BERLIN (Panorama.am) — Don Askarian, a renowned international filmmaker and photographer from Artsakh, died in Berlin on 6 October at the age of 69. He was the brother of sculptor and painter Robert Askarian.

In a Facebook post, the Artsakh Ministry of Culture, Youth Affairs and Tourism extended its condolences to Askarian’s family.

Born in 1949 in Stepanakert, Askarian studied art and history in Moscow beginning in 1967. He worked as an assistant director and film critic for a year after his study but was imprisoned between 1975 and 1977. In 1978 he emigrated from the Soviet Union to West Berlin, living and working in the country for some 20 years. He founded his own film company, Margarita Woskanian Film Production, in Germany in 1982.

Askarian returned to his homeland after Armenia’s independence in 1992.

His first film was “The Bear” (direction, scripts, costumes and scenery), based on Chekhov’s story (1983-1984). From 1985-1988 he made “Komitas,” which won several prizes at international film festivals.

In 1995 he founded the production and distribution companies — Don Film in Armenia and in 1998 Askarian Film in Germany.

In 1996 his book Dangerous Light was published in Armenia.

Among his most famous films are “Nagorno Karabkh” (1988), “Komitas” (1988), “Avetik” (1992) “Parajanov” (1998), “Musicians” (2000), “On the Old Roman Road (2003) and “Ararat — 14 Views (2007).

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ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. – The Tekeyan Cultural Association of Greater New York Chapter (TCA-NY) will inaugurate a unique exhibition featuring Armenian artist Simon Samsonian (1912-2003). The exhibition will take place on October 27-28 at the Tekeyan Center, 560 Sylvan Ave., Englewood Cliffs, with an opening reception on Saturday, October 27, 7 p.m.-10 p.m. The exhibition will be open to the public on Sunday, October 28^, from 3 to 5 p.m.

Born in 1912 and orphaned during the Armenian Genocide, Samsonian moved to Egypt and later to the United States. He became a giant in the art world with his “Symbolic Cubist” style.

The pieces selected for this exhibition are works on paper, as well as oil paintings, many framed by Samsonian himself, spanning several decades and showing a wide range of Samsonian’s styles and modes, including his unmistakable warm abstraction and what critics have termed cubist-impressionism.  One may find hints of abstract expressionism in some of the pieces, which would make sense as Samsonian was intrigued by developments in the west in the mid-twentieth century, perhaps more so than most of his contemporaries. Of interest is the shift into less figurative works as he grew closer to his passing and more of an emphasis on softer tones and hues instead of the bold lines and colors of the studies that dominated earlier in his career.

Samsonian’s works are on display in various museum collections, including the National Art Gallery in Yerevan, Armenia, the Museum of Modern Art, Cairo, Egypt, the Musée Arménien de France, the collection of the Mekhitarist Fathers’ Monastic Order, Vienna, Austria and the Hecksher Museum of Art in Huntington, NY.

The Tekeyan Cultural Association of Greater New York Chapter is a non-profit organization dedicated to promote Armenian culture, language and art. The chapter will celebrate its 50^th anniversary in 2019.

For more information about upcoming events, visit and like the chapter’s Facebook page and Instagram @tekeyangreaterny or send emails to Tekeyannynj@aol.com.

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By Raffi Bedrosyan

In August 2018, US President Trump angrily announced that sanctions will be implemented against Turkey, and personally against the Turkish ministers of interior and justice. What was the reason for Trump’s fury? The refusal to release Andrew Brunson, a US evangelical pastor arrested and jailed over two years ago, on still unproven charges of aiding terrorist organizations in Turkey and aiding the failed coup attempt against President Erdogan in June 2016. The alleged mastermind of the failed coup attempt is Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric who lives in exile in Pennsylvania and Erdogan has repeatedly demanded his extradition from the US. In the absence of any real evidence, the Americans have not complied with the Turkish demands for Gulen’s return, and therefore, Turkey resorted to an age old tactic of hostage taking to achieve its objectives. The arrest and jailing of pastor Brunson, as well as several Turkish employees of the American Embassy in Turkey were meant to pressure the US to exchange them for Gulen. President Erdogan was even quoted a few months ago to have stated: ‘You give me my cleric, I give you your pastor’.

The use of hostages is a normal state of affairs in Turkish politics. Other recent examples include the arrest of a German journalist of Turkish descent, used as a hostage to secure the return of several Turkish military officers who had sought asylum in Germany. A similar demand for the return of Turkish military officers who fled to Greece was made by Turkey by taking hostage a Greek soldier who allegedly crossed the Greek-Turkish border.

The Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities living in Turkey have been treated as hostages by the Turkish state throughout history. The religious and community leaders of these three minorities are pressured to declare their allegiance to the government, despite openly discriminatory conditions, unfair legislations, denials of historic facts, and so on. The pressure on the hostage minorities is maximized during crisis times. The most recent example is again related to the Pastor Brunson affair. Just as Trump demanded the release of the pastor, for no apparent reason, out of blue, all the minority religious leaders including the Armenian Acting Patriarch, the Greek Patriarch, the Jewish Chief Rabbi were paraded with one of the presidential aides of Erdogan and signed a declaration that ‘minorities live happily in Turkey, completely free to practice their religious and citizenship rights without any pressure’. It was obvious that the declaration that the minorities are not under pressure was obtained by pressure applied by the state on the minority leaders who had to comply obediently – or else… Sometimes, the state does not even have to exert any pressure and, as a classic case of Stockholm Syndrome, some minority leaders like the chairman of an Istanbul Armenian hospital foundation, voluntarily profess their love for their Turkish masters or parrot the state version of history.

This pattern keeps on repeating itself in Turkey. During the Cyprus crisis in the 1960s and 1970s, the Greek Patriarch in Istanbul was obliged to condemn the Greeks and praise the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. When German Parliament recognized the Armenian Genocide and acknowledged its responsibility, the Istanbul Armenian Acting Patriarch condemned the decision and defended the Turkish version of history. When Israel takes any steps against Palestinians or Moslems in general, the Jewish minority in Turkey pays for it with attacks and vandalism against Jewish synagogues, shops and homes. When Greece is perceived to treat its Moslem citizens unfavorably, the Greek minority in Istanbul is punished by the state as retribution.

Sometimes one hostage community is used against another hostage community. When Armenians worldwide started to push for Armenian genocide recognition in the parliament of several states, the Jewish minority leaders in Istanbul were pressured to actively engage Jewish parliamentarians and influential political leaders in those countries to stop the genocide recognition legislation. The Jewish minority leaders in Istanbul were ‘persuaded’ by the Turkish state to convince the Jewish lobby in the US to counteract Armenian and Greek lobbies.

But the most obvious and painful hostage incident in Turkish history relates to the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. When World War One ended with the defeat of Ottoman Turkey in 1918, the victorious Allies started occupying Istanbul and other regions of Turkey. In cooperation with the occupying British forces, the new Ottoman government went after the Ittihat ve Terakki (Committee for Union and Progress or CUP) leaders for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and for wholesale massacre of its own Armenian citizens. Turkish and British police started rounding up dozens of Ittihat ve Terakki leaders and commanders, at least the ones who had not fled yet. Trials ensued in Istanbul and most of the wartime Ittihat ve Terakki leaders, including Talat, Enver and Cemal who had already fled, were sentenced to death in absentia. Two lesser officials who were sentenced to death were executed by hanging in Beyazid Square in Istanbul in April 1919. The Turkish public opinion was dead set against these hangings, and concerned with increased protests against them, the British decided to transport all the jailed Ittihat ve Terakki leaders to the British colony island of Malta in the Mediterranean, and continue the trials there. 148 Turkish leaders were interned in Malta. Almost all of them were actively involved in the massacres and deportations of Armenians from various regions of Anatolia. Some of them had amassed great fortunes with stolen property, possessions and lands left behind by the murdered or deported Armenians.

In the meantime, the Turkish resistance movement led by Mustafa Kemal in Anatolia started to gain momentum against the Istanbul government, which was regarded as a puppet regime friendly to the occupying Allied forces. Mustafa Kemal and the newly formed government in Ankara demanded the release of the Malta prisoners. The Allied forces had sent British Colonel Rawlinson to Turkey to assess the situation in Eastern Anatolia, ahead of the Sevres Peace Treaty negotiations. Rawlinson had met with Mustafa Kemal, other Turkish commanders and community leaders. He was married to the niece of Lord Curzon, who was the British Prime Minister and chief decision maker at the peace treaty negotiations. Declaring that Rawlinson is a ‘valuable catch’, Mustafa Kemal promptly decided to arrest Colonel Rawlinson in order to force the British to release the Ittihat ve Terakki leaders jailed in Malta. After several rounds of negotiations, the British resolve to hold on to the Malta prisoners started to weaken. The hostage taking tactic of Mustafa Kemal succeeded, as Lord Curzon finally declared that “one Briton is worth more than a shipload of Turks.” An exchange of prisoners was agreed upon and Colonel Rawlinson, along with 20 other British prisoners of war, was exchanged for the 121 Turkish prisoners of Malta at the port of Inebolu in the Black Sea in October 1921. The freed Ittihat ve Terakki leaders were never tried for their war crimes nor their roles in the Armenian Genocide. In fact, most of them assumed leading positions in the new republican government as ministers and members of parliament. The state policy of hostages, denial of historic injustices and racist ultra nationalistic hatred of minorities inherited from Ittihat ve Terakki leaders continue today.

(Raffi Bedrosyan is a civil engineer and a concert pianist, living in Toronto. Proceeds from his concerts and CDs have been donated to the construction of school, highways, and water and gas distribution projects in Armenia and Karabagh — projects in which he has also participated as a voluntary engineer. Bedrosyan was involved in organizing the Surp Giragos Diyarbakir/Dikranagerd Church reconstruction project. He is the founder of Project Rebirth, which helps hidden Islamized Armenians reclaim their original Armenian roots, language, and culture.)

The post Hostages as State Policy appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

By Larry Tart

Special to the Armenian Mirror-Spectator

BELLEVUE, Nebraska – The primary emphasis in this essay is the memorialization of US Air Force C-130 60528’s 17-man crew on the 60^th anniversary of the shoot-down of their aircraft by Sasnashen, Armenia. The incident and dedication of a C-130 60528 Memorial at the National Security Agency, Fort Meade, MD, September 2, 1997, was addressed in the Armenian Mirror-Spectator issue dated August 18, 2018.

Other Memorials Dedicated to C-130 60528’s Lost Crew

In 1993, a United States POW/MIA recovery team excavated the crash site, recovering miniscule bone fragments and related aircrew artifacts. In August 1993, Sasnashen village elders and sculptor Martin Kakosian dedicated a khachkar memorial to the aircrew that perished in the edge of their village.

