? I don’t know.”

Karagoezian said that many Armenians still hold title deed to their real estate in Turkey. He mentioned the maps of Woodrow Wilson that would have more than doubled the size of modern-day Armenia, on Turkey’s eastern border.

Subsequent treaties following World War I drew different boundaries, however. A briefly independent Armenia became part of the Soviet Union, and the modern republic was created in 1991.

Armenia was the first nation to officially adopt Christianity, in 301 A.D. The faith first arrived as early as 40 A.D., traditionally attributed to the preaching of Jesus’ disciples Bartholomew and Thaddeus.

The Evangelical Church of Armenia was formed in 1846 in Istanbul, and declared an official Protestant millet (a sect allowed to use its own family laws) by the Ottoman sultan in 1850.

But today, Turkey wants to avoid the genocide label at all costs, Karagoezian said. “It would imply restitution,” he said, “and could eventually translate into some sort of compensation or other political steps.”

The Armenian Orthodox Church has filed a lawsuit against Turkey to return its ancient See of Cilicia. The case is currently working its way through the lower levels of the Turkish legal system.

But for Haidostian, if there is politics involved today, there were politics back during the genocide also. The university president’s people were crushed as the Turks tried to create a national Turkish state out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire and its

 panoply of religious communities.

So while the US House resolution is important, he told CT, it should not be overstated. Healing is paramount.

“The wound will remain open until full repentance for past wrongs is accomplished,” Haidostian said. “That is when new life starts.”

JAM News

Nov 1 2019

Combating violence against women VS national values – Armenians protest ratification of Istanbul Convention

A protest rally was held in Yerevan in connection with the visit of representatives of the Council of Europe, which are holding discussions on the convention

A rally was held today against the ratification of the Istanbul Convention, which aims to prevent violence against women and domestic violence. The rally took place near the parliament.

Much of the Armenian public that domestic violence is not prevalent in the country.

The Armenian parliament held a discussion on the ratification of the convention with the participation of senior officials of the Council of Europe, and activists who are fighting to ensure that parliament does not ratify this document take to the streets

 again.

Rejecting the role of the victim

Activists are convinced that the convention threatens traditional Armenian values.

The head of the Volia initiative, Vahagn Chakhalyan, announced that their rallies will continue:

“Citizens are ready to organize demonstrations of disobedience in different cities of Armenia.  We say that this is not yet necessary, since the document is not yet at the ratification stage.  And if the National Assembly of Armenia does not listen to the voice of citizens and goes against their opinion, then protests will be held in all cities.”

This time, the protest rally took place first in front of the parliament building.  A few hours later, it was decided to march along the streets of Yerevan.

On the Istanbul convention 

Armenia joined the convention in January 2018, even under the former authorities, but then the issue did not cause such a scandal; Armenia did not ratify the convention officially.

The Istanbul Convention (or “Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence”) was signed in 2011 in Istanbul.

Of the 47 Council of Europe member states, 34 have ratified the Convention, and 11, including Armenia, have only signed.  Russia and Azerbaijan did not sign it, and Bulgaria generally recognized the convention as unconstitutional.

According to the government program, the Istanbul Convention was to be ratified in the second half of September 2019.

Opinions on ratifying the convention

MPs from the Prosperous Armenia parliamentary party agree with the opinion of the activists; tThey even joined the collection of signatures against the ratification of the convention, organized by the Volia initiative.

According to MP of the Prosperous Armenia Party Gevorg Petrosyan, the Istanbul Convention contradicts the Armenian Constitution and the country’s value system.

The fact that in 2018 alone in Armenia more than 400 criminal cases were opened in cases of the use of violence against women, the MP commented on as follows:

“We have legislation that punishes domestic violence.  It is impossible to ratify under this pretext what, in essence, is aimed at the destruction of our national system of values.”

Gevorg Petrosyan means the “Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence, on the protection of persons affected by domestic violence and on the restoration of harmony in the family.”

