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Iran, Armenia sign trade pact in Yerevan

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Iranian and Armenian trade officials in a meeting in Yerevan on Wednesday have signed a trade agreement. The trade agreement was signed by the chairmen of the chambers of commerce of Tehran and Yerevan in the Armenian capital yesterday, Asbarez reported.

g_image-IranHead of Tehran’s Chamber of Commerce Yahya Al-e Eshaq, heading a ranking trade delegation, is in Armenia to discuss bilateral ties with senior Armenian officials.

At the meeting, head of Yerevan’s Chamber of Commerce Robert Haratounyan pointed to the current Iran-Armenia relations and said the Iranian delegation’s visit to Armenia provides the two sides with a good opportunity for boosting mutual cooperation between the two countries.

Earlier in the day, Al-e Eshaq called for the further expansion of trade ties between Iran and Armenia, saying that the Islamic Republic can open new horizons to its northern neighbor.

“Iran can open the doors to Armenia for the transit of goods to 14 neighboring countries,” Al-e Eshaq told Armenpress new agency.

The Iranian official noted that if certain problems between the two countries are settled, the two countries’ economic relations will improve.

He pointed to a possible establishment of a copyright-free trade regime between Iran and Armenia as a very important issue and said, “As far as I know, the Islamic Republic does not have any problem with this regime and it is up to the Armenian officials to decide about the establishment of such a regime in their economic relations with Iran.”

“The second problem pertains to the 20 to 30 percent rate of customs tariffs, which is too high for Armenia, who is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO),” Al-e Eshaq said.

Last month, Armenian Ambassador to Tehran Grigor Arakelyan urged Tehran and Yerevan to further broaden their relations in different areas.

Arakelyan made the call in a meeting with Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Relations Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi in Tehran.

“I hope that during the presidency of Iranian President-elect Hassan Rouhani, Iran and Armenia will further expand their relations in all fields,” the Armenian ambassador said.

In recent years, Iran and its northern neighbor Armenia have boosted cooperation, signed agreements on energy cooperation, and agreed to cooperate in technology and research and to enhance ties in commerce and economy.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Armenian counterpart pledged in December 2011 to further expand “high-level relations” between their nations and, in particular, give new impetus to the implementation of joint energy projects that have fallen behind schedule.

 

Vartu villager tells his story

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Arsen Okmez, an Armenian man born in the Vartu village, 5km of Iraq, near Van, lived there until 1978.

Arsen Okmez (Okmezyan, with the suffix ‘yan’ cut off during a census conducted by the Turkish authorities in 1960) has for the last 20 years been living in Brussels with his g_image-villigerswife Belinda and four children.

Three generations of this family had different surnames. The family had had their grandfather’s surname, Miroyan, before 1915. The surname of Arsen’s father Tigran was Okmezyan, and Arsen himself is Okmez.

Arsen told Tert.am that Vartu had been an Armenian village before 1915. Five Armenian Genocide survivors, including his grandfather, repurchased it from the Turkish authorities after the Armenian massacres.

“In summer we would shepherd sheep in the mountains and return home in winter,” says Arsen. Turkish and Kurdish were spoken in the village, but Armenians spoke only Armenian at home.

“Before 1967 we had not known if other Armenians lived in Turkey. We could not speak Armenian, they would have cut our tongues off. One nice day a clergyman came from Istanbul with an instruction to find out if there were other Christian people there. He came to our village and began talking with young people in Armenian. But they did not understand well. But older people knew the language and they began to talk with him. I did not remember the clergyman’s name, but he told us that about 70,000 Armenians lived in Istanbul. We thought we were alone in Turkey, but he said ‘no, we are going to see people in Istanbul’.”

Four or five young people went to Istanbul with the clergyman and returned. Twenty-eight people went the following year, and Arsen’s elder brother was among them. In 1978, the Armenian village of Vartu emptied.

While in Istanbul, Arsen’s father suddenly decided to settle down in Armenia.

“Daddy said we had to go to our homeland. We arrived in Hoktemberyan and lived for two years there. We were a 10-member family. Daddy worked for a collective farm to keep his family. He did not want to leave, but two of my elder brothers did not want to stay in communist Armenia,” Arsen says.

The family returned to Turkey, but four years later, following the father’s advice, went to Marseilles and then to Belgium.

Davutoglu Warns Yerevan

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ISANTBUL—Armenia “should know the limits of its capacity,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu warned Yerevan Wdnesday, referring to territorial claims recently davutoglumade by the country’s prosecutor general, reported the Hurriyet Newspaper.

Davutoglu, who was on a one-day visit to Baku, called on “those who dare to take a pebble from Turkey” to know their limits, Hurriyet quoted the Anadolu Agency. “Apart from offering such a thing, it is out of question to think about it,” he said.