The khachkar tumbled over and broke in half, and with assistance from the Big Safari Association (a non-profit USAF-affiliated organization), Kakosian created a new C-130 60528 memorial that he and the villagers dedicated at the crash site in 1998.

The Big Safari Association also funded a replica of the C-130 60528 Sasnashen Memorial as an outdoor display at the National Museum of the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, dedicating the replica memorial in 2002. In reverence to the lost crew, Michael Patterson, a retired Big Safari program manager, laid a 60^th Anniversary Memorial Wreath at the replica on September 2, 2018 — Patterson had managed the acquisition and placement of the C-130 60528 Memorial aircraft in National Vigilance Park in September 1997, the creation of the memorial at Sasnashen, Armenia, in 1998 and the replica memorial at the Air Force Museum in 2002.

50^th Anniversary Memorial Service for C-130 60528’s Crew

Gathering in front of the C-130 60528 Memorial aircraft, National Vigilance Park, Fort Meade, MD, on September 2, 2008, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the 70^th Intelligence Wing hosted a 50^th Anniversary Memorial Service honoring the 17 crew members who perished in the shoot-down of C-130 60528 on September 2, 1958. Heading the NSA official party, Chris Inglis, Deputy Director, NSA, provided an inspiring eulogy, speaking from the heart — the Inglis family had lost his younger brother Pat 25 years earlier (May 1983), when his Navy A-6A fighter-bomber crashed in the edge of a Soviet naval task force in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Prop Wash Gang held its 2008 reunion concurrently in Baltimore, honoring 60528’s lost crew at a reunion banquet on Sunday, August 31. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper (then Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence) was keynote speaker. John Simpson Jr, and his son John Simpson III were special guests at the banquet on 31 August and at the Memorial Service in NVP on September 2, 2008.

60^th Anniversary Memorial Services, August and September 2018

On August 30 and September 2, 2018, the Prop Wash Gang (PWG) took the lead role in two 60^th Anniversary Memorial Services — both in commemoration of 17 Air Force brothers who perished in Sasnashen, Armenia, on September 2, 1958. Gathering in Bellevue, Nebraska, five miles from Offutt Air Force Base, for their annual reunion, PWG members devoted their long Labor Day weekend to honoring their 17 lost Air Force comrades. On Thursday, August 30, the 55^th Wing 97^th Intelligence Squadron (IS) and the PWG hosted a memorial service on the wing’s parade ground on Offutt. The Prop Wash Gang’s Lonnie Henderson was keynote speaker at the ceremony. After the memorial service, the PWG veterans were guests of the 97^th IS at a BBQ lunch and an afternoon gathering with the squadron’s active duty airborne reconnaissance flyers.

At a reunion banquet on Sunday, September 2, 2018 —  exactly 60 years after Soviet pilots shot down US Air Force C-130 60528 at Sasnashen, Armenia, killing the 17-man crew — the Prop Wash Gang conducted a special 60^th Anniversary Memorial Service honoring the crew. Recognizing the gravity and reverence an Armenian priest would evoke with a requiem service for the 17 deceased comrades, in July 2018 I contacted Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, Primate, Western Diocese, Armenian Church of North America, Burbank, California.

Explaining our planned memorial service, I provided His Eminence an overview of the C-130 60528 shoot-down incident and requested his assistance in making a priest available in Bellevue, Nebraska, for the memorial service. Seventy minutes after sending my email, I received Abp. Hovnan’s response (sent from his iPhone) — “I am certainly interested in this matter.”

Two days later, an assistant informed me that His Eminence had assigned Rev. Fr. Vazken Movsesian “to join you for the special 60^th Anniversary Memorial Service.” As keynote speaker, Fr. Vazken gave a brief history of Armenia and its people and the early history of the Armenian church  — the first nation to accept Christianity in AD 301. He continued with a brief overview of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and used analogies to memorialize the 17 American flyers who perished in Sasnashen 60 years earlier.

As the grandson of a survivor of genocide, Fr. Vazken has devoted much of his life to helping victims of genocide. When told to “get over the Genocide, it happened a hundred years ago,”  Fr. Vazken’s response is, “You can’t get over it, the moment you forget, you have given in.”

He said, “Sixty years ago on that fateful day, 17 United States Air Force airmen perished in that crash, it was in Armenia, shot down by the Soviet Union.” He pointed out that we must remember their losses, but it is not enough to just remember, you can’t end it with just a memorial — the reason for that is that in 1938, Adolf Hitler stated that he was going to invade Poland. When one of his generals said, “You can’t do that, we won’t get away with it,” Hitler responded, “Who after all today, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?”  Just 20 years later, not 60 years, not 100 years!!!

Fr. Vasken ended his moving speech by singing an Armenian hymn and delivering an ancient prayer of the Armenian Church — a requiem service for the departed — naming each of the 17 US airmen who were being memorialized.

He was enamored with the love and comradeship he witnessed amongst Prop Wash Gang members, commending the audience specifically on the energy he detected in the banquet room. In particular, he regarded with great respect John Simpson Jr., who was three years old when his father, Lt. John E. Simpson Sr. perished aboard C-130 60528, and Sam Clark, who lost several friends/flying comrades aboard 60528. Mr. Simpson, who had attended memorial services honoring the lost crew in 1997, 1998, and 2008, was the only family member present at the 60th Anniversary Memorial Service in 2018. Retired Lt. Col. Sam Clark, an enlisted (Airman Second Class) Russian linguist (airborne voice intercept operator) who flew reconnaissance missions from Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany, 1957-1962, was the only attending veteran who had served with 528’s lost crew 60 years earlier.

The memorial service ended with the Prop Wash Gang surprising Fr. Vazken with a most unusual memento (a piece of C-130 60528 debris mounted in a shadowbox), an autographed copy of The Price of Vigilance, Larry Tart’s extensively researched history of the C-130 60528 shoot-down incident, and a plaque “We Saw An Eagle Fly,” composed by the PWG’s poet laureate Lonnie Henderson as a tribute to our 17 lost Air Force brothers. The entire event was recorded and is now available to watch on YouTube.

In an email exchange on October 1, Fr. Vazken provided a personal assessment of the 60^th Anniversary Memorial Service. “Indeed it was a pleasure and honor to be at the commemoration last month in Nebraska. The group made me feel right at home in the PWG family.” Meeting John E. Simpson Jr. and Sam Clark brought an element of connectivity to the events of 1958 in very real human terms. Additionally, at the beginning of his speech, Fr. Vazken made a point of placing the 17 names of the lost crew on the dais “in front of me, just so at no time would I be tempted to speak of an ‘incident’ and forget that the personal sacrifices of these men translated into personal tragedies for the families.” He also commented that “the missing-man table, which Chief Lonnie Henderson had set, was very touching and moving — “I don’t think it could have gotten any more personal.”

Having watched in awe when presented the shadowbox containing the piece of 60528 debris, Fr. Vazken saw a greater purpose than a personal keepsake. “I’m transferring the shadowbox with the piece of the plane to the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church Museum so that it can stand as a marker/witness to the shoot-down for future generations. We’re working with the archbishop to schedule a special presentation one evening for the local Armenian community.”

Transferring the 60528 debris shadowbox to the Armenian Church museum is unto itself an inspiring summation for the 60^th Anniversary Memorial Service in Bellevue, Nebraska, on September 2,  2018, but there is more.

During the memorial service in Nebraska, Fr. Vazken reflected that although he had been to Armenia many times, he has never been to Sasnashen. “I will not go back to Armenia again without visiting Sasnashen after this,” he declared. He has a planned trip to Armenia on October 21, and has volunteered to deliver a small gift from the Prop Wash Gang. In appreciation of the villagers’ reverence to C-130 60528’s lost crew — annual remembrance ceremonies by villagers and their progeny honoring an alien aircrew since 1993 — the PWG recently solicited voluntary donations from its members to help with the education of Sasnashen’s youth. Fr. Vazken will deliver collected proceeds to Sasnashen village leaders to be used in the village’s school system.

Remembrance and connecting the dots —  Sasnashen where the airplane fell and where the villagers honor the deceased crew is now connected to Bellevue, Nebraska, it is connected to Burbank, California, it is connected with the PWG audience in Nebraska going back to their homes, to Fr. Vazken’s visit to Sasnashen and the crash site, and to the Prop Wash Gang contributing to the education of Sasnashen village youth — the big picture!!!

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COLLEGE STATION, Tex. – On October 18, the Texas Commission on Holocaust and Genocide (TCHG) held its quarterly meeting at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas. The purpose of the meeting was to begin the process of making an exception to the TCHG policy that currently educates and informs Texans about genocides that are officially recognized by the Federal Government. It was noted in the prepared statement delivered by Mihran Aroian that on May 19, 2017 the Texas House of Representatives unanimously passed House Resolution 191, titled “Recognizing the Armenian Genocide,” thus making Texas the 46th state in the U.S. to officially classify and commemorate the 1915-1923 annihilation of Ottoman Turkey’s indigenous Armenian Christian community as genocide.

Prior to the meeting, a letter was sent to the Commissioners signed by the leaders of the four Armenian community parishes in Texas (Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio). Mihran Aroian presented prepared remarks on behalf of the Armenians present at the commission hearing with the purpose of getting the Commission to hold a discussion and vote on including the Armenian genocide in the educational materials that the TCHG provides to all Texans. The Commission agreed to discuss and vote on the Armenian genocide at the next quarterly meeting on January 17, 2019.

By gaining the support of the TCHG, this will include the Armenian Genocide in TCHG publications and seminars and be a positive step towards greater recognition by the Texas Education Agency which is responsible for all public schools in Texas.

Participants on October 18 included Karen Aroian, Mihran Aroian, Raffi Caloustian, Cynthia Chisolm, John Nichols, Levoun Ohan, Tatevik Sekhposyan and Anna Yeritsyan. We also want to thank the following individuals for helping to prepare us for the hearing: Bryan Ardouny (Armenian Assembly), Peter Balakian, Natalie Gabrelian (Armenian General Benevolent Union), Roxanne Makasdjian (Genocide Education Project) and Marc Mamigonian (National Association for Armenian Studies and Research).

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By Haykaram Nahapetyan

Special to the Armenian Mirror-Spectator

ISTANBUL – Istanbul-based Turkish-Armenian Ara Güler was not only the most famous photographer ever to emerge from Turkey. He was the one who actually founded professional photography in modern Turkey. Turks called him the “Eye of Istanbul” for his famous images of the city, although he would refer to himself and news photographers more broadly. “We are the eyes of the world. We see on behalf of other people. We collect the visual history of today’s earth,” was how the New York Times quoted him.

