Armenian News - AT

BBC1 TV, Monday 21 May, 8:30 PM, Panorama, "Eurovision's dirty secret".

The program is exposing the curruption and abuse of  authority in Azerbaijan, specially during the preparations for the Eurovision contest.

ARMENIA'S NEW PM WILL BE APPOINTED WITHIN FIRST 10 DAYS OF JUNE

- JUSTICE MINISTER

Vestnik Kavkaza

May 17 2012

Russia

During a briefing on Thursday, Armenia's Justice Minister Hrayr

Tovmasyan explained the constitutional procedures for the formation of

a new government in the country following National Assembly elections,

News.am reports.

He informed that the whole cabinet will resign on the first day of

the new National Assembly session, but it will continue as an acting

government.

Within ten days after the new parliament's first session-that is, until

June 10-the President, consulting with the National Assembly factions,

will appoint a new prime minister who is supported by the majority.

Within twenty days thereafter, the President, upon the new prime

minister's suggestion, will appoint new Cabinet members.

Within twenty days thereafter, the Government will introduce its

program to the parliament and if approved, it will continue its

commission.

"These are the maximum terms: 50 days. But experience shows that

this is carried out in a shorter time period. I believe a new prime

minister will be appointed and a government will be formed within

first ten days of June," Armenia's Justice Minister noted.

IS HARISA ARMENIAN OR TURKISH DISH?

NEWS.AM

May 17, 2012 | 01:29

Harisa is an Armenian ritual dish which comes from the pagan era,

the president of Development and Preservation of Armenian National

Dishes NGO Sedrak Mamulyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am adding that

after adopting Christianity the Armenian cuisine became simpler.

Mamulyan is concerned with other issues. Last year Turkey managed to

register a variety of harisa as a Turkish dish in UNESCO. Georgia

is trying to be recognized as the birth place for pitcher works,

wine-making and apiary. According to Mamulyan, this means that soon

Armenian tonir will be recognized as the property of the Georgians

or another nation.

Mamulyan stressed, the strongest fact proving that harisa is an

Armenian dish is that Armenia is the fatherland of wheat which is

the main component of the dish. He stated that the word harisa has an

Armenian origin which comes from the word 'harel' which means to stir.

Commenting on the question why Armenia does not appeal to UNESCO

for recognizing a variety of harisa as a Turkish dish, he said that

currently UNESCO is financially dependent on Turkey, which is its

largest donor after Canada, since the United States refused giving

financial aid to UNESCO (after the recognition of Palestine).

RFE/RL Report

Government-Subsidized Fuel Distributed To Armenian Farmers

Hovannes Shoghikian

16.05.2012

Tens of thousands of farmers across Armenia have received this spring

diesel fuel for tractors and other agricultural machines at prices

subsidized by the government, a senior government official said on

Wednesday.

The government approved the scheme in February as part of its promised

efforts to boost state support for the country's struggling

agricultural sector. The Armenian Ministry of Agriculture was

allocated 1.3 billion drams ($3.4 million) to offer a total of 12,600

tons of diesel to farmers for 350 drams per liter in time for the

spring crop planting. The ministry purchased the fuel from a private

company for 440 drams per liter.

According to Deputy Agriculture Minister Samvel Galstian, just over

8,300 liters of it has been distributed in all Armenian provinces

since then. Commenting on the less-than-anticipated volume of those

deliveries, Galstian said the government has supplied as much

subsidized fuel as the farmers were ready to pay for.

The program's implementation has clearly been less than smooth. Local

government officials complained in early March that many villagers

lack the money and storage facilities to buy large quantities of fuel

at once.

In at least one region, Ararat, some villagers claim to have been able

to buy even cheaper fuel from the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), a

junior partner in the governing coalition that engaged in

controversial benevolent activities ahead of the May 6 parliamentary

elections. Residents of the local village of Lusarat said the BHK

charged them only 300 drams per liter.

`Fifty drams is a lot of money for people here,' one Lusarat farmer

told RFE/RL's Armenian service (Azatutyun.am) as he worked at his

vineyards in a tractor. `The price is good, and that man buys our

grapes,' he said in an apparent reference to a nearby winery owned by

BHK leader Gagik Tsarukian.

Daniel Hakobian, the Lusarat mayor, insisted, however, that the BHK is

not responsible for the shortfall in the purchases of

government-subsidized fuel. `It's just that people had no cash,' he

said.

Galstian, the deputy minister, told RFE/RL's Armenian service that

despite the shortfall the government will continue to subsidize diesel

prices for farmers in the coming months and next year.

The government has also been subsidizing the equally important prices

of fertilizers as well as interest rates on agricultural loans.

