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| PRESIDENT SERZH SARGSYAN'S
HISTORIC VISIT TO CYPRUS |
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| Quick image tour of President Sargsyan and his entourage's visit to Cyprus: click here |
Simon Aynedjian - Gibrahayer e-magazine Thursday 13 January 2011 - The much anticipated and historic visit of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to Cyprus became reality on Monday 17 January 2011. During his visit President Serzh Sargsyan met President Demetris Christofias at the Presidential Palace. He later met Archbishop Chrysostomos. These two meetings were followed by the opening of the Armenia-Cyprus Business Forum that took place at The Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
After his Parliament address at a special session hosted by Cyprus Parliament President Marios Garoyian (and aired live from Cyprus national TV RIK) President Sargsyan visited Nareg school in the afternoon and attended a special event in which the Nareg choir performed for the President and his entourage.
Nareg school's Hokapartsoutiun Chairman Vartan Tashdjian welcomed the President and his entourage, while Principal Vera Tahmazian presented the President with a commemorative gift. Visibly moved, President Sargsyan rushed to the microphone and addressed pupils, teachers, parents, and Gibrahay community members, who had packed Nareg Hall.
Accompanied by Armenian MP Vartkes Mahdessian, Sargsyan later met Archbishop Hergelian and members of Temagan and Varchagan bodies at the Armenian Prelature. |
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| view the video of the visit here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkrnUwztHMU |
At 5:00pm the opening of an old Armenian manuscripts exhibition at the Cultural Center of the Ministry of Education and Culture took place where 18 manuscripts from Madenataran will be on exhibit for the rest of the week.
The first day of the official visit of the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to Cyprus was concluded by a dinner at the Presidential Palace. Before leaving to Greece
yesterday morning, Armenia's President and his entourage visited the Genocide Memorial in Larnaca.
Cypriot and Armenian media gave extensive coverage to the President's visit, especially to his bold references to neighbouring Turkey and Azerbaijan.
We will give extensive analysis of Turkish reaction to the visit, next week. |
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| TWO ARMENIAN PRESIDENTS ADDRESS CYPRUS PARLIAMENT |
| TURKISH-ARMENIAN RAPPROCHEMENT "DESTROYED" SAYS SARGSYAN |
| President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan denounced the current Turkish government’s assertive foreign policy as “neo-Ottoman” imperialist designs aimed at forcing Turkey’s neighbors into submission. |
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 17.01.2011 - Emil Danielyan - Azadutiun - President Sargsyan accused Turkey of reversing its rapprochement with Armenia and voiced strong opposition to Ankara’s perceived efforts to take on a leadership role in the region as he paid a state visit to Cyprus on Monday.
In a speech delivered in the Cyprus Parliament, Sargsyan also condemned continuing Turkish occupation of a big chunk of the island and unequivocally endorsed its Greek-dominated government’s position on the unresolved conflict.
“With its contradictory posture, inconsistent statements and groundless manipulation of the [Turkish-Armenian normalization] process, Turkey destroyed it,” he said. “Turkey backed away from its commitments and not only failed to ratify the signed protocols but also reverted to its old positions adopted before the process.”
Sargsyan denounced the current Turkish government’s assertive foreign policy as “neo-Ottoman” imperialist designs aimed at forcing Turkey’s neighbors into submission. “What had the Ottoman Empire given the peoples under its yoke apart from massacres, tyranny and plunder?” he said.
“A country that has kept the border with Armenia closed since its independence under different pretexts and has been blackmailing my people can not aspire to regional leadership,” he declared.
The unusually scathing remarks reflected Sargsyan's frustration with Turkey’s refusal to unconditionally ratify the Turkish-Armenian protocols envisaging the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two neighboring states and the opening of their border. Ankara has made that contingent on a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan.
Addressing Greek-Cypriot lawmakers, Sargsyan said that Yerevan has never set any preconditions for normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations despite having “more than sufficient moral and legal grounds” to do that. He singled out successive Armenian governments’ readiness to improve bilateral ties without Turkish recognition of the World War One-era massacres in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
The Armenian leader emphasized the fact that the Cypriot Parliament was one of the first legislatures to pass in 1982 a resolution recognizing the genocide. He went to express his country’s solidarity with the Greek Cypriots in their decades-long conflict with the Turks.
“Armenia has never accepted and will never accept any attempt to partition brotherly Cyprus,” Sargsyan declared. “We have never come and will never come to terms with the occupation of this friendly country’s north.”
“Armenians and Cypriots are not only friends and brothers but also natural allies, and we are faithful to that alliance,” he said.