So, when on October 17 the Eye of Istanbul shut both his eyes for eternity in one of the hospitals of Istanbul, Turkish media in its entirety reported this as flash news. The sad announcement remained as a frontpage article in many newspapers for many hours. Up until now Güler’s death and the subsequent funeral ceremonies continue to remain top news in Turkey. Some excerpts from those reports come to confirm that it is not merely the Armenian perspective that Güler was “number one” in Turkey –  this is actually what Turkish media says.

“Ara Güler… was the biggest photo reporter ever grown up in Turkey” –  Hurriyet.

“The most prominent name of Turkish photography in international arena” – Milliyet.  

“He shaped Turkey’s public memory with his photographs” – Sabah.

And there are many more examples…

Suffice it to say that Ara Güler was the only photographer from Turkey who was elected to and became a member of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP; today called the American Society for Media Photographers).

The list of celebrities whose images Güler immortalized is impressive: British PM Winston Churchill, artists Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali, movie makers Federico Fellini and  Alfred Hitchcock, writers Tennessee Williams and Orhan Pamuk, actors Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman, renowned Armenian composer Aram Khachadurian and many more.

Turkish authorities, from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Parliament Speaker Binali Yildirim, to ministers and MPs publicly expressed condolences. Because of the funeral services the tramway communication in one of Istanbul’s main avenues was stopped.

With all the attention coming from Turkish authorities, one thing, however, was hard to not notice: Ara Güler’s Armenian roots were not highlighted by the officials at all and got just a few sometimes controversial mentions in the Turkish mainstream press of recent days. Some indirect references to Güler’s Armenian heritage have been made by press during the coverage of liturgy at the Armenian church and his funeral at the Armenian cemetery. Hurriyet mentioned that Dle Yaman and Groong were played at the funeral without noting that those were Armenian folk songs. The same newspaper featured that some soil was brought from Shabin Karahisar, from Güler’s father Dajad’s tomb, to be scattered his grave in Istanbul – yet again providing no details about the Armenian profile of this community or the artist’s parent.

The author was able to locate only one article in Sabah’s English edition that clearly stated that Güler was an Armenian. More liberal media outlets questioned why Güler’s Armenian descent remained unmentioned throughout his life.

“Was Ara Güler an Armenian? Who was his father? These questions are being asked after the death of the master-artist,” a piece in InternetHaber mentioned. The publication found out that the original name of Ara Güler was Aram Gülerian.

Some pro-governmental mainstream publications called him a “Turk.” Paradoxically those statements often appeared in the same piece that would refer to the Christian liturgy for Ara Güler conducted at the Beyoglu Armenian church of Istanbul.

Recently another great Armenian, Charles Aznavour passed away. The French government and public from President Emmanuel Macron to endless media publications would continuously highlight Aznavour’s ethnic origins. President Macron even twitted in the Armenian language. However, Turkish officials turned out to be reluctant to do anything similar for Ara Güler, a man who did so much work to make Istanbul recognizable and prominent in the world of international photography.

As for Armenians and other peoples of the world, Ara Güler had one additional underappreciated achievement: the great photographer claimed that he had been able to track the traces of Noah’s Ark while taking pictures on the mountain of Ararat.

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YEREVAN (RFE/RL) — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accused Armenia’s outgoing parliament of “sabotage” on Monday, October 22, after it failed to approve proposed amendments to the Electoral Code drafted by his government for snap general elections expected in December.

Upon the decision of Speaker of Parliament Ara Babloyan, a special session will be convened on October 29, the parliament’s press service said.

The electoral code amendments bill will be once again debated after a group of lawmakers began a petition to convene a special sitting and re-introduce the bill. The required amount of signatures was gathered.

The amendments, formally approved by the government on October 16, are aimed at facilitating the proper conduct of the elections. They would, among other things, change the existing legal mechanism for distributing seats in the National Assembly which many believe favored Serzh Sargsyan’s Republican Party (HHK) in the last parliamentary elections held in April 2017.

Under Armenia’s constitution, any amendment to the Electoral Code must be backed by at least 63 members of the 105-member parliament. Only 56 lawmakers voted for the government bill.

Pashinyan was quick to accuse the parliament majority of “sabotaging” the work of his cabinet. “They hope that in this way they will manage to turn the fresh parliamentary elections into an instrument for political revenge,” he said. “But I want to make clear that even if the elections are held under the existing Electoral Code that will not change anything because the victory of the people is inevitable and cannot be stolen by anyone.”

“There will be no return to the past,” Pashinyan added, urging supporters to get ready for “completing regime change” in Armenia.

The bill was essentially blocked by the HHK, which still has the largest parliamentary faction.

The former ruling party officially voiced its opposition to the proposed changes in a statement released earlier in the day. It said that they were submitted to the parliament at a very short notice and that the lawmakers therefore did not have enough time to look into them.

The HHK also accused the government of ignoring a number of alternative proposals that were jointly made by the four political forces represented in the current National Assembly.

The HHK’s stance was denounced by other parliamentary forces. Naira Zohrabyan, a top representative of Gagik Tsarukyan’s Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), called it an act of “political sabotage.”

The HHK’s deputy chairman, Armen Ashotyan, remained unrepentant, however, saying that the electoral system must not be changed less than two months before the anticipated elections. “It is simply absurd to build democracy in the country with undemocratic methods,” Ashotyan told reporters.

In the 2017 elections, Armenians voted for not only parties and blocs as a whole but also their individual candidates running in a dozen nationwide constituencies. The individual races greatly helped the HHK to score a landslide victory at the time. Wealthy HHK candidates relied heavily on their financial resources and government connections to earn both themselves and their party many votes.

The bill put forward by Pashinyan’s government also envisages safeguards against vote rigging and other major changes such as a lower vote threshold for winning seats in the parliament.

Gianni Buquicchio, the president of the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission, said on Friday that the draft amendments “pursue legitimate aims and seem mostly positive.” In a statement, he also noted “the specific situation in Armenia, which requires the holding of early elections.”

Buquicchio said at the same time that the commission still has “reservations” about the proposed change of the electoral system. He stressed, though, that “these reservations are less relevant if there is consensus among political forces about the change.”

The government is allowed to reintroduce the bill to the parliament and force another urgent debate on it in the coming days. Pashinyan did not say whether the government will do so.

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By Susanne Fowler

ISTANBUL (New York Times) — Ara Guler, a Turkish-Armenian photographer who was best known for capturing poignant and nostalgic images of a bygone Istanbul but who also portrayed famous figures and everyday life in far-flung lands, died on Wednesday, October 17, in the city he so lovingly chronicled. He was 90.

His death was announced by Magnum Photos, his agency, in a statement on its website.

Guler’s pictures reflected the shadows and sparkle of Istanbul, a city he once described in an interview as a sort of “Madwoman of Chaillot” who had grown old but never neglectful of how she looked: Touch her, he said, “and a jewel will appear.”

His Istanbul, before it was erased by fast-paced modernization, was a place of boats gliding down the Bosporus, minarets poking up in the distance behind a horse-drawn cart, an elderly head-scarved woman smoking a cigarette, children flinging their arms out in joy.

Guler described his photographs, often taken with a Leica, as “a little bit romantic.”

“I don’t take pictures in normal light,” he said, “only just before or after sunset, or early in the morning.”

Guler viewed himself as a citizen of the world. His assignments had him circling it as he documented the well-known faces of the 20th century, including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Alfred Hitchcock and Winston Churchill, as well as more obscure subjects like the headhunters of Borneo. Other settings for his work included China, New Guinea, Kazakhstan and Kenya.

Only three subjects got away, he said in a 2005 interview: Charlie Chaplin, who refused to be photographed because he was in a wheelchair by then; Jean-Paul Sartre, who lived near where Guler worked in Paris but nevertheless eluded him; and Albert Einstein, “who died too soon.”

Guler’s work has been widely exhibited, at institutions including the Istanbul Modern art museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Library in Paris. He was a recipient of France’s Légion d’Honneur.

The Ara Guler Museum, dedicated to his work, opened with fanfare in Istanbul on August 16, his 90th birthday.

Despite his stature in the cultural world, Mr. Guler declined the mantle of artist.

“If it’s art, it’s art,” he told The New York Times in 1997. “If it’s not, it’s not. Other people will decide that 100 years from now. Photography looks like art, but art has to have some kind of depth.”

He continued: “I hate the idea of becoming an artist. My job is to travel and record what I see.”

More important than art, he said, is history, “and that is what press photographers record.”

“We are the eyes of the world,” he added. “We see on behalf of other people. We collect the visual history of today’s earth.”

Guler had a long collaboration and friendship with the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk. His photographs were included in the Pamuk book Istanbul: Memories and the City in 2003, and Pamuk wrote the foreword to the 2009 book Ara Guler’s Istanbul: 40 Years of Photographs.

Guler was born on August 16, 1928, the only child of Armenians living in Istanbul. His father was a pharmacist and sold to the movie industry chemicals used to develop film. As a young man, Guler wanted to become a screenwriter and thought he could use his father’s movie contacts. Instead, his father found him a job at a newspaper.

There, Guler said, he learned that it took him longer to write an article than to shoot a picture. He preferred photography’s faster results.

He also learned, he said, that “you can give more of the message with a photograph than with writing.”

He later moved on to international publications, including Time, Life and Paris Match, and was part of the stable of photojournalists employed by Magnum, the agency founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour.

Guler’s first marriage ended in divorce. His second wife, Suna Guler, died in 2010. No immediate family members survive.

In later years, Guler could be seen in a rumpled overcoat sitting at a table in Ara Café, a restaurant named after him in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, near his studio. Prints of his photographs lined the cafe walls and were reproduced as place mats.

The post Ara Guler, Poetic Photographer of Istanbul, Dies at 90 appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

BEIRUT (Combined Sources) — During his working visit to Lebanon on October 20 and 21, Armenian Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Pashinyan thanked Hariri for the warm reception and hospitality. “This is my first visit to Brotherly Lebanon, a country full of history of ancient civilizations. I am convinced that this visit will best contribute to the debate on the agenda of bilateral cooperation in different spheres. Of course, your father, Rafik Hariri, who was a great friend of Armenia, had a great contribution to the deepening and strengthening of ties between our countries.”

Hariri noted that Lebanon appreciates the close cooperation with Armenia and is interested in its strengthening it further. He attached importance to the Lebanese-Armenian community’s role in the development of the country, as well as the deepening of Armenian-Lebanese ties.

The interlocutors exchanged views on the domestic situation in the two countries.

Pashinyan touched upon the pan-national processes in Armenia in April-May of this year, presented the political changes, the current processes and the expected developments.

Pashinyan and Hariri noted with satisfaction that there is a high level of political dialogue between the two countries and encouraged adding the economic component to that bar

Pashinyan presented the steps undertaken by the government of Armenia to improve the business environment in Armenia, to ensure the protection of investments and proposed to organize a visit to Lebanese business circles to get acquainted with the conditions on the spot.

