Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi said he would not correct anything regarding his recent comments on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, when urged to do so by former Italian ambassador to Ankara Luigi Mattiolo, BBC Turkish reported on Thursday, citing Italian sources.

Mattiolo told Draghi that him calling Erdoğan a “dictator” could have “serious consequences”, Italian daily La Stampa reported.

“This must be somehow corrected,” Mattiolo told Draghi, according to La Stampa, to which the premier responded, “I will not correct anything.”

Responding to a question on SofaGate, a crisis emerging from the treatment of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during a press event with Erdoğan and European Council President Charles Michel, Draghi said Erdoğan was among “dictators with whom we need to cooperate” on April 8.

Breaking his silence for the first time on the matter, Erdoğan on Thursday said, “This man called Draghi took an axe to relations between us by making this statement.”

Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s right-wing La Lega, said in a tweet, “Today more than ever I stand with president Draghi, democracy, freedom and the West.”

“That Mr Erdoğan, who arrests opposition deputies and bombs Kurdish villages, wants to give lessons to the Italian prime minister in style and manners is hilarious,” Italian wire service 

ANSA cited Secretary National of Italy’s left-wing Sinistra Italiana Nicola Frattoianni as saying.

Washington, D.C. – During the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) confirmation hearing on Thursday, April 15, 2021, of Ambassador Victoria Nuland to serve as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, SFRC Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) raised key issues relating to the Armenian people, including the Armenian prisoners of war still unjustly held captive by Azerbaijan and the need for robust humanitarian assistance, reported the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly).

Referring to the 44-day war launched by Azerbaijan, with the full and open support of Turkey, against the Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) on September 27, 2020 as an “unspeakable tragedy” and the “inexcusable” absence of top-level United States diplomacy throughout the war, Chairman Menendez stated that the “U.S. must press Azerbaijan to release the prisoners of war members that it has – which [Azerbaijan] is refusing to release them – in violation of international law.”
Amb. Nuland confirmed that the U.S. has to “get the prisoners released.”
“I’ve worked on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh issues for some 25 years, and the way things went down last year was absolutely tragic for so many in the region,” Amb. Nuland continued.
During the afternoon hearing, Chairman Menendez also spoke about the significance and urgency of U.S. humanitarian assistance to Artsakh and the importance of “ensuring that the Armenians displaced from their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh get the assistance they need.” 
Amb. Nuland replied in full agreement about committing to robust humanitarian assistance, including demining funds, and to ensuring the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Armenia, and that it can make its own decisions.”
In reply to Chairman Menendez’s question about how to revitalize the OSCE Minsk Group, in order to create a more sustainable peace process, Amb. Nuland discussed having conversations with Turkey. 
“The Secretary [of State Antony Blinken] has spoken about needing to be clear-eyed regarding trends in Turkey,” said Amb. Nuland. “We’ve got a lot of work to do there in our bilateral relationship to make clear our concerns about not only what Turkey’s doing outside its country, but also what it’s doing inside its country.”
Amb.Nuland emphasized the importance of conveying “strong support for the Caucasus countries, being active diplomatically, getting high-level leadership there, and using all of our economic and humanitarian tools.”
“We commend Chairman Menendez’s ongoing leadership,” stated Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny. “The release of the POWs is paramount as are the compelling humanitarian needs of the Armenian people. We continue to press forward on all fronts,” Ardouny added. 
The Assembly strongly supports bipartisan legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives calling on Azerbaijan to immediately release and repatriate Armenian POWs and captured civilians.

Çavuşoğlu was so taken aback by Dendias’ articulate references to international law and reality that he could only mutter out: “I didn’t impune Greece in my speech.” Turks are not use to foreigners calling things out exactly how they are, especially when speaking in Turkey.

In Erdoğan’s alternate reality, apparently Çavuşoğlu put Dendias “in his place.” Turkey is still recovering from that verbal humiliation from Dendias yesterday. Turkey is extra angry at Dendias because they could not censor what he said like they usually do in the media.

The World Press Photo Awards honor the best visual journalism worldwide. The past year was not only marked by the pandemic, but also the climate crisis and forgotten conflicts.

