Filed under: Armenian Politics
The Results of a study by the Trans European Policy Studies Association entitled “The Case for Opening the Turkish-Armenian Border,” was presented Wednesday to the members of the European Parliament in Brussels on the occasion of a meeting between the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and the European Parliament Delegation to the EU-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee. The meeting, which was the first between the two delegations, was held in preparation for possible parliamentary initiatives in support of opening the border and normalizing relations between the Republics of Armenia and Turkey. The meeting was convened and chaired by Delegation Chairpersons Marie-Anne Isler Beguin (EU-Armenia PCC) and Joost Lagendijk (EU-Turkey JPC).After a presentation of the main findings of the study, Burcu Gultekin-Punsmann, Research Fellow at the Center for European Studies at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and Nicolas Tavitian, Director of the Inside Europe Resource Center, answered the questions of the Parliamentarians. The quality of their work was acknowledged by the Chairperson Isler-Beguin, who welcomed it as a contribution to raising awareness on this sensitive issue, as well as opening new perspectives for discussion. The Study was delivered as part of the framework contract between TEPSA and the European Parliament and was coordinated by Nathalie Tocci of TEPSA’s Italian member Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome.
Filed under: Armenian Politics
YEREVAN (RFE/RL)–Armenian Prosecutor-General Aghvan Hovsepian on Friday announced that the files pertaining to a criminal investigation launched in 1988 into the activities of the Karabakh Committee are now being kept by former president Levon Ter-Petrosian, a leading member of the Committee and one of the accused in the notorious criminal case.Hovsepian further revealed that Ter-Petrosian ordered the case files to be given to him when he was still serving as president. “I had ordered for the case to be taken from the archives and given to me, but it turned out that the case was missing. Naturally, I ordered an internal investigation. It established that the chief of the investigation department in 1996 took that case from the archive following the order of the then prosecutor-general and forwarded it to the first president Levon Ter-Petrosian on November 6, 1996,” the prosecutor-general said. According to Hovsepian, the disappearance of the materials transpired only in late October after the Iravunk newspaper requested information related to the case. The request, however, could not be met, since a search revealed that the 50-volume criminal case was absent from the archives.Meanwhile, observers tend to mistrust the claims of the Prosecutor-General’s Office that they had no knowledge about the circumstances until recently. It is feared that the occasion may be used to pressurize the growing opposition movement led by Ter-Petrosian in the run-up to next year’s presidential election. “We have formally requested that Levon Ter-Petrosian should return the case to the prosecutor’s office,” Hovsepian said. “What was done in 1996 was a gross violation of the law as even the president of the republic is not entitled to request and keep criminal cases.” In a written statement released late on Friday Ter-Petrosian replied to the prosecutor-general’s remarks.
“Following my request in 1995 or 1996, Armenia’s Prosecutor-General Artavazd Gevorgian sent the Karabakh Committee case to the Presidential Palace for the purpose of further putting it for display at a museum of the Karabakh Movement that was to be opened in 1998, on the tenth anniversary of the movement,” Ter-Petrosian said. “After the change of power, all materials of the Karabakh Committee case were transferred to my personal archive and have been kept there to date. None of the prosecutor-generals that succeeded Artavazd Gevorgian in office have requested that I shall return the materials. I still think that the most appropriate place for keeping these materials is a museum of the Karabakh Movement, which will be opened sooner or later. But if there is any necessity, I am ready to return them immediately to the archives of the prosecutor’s office.” Hovsepian was a member of the group that carried out the investigation of the case against nine members of the Karabakh Committee accused of making public statements against the Soviet regime and calling for the Armenian-populated autonomous region in the neighboring Soviet Azerbaijan to be included into the administrative borders of Armenia. The case, however, was formally dismissed because of “changed circumstances” the following year, the jailed members of the committee were released and the materials were sent to the archives.
Filed under: Armenian Politics
YEREVAN (RFE/RL)–Armenia’s Central Election Commission on Friday officially set the date of next year’s presidential election for February 19 thus marking the beginning of formal processes leading up to the vote.Following the requirement of Armenian law, CEC Head Garegin Azarian made a brief announcement in this regard through the country’s public television and radio on Friday afternoon. “In line with the Armenian election law and constitution, I am authorized to declare that the elections of the republic’s president will be held on February 19, 2008,” Azarian said. According to the Armenian constitution, an election must take place 50 days before the end of the current president’s term. In accordance with Armenia’s election law, the Election Day (Tuesday) is declared a day-off in the country. The timetable of all stages of the electoral process is expected to be defined soon after this announcement. Regardless of whether February 19 election goes into a runoff or not, the next elected president of Armenia will be sworn in on April 9. If adopted in the second reading any time soon, the amendments to the election law approved by lawmakers in the first reading early this week will stipulate that only political parties can nominate presidential candidates; persons wishing to run in the elections can do so themselves. Thus far candidates in Armenia’s presidential elections have been nominated by political parties, blocs of political parties and civic initiatives. Critics say the amendment has ‘psychological’ implications, as it will result in several political parties names not appearing next to candidate they support on the ballot-paper. They further claim that this is being done deliberately to contain a possible consolidation of different opposition parties around a single candidate in the run-up to the election. Meanwhile, advocates discard these claims as unreasonable and explain that while in legislative elections political blocs can form a faction in parliament if they manage to win seats, nominations by blocs of parties in presidential elections are completely devoid of sense. Only one party, Aram Karapetian’s Nor Zhamanakner, has so far formalized its decision on nominating a candidate. Other political parties, including major government and opposition parties, are due to hold their meetings to decide on nominations in the course of this month.