The sides discussed issues related to expanding cooperation in agriculture, transport, tourism, as well as in other spheres of mutual interest. The interlocutors expressed satisfaction with the process of cooperation in the field of tourism, the positive momentum of which was the direct air communication between the two countries.

Pashinyan welcomed and highlighted the interest of Lebanese companies in making investments in Armenia and accessing third markets through Armenia.

At the end of the meeting, Pashinyan signed the Golden Book of Honorable Guests.

Pashinyan also met with President Michel Aoun.

“Since Armenia’s independence in 1991, the relations between our countries have been consistently enriched with a new quality, which is characteristic of two friendly countries and brotherly nations. We should make best out of that to strengthen our partnership and implementation of common goals,” Pashinyan stated.

Pashinyan pointed out that the Armenian people have special gratitude toward friendly Lebanon, namely the fact that the country hosts the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia of the Armenian Apostolic Church since 1994 in Antelias.

Moreover, Pashinyan added that Armenians feel a sense of gratitude toward Lebanon and Lebanese people for accommodating the refugees escaping the Armenian Genocide. “Lebanon is the only country in the region that has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide which is important not only for preserving the historical memory but also preventing the crime of genocide,” Pashinyan stressed.

President Aoun, in turn, welcomed Pashinyan’s visit, emphasizing it would further strengthen and deepen the traditionally friendly relations between the two countries.

During the meeting the interlocutors discussed the bilateral trade and economic relations between Lebanon and Armenia as well as opportunities to expand the scope of cooperation.

Pashinyan also visited Armenian educational and spiritual-cultural centers in Beirut.

He first visited Haigazian University, where he met with members of the Council of the Armenian Evangelical Churches of the Middle East and the professors of Haigazian University, and representatives of the Armenian schools in Beirut.

Pashinyan was presented a monument dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. He, in turn, praised the work carried out by Haigazian University in the field of Armenology.

Pashinyan also made a note in the Book of Honorable Guests at Haigazian University.

The next stop was the patriarchal union of the Armenian Catholic Church, where he met Bishop Gevorg Asatourian, Bishop of Beirut, Archbishop Gabriel Muradyan of Zmmar Monastery and Anthony Vardapet Noratuncyan.

Pashinyan and his wife, Anna Hakobyan, partook at the chapel’s welcome prayer by the spiritual representatives of the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate and the members of the Zmmar Monastery, lit candles in the Church of the Monastic Complex, visited the museum and the Matenadaran.

Muradyan, on behalf of the Patriarchal Congregation of Zmmar, presented Pashinyan with a picture of the Virgin.

Pashinyan thanked the church for the warm reception, noting: “It is a very exciting occasion for me because I am at the Catholic Church for the first time and in such an environment. This is a memorable visit to me that will keep me going. One of the most important issues in Armenia and the Diaspora is that we do not have dividing lines. We are one nation, we come from the same place and aspire to the same place, we have common dreams at the center of which are the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Artsakh and the Armenian people.”

The Acting Prime Minister attached importance to the activities of one of the most important cultural and cultural centers of Armenia, namely Zmmar’s activity in the preservation of historical and cultural heritage and national identity, strengthening the Armenia-Diaspora ties.

The post Pashinyan Visits Lebanon, Meets with Leadership appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

YEREVAN (Arka) — The Yelk parliamentary faction nominated on October 23 Armenia’s acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan as a candidate for the post of prime minister, the head of the faction Lena Nazaryan said in the parliament.

“We have nominated the candidacy of the acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. As we have already noted, the nomination, of course, is formal aimed at ensuring the procedures provided for by the Constitution,” she said.

Pashinyan resigned October 16 to clear way for the dissolution of the parliament and holding early parliamentary elections on December 10. On the same day, President Armen Sarkissian accepted the resignation of the government.

Under the Armenian Constitution, early elections are held if lawmakers fail twice within 14 days to appoint a prime minister.

The post Yelk Nominates Pashinyan as Candidate for Prime Minister appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

After completing his three-and-a-half year tenure in Yerevan, US Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills has chosen to leave while making incendiary remarks rather than parting quietly with fond memories.

During his term in Armenia, a remarkable transformation took place in the country. While Armenia became more visible on the international scene, domestic changes heralded a new era particularly with the advent of the Velvet Revolution.

Any country, regardless of size, has a role to play on the strategic balance of powers, especially in the Caucasus region, which has become a powder keg.

In his parting salvo, Mr. Mills gave a long interview to EVN Report (https://www.evnreport.com/politics/u-s-ambassador-mills-i-leave-inspired-and-hopeful), where he covered much of the developments in the region during his tenure in Yerevan. To say the least, his remarks and views created a bitter aftertaste in Armenia with regard to the solution of the Karabakh conflict.

The Armenian media, in Armenia and in the diaspora, has reacted vehemently to his statement, even hurling personal insults at the ambassador. It would be foolhardy and naïve to hold Mr. Mills personally responsible for those remarks. We do not need to shoot the messenger instead of the message. We have seen in the case of one of his predecessors, namely John Evans, a single word, “genocide,” cost a diplomat his position and destroy his career. Ultimately history will vindicate Evans, but it has not helped his case in the present.

These policy statements are carefully crafted at a higher level, at the State Department, and trusted to individual diplomats to enunciate. Basically, that was the mission of Mr. Mills, to deliver the message to the Armenian people, no matter how unpalatable it was. His successor, Lynne Tracy, cannot deviate from the script either.

During that notorious interview, Mr. Mills stated, “I was surprised when I first got here and found out that most Armenians I met were adamantly opposed to the return of the occupied territories as part of a negotiation settlement. … It has long been my government’s understanding of why the occupied territories were originally seized; they would be land for a peace option,” he said. “So I was very surprised that there was no support for that anymore.”

Originally the idea of territorial concession was adopted by Armenia’s first president, Levon Ter-Petrosian, incidentally the mentor of the current acting prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan. But that view cost him the presidency and support for that position has been eroding with the public ever since. Armenia was eventually able to force a cease-fire on Azerbaijan in May 1994, after taking strategic heights in the battlefront, and which entailed seizing control of some territories (seven regions in all) outside the historic boundaries of Karabakh.

In one village nestled under the city of Shushi, called Karintak, there was not a single family left which had not lost a member. The Azeri army was raining rockets over the civilian population indiscriminately. That is why people in Karabakh refuse to cede a single inch of territory.

Ter-Petrosian still believes that inflexibility is a sure path to war but the majority of the population thinks otherwise, particularly after the Azeri blitzkrieg of April 2016. The post-independence generation is more security conscious and believes that Armenia’s safeguard begins in the Karabakh mountains.

The strategic drive is to populate those areas rather than cede them to the enemy.

Currently, President Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton is on a mission to Moscow. Mr. Bolton is not known as a suave diplomat and nothing good should be expected out of his trip to Armenia. That trip coincides with the president’s blunt pronouncement that the US will further build up its nuclear arsenal and not be intimidated by Russia and China, called out by name. Certainly, that will be the thrust of Mr. Bolton’s message.

While Mr. Trump knows that President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China are not the type of statesmen who will blink, as Mr. Bolton travels further south, where he is scheduled to visit Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, he may wreak havoc in that region. His sole mission in the Caucasus will be to contain Iran at any price.

Some commentators believe that Mr. Trump’s call to arms is more motivated by domestic factors than international issues. In view of the forthcoming mid-term elections, Mr. Trump’s advisors have urged him to take a more aggressive posture to overcome the erosion of the Republican seats in the House and Senate races.

Naturally, that kind of posture tends to grease the wheels of the military-industrial complex, which sets higher store in the president’s moral compass, as was revealed in his treatment of the Saudi Kingdom, after the murder of a dissident journalist.

Mr. Mills and his successor are the extension of the same policy in the Caucasus. He has surmised that the return of lands was one of the core tenets of the Madrid Principles.

By mentioning that one aspect of the Madrid Principles, Mr. Mills is taking apart an entire deal which also has other components. If the deal is about land for peace, where is the other component which ensures the safety of the population of Karabakh after it gives up its strategic positions?

The ambassador states that he was surprised to find out there was no appetite for territorial concessions on the Armenian side. How was it that he was not similarly surprised when Azeri President Ilham Aliyev repeatedly threatened that he would occupy not only Karabakh but also Armenia proper?

The resolution of the Karabakh conflict has been entrusted to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, chaired by the US, Russia and France. Thus far, the code of conduct has been to have coordinated, united pronouncements by the three co-chairs. But by Mr. Mill’s unilateral statements, it seems the US has been breaking away from the established protocol.

Last but not least, Mr. Mills’ position favors Azerbaijan for the latter’s $5 billion arms purchases from Israel and its willingness to allow Israel to spy on Iran and if necessary to use its territory as a launching pad to stage an attack against Iran.

As far as Iran is concerned, and perhaps also Russia, Mr. Mills has an incongruous message for Armenia. He pontificates in the following manner: “Ultimately, what we want for Armenia is that it follow its own foreign policy based on a very basic principle; Armenia is a sovereign nation, it should make its own decisions based on its own interests and the interests of the Armenian people.”

In the same breath, he delves into the Iran issue, and after giving the same diatribe (“Iran is an exporter of terrorism,” “Iran’s mischief in Syria,” “Hezbollah,” etc.) he asks Armenia to stand up and bash Iran. He said, “But if your voice is going to be heard in the international community, you also have to accept some responsibilities.”

Mr. Mills’ advice amounts to double suicide: give up Azeri territories without peace guarantees so that Mr. Aliyev marches into Armenia. You have to antagonize Iran because we want you to do it as part of “your voice in the international community,” even if Iran is your only pipeline to the outside world, as proven during the 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

Certainly Armenia and Karabakh have to use their official channels to make their voices heard. But it is incumbent upon the diaspora Armenians, particularly in the US, to react. In order to be able to react effectively, the community has to be politicized. The mid-term elections are ahead. No party and no candidate has made an issue of the State Department’s toxic policy vis-à-vis Armenia or Karabakh.

Only Armenians can raise their voices in an organized or coordinated fashion. Other groups have been vitally involved in protecting and defending the interests of their ancestral lands.

If the diaspora is to mean something to Armenia, it has to become the extension of its foreign policy in faraway lands.

The post US Ambassador’s Parting Salvo Asks for Territorial Concessions in Karabakh appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

WATERTOWN — Hrag Papazian, a Lebanese-Armenian graduate student in his late 20s, is studying the Armenians of Turkey. He came to the United States recently to give a series of lectures at the Institute of Armenian Studies at the University of Southern California. On his way back across the Atlantic, he stopped by in Boston to give a lecture on the Nor Zartonk movement of Istanbul (see https://mirrorspectator.com/2018/10/11/hrag-papazian-to-speak-at-inaugural-zoravik-event/) and gave an interview on his work.