A joint declaration issued with Cyprus President Demetris Christofias after their talks in Nicosia, Sargsyan likewise hailed the Greek Cypriots’ “creative approach” to the conflict’s resolution and faulted Turkey for “not duly responding to these steps.” Official Nicosia, for its part, praised Armenia’s “constructive efforts” to settle the Karabakh conflict.
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| After the President's Cyprus visit, Ruben Safrastyan declares that Turkey's policy of neo-Ottomanism has no perspective |
| "President Sargsyan declared things in Cyprus, which he had never spoken loudly about. For the fist time President Sargsyan declared that Turkey’s policy was based on blackmail and made it clear that the Genocide issue could serve as preconditions in important issues." |
| 18.01.2011 17:57 - Anna Nazaryan - “Radiolur” - President Serzh Sarsgyan’s speech at the Parliament of Cyprus and the joint declaration were of primary importance from the point of view of prioritizing the right of people to self-determination in the settlement of the  Karabakh conflict and giving an assessment to the Armenian-Turkish relations on the highest level, expert of Turkish studies Ruben Safrastyan told a press conference today. He is assured that Turkey’s policy of Neo-Ottomanism has no perspective.
Facing the problem of territorial integrity, for the fist time Cyprus confirmed in a written document that the right to self-determination or the free expression of will should be of compulsory character in the Karabakh issue, which is very important, taking into consideration that Cyprus is a member of the European Union, Safrastyan said.
President Sargsyan declared things in Cyprus, which he had never spoken loudly about. For the fist time the President declared that Turkey’s policy was based on blackmail and made it clear that the Genocide issue could serve as preconditions in important issues.
“This means that the Genocide issue can once serve as precondition in the establishment of Armenian-Turkish relations,” he said.
Does this mean that the “football diplomacy” has failed? “The process has long reached a deadlock and it’s Turkey’s fault,” Safrastyan declared. |
| TAYYIP ERDOGAN EXPECTS AN APOLOGY FROM ANGELA MERKEL AFTER CYPRUS VISIT |
|  Cyprus Weekly - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to apologise for blaming the Turkish side for an impasse in the Cyprus talks.
Merkel’s visit to Cyprus raised eyebrows in Ankara and in the north after she praised President Demetris Christofias’ efforts for a solution, and criticised Turkey for not doing enough.
Speaking at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Merkel said Turkey needed to show more willingness to resolve the dispute, while noting that Christofias’ readiness to compromise had not been reciprocated by the other side.
Turkey’s response was immediate. Leaving diplomatic niceties by the wayside, the Turkish leadership accused Merkel of bias and lack of historical knowledge on Cyprus. Ankara took it one step further a few days later, during an address Erdogan gave to regional leaders of his ruling AK Party. “These comments and attitudes do not give the impression of a leader who is far-sighted and visionary,” Reuters quoted him saying. “We expect Merkel to apologise to the Turkish side."
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| Turkish presence in Wilsonian Armenia "nothing more
than an administrative control like the Turkish status
over northern Cyprus" says historian Ara Papian |
|  WASHINGTON (A.W.) - On Nov. 16, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) hosted an event on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Woodrow Wilson Arbitral Award, at the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington. The event featured two speakers. Ara Papian, the head of the Modus Vivendi Research Center, who has served as Ambassador of Armenia to Canada and as spokesperson for the Armenian Foreign Ministry, and Dikran Kaligian, who has taught history at Clark University, and Regis, Westfield State, and Wheaton colleges, and is the managing editor of the Armenian Review.
About 90 years ago, on Nov. 22, 1920, at the request of the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers, President Wilson issued an Arbitral Award, under the Presidential Seal, to establish a Turkey-Armenia boundary pursuant to the Treaty of Sevres. Through this legal document, Armenia was granted the provinces of Van, Bitlis, Erzurum, and Trabzon.
A historian and diplomat, Papian spoke about the legal and historical background of the Arbitral Award. “It can be declared confidently, the Arbitral Award of Woodrow Wilson is still valid and legally obligatory document, because the indispensable feature of an Arbitral Award is that it produces an award that is final and binding. By agreeing to submit the dispute to arbitration, i.e. signing a compromise, the parties, in advance, agree to accept the decision… It is obligatory, also, for the United States, not only by virtue of the fact that the arbitrator was the United States president, but primarily because it was sealed in the great seal of the United States, thus it became part of the land of this country.”
Turkish presence over there is nothing more than an administrative control like the Turkish status over northern Cyprus,” said Papian. “Thus the presence and all acts taken by the Turkish Republic in the Wilsonian Armenia are illegal and invalid because the belligerent occupation does not yield lawful rule over a territory.”