World Press Photo of the Year

Along with the top award, Mads Nissen also won in the General News category with his photo of an 85-year-old woman being embraced for the first time in months through a “hug curtain” by a nurse at the Viva Bem care home in Sao Paulo. It is a “rare positive photo about the COVID-19 era,” said the jury. Under President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil is one of the countries most affected by the virus.

YEREVAN. – Zhoghovurd newspaper of the Republic of Armenia (RA) writes: According to Zhoghovurd daily’s information, RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s statement from the NA [National] tribune the day before about the [recent Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh)] war, the operations made, the shortcomings has made a number of generals, colonels very concerned as to why the Prime Minister was publicly saying about it from the NA tribune.

Moreover, according to the news we received, the high-ranking military officials have discussed that this public dispute between the former chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the prime minister will not lead to a good place and will pose new challenges to the army.

We learned from well-informed sources that on March 22, when RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan introduced Artak Davtyan [the new chief of the General Staff] to the RA Armed Forces command, during a closed discussion many of the generals asked what fate awaited them, whether they were going to be included in any criminal cases or be tried in connection with the 44-day war.

[But] Pashinyan assured [them] that no fact-finding group will be set up, no investigation will be carried out, everyone can peacefully carry out their functions. Moreover, according to the same information, Pashinyan had noted that they could hold internal discussions and decide among themselves where, who, how made mistakes, draw a conclusion. And the command staff of the Armed Forces, being confident that everything was fine, had calmed down and gone to its work.

But it can be said that the MOD and the Armed Forces makeup are alarmed by the prime minister’s speech the day before, as sharp turns are possible in the near future.

The roads need to be unblocked, but it has to be done in such a way that Armenia’s interest isn’t overlooked, and this implies blockage of a corridor for the Azerbaijanis through the territory of Meghri. This is what deputy of the My Step faction of the National Assembly of Armenia Armen Khachatryan told reporters in parliament.

“The fact that the unblocking of roads is a key issue for Armenia and that the country will see major changes in the economy and have new prospects after unblocking is unequivocal, but Aliyev’s notions of the unblocking of roads are perhaps unacceptable for us, for the most part. You are probably referring to the issue of providing a certain corridor through the Syunik Province. I don’t think there is such an issue, and there can’t even be a corridor for Azerbaijan through Syunik Province. Aliyev and Erdogan dream of having that corridor, but they will keep dreaming,” the deputy said.

Onik Gasparyan, former chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia (RA), has issued a statement addressing the National Assembly (NA) speaker, the heads of the three NA factions, as well as the chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Defense and Security, ArmLur.am reports.

“More than five months have passed since the end of the war unleashed by the Azerbaijani-Turkish coalition against the Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] Republic on September 27, 2020. During all this time, many questions have accumulated among various segments of our society about the many events (…) that took place before the war, during it, as well as after the signing of the ceasefire.

The [Armenian] public media is flooded with various information, assessments, disclosures, conspiracy theories.

Information that has been partially declassified and made public by some state bodies (…) has been added to it in recent times.

All this has become a real threat to our national security, undermines our public solidarity, demoralizes our armed forces and, as a result, makes our state vulnerable to further possible encroachments by the enemy.

During all this time, the RA General Staff of the Armed Forces has shown maximum restraint in this matter, (…). But the recently increasing speculations (…) make it necessary to legally regulate the process of state investigation of all circumstances related to the past war (…).

Therefore, I petition to you to immediately initiate, within the framework of the powers vested in you by Article 108, Clause 4 of the RA Constitution, the establishment of an NA inquiry committee in the circumstances of the 44-day war in 2020. (…). I express my readiness to provide maximum assistance to the work of the future committee of inquiry,” Gasparyan’s statement reads in particular.

YEREVAN — When Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian signed a Russian-brokered cease-fire in November to end the war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, it created a tumultuous postwar crisis that has eroded public confidence in Yerevan’s political establishment.

Opinion polls show the approval rating of Pashinian’s government has fallen from about 60 percent in September 2020 to around 30 percent today.

Pashinian’s allies — faced with political upheaval and declining public confidence in politicians — are now working to change the country’s election laws ahead of snap parliamentary elections expected in June.

The 45-year-old Pashinian’s My Step alliance is revamping parts of the Electoral Code that were put in place in 2016 by his predecessors, the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), two years before the “Velvet Revolution” that swept him into office.

