12:33, 11 April, 2013

The small-to-medium business is of a certain importance for the steadfast economic growth of a country, as it gives innovational impulses to the economy. “Armenpress” News Agency highly appreciates the significant role the small-to-medium business plays; each week “Armenpress” introduces business stories regarding various branches of economy.

YEREVAN, APRIL 11, ARMENPRESS. Minas Ter-Davtyan had left Iraq and moved to Armenia in April 2007. Due to the help of his brothers’ friends Minas was employed in auto repair station of a taxi service. Minas told us that he owned private auto repair station in Iraq since 1996.

Minas worked in various auto repair stations till 2011. He stated that the customers noticed that he and his brothers did not cheat them, and they did not bother to leave the cars under their care. Minas jokingly noted: “All the artisans are cheaters.”  They moved to Baghdad from Iraqi city of Mosul and after they left Baghdad and moved to Armenia.

Minas is among those businessmen, who participated in the classes organized by the Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Development National Center of Armenia and the Armenian Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and received credit to start his own business. He had almost finished the construction of his service centre in Darakert Village of the Ararat Province on December 2012. Notwithstanding the construction is not yet entirely over, but Minas already receives clients. (THE FULL VERSION OF THE ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE IN ARMENIAN)

The story and photos by Small and Medium Entrepreneurship Development National Center of Armenia

Article by Davit Muradyan

I am in Salzburg, Austria, for a week as an Erasmus visiting professor. I am mainly contributing to the ongoing seminar classes of other professors who have asked me to talk about Turkey, Islam, democracy, human rights, Turkey’s EU membership process and the Hizmet movement. The students of the University of Salzburg are highly interested in these topics and they ask a lot of probing and challenging questions. It seems that they have been following Turkish domestic and international politics very closely and are concerned about the recent developments.

In every class, I have had a question on the Armenian issue of 1915. My answer was blunt. I said that the Young Turks had oppressed several sections of society with their nationalist homogenizing policies to create the perfect citizen, Homo LASTus — laicist, non-practicing Sunni Muslim Turks. For instance, in 1938, they used poison gas against thousands of innocent civilians, including children and women, in the caves of Dersim, for which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has publicly and very clearly apologized in Parliament.

In the same vein, it is most probable that this Young Turkish mentality had allowed them to get rid of the over half-century-old Armenian question of establishing an independent state in the eastern provinces of Anatolia once and for all in 1915. They had used the terrible conditions of World War I and brutal attacks of some Armenian gangs on Muslim villagers as a pretext to ethnically cleanse Anatolia of non-Muslims. I told them that it is not clear if the Young Turks wanted all Armenians dead, but it was obvious that they did not and maybe could not take sufficient precautions to protect the migrating Armenians, who would very obviously have come under attack by Turkish and Kurdish gangs.

Turkey must at least come to terms with this terrible failure and issue an apology. These Armenians’ children must be invited back and given Turkish passports. Their confiscated properties must be returned. Even if they “sold” these properties before they left, their lands must be given back. One does not have to be a genius to know that under these terrible conditions, no one was able to sell their property for a proper price and, thus, practically speaking, their goods and properties were looted by certain Turks and Kurds. Though, at the same time, other Kurds and Turks were trying to save the lives of these Armenians by hiding them in their houses. At the end of the day, it is agonizing enough that a “millet” that lived in Anatolia for thousands of years and was protected by Islamic Seljuk and Ottoman rulers for hundreds of years became extinct because of the decisions of the secularist-nationalist Young Turks. Why should practicing Muslims defend their sins?

Other questions were on Turkish political developments. Students have asked me if Turkey could prove that former Islamists will not tend to be authoritarian after securing their political power by getting rid of the military establishment. We have also talked about the American green light to all military coups that took place in Turkey. I explained to them exaggeratingly that even the Turkish military generals’ underwear comes from the Pentagon and that without America’s permission, they could not fly a fighter jet. In its relations with Turkey, the American government has mainly been concerned about security issues and, unlike the EU, has never criticized the Ergenekon gangs, the terrible, anti-Islamic Feb. 28, 1997 coup and several other anti-democratic Kemalist moves in the country.

The students were also concerned about Erdoğan’s recent remarks on Zionism being a crime against humanity. It is quite obvious that very few people understand and interpret Zionism as Erdoğan does. In most people’s eyes, it is about creating a safe haven for Jews who have been oppressed for thousands of years by different Western peoples. Criticizing oppressive and brutal right-wing Israeli policies should not be confused with criticizing Zionism, since there are also many left-wing Zionists who harshly criticize Israeli policies and support an independent Palestinian state. Putting all of them in the same basket is neither just nor wise.