The prosecutor general of Armenia, Aghvan Hovsepyan, recently said Armenia should re-obtain its lost territories as the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide approaches. The Turkish Foreign Ministry was furious at Hovsepyan’s declaration that the border between Turkey and Armenia has never been legally established and that lost Armenian land should be returned to Armenia.

Davutoğlu said the statements made by the Armenian officials over the issue were the product of “delirium,” arguing that possible peace in the Caucasus would only be possible when all parties knew their limits and boundaries. “I invite all to common sense. The territorial integrity of Turkey and Azerbaijan is pivotal for us,” he said.

Davutoğlu visted Baku to hold discussions with Azerbaijani officials. According to Azerbaijan media reports, Elmar Mammadyarov, Azerbaijan’s foreign minister, briefed his Turkish counterpart about a July 12 meeting with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs in Vienna. He emphasized that Azerbaijan supports the idea of holding a meeting between the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Anadolu Agency also published a photo showing Davutoğlu being briefed by a Turkish military attaché over the Caucasus Battle. The battle consisted of armed conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire in 1918 during World War I. The land warfare was accompanied by Russian naval activity in the Black Sea region of the Ottoman Empire.

The visit also came as the Turkish and Azerbaijani armies launched joint military exercises on July 12 that will run in Baku and Nakhichevan until July 28. The land forces of the two countries will be involved in the war games; an infantry division will be involved in the Baku exercises, while a mechanized infantry division will take part in the exercises in Nakhichevan. In the region, Russia and Iran are also planning to conduct a joint naval exercise in the Caspian Sea in the second half of 2013.

Davutoğlu’s visit coincides with a project to carry gas from Azerbaijan through Turkey and Greece to Europe as part of the Trans-Adriatic-Pipeline (TAP), which was officially confirmed last month.

At least seven killed, nine wounded in land dispute in eastern Turkey

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17 July 2013 /Doğan news agency
Seven people were killed and nine others seriously wounded on Wednesday when two families took to arms over a land dispute in the eastern province of Muş.

According to the Doğan news agency, the Dost and Kundo families were fighting over land in the eastern province. The two families are residents of the province’s Eskiyol mus1village in the Bulanık district, local District Governor Ferit Görükmez said.

The families fought with scythes and spades before resorting to guns, the agency reported, adding that two of those killed were members of the Dost family, while the other five were members of the Kundo family.

Doğan reported the names of the dead as Bahattin Dost, Nusrettin Dost, Fethullah Dost, Mehmet Dost, Fehim Kundo, Gıyasettin Kundo and Halit Kundo.

The wounded were taken to hospitals in Muş and the neighboring province of Erzurum. The number of wounded and dead may rise as medical reports come in. Gendarmerie forces have clamped down on security to prevent further disputes in the village and the hospitals where the wounded are being treated. Gendarmerie forces are investigating the incident.

Muş Governor Vedat Büyükersoy told the press that the wounded, three of whom are in critical condition, were taken to hospitals in Bulanık, Muş and Erzurum.

In major policy shift, Armenia demands lands from Turkey

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By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

Ever since independence in 1991, Armenia’s leaders have been reluctant to make any concrete demands from Turkey beyond recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

Harot SasonianOnly in recent years, Armenian officials have begun to speak about “the elimination of the consequences of the genocide,” without specifying the “consequences” and the means for their “elimination.”

Earlier this month, however, a major shift was announced in Armenia’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Turkey, when Aghvan Hovsepyan, the Prosecutor General of Armenia, called for the return of historic Armenian territories at an international conference of Armenian lawyers in Yerevan. This is the first time that a high-ranking Armenian government official has made such a public demand from Turkey.

In a lengthy and comprehensive speech, Hovsepyan stated that the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by various countries is simply a moral and emotional issue. Calling for a switch to “the legal field,” the Prosecutor General indicated that “to eliminate the consequences of the Armenian Genocide” Turkey must “pay compensation to heirs of the Armenian Genocide, return to the Armenian Church the miraculously still standing Armenian churches and properties in Turkey, and give back the lost territories to the Republic of Armenia.”

Prosecutor General Hovsepyan insisted that unless Armenians adopt this bold approach, they will not accomplish any concrete results in the next one hundred years, just as they did not in the last one hundred years. He proposed a thorough legal review of all international agreements regulating Armenia-Turkey relations, from the Berlin Treaty of 1878 to the signed but not ratified protocols of 2009. He also declared that the region of Nakhichevan is “an inseparable part of Armenia, albeit occupied by Azerbaijan.” Hovsepyan urged the assembled lawyers from around the world to prepare the legal case for territorial demands from Azerbaijan and Turkey and present it to the Armenian government for eventual submission to the International Court of Justice (World Court).