It was adopted at the end of 2017 – again after heated debate and protests in general, it entered into force in January 2018, and began to be applied practically from July 1, 2018.

In connection with the intensification of the protests, the chairman of the parliamentary commission on state and legal issues Vladimir Vardanyan explained: at the moment, the ratification of the Istanbul Convention is not on the agenda of the National Assembly.

“But we need to clearly understand the following: Armenia is a member of the Council of Europe, and in a certain sense we should go in this direction.  There should be discussions of the (convention).”

Why do many people think that domestic violence is an issue? 

The fact is that victims of violence generally do not report to the police.

Very rarely do women come forward to talk about violence against them; even rarer do people go to the police. This creates the impression in society that there is no violence against women in Armenia.

At the same time, as psychologist Anush Aleksanyan explained to JAMnews, victims of violence remain silent because they are afraid of the reaction of society:

“The society does not have the right attitude towards people who have been abused, there is no support.  Therefore, they simply remain silent or speak on condition of anonymity.  We also don’t have a culture of discussing such topics,” says the psychologist.

 Aleksanyan considers it a big problem that society often justifies the rapist and blames the victim.

The psychologist explains that people are silent about violence against themselves out of guilt – the inevitable consequences of violence.  After all, they are also carriers of the stereotypes of their society and often share the opinion of others that they have a share of guilt in what happened.

As regards sexual violence, the Armenian Penal Code does not provide for legal action at all if the rapist is the legal husband of a woman.

News.am, Armenia

Nov 1 2019

Benefits with child’s birth to increase twice in Armenia in 2020 

Benefits in connection with the birth of a child will increase in Armenia in 2020, said the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs of Armenia Zaruhi Batoyan on Friday at a joint meeting of the standing parliamentary commissions during the preliminary discussion of the draft state budget for 2020.

According to her, the one-time allowance for the first child in Armenia in October 2018 was up to AMD 150 thousand.

“Now both benefits will increase up to AMD 300 thousand. Moreover, benefits for caring for a child up to two years old will increase,” Batoyan noted, adding that these changes will come into force not from January 1, but from July 1, 2020.

After giving birth, the mother can take a leave of up to three years, with benefits up to two years. Now this allowance is AMD 18 thousand per month, and from 2020 it will grow to AMD 26.5 thousand.

Asked to comment what caused the delay of six months, the minister explained that some time should pass between the announcement of benefits and their entry into force.

Armenpress.am

1 November, 2019

International brands with Made In Armenia label: 4 major garment factories opened in Armenia

From now on the clothes of several international brands will be produced in Armenia and will be exported to the European and Russian markets with “Made in Armenia” label.

The opening ceremony of 4 garment factories of Sartex, Asa Garment, Alex Textile and Texas Production was held on November 1 in Yerevan. The ceremony was attended by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pahsinyan who toured the factories, got acquainted with the production process and the products.

“More than 3000 people will work here in the future. The production will be exported mainly to the European, also Russian markets. All products are with Made in Armenia label”, director of the Asa Garment, Alex Textile and Texas Production companies Marat

 Movsisyan said.

Sartex has been founded by the Italian Sartis and Armenian Alex Textile companies. Sartex represents Sartis Italian company in Armenia. The company is engaged in production of clothes of MaxMara, Moncler, Peuterey, Dolce&Gabana, Dainese and other famous

 brands. Director of the company Mkhitar Aghabekyan said they want the Made in Armenia label become a quality guarantor.

Asa Garment is an Armenian-Chinese company engaged in production of the French Jennifer brand’s clothes. The company also holds talks for producing ZARA brand clothes. At the moment the company has 300 employees, but soon this number will reach 1000.

Alex Textile produces clothes for the Russian companies.

Middle East Forum

Nov 1 2019

Denial of Religious Dimension to Armenian Genocide Persists

by Raymond Ibrahim

An ugly truth of history has just been acknowledged. On October 29, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (405 to 11) in favor of Resolution 296, which acknowledges the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Ottoman Turks during WW1. (Unsurprisingly, Ilhan Omar was among the very few to abstain; her disingenuous logic will be addressed later.)