My Step gained power with 70 percent of the vote in 2018 snap elections after Pashinian led mass protests against the HHK-led government. It was enough for My Step to take a commanding 88 of the 132 seats in Armenia’s single-chamber parliament.

By comparison, the discredited pro-Russian HHK of former President Serzh Sarkisian failed to clear the minimum 5 percent threshold needed to win parliamentary seats. That left the Republicans sidelined along with more than a dozen other small parties that remain outside of parliament.

Postwar Crisis

Five lawmakers have quit My Step’s parliamentary faction since the end of the war to become nonaligned deputies — leaving My Step with 83 parliament seats.

Strikingly, the two opposition parties in parliament have not benefited from My Step’s evaporating support. Research by the International Republican Institute reveals a simultaneous decline in public support for the opposition Prosperous Armenia and a rival opposition faction, Bright Armenia.

Led by powerful businessman Gagik Tsarukian, Prosperous Armenia had been a member of the Republican Party’s governing coalition from 2008 to 2012 — calling itself a “nongoverning party” after that until 2015, when it formally declared itself in opposition to the Republicans.

Controversial former President Robert Kocharian has also been an influential figure in Prosperous Armenia, which has 24 deputies in the current parliament.

Bright Armenia is led by Edmon Marukian, a Western-educated former ally of Pashinian who is seen to have pro-European leanings. Bright Armenia has 17 deputies in the current parliament.

Rounding out parliament are eight nonaligned lawmakers, including two who vote with the My Step faction on many issues.

Outside of parliament, 17 anti-Pashinian groups with differing political orientations formed a postwar tactical coalition called the Homeland Salvation Movement (HPS).

The HPS is not a separate political entity. But it organized demonstrations that brought thousands of protesters to the streets throughout the winter to demand Pashinian’s resignation over his handling of the Nagorno-Karabakh war, which led to Armenian forces losing control of large swaths of territory.

Pashinian responded to the criticism by blaming his predecessors for the country’s war losses — including members of the HPS — saying they had neglected Armenian’s military forces for more than a decade.

Amid the mudslinging and declining public confidence in all political factions, Pashinian announced on March 18 that he will soon resign so the next general elections, originally scheduled for December 2023, can be moved forward to June 20.

Larisa Minasian, executive director of Open Society Fund-Armenia, says Armenia’s political crisis has morphed into “a deep societal crisis — meaning a substantial loss of trust in the government” and “frustration with the opposition, which obviously…feeds off the tragedy” of Armenia’s battlefield losses.

“Recent polls show that the frustration is quite widely shared amongst the Armenian population,” Minasian says. “An average of 42 percent and, in Yerevan, as much as 50 percent — half of the population — are really deeply frustrated with [all] sides.

“After a long back and forth to maneuver through the crisis, finally the government decided to go with snap elections…as the means to get out of this crisis,” Minasian says.

Election Law Changes

Political analyst Stepan Grigorian says holding a new election without changing the Electoral Code created in 2016 by the then-ruling HHK will not resolve the deepening crisis.

“If we do not change the electoral code, we will have the same parliament. We will have a newly elected parliament and we will have, again, the current government in place,” says Grigorian, who heads the Yerevan-based Analytical Center on Globalization and Regional Cooperation.

“We will be hearing this mutual accusation process again, where one side says, ‘You’re a traitor,’ and the other one says, ‘No, you’re the traitor.'”

“That’s why a transition to a ‘multipartisan’ system is what we need” to replace a parliament long characterized by the dominance of one party and a divided opposition, he says.

Grigorian says numerous smaller parties left out of parliament need to be brought into the political process so that views emerging across Armenia since the end of the war are also represented in the legislature.

“Our purpose is to get a discussion started so the parliament becomes multipartisan,” he concludes.

In fact, the My Step alliance has been using its continued control of parliament to push through election law changes that had been among the promises made during the Velvet Revolution. A key amendment passed on April 1 eliminated so-called “district list” voting for individual candidates. That change to the technical rules of voting transforms Armenia’s electoral system into one of fully proportional representation.

Bright Armenia, the party that first warned about faults within the district-list system, is now criticizing its elimination — saying the move will leave regions outside of Yerevan underrepresented in the next parliament. None of Bright Armenia’s deputies participated in the April 1 vote.