Papazian graduated from Hamazkayin’s Melankton and Haig Arslanian College (formerly called Hay Jemaran) in Antelias, Lebanon, in 2010 and then attended American University in Beirut, from which he received a bachelor’s degree in communication arts. Deciding to switch his focus to anthropology, he went into a master’s program at the University of Oxford in 2013. He wrote on the Christian Armenians citizens of Turkey living in Istanbul for his thesis, but upon starting the doctoral program at the same university in 2015, decided to broaden his topic to include two other types of Armenians, migrants from the Republic of Armenia to Istanbul who came beginning in the 1990s due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Muslim Armenians, who began to come to media attention in the early 2000s.

Papazian moved to Turkey where he did ethnographic field work for 18 months, and then went to Armenia to begin to write his dissertation, which he says he has half completed and plans to finish by the summer of 2019.

In it, Papazian said, he primarily deals with understandings of Armenian identity and Armenianness, including the production, reproduction and interpretation of the latter. He compares how the three groups of Armenians mentioned above who are living now in Istanbul each perceive and define Armenian identity. Papazian said, “It turns out that it is quite different. For the local Christian Armenians, Armenian identity is mostly an ethnoreligious identity. It is very much tied with being a member of the Armenian Church.” Papazian explained that the reasons for this includes the Turkish state’s categorization of Armenians as a religious minority and its oppression or censorship of trans-religious understandings of Armenianness. The state tried as much as possible to encourage the religious aspect and to make Armenians assimilate in other realms so that they no longer are an ethnic or national minority with national ethnic claims. The Treaty of Lausanne, which laid the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, also guarantees religious rights. A concomitant reason for the ethnoreligious identity is the religious discrimination which took place throughout the history of the Turkish republic. It made them conscious of their religious difference. Papazian also pointed to what he calls the experiential pairing of Christian and Armenian. People in that community always experience one in tandem with the other. They learn about Armenianness through the church and religious classes in schools because the history of Armenia and the Armenians itself is banned as a subject to be taught in schools.

As for the Armenian migrants, Papazian finds their main ideological pillars of Armenian identity to be different. It starts with Armenia as a homeland. Consequently, they expect Armenians to show concern, interest and love toward Armenia. If they see these lacking, they would immediately start to question their Armenianness. Papazian related an incident recalled by one migrant who worked for a local Istanbul Armenian. There was a debate about politics and his boss told him “you are a guest here — go back to your country if you do not like this one.” The migrant replied, “how come that country is my homeland and not yours? Are you also not an Armenian? If this is your homeland and not Armenia, then what is the difference between you and the Turks? How can I count you as an Armenian?”

A second important pillar according to Papazian is morality. The migrants speak about moral norms or traditions of Armenianness, particular behaviors that are Armenian and others that are not like Armenians. Kinship and gender are also involved. If one acts in accordance with these traditional moral norms, then one is an ideal Armenian, but if not, they start questioning that person’s Armenianness.

The third group, the Muslim Armenians, said Papazian, lack institutions that the migrant and local Christian Armenians have which somehow dictate, define and reproduce Armenianness. For the local Armenians, that is the church and community system, while for the migrants, the Armenian state. “The only thing the Muslim Armenians have,” Papazian said, “is a lost past, a lost memory. For them, it is very much lineage-based. You are an Armenian if you have Armenian origins. If you learn that your father or grandfather is Armenian, then you are Armenian, period. There is no religious condition, there is no morality or state…It is about learning about one’s Armenian origins and trying to recuperate what was lost in terms of culture and knowledge and content. They mostly learn this from the elders or from discrimination.”

Some of them did not even have a clue about their Armenian origins until they were discriminated against as infidels or Armenians. This made them realize that changing religion and knowing nothing about Armenianness cannot help them escape being identified by others as Armenian and discriminated against as such.

This identity is also connected to the Anatolian, Turkish and Kurdish environment where people live in clans or asirets. Growing up the Muslim Armenians begin to realize that they do not belong to any tribe or clan and eventually realize why — because of their Armenian origins.

Papazian found that with such different understandings and definitions of being Armenian, when these three groups coexist in one city, there are identity conflicts, and a lot of social and symbolic boundaries emerge. Christian Armenians often even reject the expression Muslim Armenian, finding it to be an example of cognitive dissonance — how can one be both a Muslim and an Armenian — because of their religious understanding of Armenianness.

The migrants do not deny the Armenianness of the local Armenians yet do really question it. They see, Papazian said, a lack of enthusiasm toward Armenia, occasional pro-Turkish statements by the local community representatives, and cultural and linguistic Turkification. Many of the migrants as domestic workers see how local Armenian family relationships and gender roles are played. They find it very different than back home in Armenia. Some women told Papazian that the local Armenian men were not real men, as they were not strict enough with their women. In fact, they said, “the wives control the husbands,” which they felt was against Armenian traditions, as was the placing of elderly parents in old age homes.

While analyzing the intra-Armenian boundaries in Istanbul between the three different groups, Papazian argues that it is necessary to always take into account the boundaries between these groups and the Turkish state and the Turkish majority population. For example, the boundary between Christian and Muslim Armenians can be explained through the understanding of Armenianness as well as the symbolic and political relationship of these two groups with the Turks. When the boundary between Christian Armenians and Turks is primarily a religious one, if the Christian Armenians accept Muslim Armenians as Armenians, they would automatically jeopardize their own boundaries with the Turks.

When asked if he would make any comparisons of the Armenians in Turkey with those of various diasporan communities, Papazian replied that he has not done it academically, but could reply informally about the Lebanese Armenians based on personal experience. He said that though the Armenian Church was still important for the latter, their Armenianness was not an ethnoreligious identity because there were ways other than through the church to be Armenian. The transreligious dimensions of Armenianness were not banned, so that political parties and secular schools could exist. You could be an Armenian without having contact with the church in Lebanon, unlike in Turkey.

A short-lived exception to the situation in Istanbul arose in the 1990s with a minority within the Armenian Christian minority that started to challenge the religious understanding of Armenianness. They claimed ethnic rights and the recognition of Armenian history and the contributions of the Armenians to the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey, and raised their voice against the injustices faced by Armenians. The political climate in Turkey had changed. Various Kurdish organizations had claimed their rights as an ethnic minority, though part of the religious majority. When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power and made some initial steps toward democratization, partly as part of the process to access the European Union, this had its influence on Armenians too. The movement around Agos and Hrant Dink, and the Aras publishing house emerged, demanding rights for Armenians as a national minority.

The youngest generation of Armenians created the Nor Zartonk or New Awakening movement. They saw Hrant Dink as a role model and when he was shot they decided to go public in the Armenian community. They were active as democratic leftist activists in Turkish political circles and began to at the same time involve themselves in Armenian activism. They thought, according to Papazian, that Armenians could not solve their problems by looking inward. Instead they must take part in the general political changes in Turkey. Armenians could have their rights respected only if there was a democratic, non-nationalistic and more diverse Turkey.

Papazian said that they understood that they had to be active in movements like the Gezi Park protests, environmental movements, feminism, LGBT movements, and the defense of workers’ rights in order to represent the Armenian minority in this progressive democratic faction of Turkish society. By this, Papazian said, they also challenged the institutions of the Armenian minority. They advocated a secular representation of minorities such as Armenians in the place of the Armenian Patriarchate, pointing out that there were Armenian atheists and now Muslim Armenians raising their voices.

However, starting in 2015-16, when the AKP put aside democratization and returned to an authoritarian approach, the crackdown on the progressive pro-minorities movements in Turkey had its impact on the extension of these movements in the Armenian community. Some of the Nor Zartonk members left the country like their Kurdish and Turkish counterparts.

For more on Papazian’s analysis of the Nor Zartonk movement, see the video of his recent talk in Cambridge, Mass. for the Zoravik Armenian Activist Collective (https://www.facebook.com/zoravik/videos/314684859307974/?fref=mentions&__xts__[0]=68.ARCqY_al2P_BX_X2HXADaiMPB1GGdPC-Wo9N5KIeKzMIRwe74hJovu9pM-ujQAqIfc3ym_sl-MEhZ4OXSxOEvIJyXRuFDmcMSVDEJ4ZI1T2F1Pc-IfXRdVPHHMmKAm6S-sil8XscUh37jomUL6vagm3EPDeUzImkspLHfE_BXZU1Wu2O4KzzNzb9ipebfOAWHsp80CDs_XY&__tn__=K-R). He also has published the article “Between Gezi Park and Kamp Armen: The Intersectional Activism of Leftist Armenian Youths in Istanbul” (Turkish Studies, vol. 18:1, 2017) and “Armenians and Other Armenians in Turkey” (https://repairfuture.net/index.php/en/identity-standpoint-of-armenian-diaspora/armenians-and-other-armenians-in-turkey, 2017), which covers much of the same topics he discussed in the present interview.

The post Hrag Papazian Explores Armenian Identity in Turkey appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

Douglas Kalajian, author of Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me, shares his favorite lamb shank recipe with Armenian Mirror-Spectator readers.*

Ingredients:

4 meaty lamb shanks, trim off fat

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

4 carrots, cut into chunks

3 celery stalks, coarsely chopped

3-4 garlic cloves, peeled and coarsely chopped

3-4 tablespoons olive oil

3 bay leaves

3 to 4 cups homemade lamb broth (water or low-sodium beef broth may be used)

Salt and pepper

Directions:

Day 1: Parboil shanks in a large pot of lightly salted water for about 2 hours. The water should almost cover the shanks. By doing this, the cooking time is cut down on serving day, and you’ll end up with a large bowl of lamb broth for future recipes – soup, lamb and string bean stew, or whatever you are inspired to prepare.

Note: Cool the broth and place it in a large bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight. The next day, skim off any fat that rises to the top and discard. Use some of the broth to prepare the shanks; the remaining broth can be stored in containers and placed in the freezer for future recipes.

Day 2 – Serving Day:

Sauté the onions, carrots, celery and garlic in olive oil in a pot large enough to hold the shanks, vegetables and broth. Add the shanks, bay leaves, broth and seasonings to taste.

Place a cover on the pot in a tilted position; bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer. Simmer shanks for about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Check periodically to ensure there is still enough liquid to prevent burning. Adjust seasonings, if necessary.

Remove bay leaves. Once done, the tender, falling-off-the-bone lamb, can be served in individual bowls over a bed of buttered noodles with plenty of vegetables and cooking liquid from the pot. Armenian rice or bulgur pilaf would be an ideal accompaniment in place of the noodles.

Crusty bread or garlic bread (for dipping into the juices) and a tossed green salad make for a very satisfying and traditional lamb shank dinner.

What to do with leftover meat from the shanks:

Note: Larger leftover meat pieces may be shredded and added to a string bean stew, while smaller bits of leftovers may be turned into a breakfast hash with an egg on top.