Genocide question sparked bitter debate
The Boston Globe
By Keith O’Brien, Globe Staff | August 18, 2007
The national Anti-Defamation League fired its New England regional director yesterday, one day after he broke ranks with national ADL leadership and said the human rights organization should acknowledge the Armenian genocide that began in 1915.
The firing of Andrew H. Tarsy, who had served as regional director for about two years and as civil rights counsel for about five years before that, prompted an immediate backlash among prominent local Jewish leaders against the ADL’s national leadership and its national director, Abraham H. Foxman.
“My reaction is that this was a vindictive, intolerant, and destructive act, ironically by an organization and leader whose mission — fundamental mission — is to promote tolerance,” Newton businessman Steve Grossman, a former ADL regional board member, said yesterday.
“I predict that Foxman’s actions will precipitate wholesale resignations from the regional board, a meaningful reduction in ADL’s regional fund-raising, and will further exacerbate the ADL’s relationship with the non-Jewish community coming out of this crisis around the Armenian genocide.”
Tarsy, 38, said he had been struggling with the national position for weeks and finally told Foxman in a phone conversation Thursday that he found the ADL’s stance “morally indefensible.”
The regional board’s executive committee backed Tarsy and, according to a source fa miliar with the discussion, even went a step further, resolving to support legislation now pending before Congress to acknowledge the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians during the World War I era as genocide.
The national office’s three-page response — which it provided yesterday to the Globe — did not mention the local office’s intent to support the legislation. But it made clear just how far apart the two sides were on an issue with local, national, and international implications.
The letter, signed by Foxman and Glen S. Lewy, the ADL’s national chairman, said “we have acknowledged the massacres of Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire and called on Turkey to do more to confront its past and reconcile with Armenia. We will continue to press Turkey, publicly and privately . . .” But the letter also makes clear that the national ADL feels the safety of Israel, which considers Turkey a rare Muslim ally, is paramount.
The national ADL leaders also said employees who do not agree with the ADL’s position should not differ pubicly, but should resign. “No organization can or should tolerate such an act of open defiance,” the letter said.
Asked how they would resolve the difference of opinion, both local and national leaders said they did not know.
“They’ve taken a position,” Foxman said in an interview. “We’ve taken a position. I hope they will read our position and hopefully we’ll have conversations.”
Tarsy’s firing — and the national office’s rebuke of the local office’s independence — marked the latest twist in a debate that began weeks ago in Watertown, home to more than 8,000 Armenian-Americans. Residents there became angry when they learned that the ADL was the sponsor of the town’s anti-bigotry program “No Place For Hate” and, on Tuesday this week, the Watertown Town Council voted unanimously to pull out of the program.
At issue was not the program itself, but rather a tangle of international politics dating back more than 90 years. From 1915 to 1923, Ottoman Turks massacred as many as 1.5 million Armenians in what is now modern-day Turkey. Armenians, historians, and some European nations have recognized the killings as genocide. But the Turkish government has refused to accept the genocide label and the national ADL refuses to use it as well.
In a 438-word open letter slated to appear in advertisements inside local newspapers beginning next week, the ADL does not use the word genocide. Officially, Foxman reiterated yesterday, the ADL has no position on the genocide issue. But it does not support the legislation in Congress. In the open letter yesterday, the ADL called it “counterproductive” and the organization, founded in 1913 to fight anti-Semitism, worried what effect passing the legislation would have on Jews living in Turkey.
Critics say this position is hypocritical. Foxman “should understand that the truth of any genocide is not conditional upon political relationships,” said Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America in Washington, D.C. Rather, he said, it should be dictated by “truth” and “history.”
As recently as Tuesday night, however, Tarsy defended the ADL’s position before a hostile crowd at the Watertown Town Council meeting. In explaining why he did it, Tarsy said yesterday that he was doing the best he could to explain the ADL policy while struggling at the same time to change the policy internally. Neither side would back down and he was fired.
“I have been in conflict over this issue for several weeks,” Tarsy said. “I regret at this point any characterization of the genocide that I made publicly other than to call it a genocide. I think that kind of candor about history is absolutely fundamental.”
Both the Jewish and Armenian-American communities rushed to Tarsy’s defense yesterday in the wake of his firing and applauded him for taking the stand that ultimately cost him his job.
“I’m devastated to hear the news,” said Ronne Friedman, senior rabbi at Temple Israel, the largest synagogue in Boston. “I think he’s really a quality professional and a wonderful person of conscience. I think it’s an inexcusable behavior on the part of the national office.”
Grossman said Tarsy provided “moral leadership” and surely would have invigorated a new generation of ADL members in New England if he had been given the chance. Hamparian said it spoke poorly of the ADL’s national leadership that Tarsy “was not rewarded, but fired for speaking the truth.” And James Rudolph, the ADL’s regional board chairman and partner at a Boston law firm, said he would miss working with Tarsy.
“I’m disappointed,” Rudolph said. “He was an extraordinary leader and I’m sure that a lot of people affiliated with the board and affiliated with the ADL share my disappointment.”
Rudolph, like Foxman, said he is hoping to have further conversations with the national office in the days ahead regarding the differences between them.
But they will be doing it without Tarsy, who said that he has no idea what he will do next.
“I have the greatest respect for the ADL and for its staff and leadership,” Tarsy said, referring to the people he has worked with in the regional office over the years. “And I want very badly to see the ADL do what’s right on this issue.”