The opposition Prosperous Armenia faction boycotted the parliamentary session at which the change was approved.

Lilit Makunts, leader of the pro-Pashinian majority in parliament, says other amendments still could be introduced to the Electoral Code ahead of the June vote. On April 5, Makunts said those changes could include lowering the threshold needed by political parties to win seats — a move that gives smaller parties a better chance to enter parliament.

She said any additional changes would have the backing of the Venice Commission, an influential advisory body to the Council of Europe on constitutional law. Makunts also said Armenia’s Central Election Commission must deem any changes as feasible within the time remaining before the vote and consult other political parties.

The proposed amendments have already been submitted to the Venice Commission for review. They include lowering the threshold for a party to enter parliament from 5 percent to 4 percent of the vote. Another proposed change would raise the threshold for political alliances to 8 percent for two-party alliances, 9 percent for three-party alliances, and 10 percent for alliances with more than three parties.

Political analysts say such reforms could restore public confidence in democracy by encouraging and fostering a multiparty system that represents a wider range of voter views. They say the logic is to ensure political parties are encouraged to participate independently and to reveal their ideologies so that voters understand the party platforms.

With more parties entering parliament, analysts say governing coalitions can be formed to better represent the will of the people when a single party doesn’t control a majority.

Leveling The Playing Field

The Electoral Code pushed through parliament ahead of the 2017 parliamentary elections was widely seen as giving unfair advantages to the ruling HHK. That party was described by The Economist magazine in 2007 as a “typical post-Soviet ‘party of power’ mainly comprising senior government officials, civil servants, and wealthy business people dependent on government connections.”

Vardine Grigorian is the coordinator of Democratic Institutions Monitoring at the Vanadzor branch of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Armenian Committee. Her NGO has taken part in proposing and drafting changes to the 2016 election laws in an attempt to level the playing field for smaller political parties.

Grigorian explains that the HHK had seen a way in 2016 to gain an advantage by changing technical details of what was then a mixed electoral system — a blend of proportional representation and races between individual candidates.

For proportional voting, each party presents its party list of potential lawmakers. Voters cast a ballot for the party of their choice and parliamentary seats are distributed according to the percentage of votes received by each party — provided a party crosses the minimum threshold needed to enter parliament.

In past elections, voters in about half of Armenia’s precincts would cast ballots in races between individual candidates. “Before the 2017 parliamentary elections, if two majoritarian candidates were competing against each other the winner would take all. But these votes did not transfer to party votes,” Grigorian notes.

“The Republican Party realized this mixed system was not conducive to getting as many votes as they needed,” she says. “So they introduced something called ‘district lists,’ which allowed any candidate running from a party to bring their votes directly to the political party.

“This allowed the Republican Party to get more than 100,000 additional votes in the 2017 parliamentary elections, even though their approval ratings were a lot lower than the years before,” she says.

Political analyst Stepan Grigorian agrees. He notes that district lists are a Western norm that works well in established and affluent democracies. “But Armenia is a poor country. In our situation, the district-list system meant a bigger influence for those with money and administrative resources,” he tells RFE/RL. “Removing the district lists was necessary to diminish the serious influence that our oligarchs had on the outcome of elections through their resources and money, and through corruption.”

Armenia’s district lists also discouraged the development of smaller political parties because of a requirement that all political parties have at least five candidates in all 13 regions of Armenia — with each paying a high deposit cost.

“All the conditions were there for less political participation, for fewer parties to participate, and for more parities to go into alliances and form alliances before they entered into parliament,” Vardine Grigorian says.

“These alliances were not really sustainable. Most of them would fall apart with the next disagreement that appeared in parliament,” she says. “Alliances would be a onetime opportunity to be able to pass that minimum threshold. But then the parliament wouldn’t reflect the will of the people and what they voted for.”

“Meanwhile, the focus was so much on those races with individual candidates that the competition in the election campaign became very apolitical,” she says. “They were not focused on the party platforms or contributing to the development of the party system — which is so needed for trying to establish and work out this parliamentary system in Armenia.

“That’s why we’ve been trying to develop on this process since 2016,” she says.