Add 1/2 to 1 cup red wine depending on the number of lamb shanks. Also, add a 15 oz. can of diced or crushed tomatoes with liquid and dried herbs, such as oregano and thyme, depending on the amount of meat.

Serves 4.

*Douglas Kalajian is a retired editor/journalist and sous chef at https://www.thearmeniankitchen.com/. His career in newspapers took off in the fading days of manual typewriters and touched down in the digital age. As an editor, reporter and feature writer for the Palm Beach Post and the Miami Herald, he enjoyed a front-row view of South Florida’s explosive growth and equally explosive crime and corruption over three decades. His first book, Snow Blind, grew out of a front-page story about a brilliant young public defender whose ideals and health fell victim to the region’s cocaine insanity in the 1980s. After retiring from newspapers, Kalajian co-authored They Had No Voice: My Fight for Alabama’s Forgotten Children. His latest book, Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me, is a memoir about growing up in the shadow of the Armenian Genocide. His wife, Robyn Kalajian, is a retired culinary teacher and chief cook at https://www.thearmeniankitchen.com/. Together as a husband-wife team, they publish The Armenian Kitchen.

To order Stories My Father Never Finished Telling Me: Living with the Armenian Legacy of Loss and Silence, go to: https://www.amazon.com/Douglas-Kalajian/e/B00F218Q6M

The post Recipe Corner: Armenian Lamb Shank Dinner for Four appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

ARLINGTON, Mass. — While science expands our understanding of our environment and the universe, poetry, since time immemorial, has nurtured the minds, souls and imagination of humanity with universal ideals. For more than five decades, Armenians in general and the Armenian-American community in particular had the fortune of enjoying in their midst the impressive career, “a rare and enormous talent,” poet Diana Der Hovanessian.

On Sunday, November 4 at 3 p.m., the Armenian Cultural Foundation and the New England Poetry Club in collaboration with eight Boston area cultural organizations: Amaras Art Alliance, Armenian General Benevolent Union – New England, Armenian International Women’s Association, Armenian Museum of America, The Friends of the Longfellow House, Hamazkaine Armenian Cultural and Educational Society, National Association for Armenian Studies and Research and Tekeyan Cultural Association of the United States and Canada will pay tribute to the life and literary legacy of Diana Der Hovanessian.

Born in Worcester, the oldest Armenian community in America, Diana Der Hovanessian, grew up in a traditional Armenian family, including her grandparents, until age 5. The youngest of three daughters and a son born to John Der Hovanessian and Mariam Israelian, her paternal grandparents were originally from Tadem, Kharpert, Western Armenia, while her maternal grandparents were from Worcester. Her parents’ families, on both sides, were wiped out during the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Diana’s upbringing shaped her early life as her family prospered and helped waves of Armenian immigrants to find work and attend school.

Reading in general and recitation of poetry were integral parts of the Der Hovanessian family culture. Diana’s first exposure to poetry came through the words of the martyred Armenian poets Daniel Varoujan and Siamanto. Her father recited their poems in Armenian, while her mother acquainted her with American and English poetry by literary giants such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. All of the Der Hovanessian children, according to Diana, were not only encouraged but “expected to write poems for gifts for special days.”

To further her education, she attended Boston University, where she obtained an A.B. in literature. Later as a graduate student at Harvard she studied with Robert Lowell. Concurrently she worked as a journalist for the Medford Mercury. Later in New York City, she was a writer for the Associated Press and then for a young people’s weekly news magazine called Young America.

Moving to Cambridge, Mass., where she lived for the rest of her life, Diana began writing and publishing poems in various newspapers and magazines. Over the years more than 25 books of her poetry and translations were published, including How to Choose Your Past, Songs of Bread, Songs of Salt, and Dancing at the Monastery. She taught American literature, poetry, and translation, and also conducted poetry workshops in various academic institutions, including her alma mater Boston University, Stetson University, Bard College, Columbia University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Yerevan State University, Armenia.

At the same time Diana was a visiting poet in Massachusetts schools and worked as visiting faculty and writer-in-residence at various universities in the United States. She was Fulbright professor of American poetry at the Yerevan State University in Armenia in 1994 and 1999. Diana served on the governing boards of the Poetry Society of America, and the Columbia University Translation Center. Garrison Keillor has read poems from her books on his “Writer’s Almanac” program on National Public Radio.

During her illustrious career, serving on the boards of many literary and cultural organizations, Diana made major contributions to the development of literature, poetry in particular. These associations included the Massachusetts Council on Arts, and Humanities; the International Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists Association; the Poetry Society of America; Boston University Collegium of Distinguished Alumni; and the Writers Union of Armenia. Diana also served on the editorial board of several literary and academic journals, such Ararat Literary Quarterly, and the Armenian Review.

As a member, and later president, of the New England Poetry Club, founded in 1915 by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, and Conrad Aiken in Cambridge, Diana served with distinction. She transformed the Club from being “insular and provincial, with meetings held at the Brahmin enclaves of Beacon Hill and the Harvard Faculty Club” into a more open and vibrant society by inviting poets of diverse backgrounds and nationalities, such as Andrei Voznesenky and Yevgeni Yevtushenko, scores of South American and Latin American poets, as well as prominent American poets, among them Robert Creeley, X. J. Kennedy, and Robert Pinsky. During her tenure spanning over three decades, in addition to her administrative duties and recognition of the outstanding work of poets, younger ones in particular, she initiated in 2006 the Daniel Varoujan Award, in memory of the prolific Armenian poet martyred during the 1915 Armenian Genocide. Later, in her honor, the Club established the Der Hovanessian Awards for translation works from any language, authored by someone other than the translator. For the past decades over fifty promising young poets have received awards. As president of the New England Poetry Club. she also initiated and presided over the popular summer poetry reading festivals at the Longfellow House in Cambridge.

Diana’s interest in translating Armenian poetry, nurtured by her father from an early age, blossomed decades later, making a major literary legacy unmatched in English-language Armenian diaspora literature. The first attempts were a set of Armenian sharakans (hymns) for a Boston Pops concert conducted by Rouben Gregorian, a close friend of her father’s. The second consisted of a set of six pieces for a lecture on Daniel Varoujan her father was giving. Encouraged by positive reactions, Diana submitted them to her editor, who to her surprise took the whole batch. Shortly after, an invitation from the Christian Science Monitor to launch a page of international poems marked the beginning of Diana’s translation work. Her first works included pieces by Vahan Terian, followed by Nahapet Kouchak, the Armenian minstral Sayat Nova, tenth-century theologian Gregory of Narek, and then a long list nineteenth and twentieth century Armenian poets.

Today Diana’s translated works by over 200 Armenian poets, appear in 10 volumes of anthologies as well as in volumes dedicated to individual poets such as Varoujan, Kouchak, Tekeyan, and Emin. In her 2005 anthology, The Other Voice, Diana dedicated an entire volume to her translation of poems by Armenian women writers, beginning with old lullabies and magic chants and continuing through the ages to contemporary works. Her Anthology of Armenian Poetry, edited and translated with Marzbed Margossian, won the Anahid Award from the Columbia University Armenian Center.

In addition to the Armenian, Diana also translated works by Russian, Romanian, and Arab poets such as Anna Akhtamova, Maria Banus, Nizar Qabbani, Abd al-Razzaq and Abu al-Wahid.

Diana’s poems, exceeding a thousand, have appeared in over one hundred literary journals and magazines, among them Agni, American Poetry Review, Ararat, Christian Science Monitor, Poetry, Partisan, Prairie Schooner, Nation, Kroonk, and the Armenian Review, and in anthologies such as Against Forgetting, Women on War, On Prejudice, Finding Home, Leading Contemporary Poets, Orpheus and Company, Identity Lessons, Voices of Conscience, and Two Worlds Walking, select number of Diana’s works, in three volumes, have been translated into Armenian, and also into Russian, French, and Greek.

Perhaps unknown to many, Diana, wrote a number of plays. Two — “The Secret of Survival” and “Growing Up Armenian” — in 1984 and 1985 were produced on many college campuses, telling the Armenian story with poetry and music. The Secret of Survival with Michael Kermoyan (and later with Vahan Khanzadian) was also performed in the early 1990s to raise relief funds for victims of the December 1988 earthquake in Armenia. Both pieces are built around themes of Armenian American history and identity.

Decades of impressive literary output, scholarly work, academic accomplishments, and service to the literary culture in the United States brought praise from prominent writers and institutions. Specifically her contributions were recognized by some of thirty-four institutions and publication, and won her their highest awards, among them the prestigious PEN/Columbia Translation Award (1979), Paterson Poetry Prize (1998), Prairie Schooner, George Herbert Award of the World Order of Narrative Poets, Writers Union of Armenia, The PEN-New England GOLDEN PEN Award, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award (2009), and the Armenian Writers Union Award.

More specifically prominent American, Russian, and Armenian literary figures such as John Updike, D. M. Thomas, William Saroyan, F. D. Reeve, Yevgeni Yevtushenko, Robert Penn Warren, Peter Viereck, and Andrei Voznesensky praised Diana. The London Times Literary Supplement referred to Diana as “a brilliant poet who has opened up a new world to the English reader.”

The event on November 4 at 3 p.m. will be held at the Armenian Cultural Foundation (441 Mystic Street, Arlington). The keynote speakers include award-winning poet and educator, Dr. Vivian Shipley, a member of the University of Kentucky Hall of Distinguished Alumni and Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor at Southern Connecticut State University and Dr. Askold Melnyczuk Professor of English and MFA Graduate Program Director, College of Liberal Arts, University of Massachusetts Boston. Other speakers will include Dr. Robert Mirak, ACF president, Mary Buchinger, president of the New England Poetry Club, Maro Dalley, Diana’s daughter, and Dr. Barbara J. Merguerian, co-founder, Armenian International Women’s Association. The program, followed by a reception, will also include recitations of her works in English by Diana Der Hovanessian, Marc Mamigonian and Regie Gibson and Ani Arakelian in Armenian.

For more information and details, contact the ACF office during office hours (9 a.m. to 2 p.m.).

The post Community Celebrates the Legacy of Diana Der Hovanessian appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

By Kevork Keushkerian

ALTADENA, Calif. — Catholicos Karekin I of the Great House of Cilicia had declared October to be commemorated as cultural month. This year the feast of the Holy Translators was on Saturday, October 13. The cultural month denotes the translation of the Holy Bible by the disciples of St. Mesrob Mashtots, the founder of the Armenian alphabet.

Tekeyan Cultural Association’s Pasadena-Glendale Chapter Committee organized an evening of artistic renditions to commemorate the Armenian Cultural Month. It took place on Sunday, October 14, at TCA’s Beshgeturian center in Altadena.