In order to become official policy, however, the resolution needs to be approved by both houses of Congress, and then signed by the president. The Senate is currently not scheduled to vote on the measure.

It is at any rate a step in the right direction. According to the book Remembrance

 and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide,

At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000. Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of the Armenian Genocide, eyewitness

 accounts, official archives, photographic evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors, denial of the Armenian Genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on from 1915 to the present.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the vote "worthless" vote, while Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hailed it as "a bold step towards serving truth and historical justice."

Indeed, Turkey is currently outraged at this resolution; its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, called it "worthless" and the "biggest insult" to the Turkish people.

Such willful denial borders the surreal considering how well documented the Armenian genocide is. As the International Association of Genocide Scholars says, "the Armenian Genocide is not controversial, but rather is denied only by the Turkish government and its apologists."

Nor is this a new issue. The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey from 1913-16, wrote the following in his memoir:

When the Turkish authorities gave the order for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to

 conceal this fact. . . I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915.

In 1920 U.S. Lieutenant General James Harbord called the Armenian genocide the "most colossal crime of all the ages."

In 1920, U.S. Senate Resolution 359 heard testimony on the "mutilation, violation, torture, and death" of countless Armenians, to quote American Lieutenant General James Harbord, who further referred to the genocide as the "most colossal crime of all the ages."

In her memoir, Ravished Armenia, Aurora

 Mardiganian described being raped and thrown into a harem (consistent with Islam's

 rules of war). Unlike thousands of other Armenian girls who were discarded after being defiled, she managed to escape. In the city of Malatia, she saw 16 Christian girls crucified: "Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross," she wrote, "spikes through her feet and hands, only their hair blown by the wind, covered their bodies." Such scenes were portrayed in the 1919 film Auction of Souls, some of which is based on Mardiganian's memoirs.

Whereas the genocide is largely acknowledged in the West—long before this new resolution over 40 American states had acknowledged it—one of its primary if not fundamental causes is habitually overlooked: religion (Muslim Turks vis-à-vis Christian Armenians).

The genocide is unfortunately articulated through a singularly secular paradigm that focuses almost exclusively on nationalism, identity, territorial disputes, etc.—thereby projecting modern, secular Western sensibilities onto vastly different characters and eras.

One of the primary causes of the Armenian genocide is habitually overlooked: religion.

War, of course, is another factor that clouds the true essence of the genocide. Because these atrocities mostly occurred during World War I, so the argument goes, they are ultimately a reflection of just that—war, in all its chaos and destruction, and nothing more. But as Winston Churchill, who described the massacres as an "administrative holocaust," correctly observed, "The opportunity [WWI] presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race." Even Adolf Hitler had pointed out that "Turkey

 is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention."

Even the most cited factor of the Armenian Genocide, "ethnic identity conflict," while legitimate, must be understood in light of the fact that, historically, religion often accounted more for a person's identity than language or heritage. This is daily demonstrated throughout the Islamic world today, where Muslim governments and Muslim mobs persecute Christian minorities who share the same race, ethnicity, language, and culture; minorities who are indistinguishable from the majority—except,

 of course, for being non-Muslims, or "infidels."

As one Armenian studies professor asks,

 "If it [the Armenian Genocide] was a feud between Turks and Armenians, what explains the genocide carried out by Turkey against the Christian Assyrians at the same time?" The same can be said about the Greeks (some 750,000 of whom were liquidated during WWI).

 From a Turkish perspective, the primary thing Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks had in common was that they were all Christians—"infidels."

And the same can be said of all those Christians and other non-Muslim minorities who were targeted for what the U.S. acknowledges was a genocide by ISIS—another genocide that was also conducted during the chaos of war, and against those whose only crime was to be "infidels."

Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum.