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A nursing home belonging to the Armenian community was shelled in Aleppo Friday. According to the Berian Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, the terrorists shelled V. Gulbenkian nursing home located in the Armenian-populated district Nor Kyugh.
The building has been damaged, however the elderly people living in it haven’t fortunately been injured. The building is under reconstruction.
The Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC) is marking the 11th anniversary of Azerbaijan’s destruction of the historic Armenian cemetery of Djulfa by calling on the Canadian government to hold Azerbaijan accountable for the systematic destruction of Armenian historical, cultural and religious sites and monuments, the ANCC said in a statement.
On December 10, 2005, the government of Azerbaijan began the final demolition of the historic Armenian cemetery in Djulfa, an ancient Armenian city now located in Azerbaijan. This marked the final blow to the 10,000 intricately hand carved khachkars (stone crosses) which were erected between the 6th through the 17th centuries. Khachkars are a uniquely Armenian form of stone carving which UNESCO has recognized as being both culturally and religiously significant to the Armenian people and constituting part of humanity’s shared intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding.
By December 15, 2005, the final destruction was complete. Approximately 200 Azerbaijani soldiers gathered at the Nakhichevan-Iran border to desecrate the remaining grave markers at the Djulfa Armenian cemetery. The cemetery has since been replaced with an Azerbaijani military training base.
Despite clear evidence and condemnation by international bodies such as the European Parliament and International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), Azerbaijani authorities continue to deny this crime, while still promoting the destruction of all Armenian religious and cultural sites in the country.
Shahen Mirakian, President of the ANCC stated “The Armenian monuments represent unique architectural value and the international community should be aware of the policy of their destruction that can only be defined as cultural genocide.”
Mirakian called upon the Canadian government to exert the necessary pressure on the Azerbaijani government to end this campaign. “The annihilation of the civilization of a people is incompatible with any country aspiring to become an honest broker for peace, justice and equality around the world. Azerbaijan cannot be regarded as such, until it faces its own history, and respects the rights and freedoms of other nations” said Mirakian.
A total of 1,400 female babies are not born in Armenia because of sex-selective abortions, according to the project “Combating Gender-Biased Sex Selection in Armenia” implemented since May 2015 by the International Center for Human Development (ICHD) in partnership with the Stichting Save the Children Nederland (STC Netherlands), Armavir Development Centre (ADC), Martuni Women’s Community Council (MWCC) and Save the Children (STC) International and funded by the European Union (EU).
According to the National Statistical Service of Armenia, the male/female child ratio is 108/100 in Armenia this year against 113/100 last year, which is certainly progress.
Such an outcome was due to awareness raising activities and public consolidation campaigns in the regions, said Vahan Asatryan, a representative from ICHD.
“We conducted collaborative work in all those directions in the regions. The state policies towards promoting public awareness are very important. Any attempt to put off fire is certainly good, but when you blow it out, it may erupt instead of extinguishing. Hence, we need knowledge to achieve that. That is why we have prioritized the issue,” he said, noting that sex-selective abortions are often motivated by economic factors (when women feel they have a secondary role in the society).
Asatryan admitted that the male-female ratio in Armenia is a concern also against the backdrop of the decreasing birth rate.
Armenia and the World Bank signed today a US$50 million development policy finance operation to support the Government’s reforms program across key economic areas. Gohar Gyulumyan, Senior Economist of Co-Task Team Leader of the World Bank noted during the press conference held in the Yerevan Office of the World Bank.
The Fourth Development Policy Financing (DPF-4) for Armenia supports a wide range of reforms promoting fiscal, social and environmental sustainability and strengthening competitiveness. This is the last operation in a programmatic series of four DPFs spanning 2013-2016.
The first pillar of this operation includes measures for improving the financial sustainability of key sectors and the efficiency of social protection programs while enhancing environmental safeguards in the mining industry, which accounts for over half of Armenia’s exports. The second pillar, on improving competitiveness, focuses on strengthening the business environment and improving trade facilitation and connectivity, as well as access to credit.
Key milestones supported by this operation include the enactment of the Unified Tax Code, which will address shortcomings in the tax system, and increase the fiscal space for growth-enhancing capital investment and social spending. It includes measures to enhance revenues, improve the efficiency, transparency and equity of the tax system, and to strengthen tax administration.
“The new Code is a major step forward in the tax policy reform, as it unifies and harmonizes what were previously two different sets of tax laws, bringing them together into a single Code. The Code will reduce the risk of rule duplication and, more importantly, of inconsistencies across different tax laws. By revisiting the level and structure of income taxes, reducing the number of exemptions and tax gaps, increasing excise taxes and strengthening coverage of high-wealth individuals and large companies, the Code will lead to higher revenue mobilization in the medium-term,” World Bank Co-Task Team Leader of the Project Gohar Gyulumyan noted.
The program supports several reforms aimed at enhancing environmental safeguard legislation. In particular, the amendments to the Mining Code to align with the Law on Waste Management will reduce the negative environmental impacts from mining operations and preserve the asset endowment for households in rural areas, which often depend on income from agricultural activity.
Another focus area of this operation is improvement in the business environment, through enactment of the amendments to the Law on Bankruptcy, which strikes a better balance between creditors’ and debtors’ rights. The operation also supports increasing transparency and reliability of the financial sector by enacting regulations to ensure disclosure of beneficial ownership of financial institutions and groups.
The Fourth DPF, totaling US$50 million, is an IBRD loan with a fixed spread with a 14.5-year grace period and repayment of 25 years.
Since joining the World Bank in 1992 and IDA in 1993, total IDA and IBRD commitments to Armenia amount to US$2.3 billion.
Murat Guzel facebook
Chuck Ross, Reporter
A Turkish-American businessman who is head of the Democratic National Committee’s Heritage Council claimed to have paid a former GOP congressman to write a pro-Turkey op-ed last year and also provided secret updates on his own political activities to members of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s inner circle, newly released emails reveal.
The businessman, Murat Guzel, was also interviewed by the FBI earlier this year along with several Turkish nationals linked to its government, other emails indicate.
The bombshell revelations come from the hacked email account of Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s energy minister and Erdogan’s son-in-law. The emails, which number more than 57,000, were originally released by a hacker collective called RedHack, but they received little attention in the American press until they were published on Monday by WikiLeaks.
The documents, almost all of which are in Turkish, shed light into many secret activities between Erdogan’s government and U.S.-based operatives working to further Turkey’s agenda.
Guzel, who owns Nimeks, an organic juice company based in Pennsylvania, has perhaps the biggest political footprint of any of the operatives identified in the emails.
He has contributed nearly $300,000 to committees that supported Hillary Clinton for president, and his Facebook page is replete with photos he has taken with the former secretary of state and other top Democrats.
He’s given hundreds of thousands of dollars more to various Democratic politicians, and has visited the White House on several occasions. One of Guzel’s Facebook photographs shows him sitting in on a meeting with President Obama.
And writing under his title as chairman of the DNC’s heritage council and as an officer with the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Council, Guzel endorsed Clinton in an op-ed published in The Hill on Nov. 2.
But in addition to his steadfast support for Democrats and his official positions with the DNC, the emails hacked from Albayrak’s account suggest that Guzel, who is a naturalized American citizen, also appears to have strong allegiances to his native land and to Erdogan.
“To stand by Erdogan and do whatever we can against evil powers is not just an act of kindness but rather an Islamic obligation upon all of us,” he wrote to Albayrak in an Oct. 19, 2014 email which was translated for The Daily Caller by a Turkish citizen.
Erdogan, who is an Islamist, has come under increasing pressure from human rights groups because of his crackdown on the Turkish press and dissenters. RedHack released the Albayrak emails after Erdogan’s government refused to release a group of activists from prison.
Guzel, who is a director at MÜSİAD-USA, a Muslim business association that represents Turkish companies, is seen in the emails reporting his activities to Albayrak as well as to Bilal Erdogan, the son of Turkey’s president, and Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan’s press secretary.