In commemoration of the Armenian Cultural Month, Tekeyan Cultural Association’s Los Angeles Chapter had organized a lecture about novelist Zabel Yesayan on Wednesday, October 10, at 7:30 p.m. at the Glendale Central Library. The lecturer was Dr. Minas Kojayan.

In the same spirit, the newly-founded Tekeyan Cultural Association’s Los Angeles Metro Chapter is organizing a comedy night on Saturday, October 27, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. at Pasadena’s Rococo Restaurant. It will feature comedian Harout Soghomonian, with the participation of Maro Ajemian and Narine Avakian. It is a sold-out event.

Now, back to the TCA Pasadena-Glendale Chapter’s event. In his opening remarks, Kevork Keushkerian briefly dwelled upon the significance of the Cultural month and then invited the various artists to participate in the program. The program consisted of vocal renditions, poetic recitation, and dance performance.

Raffi Kerbabian was phenomenal in his rendition of 3 Armenian popular folk songs and an English song from our famous Charles Aznavour (Yesterday when I was young), which was in tribute to the late singer-song writer. Following this, Keushkerian asked the audience to stand and observe a moment of silence, in his memory.

Asdghig Dadourian eloquently recited two poems from poet Vahan Tekeyan and poet Henrig Toumanyan. Pateel and Cynthia Albarian intermittently performed 3 dances, the last of which was in memory of the Sardarabad victory.

Finally, Khatchig Nahabedian of our chapter committee rendered three songs, the first of which was from Sayat Nova. This one was also in tribute to the late Charles Aznovour, as he had performed this with his daughter, Seta.

At the close of the artistic renditions, Very Reverend Father Kegham Zakarian of the St. James Brotherhood in Jerusalem, recited the Lord’s Prayer and dismissed the audience with his Benediction. This was followed by a light reception, when the audience had a chance to congratulate the artists and the committee members for an evening of highly acclaimed performances.

The post Celebrating Armenian Cultural Month appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

By Rick Pushinsky

MOSCOW (Financial Times) — Ruben Vardanyan recalls earning a first monthly salary of just $100 shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed. Today, his focus is more on how to give away the vastly larger sums he has amassed and to share his advice with Russians still ill-prepared for wealth succession.

The Russian-Armenian businessman — who puts his wealth at “way less” than a Forbes estimate of $950 million — says in recent years he has made $300 million in donations and social impact investments. In parallel, he advises wealthy families that have emerged from the post-Communist world as they move towards retirement.

As a student at Moscow University in 1990, Vardanyan began preparing for the transition from central planning to the market economy. Within months, he became one of the first employees of Troika Dialog, which aimed to be Russia’s pioneering investment bank in fast-moving and unpredictable “Wild East” times.

“It was really a unique time,” says Vardanyan. “There were no regulations, no clients, nobody knew what the securities market was. My exam was a discussion with the deputy minister of finance.”

In 1992, when Goldman Sachs poached senior staff, he became Troika’s executive director at the age of only 23. The bank was active in the “voucher” privatizations of state enterprises and began wooing foreign investors as clients. He became an early participant in the country’s fledgling trading and deposit clearing systems. “It was the very, very beginning of everything.”

By 1996, he had acquired significant wealth through a stake in Troika shortly before it was bought by the Bank of Moscow. Then came the 1998 financial crisis and widespread default.

“It was quite horrible. Eighty percent of our business was from western clients and they all disappeared.” His new owner tried to force him out in 2001, but he fought back and oversaw a leveraged buy-out.

He witnessed another market crisis in 2008, sold a stake to Standard Bank before the whole company was acquired by Sberbank of Russia in 2012. By then, he was already reflecting on how to give away and invest money with a social purpose.

He was a founder of Skolkovo, the Russian business school based just outside Moscow that launched in 2006, where he encouraged discussions about how to give away as well as earn money. “I wanted to build a new infrastructure for private ownership,” he says. “I realized it was critical for Russia, 100 years after the revolution, as we were facing the first generation that needed to transfer wealth to the next generation. They had no experience, culture or legal infrastructure.”

He created his own consultancy group, Philin, to offer managerial support for philanthropic structures for the rich and Phoenix Advisors to help them with wealth conservation and succession issues. His target market is families with $50 million-$1 billion in assets and says he has about 50 clients.

“It’s the most difficult category: they are not big enough to have family offices and not small enough for the private banks.” He says few Russians are prepared for succession: a survey by Skolkovo suggested that 78 percent of their children did not want to take over their parents’ businesses; and 92 percent of the founders had not yet written wills.

“We believe philanthropy will move very fast in the next five years, but people have no culture to think about it,” he says. “This will be critical for Russia. Who can they learn from? Your company needs to be run, management can steal from you, the legal system is inefficient and sometimes corrupt. You can lose everything. “My main advice is whatever you have decided, it will take time to explain to your family — five years or more,” he says. “If you don’t start now, it will be dangerous. It’s a long-term process that requires lots of effort and commitment. Do it as soon as you can.”

He and his wife agreed they would give away more than 80 percent of their wealth, simply leaving their children some property and a relatively modest allowance.

Although he holds a Russian passport, his roots are in Armenia on the country’s southern flank and half of his activity is focused there. The genocide in the crumbling Ottoman Empire a century ago remains a heavy historical burden in Armenia, memorialized in a moving museum in the capital city Yerevan. His grandfather was reluctant to talk about his own experiences, but Vardanyan learned that he had been saved by a Turk and four American missionaries, moved westwards and placed in an orphanage school. That inspired him to create the annual $1.1 million Aurora prize in 2016 to recognize humanitarian courage, commitment and impact. (Vardanyan contributes the majority of support for the prize fund.)

This year’s winner was Kyaw Hla Aung, a lawyer and activist on behalf of the Rohingya refugees in Myanmar. Last year’s laureate was Dr. Tom Catena, who worked in Sudan’s Nuba mountains and in 2016 Marguerite Barankitse, who worked with orphans in Burundi. “We all remember the people who were killed, but let’s look at those who have been saved,” says Vardanyan. “We should say thank you and give something back. That’s not about human rights, but human values.”

He has also donated significant amounts to education, notably through the creation of a school in the Dilijan district in northern Armenia. Yet much of his activity has been what he characterizes as “commercial social impact” investments through “anchor projects” inspired by a series of principles. These include an approach that is “private-public” rather than “public-private” (or state-led) and a focus on projects that are ambitious and scalable. He has encouraged investments from the country’s unusually large diaspora of 7 million, who make up more than twice the number of Armenian inhabitants.

“They have been good but bad for Armenia,” he says. “They give $2 billion a year, which helps people to survive, but creates the wrong message. Becoming dependent on their external funding is like dependency on oil: if it’s free of charge, you don’t value it.” His priorities came from Armenia 2020, a project he asked McKinsey to draw up 15 years ago. The consultancy highlighted the pivotal importance of education, healthcare, urban development, cultural heritage and national identity to growth. “We’ll do another report in 15-20 years to see if it’s working,” he says. “But there are already some success stories.” He points, for example, to the funding of a cable car to Armenia’s remote Tatev monastery, which has helped sharply boost tourism and investment in the area.

He regards Armenia as a test bed for some 25 other small, “invisible” countries with similar characteristics, such as Moldova, Macedonia and Nicaragua.

“No one cares about them, so it is difficult to invest. The costs of charitable giving are high. I thought, how can we convert this problem into a solution to create something common for other countries like it?” But just as he stresses the need for long-term planning as wealth passes to a new generation of post-Soviet families, he also sees the need for patience. “That’s one of the biggest challenges. The expectation of a return is usually a maximum of 10 years in Armenia. Our vision is 25 years.”

The post Ruben Vardanyan: The Russian-Armenian Businessman Focusing on Giving Wealth Away appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

By Monique Svazlian

Special to the Mirror-Spectator

SAN FRANCISCO — With the recent change in government in Armenia, there is a renewed sense of hope for the future of the country. It feels like the timing couldn’t be better to complement the recent influx of future-forward initiatives and projects that have nudged Armenia toward progress such as the Tumo Center, UWC Dilijan College, Aurora Prize and an increasing presence of technology and venture capital focusing on social, cultural and economic development in Armenia.

One prominent name behind some of these projects has been entrepreneur Ruben Vardanyan, whose vision for the future of Armenia is no secret. His most recent venture is the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST), focused on science and technology innovation in Armenia. I recently had the chance to speak with FAST’s CEO, Dr. Armen Orujyan, about what he sees as the opportunities and possibilities in Armenia.

Orujyan was born and lived in Armenia until age 16. He left in 1989 for the United States and completed all his schooling up till his PhD in the US. He has been an entrepreneur and innovator his entire career, having built organizations and initiatives such as the Athgo Corporation, one of the world’s leading entrepreneurship platforms in consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council, UN Department of Public Information, and the World Intellectual Property Organization. Earlier in his career, he joined the UN’s Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID) as a Founding Member. He further served as a Commissioner on the UN’s venerated Broadband Commission for Digital Development through 2015.

A lesser known fact — he was also one of the founders of the Armenian Genocide March that takes place in Hollywood every year on April 24.

In 2017, he met Ruben Vardanyan in Los Angeles, after which he invited him to go to Armenia to explore the country. “It was incredible to see the progress since I had been there last in 2007. That’s when Ruben introduced me to his vision for making Armenia a science and technology hub. He was looking for someone to take over that initiative, so I agreed to go for six months to get to know Armenia better, to know the team and it was like falling in love – both with the country and the people working on these incredible initiatives like UWC Dilijan and IDeA, it was really exciting. I’ve been involved ever since.”

FAST is a nonprofit organization that reinforces intellectual, financial, and network capacities of the science and technology ecosystem in Armenia and beyond. Focused on producing an ecosystem that drives scientific advancement and technological innovation, under Orujyan’s leadership, FAST has launched a Fellowship for the top 10 percent of all PhDs in Armenia in STEM, deployed numerous scientific grants, and established the first Science and Technology Angels Network in Armenia.

FAST is focusing on developing four main areas, specifically data sciences (AI, machine learning, big data and analytics), bio-technology, advanced materials and micro-electronics. They plan on doing this through concentrating resources behind select breakthrough innovations, inventions, and multi-stakeholder projects, and coordinating activities of scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs to amplify their work and impact both in Armenia and the world. “The goal is to successfully advance these four verticals, to make Armenia a very competitive country, grow the GDP in line with Western standards, stop the brain drain and think about the brain gain in the country and attract Armenians from the Diaspora as well as non-Armenians from other countries,” says Orujyan.

The bigger objective is to turn Armenia into a Top 10 Innovation country. Currently, Armenia is number 69 on the list. “It’s going to take a big cultural and socio-economic shift, as well as lots of out-of-the-box thinking to get there. Culturally, however, Armenia is ready to embrace science – we love studying physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics. The instruction level is fairly low in the country, so education and knowledge needs to be improved, but it’s an issue that exists and we can correct that. But we do have the talent, the drive and the passion that can help us grow exponentially.”