Written and reported from Prague by Ron Synovitz with additional reporting by Suren Musayelian in Yerevan

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/armenia-election-reforms-end-political-crisis/31197997.html?ltflags=mailer

NBC News reviewed posts from four private, secret Facebook groups that describe themselves as solely for current and former special operations forces.

By Carol E. Lee

WASHINGTON — They’re the most elite, lethally trained members of the U.S. military, widely considered the best of the best. And yet in secret Facebook groups exclusively for special operations forces that were accessed by NBC News, they share misinformation about a “stolen” 2020 election, disparaging and racist comments about America’s political leadership and even QAnon conspiracy theories.

Among the hundreds of Facebook posts NBC News reviewed from forums for current and former Rangers, Green Berets and other elite warriors: a member of a special forces group lamenting that several aides to former Vice President Mike Pence were part of a “Concerted effort by the thieves and pedophiles walking the hallowed halls of the peoples government” to undermine former President Donald Trump.

“In a just world, they would have already been taken out behind the court house and shot,” another member commented.

In yet another post, a member of one of the groups responded to criticism of the Black Lives Matter movement with an image of a noose and the message “IF WE WANT TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN WE WILL HAVE TO MAKE EVIL PEOPLE FEAR PUNISHMENT AGAIN.”

“The story of radicalization in special operations is a story that needs to be told,” said Jack Murphy, a former Army Ranger and Green Beret who has written extensively about the special operations forces community. “It has shocked and horrified me to see what’s happened to these guys in the last five or six years.”

Extremism in the military has been in the spotlight since more than two dozen current and former service members were linked to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But the private Facebook groups reveal an underbelly of a segment of the military that has long been revered as America’s front line of defense.

NBC News reviewed posts from four private groups that describe themselves as solely for special operations forces. While the majority of the content in two of the groups, SF Brotherhood – PAC and US Special Forces Team Room, is political in nature, the forums shouldn’t be seen as reflective of the overall views of the whole special operations forces community.

Collectively, the two groups have more than 5,000 members, with some belonging to both. U.S. Special Operations Command has about 70,000 personnel, and there are tens of thousands more retired members of special operations forces.

Facebook has flagged a few of the posts in the groups as including false information, or they have received pushback from fellow members.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/secret-facebook-groups-america-s-best-warriors-share-racist-jabs-n1263985?cid=eml_nbn_20210416&user_email=84c3d67de2d6c2696a2542c01dec02b79989244842ce623f17a7011e1361e2be&%243p=e_sailthru&_branch_match_id=784942575491979598&utm_medium=Email%20Sailthru

Armenia attaches great importance to friendship and cooperation with neighboring Georgia, ARMENPRESS reports President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian said in a statement following meeting with Georgian Presidnt Salome Zourabichvili, amphasizing that the Armenian-Georgian relations date back centuries ago.

”I can confidently say that strengthening relations with Georgia is one of the key preconditions for security and development for both our countries and the entire region”, Sarkissian said.

He said that a wide range of issues were discussed with the Georgian counterpart, touching upon transport, energy, tourism, agriculture, education and culture, and other spheres. According to the Armenian President, there is a great potential for cooperation in the fields of modern technologies, artificial intelligence, biotechnologies, cyber security, food security.

‘’We also referred to regional security and stability issues, considering the new realities caused by the Azerbaijani aggression against Karabakh actively and openly supported by Turkey. I presented the approaches and positions of the Armenian side on NK issue to my Georgian counterpart. I specially emphasized the fact that it’s impossible to establish lasting peace and ensure stability in the region without a fair solution to Artsakh issue. I also referred to the opportunities and the necessity for restoring the peace process in the sidelines of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs. I emphasized the huge humanitarian problems caused by the war’’, President Sarkissian said, focusing on the issue of returning of POWs, hostages and other detainees kept in Azerbaijan.

Armen Sarkissian emphasized that it’s inadmissible to speculate over the post-war situation by Azerbaijan and leading a policy of violating national dignity. ‘’This policy cannot foster the establishment of an atmosphere for dialogue’’, Sarkissian said, expressing concerns also over the preservation of the Armenian historical-cultural heritage that have appeared under Azerbaijani control as a result of the war.

At the end of the speech President Sarkissian thanked Salome Zourabichvili for the warm reception, hoping to see her in Armenia in the near future.