Some of the emails show that Guzel asked the Turkish officials for help in coordinating his political activities in the U.S. In turn, he was directed to coordinate with other U.S.-based operatives to push Turkey’s political issues.
In one Oct. 20, 2015 email, Guzel told Kalin about an op-ed he helped place in The Washington Times written by former Indiana Rep. Dan Burton.
In the piece, entitled “Why Turkey Matters,” Burton, who retired from Congress in 2013, praised Turkey as the U.S.’s “biggest friend and ally” in the Middle East.
Guzel told Kalin that he paid Burton for the op-ed and helped the Republican write the article. A translation provided to TheDC reads:
Congressman Dan Burton is the person invited by us to AKP Delegation Meetings in Turkey and you can find his article about Turkey below. He had worked over 30 years at the state department as a congressman and we were able to get an article from a very important person and we didn’t spent that much money for it. I have worked alot to make this happen but your help and the time that we spend together help him to make the main points of the article. without your and yasin hoca’s help and warm welcome this article had been not written. Congressman and I appreciate it to both of you.
Kalin thanked Guzel for placing the article.
“Yes it was a good work. Thanks. We need to increase this type of writing. We publish this in Turkish,” he responded.
Guzel also told Albayrak and Bilal Erdogan about a meeting he had in Nov. 2014 with Pennsylvania Rep. Matt Cartwright.
Cartwright had recently praised Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric from Turkey who lives in exile in the Pocono mountains and is Erdogan’s top enemy. Erdogan has for several years accused Gulen and his millions of followers of attempting to undermine the Turkish government. The rivalry reached a peak in July after Erdogan accused Gulen of masterminding a coup.
In his email, Guzel informed Albayrak and the younger Erdogan that he told Cartwright that the Democrat had been the recipient of illegal campaign contributions made by foreigners who support Gulen.
“You did the job very well,” Albayrak replies. “I need to be very dynamic and active in these matters. It is also important that you act in coordination there.”
In a phone interview on Wednesday, Cartwright confirmed that he met with Guzel. But he said he does not recall that Guzel was threatening in any way. He said that he considers Guzel a friend. He also reaffirmed his support for Gulen.
Cartwright returned the donations from the Gulen supporters shortly after that meeting out of “an abundance of caution,” he told TheDC.
The DNC’s position on Guzel’s behind-the-scenes activities are unclear. The party did not respond to several requests for comment. It’s also not clear if Guzel was working directly for the DNC at the time he sent the emails.
It is also not known how much Guzel allegedly paid Burton and why the retired congressman did not disclose his lobbying activities. Burton, who is registered as a lobbyist for only one other client, is the former head of the Azerbaijan America Alliance. During his time in Congress he was accused by an FBI whistleblower named Sibel Edmonds of accepting bribes from Turkish agents.
Burton did not respond to two requests for comment.
Other emails hacked from Albayrak’s account indicate that Guzel was interviewed by the FBI several months ago.
In a Sept. 8 email, Ibrahim Uyar, an executive at MÜSİAD-USA who co-founded a group called the Turkish American National Steering Committee (TASC) along with Guzel, informed Albayrak that he was questioned for an hour by two FBI agents.
“They asked about MÜSİAD and TASC. They are accusing me of trying to intervene in American politics on behalf of our president and working as a secret agent in the name of the Republic of Turkey,” he wrote, according to a translation of the email.
He also said that “they have studied our work in the last two years.”
He added that Guzel and several other MÜSİAD board members, including Mustafa Tuncer, Emre Eren and Halil Danismaz, were also interviewed.
Danismaz is the former president of the Turkish Heritage Organization and was in frequent email contact with Albayrak and Bilal Erdogan.
Reached by The Daily Caller, an FBI spokeswoman declined to say whether the interviews of Uyar, Guzel and other MÜSİAD took place. She said that the bureau does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations.
Guzel, whose email address in the Albayrak trove matches up with one listed in a DNC database, also did not respond to emails requesting comment. Uyar also did not respond to a request for comment.