CONFERENCE TO EXPLORE ARMENIAN, TURKISH FILMS

armradio.am

16.05.2012 17:04

Salt Galata will be hosting Sweet Confusion, a comparative project

that explores Armenian and Turkish cinematography of the 60s in

collaboration with AICA Armenia, Anadolu Kültür, International

Armenian Cinema Center, Armenia-Turkey Cinema Platform and tranzit.at.

The conference attempts to reread the socio-political and cultural

paradigms of two geopolitically estranged contexts, which, throughout

the 1960s, were in the process of self-definition and positioned

themselves by determining and shaping the â~@~\otherâ~@~] through

the complex correlation of cultural and political systems.

Sweet Confusion, which is supported by the Eurasia Partnership

Foundation, USAID, Erste Stiftung and Allianz Kulturstiftung, was

conceived in the framework of the international research project

â~@~\Sweet 60s.â~@~] The project explores, through contemporary

artistic and theoretical perspectives, the unknown, underestimated

and hidden contexts and territories of the 1960s that were omitted

from the meta-narrative of the â~@~\romantic revolutionary epoch.â~@~]

Hrach Bayadyan, Keti Chukhrov, Zeynep Dadak, Siranush Dvoyan, Dimitris

Eleftheriotis, Vigen Galtsyan, Ahmet Gürata, Nazareth Karoyan,

Nadire Mater and Fatih Ã~Vzgüven will be presenting during Sweet

Confusion. The films that will be screened as part of the program

include Barev, es em (Hello, itâ~@~Ys me!), Erankyun (Triangle), Menq

enq, mer sarery (We and our mountains), Hayrik (Daddy), Vesikalı

Yarim (My Prostitute Love) and Bir Gecelik Gelin (One Night Bride),

Hurriyet Daily News reports.

Mirrorspectator.com

COMMENTARY: PRESIDENT GUL IS BEGGING FOR SYMPATHY

By Edmond Y. Azadian

Some people believe that with our scattered forces and with a homeland

struggling for survival, our efforts toward Genocide recognition are

futile against the growing strategic power of Turkey.

For many years, we waged our fight for recognition away from Turkey's

territory. Today, the issue of the Armenian Genocide is a topic for

national discourse within Turkish society itself, and the question

has acquired its own life, sometimes independent of Armenian activism.

Turkey is indeed on the defensive and that is the first step towards

victory. The wheels of justice will move at a low pace, but there is

no way that it will lose momentum.

Contrary to the adage that justice delayed is justice denied, an

inexorable course of perseverance will continue, even after the

centennial mark of 2015 for the final victory.

The Turkish government has mobilized its resources domestically and

internationally to deny or delay that final victory.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey's erudite foreign minister, has been trying

to give a human face to Turkey's growing international power. His

"zero-problem with neighbors" policy proved to be hollow; Armenia's

blockade is still continuing, Ankara is defying NATO to keep Israel

out of the organization's forthcoming meeting in Chicago, and freezing

negotiations with the European Union for the duration of Cyprus'

presidency and even threatening war with Cyprus over the latter's

gas explorations in the Mediterranean.

Now Mr. Davutoglu has concocted another trick to deflect the

recognition of the Armenian Genocide. He is talking of the "common

pain" between the Armenians and the Turks. He had repeated that

mantra on April 23, on the 97th anniversary of Ataturk's victory

in the Gallipoli campaign, where 25,000 Ottoman soldiers perished,

including drafted Armenian youth.

Incidentally, it remains one of history's mysteries why the Australian

ANZAC forces, under Winston Churchill's admiralty, could not win

that battle. Historians believe that as the allied Russian forces

were advancing on the Eastern front, the British subverted Russian

plans to overrun Turkey - a scenario which could have prevented the

Armenian Genocide.

Now Davutoglu's theme of "common pain" has been borrowed and elaborated

on by President Abdullah Gul. In an oblique manner, Prime Minister

Recep Tayyip Erdogan apologized to the Kurds for the Dersim massacres

of the Kurds in the 1930s (although his AK party's hands are not clean

of Kurdish blood), blaming Ataturk's party for the crime. In the same

way, President Gul has taken the theme of "common pain" because, in

line with Turkey's Genocide policy, he is trying to equate the Ottoman

losses in an imperial war with the murder of 1.5 million people of an

unarmed subject-nation and he begs for sympathy and understanding from

the Armenian side. This cynical policy has another sinister component,

which follows below.

During the ceremonies in Chanakkale (Gallipoli), President Gul

answered a journalist's question by stating that he defined the

1915 events as "a common pain," and then he continued magnanimously:

"Pain causes happiness to no one. In my opinion it is not right to

convert history into an instrument of animosity. If the pain is passed

on to the younger generations as a means of animosity and rancor,

there will be no end to it."