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| THIS SUNDAY ON 23 JANUARY AT 6:00 PM |
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| STATUES IN KARS NOT SAFE WHEN
RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN IS AROUND |
| Dr. Harry BV Hagopian |
|  Statues in Kars are not safe when Recep Tayyip Erdogan is around. When Turkey’s Prime Minister visited the city last year, the local mayor, who belongs to Mr Erdogan’s mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party, sought to avoid his ire by ordering the removal of a public fountain featuring bare-breasted nymphs. Last week, during another trip to Kars, which lies about 45km west of the border with Armenia, Mr Erdogan called for the demolition of a local monument designed to promote reconciliation between Turks and Armenians. The statue, of two 30-metre-tall concrete figures reaching out to each other, was, he said, a “freak”.
Mr Erdogan insisted that his distaste was purely aesthetic. Yet some suspect him of pandering to nationalist sentiment in the run-up to elections in June. Many Turks see the statue as an admission of Armenia’s charge that the slaughter of up to 1.5m Armenians by Ottoman forces in 1915 amounted to genocide. In 2009 the then mayor of Kars, Naif Alibeyoglu, who had commissioned the statue, was forced out under pressure from Mr Erdogan and the city’s 20% ethnic Azeri population (egged on by Azerbaijan, which disliked Turkey’s efforts to make peace with Armenia).
Mr Erdogan has backed away from a set of protocols signed with Armenia in 2009 that foresaw the establishment of diplomatic relations and the reopening of borders. These were sealed in 1993 after Armenia’s short war with Azerbaijan over the mainly Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Mr Erdogan insists that the protocols can only be ratified if Armenia withdraws from seven regions it occupies around the enclave. Armenia is threatening to scrap the deal altogether.
But there is also a whiff of Islamic orthodoxy in the air. Mr Erdogan’s tirade against the Kars statue included references to Hasan Harakani, an ancient Muslim scholar buried nearby. “They erected a strange thing next to his mausoleum… it is unthinkable,” he complained. Many Muslim scholars consider statues to be idolatrous, and other AK officials have not disguised their aversion to them. Ankara’s mayor, Melih Gokcek, has systematically dismantled statues erected by his pro-secular predecessors. “I spit on this kind of art,” he once said.
Mehmet Aksoy, the designer of the Kars monument, says that the government risks being seen as “the Taliban” if it presses its demands. But Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has backed his boss, arguing that Mr Aksoy’s work fails to blend into the Seljuk, Ottoman and Russian character of the city. He might have included Kars’ Armenian legacy, but that is being erased. A long-abandoned tenth-century Armenian church recently reopened - as a mosque.
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| MEGERDITCH (MGO) KOUYOUMDJIAN APPOINTED ARMENIAN MUKHTAR |
 Simon Aynedjian - Gibrahayer e-magazine Thursday 13 January 2011 - The Minister of Interior has appointed Megerditch (Mgo) Kouyoumdjian Armenian Mukhtar of Nicosia (Karaman Zade quarter) as of January 1, 2011.
Mgo Kouyoumdjian succeeds Vahe Kouyoumdjian (no relation to Mgo) - who had retired from the position in 2009 and who had successfully held this position since 1955, prior to the independence of Cyprus.
Mgo Kouyoumdjian is a 61-year-old businessman in the textile industry. He and his family are active members of Gibrahay community life.
We all congratulate Mgo Kouyoumdjian and wish him and his family all the best.
You can contact him on 99611987. The new Armenian mukhtar's address is 48 Onasagorou street, 1011 Nicosia. You can also contact him by email on mgo@m-k.com.cy . |
| LIFE AT THE MELKONIAN AGAIN |
| Alexander-Michael Hadjilyra - Last Sunday, 16 January 2011, the grounds of the Melkonian were filled with life once again on the occasion of the annual parerarnerou hokehankisd. Older and newer Melkoniantsis, as well as friends of the Melkonian, were joined together to commemorate the two immortal benefactors, Agha Krikor and Agha Garabed Melkonian of Caesarea, whose gift to the Armenian nation was perhaps the greatest of all. The old and the young prayed in front of the tampan, proudly sang the school’s kaylerk and then wandered around the premises. Some sat at the benches between the old and the new buildings, reminiscing old times and sharing new memories, while others had their pictures taken in front of the Tampan, the Aypoupen, Mayr Hayastan or one of the 7 sandstone statues. But that was between 11:30-12:30 of that Sunday. An hour later, life was no more at the Melkonian and the parerarner were once again alone, waiting… |
| View images of the Melkonian brother's 2011 memorial service here: |
| http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2097026&id=1543460178&l=5e873c8587 |
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