14:57, 10 April, 2013

YEREVAN, APRIL 10, ARMENPRESS. Turkish website marksist.org touched upon the issue of nationality of prominent Armenian medieval architect of the Ottoman Empire Sinan and stated that nobody tells anything about the Armenian identity of the famous architect, of whom both the Ottomans and the Turks were proud about.

As reports “Armenpress” the website stated that the chief architect of the medieval period of the Ottoman Empire Sinan was born in an Armenian family in a small town called Ağırnas near the city of Kayseri in Anatolia. At the age of 22 Sinan was conscripted into Ottoman service as a son of Christian. He is the first Armenian, upon whom the title of Pasha was bestowed.

Among other things the Turkish website stated: “Nobody was worried about Sinan’s Armenian origin in the Ottoman Empire. But after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey the Turkish “scientists”, who suffer the complex of inferiority, opened his tomb to discover whether he was a Turk or not.”

Sinân Âğâ was the chief Ottoman architect (Turkish: “Mimar”) and civil engineer for sultans Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II, and Murad III. He was responsible for the construction of more than three hundred major structures and other more modest projects, such as his Islamic primary schools. His apprentices would later design the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Stari Most in Mostar and help design the Taj Mahal in the Mughal Empire.

The son of a stonemason, he received a technical education and became a military engineer. He rose rapidly through the ranks to become first an officer and finally a Janissary commander, with the honorific title of ağa. He refined his architectural and engineering skills while on campaign with the Janissaries, becoming expert at constructing fortifications of all kinds, as well as military infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges and aqueducts. At about the age of fifty, he was appointed as chief royal architect, applying the technical skills he had acquired in the army to the “creation of fine religious buildings” and civic structures of all kinds. He remained in post for almost fifty years.

His masterpiece is the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, although his most famous work is the Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul. He headed an extensive governmental department and trained many assistants who, in turn, distinguished themselves, including Sedefkar Mehmed Agha, architect of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. He is considered the greatest architect of the classical period of Ottoman architecture, and has been compared to Michelangelo, his contemporary in the West. Michelangelo and his plans for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome were well known in Istanbul, since Leonardo da Vinci and he had been invited, in 1502 and 1505 respectively, by the Sublime Porte to submit plans for a bridge spanning the Golden Horn.

12:41, 10 April, 2013

YEREVAN, APRIL 10, ARMENPRESS. Turkey tries to link the regulation of the Armenian-Turkish relations with the issue of Nagorno Karabakh conflict on purpose. The Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia Edward Nalbandyan stated this during the press conference held after the meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic Miroslav Lajčák on April 10. Minister Nalbandyan reminded that the international community has expressed its principle position over the regulation of the Armenian-Turkish relations without preconditions for a number of times. Among other things Edward Nalbandyan noted that linking the regulation of the Armenian-Turkish relations with the Karabakh issue can damage the procedure. As reports “Armenpress” Edward Nalbandyan underscored: “There is an impression that Turkey tries to link the two processes on purpose hindering the joint efforts made by Armenia and international community aimed at the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.”

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic Miroslav Lajčák arrived in Yerevan on April 9. It is planned that Miroslav Lajčák will have meetings with the President of the Republic of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, the Chairman of National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan, and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Tigran Sargsyan.

April 10, 2013 | 11:32

Reacting swiftly and negatively, Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos rejected out-of-hand a plan from his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu for a two-state solution on divided Cyprus if Greek Cypriots move alone to exploit oil and gas reserves off the island’s coast that could be lucrative.

“Any insinuation of partition should be out of anyone’s mind,” Avramopoulos said in a letter to Davutoglu which was published on the Greek Foreign Ministry’s website.

Avramopoulos said that Greece would not accept joining talks with Turkey over any idea of partition on Cyprus, whose northern third has been unlawfully occupied since a Turkish invasion in 1974 “chiefly because such a proposal contravenes the fundamental and inalienable principle of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Cyprus,” Avramopoulos said. “The Greek and Turkish Cypriots no longer need protectors,” he added.

In an interview published in the daily Haberturk and the Hurriyet Daily News, Davutoglu said Ankara wants “negotiations to start between both sides on the island and between Turkey and Greece.” If Nicosia insists on claiming any reserves as its own, “this means tacitly that Turkish Cypriots own the resources in the north,” Davutoglu said. “If they behave according to this claim, we are ready to negotiate a two-state solution.”

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

The Greek government is in disarray after the leak of an explosive report drawing up vast reparations claims against Germany, covering both the First and Second World Wars.

The alleged claim against Germany reaches a grand total of €162bn, including €108bn for rebuilding the country’s infrastructure after the Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944. This is 80pc of Greek GDP. Photo: AP

Premier Antonis Samaras held a special meeting with the foreign minister Dimitris Avramopoulos and other key officials this morning to limit the diplomatic damage from the 80-page report.