Statements made by a prosecutor general usually do not carry much weight in international affairs, if it were not for the fact that several other high-ranking officials, including Pres. Serzh Sarkisian, President of the Constitutional Court Gagik Haroutyunyan, Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan, Armenia’s Minister of Justice Hrair Tovmasyan, and Minister of Justice of Artsakh (Karabagh) Ararat Tanielian, also made remarks on restitutive justice at the lawyers’ conference. It was clear that the Prosecutor General was the designated spokesman of the Armenian government to articulate its new tougher line toward Turkey in advance of the Genocide Centennial.

Pres. Sarkisian, using more circumspect language than the Prosecutor General, told the lawyers’ conclave: “The international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, and elimination of its consequences will always remain a salient issue. As long as the Armenian State is in existence, all efforts to deny and send into oblivion this historical reality will be doomed. This greatest crime against humanity must be recognized and condemned once and for all, and first of all, by Turkey itself.”

In keeping with the government’s new policy orientation, Constitutional Court President Gagik Haroutyunyan announced that a special committee will be formed to prepare the legal documentation necessary for the pursuit of Armenian Genocide claims.

At the conclusion of the conference, the participants issued a joint statement asserting that the priority for Armenian lawyers is not proving the self-evident facts of the Genocide, but preparing a comprehensive legal document “to remedy the consequences of the Armenian Genocide.”

This is a welcome development in terms of arriving at a consensus between the Armenian government and the Diaspora on the objectives to be pursued for the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.

However, in order to move beyond mere emotionally inspiring statements, the Armenian leaders must take two immediate steps:

1) Withdraw the Armenian government’s signature from the counter-productive Armenia-Turkey Protocols. On the eve of the Genocide Centennial, it would be inconceivable to move forward with fruitless efforts to improve relations with Turkey, while preparing to file a lawsuit for restitution.

2) Form a team of international law experts to begin structuring the legal case against Turkey in the World Court and/or the European Court of Human Rights.

While skeptics may not take seriously the recent policy pronouncements of the Armenian authorities, the Turkish Foreign Ministry has no such doubts. Last week, Ankara denounced the Armenian territorial demands, announcing angrily that “nobody can dare to claim territory from Turkey!”

New South Wales, Artsakh set to expand ties

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Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan received an official delegation from the Australian New South Wales state.

g_image-New south walesA wide range of issues related to the development of relations between New South Wales and Artsakh were discussed during the meeting.

President Sahakyan expressed gratitude to the authorities and people of New South Wales for supporting Artsakh and de-facto recognizing its independence, adding that it was a significant political and moral step on the path of international recognition of Artsakh and establishment of bilateral relations.

Both sides noted that there are all necessary conditions for cooperation and resoluteness to work in this direction.

Deputy Speaker of the Artsakh Republic National Assembly Arthur Tovmasyan, NKR Permanent Representative in Australia Varouzhan Iskandaryan, members of the Armenian National Committee of Australia and other officials were also present at the meeting, reported the Central Information Department at the Artsakh President’s Office.

 

Deputy speaker urges Turkey against interfering in Karabakh settlement

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July 17, 2013 – 17:54 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Deputy speaker of Armenian parliament commented on recent statement of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggesting Ankara will always 165893be supporting Azerbaijan and is ready to promote peaceful settlement of Karabakh conflict.

“Davutglu’s statement confirms Turkey’s adherence to pro-Azeri solution of Karabakh conflict, rather than a fair one,” Eduard Sharmazanov said.

“If really interested in a rapid solution of the conflict, Turkey has to take one simple step – stop interfering in the settlement process,” the deputy speaker said.

RT: ‘Heroic effort at great personal cost’: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

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A Swedish sociology professor has nominated Edward Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize. He says the NSA whistleblower could help “save the prize from the disrepute incurred by the hastsnowden-nominated-nobel-peace---_siy and ill-conceived decision” to give the 2009 award to Barack Obama.

In his letter addressed to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Stefan Svallfors praised Snowden for his “heroic effort at great personal cost.” He stated that by revealing the existence and the scale of the US surveillance programs, Snowden showed “individuals can stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.”

 

 

Turkish police detain 30 over Gezi protests in pre-dawn raids

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16 July 2013 /TODAY’S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL

The İstanbul police department’s counterterrorism unit and special operations team raided over 100 locations early on Tuesday, detaining at least 30 people suspected of provoking protests linked to Gezi Park near İstanbul’s Taksim Square.

The places that were raided in İstanbul’s various districts include several student dormitories. Those detained are suspected of organizing protests and being involved in violence in the course of the protests. The detainees were brought to the İstanbul Police Department, following medical examinations. The raids were continuing when Today’s Zaman went to print and the number of detainees may rise.

