Monthly Archives: April 2012
Two Faces of Turkey: Veneer of Gentility Masking Ruthlessness
When Turkey’s Foreign Minister met secretly with a group of Armenians in Washington last month, he wooed them with his sly smile and sugar-coated words. This was the fake facade of traditional Turkish diplomacy. Last week, Turkey’s UN Ambassador in New York revealed the nasty and aggressive face of his government. Upon learning that a […]
Revisiting the Turkification of Confiscated Armenian Assets
If one person murders another, then takes over that murdered person’s property and possessions, he would be living off the proceeds of his crime. Once authorities discover his crime, he would be found guilty—by any court, anywhere—and then sentenced, punished, and forced to return the unlawfully obtained property and possessions. But if a people murders […]
Armenia: Symbols of Status, Culture in Crisis
With the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of an independent Armenian Republic, the tectonic landscape of Armenia, culturally, economically, socially, and of course political, has drastically shifted. Twenty years on and the ground is still unsteady, although clear patterns of change are emerging, and these changes seem less than positive. While political […]
Israeli Minister Makes Rare Trip To Armenia
Israel’s Agriculture Minister Orit Noked laid a wreath at the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on Monday during what was a rare visit to Armenia by an Israeli cabinet member. Noked arrived in Yerevan to discuss ways of promoting cooperation between the agricultural sectors of the two countries. Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian and Agriculture Minister […]
Chelmsford Students Come to Grips with Genocide
CHELMSFORD, Mass.—Busra Cetin is an exchange student from Antalya, Turkey. She sat with 250 students inside an auditorium at Chelmsford High School, perhaps squirming a bit while listening to Weekly editor and doctoral candidate Khatchig Mouradian talk about denial of the Armenian Genocide. The more she listened, the more she heard. “It’s good to hear […]
Travels in Turkey’s northeast neighbor: Armenia
A photograph of Mt. Ararat taken from the north became a part of the mystique which grew up around the notorious British double-agent and “Cambridge spy” Kim Philby. During the Cold War decades the north face of “Noah’s mountain,” which stands on Turkish territory, could be seen only from behind the closed (to Westerners) border […]
Loving, and Maybe Exploiting, Armenia
Braden King’s ‘Here’ Raises Questions of Philosophy There are vistas in Braden King’s metaphysical road movie, “Here,” that are so beautiful you want to step through the screen and disappear into the Armenian landscape where much of it was filmed. In the most evocative scene, the camera slowly pans across pastures framed by distant mountains […]
Artsakh Minister of Defense: “Our response to Azeri ceasefire violations is punishing”
Fourteen journalists from Armenia recently visited frontline units of the Artsakh Defense Forces. This was due to an agreement reached between Hetq and the Artsakh Ministry of Defense. After our tour, we also had the opportunity to meet with Defense Minister Lieutenant-General Movses Hakobyan. We posed the following questions to him. Minister Hakobyan, what must […]
Western Armenian Is Nearing Extinction
“We must know the white man language to survive in this world. But we must know our language to survive forever.” (Darryl Babe Wilson, a Native American). The recent well-justified alarm that western Armenian is among the world’s thousands of endangered languages (that is, predicted to die in the next 100 years), important though it […]
Repatriate Reaches Out to Help Son of Freedom Fighter
Honoring the freedom fighters who served our nation is not just about celebrating their victories and sacrifices; it is about empathizing with their current-day struggles and challenges. This past December, a young repatriate living in Kapan did exactly that. She took it upon herself to aid in the medical treatment of the son of a […]
Commentary: Armenian Genocide in Progress
Why is the Armenian Genocide relevant today, after 97 years? This question is asked often by non-Armenians and sometimes even by Armenians themselves. Therefore, we need a broader definition of that act of ethnic cleansing that befell the Armenian nation in order to understand its relevance today. First of all, the Genocide is not an […]
From The Turks To The ‘Titanic:’ One Armenian’s Fateful Escape
Neshan Krekorian was barely in his twenties when his father urged him to emigrate from western Armenia and start a new life far away across the Atlantic Ocean. Thousands of Armenians were doing the same, in a bid to escape rising violence and persecution at the hands of Ottoman-era Turks. So Krekorian fled, making his […]
Armenian genocide memorial to put Georgia between rock and hard place
The Armenian Diaspora in Tbilisi has asked City Hall to erect a memorial to their genocide at the hands of the Turks in the early 20th century. Georgian officials have not yet responded to the demand, but it is clear that if they build the monument it will cause a significant amount of discontent among […]
Flying the Flag of Facebook for Power to the People – and the Politicians
A new flag is flying proudly these days alongside the Armenian national flag at opposition rallies for Armenia’s May 6 parliamentary elections, and it is the flag of Facebook. The US-based social network is proving an increasingly handy tool for shaking up Armenia’s ossified election system — both for exposing abuses and for campaigning — […]
Turkey’s Foreign Minister in Search of ‘Soft’ Armenians
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s “man on the run,” has added to his extremely busy schedule the new task of travelling around the globe trying to recruit ‘sensible’ Armenians. Davutoglu has embarked on such a desperate initiative after the failure of all Turkish attempts to divide and conquer the Armenians and weaken their resolve to […]
Armenian Specialist at Library of Congress: “Who’ll replace me when I retire?”
Dr. Levon Avdoyan has been diligently working away at the U.S. Library of Congress since 1992. His current position is Armenian and Georgian area specialist in the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division. He fears that after retiring, there’ll be no one to replace him. Avdoyan was born in the U.S. […]
U.S. Archaeologists Return to Shengavit Preserve
The Cambridge-Yerevan Sister City Association (CYSCA) is launching a fundraising effort to help support the ongoing research into 4th–2ndmillennium B.C. history and culture at the Shengavit archaeological site in Yerevan. Archaeologist Dr. Mitchell S. Rothman, head of the department of anthropology at Widener University in Pennsylvania, plans on returning to Armenia with a group of […]
Religious Minorities in Turkey: ‘An Endangered Species’?
U.S. Religious Freedom Report Serves Tough Warning The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in its 2012 annual report recommended designating Turkey as a “country of particular concern (CPC)” for its “systematic and egregious limitations on the freedom of religion.” Turkey was on the commission’s “Watch List” from 2009-11. The commission found that […]
Children in Armenia Agree…….We Shall Overcome!
Much of the pleasure derived from being in a foreign country comes from the children we meet. Rosy cheeked and smiling, even in frigidly cold weather, Emma and Saran greet me almost every day as we meet on the sidewalk, going in our opposite directions to different schools. At first it was “hello, how are […]
BREAKING NEWS: Zarakolu Released from Prison Pending Trial
ISTANBUL, Turkey—Publisher Ragip Zarakolu was released from prison today pending trial along with 14 other suspects. He was taken into custody on Oct. 28, 2011, during a large-scale manhunt in Istanbul against Kurdish and human rights activists. An indictment on an alleged umbrella political organization (KCK) that includes the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was accepted […]