Germany’s foreign minister voiced the OSCE’s concerns over the developments in Nagorno-Karabakh, calling for urgent efforts towards strengthening peace on the frontline.
In a speech at the organization’s Ministerial Council, Frank Walter Steienmeier highlighted particularly the heavy fighting in April as a real hazard. “The discussions demonstrate how urgent it is to strengthen the ceasefire; hence, we must properly continue the negotiations to settle the [conflict],” he said.
Steienmeier, whose country this year assumed the OSCE presidency, said the organization will continue assisting in the Minsk Group efforts towards achieving peace.
“My impression is that we need to improve the humanitarian situation to build trustworthy relations and security,” he said, stressing the importance of further action.
A restoration project for the Upper Mosque in the Nagorno Karabakh city of Shushi has been completed. The program was ordered by the Ministry of Economy and implemented by a group of Iranian experts.
According to Deputy Economy Minister Sergey Shahverdyan, the renovation of the mosque is essential in terms of protecting the cultural heritage of Karabakh, as “any monument on its territory, regardless of it being a religious or cultural site, is the historic property of the people of Artsakh.”
The repair project of the Persian mosque, according to Karabakh experts, is well-prepared and fully complies with all the norms of heritage conservation.
Shahverdyan said picking an Iranian company for the project was not accidental, given the mosque’s connection with Persian culture and history.
Armenia has submitted three movies for consideration for Best Foreign Film at the 74th annual Golden Globe Awards – “The Last Inhabitant,” “Hot Country, Cold Winter,” and “Earthquake,” the The Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s official website says.
“As a filmmaker raised in Nagorno Karabakh I have listened to stories of hardships endured by my family and villagers, and of their struggles into dealing with such a devastating inter-ethnic conflict.” So says Jivan Avetisyan, a prolific 35 year-old Armenian director with a solid documentary background, who was born in this mountainous landlocked region in the Southwestern tip of Armenia bordering with Azerbaijan. He even had to do his mandatory military service there, in the province’s Defense Army from 1999 to 2001.
It is not surprising that he decided to make it the setting of “The Last Inhabitant,” his eighth feature film, which centers around Abgar, the only Armenian of Christian faith left in the village of Gyurjevan, now devastated and in near ruins, after everyone else has been deported. Because of his skills as a stonemason, he is assigned to help build a mosque by the Azeri occupants. He also has to take care of his daughter Yurga, traumatized after witnessing her husband’s murder. As the situation deteriorates around them with increasing enemy danger and lack of food, they find solace in their memories of an idealized past, when peace and happiness still prevailed. The last resort for those who have not much to hope for. With its often elegiac and poetic approach the film is able to achieve a touching portrait of survival and at the same time humanizing the protagonists and their fate, how tragic it may be.
Another of the movies sent for consideration is “Earthquake”, which is based on the real events surrounding the disastrous earthquake which struck Armenia in 1988. The terrible earthquake claimed at least 25,000 lives and left about half a million people homeless. For director Sarik Andreasyan it was a very special project, in which he wanted, after almost 30 years, to tell the story not only of death and destruction but also to show the hope and community spirit in the face of the nightmare.
The story is built around a Russian family living in the Armenian city of Leninankan. Anna Berezhnaya (Maria Mironova) with her son Vanya (Daniil Izotov) and daughter Katya (Anastasia Savkina) awaits the return from prison of her husband (Konstantin Lavronenko) who eight years prior was sentenced to prison for the death of two people in a car accident.
“Hot Country, Cold Winter” tells about the situation in Armenia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Some of the most suffering people there were the members of intelligentsia, who found themselves without means of existence and no sense of purpose. In his film “Hot Country, Cold Winter” Armenian director David Sarafian mixes realism and poetry to explore another dark period in the history of his long-suffering people. But don’t expect to get all the answers to the many questions asked by this film.
On the surface it is a story of a man and a woman from artistic circles who are suffering through circumstances of a total winter energy crisis. But in some ways this is merely a pretext to delve deeper into the problem of an artist living through hard times. Their recollections and their imagination are used here to help understand not only the story as such, but to appeal to core human values which are universal.