President Gul's statements have been reported by the journalist Sedat

Laciner, who had further discussed the issue the next day on a boat

trip with the president. In his comments on the Samanyolu Haber TV

network, he elaborated on the issue: "Both sides need solace and

understanding. The Turks have to understand that more than a million

Armenians were uprooted from their ancestral land, irrespective of

the causes. Consequently, the Armenians have to give up the notion

that they were the only losing party and they have to understand the

pain that the Turks have suffered at the turn of the last century.

The Turks fell under the ruins of a crumbling empire. Any Armenian

with a human conscience cannot deny the pain the Turks suffered from

the end of the 19th century to 1923, especially that Armenian armed

gangs were partially responsible for that pain."

It is not clear whether these comments were made by President Gul or

they are the interpretations of the journalist. However, they are in

the same line of thought that unless Armenians understand the pain

that Turks have endured there will be no reciprocal recognition.

Indeed Armenians seem to be "heartless" people, devoid of

"human conscience." How can they not understand how much Turks have

suffered fighting an imperial war against an equally powerful empire

to maintain the Ottoman rule of slavery? Further, how can they not

understand how much the Turkish gendarmes, Teshkileti Mahsusa forces,

the army and the irregulars have suffered in murdering one-and-a-half

million individuals. Their suffering was further aggravated by the fact

that under the rules of frugality, they had to save bullets and resort

to more primitive methods to slaughter children, women and the elderly.

Now we can understand why we cannot expect any sympathy from the

Turkish official quarters, as long as we observe history in such a

"heartless" manner!

While the Turkish president is pleading for sympathy from the

Armenians, his government has mobilized massive forces to deny the

Genocide. In addition to the millions spent in lobbying foreign

governments, Turkey has undertaken the huge task of "educating"

its youth on this very sensitive issue.

Realizing that a mountain of scholarly works is piling up in world

historiography on the question of the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish

government has undertaken a frontal attack by organizing so-called

scholarly seminars. Indeed symposia were held in April in two

universities with the participation of 75 historians, including some

hired guns from the US, Norway, France, Russia, Tajikestan, Georgia,

Azerbaijan and Iran. The first symposium took place at Karatekin

University of Changere. We are not sure if the venue was selected

intentionally or unintentionally, because Changere happens to be

the place where the Turks crushed with rocks the skull of writer and

Ottoman Parliament member Krikor Zohrab.

The initiative was undertaken by an organization called The Society

of Future Academicians.

In that august gathering, Prof. Galib Chagh made one of the

most childish denialist arguments that: "the law of deportations

precludes the use of the term 'genocide' because that law protected

the properties of the deported Armenians." Never mind that after the

Genocide, Talaat Pasha appealed to the foreign banks and insurance

companies as the inheritor of those "protected properties."

Another symposium too place at Ataturk University of Erzerum under the

title, "First International conference on Turkish Armenian Relations

and the Great Powers."

Prof. Halouk Selvi from the University of Sakaria has devised

an earth-shaking argument about the Genocide. He has stated that

"instead of appealing to the courts, Armenians have been appealing

to different parliaments because they don't possess any document that

a genocide was perpetrated."

To add insult to injury, the honorable scholar has further stated

that the American missionaries had bad-mouthed the Turks, pleading

for the suffering Armenians in Anatolia, because they needed to raise

money for their own causes.

We are not sure how much these arguments impressed the participants and

aspiring young Turkish scholars, but the dean of Turkish journalists,

Ali Birand, head of CNN-Turk, does not seem to be impressed at all. In

his April 24 commentary, he made scathing remarks about Turkey's

denialist historiography. He stated that against the barrage of

criticisms and scholarly works: "Turkey, as it has done before,

will react harshly. It will utter threats, but they will remain

ineffective. Do you know why? It is because the Armenians have gotten

a significant part of the world to accept their claims of Genocide."

Then he cites one example and refers to a 1,000-page book compiled

by German writer and journalist Wolfgang Gust, published in English,

German, Spanish and Portuguese and recently published in Turkey by

Belge Publishing House, "in extremely comprehensible and beautiful

Turkish."

Birand continues: "Without going into detail, if you read the book

and look at the documents, if you are a person who is introduced to

the subject through this book, then there is no way that you would

not believe in the Genocide and justify the Armenians."

His telling conclusion: "Let us not deceive each other; if you can

give correct answers to these questions, then you will be able to

clarify some very key facts for us. "I know you will remain silent."

President Gul's verbal gymnastics and then the "scholarly" charades

staged at those universities amount to nothing. Perhaps the most

honorable position would indeed be to keep silence.