Within the operation, a house in Fatih district, where reportedly neo-nationalist Turkish Youth Union (TGB) members stay, was searched for two hours by the police, who seized two sacks of documents. Olgu Özdemir, chairman of the TGB İstanbul branch, and some other members of the TGB were among the detainees.

Meral Danış Bektaş, the Peace and Democracy Party’s (BDP) deputy leader who is responsible for law and human rights, issued a press statement condemning the morning raids and detentions, saying, “It is inexplicable that students and political party members were detained in a witch hunt by the government, while criminals who attack protesters with machetes and bats were released pending trial.”

In İzmir, a court decided to arrest 11 suspects on charges of being members of terrorist organizations, being involved in violence that damaged public buildings, vehicles and businesses and provoking people.

The arrests came after police earlier detained 15 suspects in raids at 16 locations in four western provinces — İzmir, Balıkesir, Manisa and Bursa. Two suspects were set free by prosecutors after those detained were referred to court. Another two suspects were released pending trial out of the 13 suspects who were referred to court. The rest were arrested.Forty-eight people have been arrested out of 57 detainees in four raids in İzmir since the protests started in late May.

On Monday night a large group gathered in Gündoğdu Square in İzmir in order to break their fasts — on the seventh day of Muslim holy month of Ramadan — on the ground, sharing the food they brought and protested the police brutality resulting in deaths and injuries.

Twelve people who were among the 50 protesters detained on the opening day of Gezi Park on July 8 but later released pending trial, face arrest once again, following the appeal by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday. Mücella Yapıcı, secretary-general of the İstanbul branch of the Turkish Union of Engineers and Architects’ Chambers (TMMOB) and member of Taksim Solidarity, is among them.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TİHV) issued a memorandum stating that so far 133 people have been arrested and 3,636 people detained related to the Gezi Park protests.

With respect to the brutal beating of 19-year-old university student Ali İsmail Korkmaz by a group during the Gezi protests in Eskişehir resulting in his death on July 10, the suspect S.K. was released pending trial on Tuesday with a ban on leaving the country, after he was detained on Monday.

Thirty-three-year-old bus driver S.K. who was identified from security camera footage taken in the area of Korkmaz’s beating, reportedly has a criminal record of violating the firearms law by firing a gun. S.K. denied the charges but said he had a dispute with a group throwing stones and he was intoxicated that night. He replied to the reporters’ question, “Did you kill Ali İsmail Korkmaz?” with the answer, “No.”

In a statement issued by the Eskişehir Chief Prosecutor’s Office, it is said that two more people linked to the incident are being sought.

Korkmaz suffered a brain hemorrhage after being beaten with baseball bats by men in street clothes as he fled police during a demonstration in support of the Gezi Park protests in Eskişehir. He fought for his life for 38 days at a hospital before succumbing to his injuries. The attack on Korkmaz has stoked the tensions that erupted late in May over a government plan to demolish İstanbul’s Gezi Park in Taksim Square and replace it with a replica of an Ottoman-era barracks.

In Korkmaz’s hometown of Hatay the atmosphere was calm on Monday after five days of protests following his death. There was a peaceful sit-in with slogans being shouted regarding Korkmaz and Abdullah Cömert – the 22-year-old victim of police violence on June 3 in Hatay. The protest was carried out without any police intervention for the first time in five days.

Another protester, Mustafa Ali Tombul, who has been in a coma since being critically injured when a gas canister was fired at his head by the police on June 8 at the opening of Gezi Park, is showing signs of improvement, according to a statement made by his family outside Taksim İlkyardım Hospital. Mehmet Tombul, father of the 17-year-old, thanked everyone for their prayers. He added that they are determined to win their legal battle.

Armenian minister of diaspora hosts Thessaloniki mayor

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Armenian Minister of Diaspora Hranush Hakobyan received on Tuesday a delegation led by Mayor of Thessaloniki Yiannis Boutaris.

g_image-8Mr Boutaris has arrived in Armenia to establish closer ties with Armenia’s second largest city and Thessaloniki’s sister-city Gyumri. The Thessaloniki authorities plan to invite 250 to 300 Armenian youths to Thessaloniki to take part in different events and establish contacts with their peers.

“I am happy that your programs are focused on young people because they are our future. Our peoples’ friendship has centuries-old history, and we must jointly cope with the challenges. We have great potential to develop economic, education, cultural and tourist ties,” Minister Hakobyan said.

In his turn, Mr Boutaris pointed out the Armenian community’s important role in Thessaloniki’s life. Armenians are clever and hard-working people, he said.

In conclusion the sides exchanged souvenir.