“Hot Country, Cold Winter” was an official selection for the main competition of the 2015 Tallinn International Film Festival in Estonia.
Source: PanARMENIAN.Net
Erdoğan: Currency speculators trying to bring down Turkish economy President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has claimed Turkey’s struggling economy is under attack from foreign exchange speculators, while also praising citizens who have converted their foreign currencies into liras.
“They are trying to destroy our economy through foreign exchange speculation. Are there no problems with our economy? Yes, there are. But our government has been taking the required measures and will continue to do so,” Erdoğan said in a speech to neighborhood leaders in the presidential palace in Ankara on Dec. 7.
He noted that he saw “no economic reason” for the Turkish Lira’s recent plunge, after the lira lost as much as one fifth of its value against the U.S. dollar this year before rebounding slightly on Dec. 6.
Casting recent weakness in the Turkish currency as a plot by outside powers to destroy the economy, Erdoğan has repeatedly called for Turkish citizens to convert any dollars under their mattresses into liras or gold, while urging businesses to conduct more transactions in the local currency.
Some $2.5 billion is cash alone has flown out of Turkey in less than a month, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chair Selin Sayek Böke has said, criticizing the government for creating “structural problems” with its draconian state of emergency decrees.
“The net outflow of cash since the beginning of November alone is $2.5 billion,” Böke said on Dec. 7, speaking after her party’s central executive board meeting.
She also rejected President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s claim that Turkey was being targeted in an economic war by shady outside forces, saying the government’s state of emergency decrees after the failed July 15 coup attempt had created “structural problems” that paved the way for economic strife.
“In the process that started with the extension of the state of emergency, the discussions on presidential system shift, and the deterioration of relations with the EU, the Turkish Lira became one of four currencies that have lost the most value,” Böke said.
“In addition to structural problems, there are political problems in Turkey. With the state of emergency, democracy has been abolished. The law has been destroyed by decree laws … For the sake of its own political power, the government is engaging in fights with the whole world. Political risks are leading Turkey to break away from the world,” she added.
The co-chair of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) is being overtly subjected to torture in prison, a HDP lawmaker has said, commenting on the imprisonment of HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş.
“Isolation is a form of torture and our lawmakers and co-chairs are being overtly subjected to torture,” HDP deputy Meral Danış Beştaş said before visiting Demirtaş in the prison in the northwestern province of Edirne, adding that “lawlessness is being implemented.”
“There is isolation, restrictions and lawlessness in every sense,” she said.
Nine lawmakers from the HDP, as well its co-chairs, Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, were arrested on Nov. 4 in a probe that was launched against 14 of the party’s lawmakers over alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Saying that Turkey should rectify its mistake, Beştaş noted that “no good can come to Turkey with it.”
“The fact that the co-chair of Turkey’s third biggest party is kept under torture and restrictions doesn’t do anything to benefit Turkey, and Turkey needs to rectify its mistake as soon as possible,” she said.
After being imprisoned, Demirtaş requested to serve his prison sentence in the same cell as one of the party’s lawmakers from the eastern province of Hakkari, Abdullah Zeydan, who was arrested on Nov. 6 and brought to the same prison in Edirne. Demirtaş’s request was rejected.
Accompanied by HDP lawmakers Burcu Çelik Özkan and Erol Dora, Beştaş said the fact that Demirtaş’s aforementioned request was rejected was against decisions by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
“We are here today for Demirtaş’s prison conditions. Unfortunately, he is still being kept in isolation alone. Despite the fact that Zeydan is also serving here, Demirtaş’s and his requests to stay together were rejected,” she said.
Beştaş also said the prison staff were restricting the number of letters that Demirtaş can write.
“We filed applications on three matters and one concerned the letters. Mr. Demirtaş’s parliamentary group meeting talk wasn’t given. It was given after two weeks and it was censored. His letters to European parliamentarians were also not given. This is not acceptable,” she added.