I asked him why he thought this was such an important initiative for the country, given all the other challenges it faces currently. “Armenia is very small, we don’t have many natural resources. Our best resource are our people, we have human capital. Science doesn’t require big numbers, it requires intellectual capital and we can do that with the people that are in Armenia.”

Currently, the organization is looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to turn Armenia into a science and tech hub, through philanthropic investment, impact investment, and return on investment. “We need intellectual capital as well as coaches and mentors for our young fellows in various areas of science. We also need to develop our network capacity to get in touch with top notch institutions around the world we can collaborate with. We welcome everyone’s support – we can’t and don’t want to do this by ourselves!”

To learn more about FAST, visit https://fast.foundation/

The post Dr. Armen Orujyan Wants to Put Armenia in the FAST Lane appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

ALTADENA, CA – The Tekeyan Cultural Association Metro Los Angeles Chapter will host a program titled “Captain Jim Chankalian: Leader of the Armenian-American Volunteer Soldiers” on Sunday, November 18, 2018 at 5 p.m. at the Tekeyan Center in Altadena. Boston-based scholar Aram Arkun, Executive Director of the Tekeyan Cultural Association of the United States and Canada and Assistant Editor of the Armenian Mirror-Spectator, will serve as the keynote speaker and present the fascinating life of Captain Jim Chankalian, who was a part of the Armenian Legion that successfully defeated the Turkish and German forces at the Battle of Arara in Palestine in September 1918 as well as a volunteer fighter under the Russians in Van during World War I.

This bilingual program will be dedicated to the 100th anniversary of this heroic victory that was achieved by the 4,000 members of the Armenian Legion (including 1,200 valiant American-Armenian soldiers led by Captain Jim Chankalian). Born in Dikranagerd in 1879, Chankalian, along with three other Armenians from Paterson, New Jersey, served in the United States Army during the Spanish-American War. Almost twenty years later, under Chankalian’s leadership, New Jersey became the initial military training ground for the Armenian Legion in the United States, before they headed overseas. Captain Jim Chankalian is recognized as one of the most prominent leaders of the Armenian Democratic Liberal party (A.D.L.) as well as the first president of the Central Committee of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) in the United States. He also served the Armenian Church in numerous leadership positions, among them as a member of the original committee which led to the building of the Diocesan Center and St. Vartan Cathedral in New York City. He died in New Jersey in 1947.

Keynote speaker Arkun, a respected scholar, is a graduate of Princeton University with a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Pennsylvania and a C. Phil. degree in Armenian history from the University of California Los Angeles.  He has been editor-in-chief of the AGBU Ararat quarterly, director of the Krikor and Clara Zohrab Information Center of the Diocese of the Armenian Church (Eastern) and adjunct assistant professor at New York University, among other posts. He has written a number of articles on Cilician Armenians in the modern period.

Also participating in the program is Dr. Zaven Arslanian, the maternal grandson of Sergeant Caspar Menag of Chunkoosh and Lawrence, Massachusetts of the Armenian Legion. Sergeant Caspar Menag, who fought at the Battle of Arara and in Cilicia, considered Captain Jim Chankalian to be one of the great influences on his life.

The dancers of the Patille Dance Studio of Pasadena, under the direction of Patille and Cynthia Albarian, will perform a number of dances in honor of the Armenian Legion.

Captain Jim Chankalian made many personal sacrifices to serve the Armenian people, by means of the Armenian Legion, A.D.L., Armenian Church, AGBU, as well as the United States Army, with great distinction and honor, becoming a great patriot and national hero.

The post Program on Armenian-American Volunteer Captain Jim Chankalian To Be Hosted by New Tekeyan Metro Los Angeles Chapter appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

YEREVAN (RFE/RL) — US national-security adviser John Bolton has vowed that President Donald Trump’s administration will “squeeze Iran” with maximum economic pressure in response to Tehran’s “malign” behavior in the Middle East and around the world.

Bolton made the remarks in an interview with RFE/RL on October 25 after he met in Yerevan with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

“As I explained to the prime minister, we want to put maximum pressure on Iran because it has not given up the pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Bolton told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “It remains the world’s central banker of international terrorism. And we’re concerned about its ballistic-missile programs and its active conventional military operations in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere.”

Bolton said Washington doesn’t want to “cause damage to our friends in the process” of expanding sanctions against Iran, which shares a border with Armenia.

He said that’s why he “stressed” to Pashinyan, in advance, that the Trump administration is “going to enforce these sanctions very vigorously” and that the Armenian-Iranian border is “going to be a significant issue.”

“We are going to squeeze Iran because we think their behavior in the Middle East and, really globally, is malign and needs to be changed,” Bolton said.

Bolton’s talks with Pashinyan came a day after the US national-security adviser met in Baku with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov vowing that Washington will continue to support a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Baku and Yerevan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Bolton said he and Pashinyan “talked a lot, obviously, about Nagorno-Karabakh,” and that he is aware of the economic difficulties Armenia faces as a result of the “geographical situation and historical antecedents” related to the conflict.

Armenia’s borders with Azerbaijan remain closed as a result of their ongoing conflict. Turkey, in solidarity with Azerbaijan, also has closed its border with Armenia.

Thus, if Yerevan adheres to US sanctions against Iran, Armenia would have only Georgia as a neighboring trading partner — raising concerns in Yerevan about how Russian pressure against Tbilisi would impact Armenia.

Bolton said those “current circumstances highlight” the importance of Armenia and Azerbaijan “finding a mutually satisfactory agreement to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.”

“Once that happened, then the Armenian-Azerbaijani border would open,” Bolton said. “The Turkish border, I believe, would almost certainly open. And I think the border with Georgia might be less subject to concern about what pressure the Russians may be putting them under.”

Bolton told RFE/RL that Washington has wanted to be “of whatever assistance we could be behind the scenes, as well as one of the co-chairs of the [Organization for Security and Cooperation] Minsk Group, to see if we could help facilitate a solution between Armenia and Azerbaijan that would be mutually agreeable to both.”

“We recognized the obvious difficulties there, but we just felt that [Pashinyan] was in an excellent position here in Armenia, and would be after the elections [in early December], to show leadership on that,” Bolton said.

Bolton also said the Trump administration wants to “look at” possibilities of weapons sales to Armenia that would not violate restrictions the US Congress has imposed.

“We have restrictions Congress has imposed on the United States in terms of [weapons] sales to Azerbaijan and Armenia because of the [Nagorno-Karabakh] conflict, but there are exceptions to that,” Bolton explained.

“As I said to the prime minister, if it’s a question of buying Russian military equipment versus buying US military equipment, we’d prefer the latter,” he said. “We think our equipment is better than the Russians’ anyway. So we want to look at that. And I think it increases Armenia’s options when it’s not entirely dependent on one major power.”

Asked by reporters on October 27 whether Yerevan is actually going to purchase military equipment from the United States, Pashinyan said: “The [Armenian] government is not constrained by anything. If there is an offer from the United States that is good for us, we will discuss it.”

He also said Armenia’s “excellent” prospects for becoming a “stable democracy” are “really fundamental to Armenia exercising its full sovereignty and not being dependent on — or subject to — excessive foreign influence.”

Bolton also noted that a large community of Armenian-American citizens in the United States makes the “prospects for closer economic cooperation” with the US private sector “very real” and “much better for the long term than government-to-government assistance.”

“I think this is a time to be optimistic that Armenia can emerge more on the world stage,” Bolton said, stressing that the Trump administration “considers the South Caucasus a very important area strategically” and that improving relations with Armenia is “a very high priority.”

The post Bolton Vows To ‘Squeeze Iran,’ Explore Weapons Sales to Armenia appeared first on The Armenian Mirror-Spectator.

By Florence Avakian

NEW YORK — It was both a celebration of the 10th anniversary of Direct Help for Armenian People (DHAP), and the 2800th anniversary of Erebuni-Yerevan.

DHAP President and founder Dr. Svetlana Amirkhanian warmly welcomed the audience to this celebratory concert which took place at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, October 20 that presented the year’s talented Armenian youth finalists.

Opening the sold-out event was a soulful prayer by Armenian Diocesan Vicar General, the Very Rev. Fr. Simeon Odabashian, followed by the presentation and awarding of this year’s talented youth finalists by Master of Ceremonies Eugenia Sarian.

As 17 youngsters of the Hamazkayin Arekag Choir led by their musical director and conductor Vagharshak Ohanyan filed onto the stage, the audience erupted into thunderous applause. In joyful voice and perfect unison they offered a number of moving Armenian numbers.

For many of the young performers, Aram Khachaturian was the dominant composer, especially for talented pianists Davit Avetisyan, Yana Prakhina, Maxim Tesovic. Alex Vartanian’s interpretation of the famed composer’s Waltz displayed a deep understanding of the music, and Cami Hall played an impressive first movement of Khachaturian’s Sonatina.

Other gifted pianists were Michael Khoury sharing Beethoven’s Sonata in F minor, and Andrew Boldi interpreting Ed Baghdasaryan’s Prelude in B minor.

Lovely voices by Anahit Indzhigulyan, Alice Mashensky and Christina Kerestedjian soared musically throughout the hall. And a beloved Oror by Barsegh Kanachyan, sung with great feeling by sisters Sareen and Arya Balian brought many in the audience to tears.

Baghdasaryan’s beautiful Nocturne was given a soft and lyrical interpretation by violinist Aren Arakelyan, and Robert Ward’s first movement modern and difficult Concerto for Saxophone was played with great nuance by David Hovanisyan.

Cellist Laura Navasardian’s masterful rendition of Kabalevsky’s Concerto No.1 in G minor, accompanied on the piano by her equally talented mother, Lilit Navasardian, nearly brought the house down. Accented by lush tones, great technique, and deep emotion, this youngster is ready for professional stage performances.

The concert concluded with the Hamazkayin Arekag Choir offering a special tribute to the late International legend Charles Aznavour with his moving Hayastan, after which they appropriately sang Edgar Hovhannisyan’s Erebuni-Yerevan to a standing ovation.

During the closing ceremony, flower bouquets and commendation plaques were presented to the planners and organizers Dr. Svetlana Amirkhanian, Marina Baghdasarova, and Eugenia Sarian by Armenia’s Ambassador to the United Nations Mher Margaryan. As well, Ohanyan received a commendation for his many years of service.

Honorary Chairman of the Tekeyan Cultural Association Hagop Vartivarian animatedly speaking in Armenian, thanked the organizers for “bringing Armenian breath and culture to the new generation.”

Dr. Irina Kakossian who with her husband, Dr. Ken Kirakossian, were the major benefactors of the concert, expressed special gratitude to all involved.

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