There has been no magic hand guiding Turkey and Russia as they form the axis of a new political formation. Turkey, once the ‘sick man of Europe’, is now ‘the only healthy man of Europe’, notes Eric Walberg.
The neocon plan to transform the Middle East and Central Asia into a pliant client of the US empire and its only-democracy-in-the-Middle-East is now facing a very different playing field. Not only are the wars against the Palestinians, Afghans and Iraqis floundering, but they have set in motion unforeseen moves by all the regional players.
The empire faces a resurgent Turkey, heir to the Ottomans, who governed a largely peaceful Middle East for half a millennium. As part of a dynamic diplomatic outreach under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey re-established the Caliphate visa-free tradition with Albania, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya and Syria last year. In February Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay offered to do likewise with Egypt. There is “a great new plan of creating a Middle East Union as a regional equivalent of the European Union” with Turkey, fresh from a resounding constitutional referendum win by the AKP, writes Israel Shamir.
Turkey also established a strategic partnership with Russia during the past two years, with a visa-free regime and ambitious trade and investment plans (denominated in rubles and lira), including the construction of new pipelines and nuclear energy facilities.
Just as Turkey is heir to the Ottomans, Russia is heir to the Byzantines, who ruled a largely peaceful Middle East for close to a millennium before the Turks. Together, Russia and Turkey have far more justification as Middle Eastern “hegemons” than the British-American 20th century usurpers, and they are doing something about it.
In a delicious irony, invasions by the US and Israel in the Middle East and Eurasia have not cowed the countries affected, but emboldened them to work together, creating the basis for a new alignment of forces, including Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iran.
Syria, Turkey and Iran are united not only by tradition, faith, resistance to US-Israeli plans, but by their common need to fight Kurdish separatists, who have been supported by both the US and Israel. Their economic cooperation is growing by leaps and bounds. Adding Russia to the mix constitutes a like-minded, strong regional force encompassing the full socio-political spectrum, from Sunni and Shia Muslim, Christian, even Jewish, to secular traditions.
This is the natural regional geopolitical logic, not the artificial one imposed over the past 150 years by the British and now US empires. Just as the Crusaders came to wreak havoc a millennium ago, forcing locals to unite to expel the invaders, so today’s Crusaders have set in motion the forces of their own demise.
Turkey’s bold move with Brazil to defuse the West’s stand-off with Iran caught the world’s imagination in May. Its defiance of Israel after the Israeli attack on the Peace Flotilla trying to break the siege of Gaza in June made it the darling of the Arab world.
Russia has its own, less spectacular contributions to these, the most burning issues in the Middle East today. There are problems for Russia. Its crippled economy and weakened military give it pause in anything that might provoke the world superpower. Its elites are divided on how far to pursuit accommodation with the US. The tragedies of Afghanistan and Chechnya and fears arising from the impasse in most of the “stans” continue to plague Russia’s relations with the Muslim Middle East.
Since the departure of Soviet forces from Egypt in 1972, Russia has not officially had a strong presence in the Middle East. Since the mid- 1980s, it saw a million-odd Russians emigrate to Israel, who like immigrants anywhere, are anxious to prove their devotion and are on the whole unwilling to give up land in any two-state solution for Palestine. As Anatol Sharansky quipped to Bill Clinton after he emigrated, “I come from one of the biggest countries in the world to one of the smallest. You want me to cut it in half. No, thank you.” Russia now has its very own well-funded Israel Lobby; many Russians are dual Israeli citizens, enjoying a visa-free regime with Israel.
Then there is Russia’s equivocal stance on the stand-off between the West and Iran. Russia cooperates with Iran on nuclear energy, but has concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions, supporting Security Council sanctions and cancelling the S-300 missile deal it signed with Iran in 2005. It is also increasing its support for US efforts in Afghanistan. Many commentators conclude that these are signs that the Russian leadership under President Dmitri Medvedev is caving in to Washington, backtracking on the more anti-imperial policy of Putin. “They showed that they are not reliable,” criticised Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi.
Russia is fence-sitting on this tricky dilemma. It is also siding, so far, with the US and the EU in refusing to include Turkey and Brazil in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme. “The Non-Aligned countries in general, and Iran in particular, have interpreted the Russian vote as the will on the part of a great power to prevent emerging powers from attaining the energy independence they need for their economic development. And it will be difficult to make them forget this Russian faux pas,” argues Thierry Meyssan at voltairenet.org.
Whatever the truth is there, the cooperation with Iran and now Turkey, Syria and Egypt on developing peaceful nuclear power, and the recent agreement to sell Syria advanced P-800 cruise missiles show Russia is hardly the plaything of the US and Israel in Middle East issues. Israel is furious over the missile sale to Syria, and last week threatened to sell “strategic, tie-breaking weapons” to “areas of strategic importance” to Russia in revenge. On both Iran and Syria, Russia’s moves suggest it is trying to calm volatile situations that could explode.
There are other reasons to see Russia as a possible Middle East powerbroker. The millions of Russian Jews who moved to Israel are not necessarily a Lieberman-like Achilles Heel for Russia. A third of them are scornfully dismissed as not sufficiently kosher and could be a serious problem for a state that is founded solely on racial purity. Many have returned to Russia or managed to move on to greener pastures. Already, such prominent rightwing politicians as Moshe Arens, political patron of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are considering a one-state solution. Perhaps these Russian immigrants will produce a Frederik de Klerk to re-enact the dismantling of South African apartheid.
Russia holds another intriguing key to peace in the Middle East. Zionism from the start was a secular socialist movement, with religious conservative Jews strongly opposed, a situation that continues even today, despite the defection of many under blandishments from the likes of Ben Gurion and Netanyahu. Like the Palestinians, True Torah Jews don’t recognise the “Jewish state”.
But wait! There is a legitimate Jewish state, a secular one set up in 1928 in Birobidjan Russia, in accordance with Soviet secular nationalities policies. There is nothing stopping the entire population of Israeli Jews, orthodox and secular alike, from decamping to this Jewish homeland, blessed with abundant raw materials, Golda Meir’s “a land without a people for a people without a land”. It has taken on a new lease on life since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev made an unprecedented visit this summer, the first ever of a Russian (or Soviet) leader and pointed out the strong Russian state support it has as a Jewish homeland where Yiddish, the secular language of European Jews (not sacred Hebrew), is the state language.
There has been no magic hand guiding Turkey and Russia as they form the axis of a new political formation. Rather it is the resilience of Islam in the face of Western onslaught, plus — surprisingly — a page from the history of Soviet secular national self-determination. Turkey, once the “sick man of Europe”, is now “the only healthy man of Europe”, Turkish President Abdullah Gul was told at the UN Millennium Goals Summit last week, positioning it along with the Russian, and friends Iranian and Syrian to clean up the mess created by the British empire and its “democratic” offspring, the US and Israel.
While US and Israeli strategists continue to pore over mad schemes to invade Iran, Russian and Turkish leaders plan to increase trade and development in the Middle East, including nuclear power. From a Middle Eastern point of view, Russia’s eagerness to build power stations in Iran, Turkey, Syria and Egypt shows a desire to help accelerate the economic development that Westerners have long denied the Middle East — other than Israel — for so long. This includes Lebanon where Stroitransgaz and Gazprom will transit Syrian gas until Beirut can overcome Israeli-imposed obstacles to the exploitation of its large reserves offshore.
Russia in its own way, like its ally Turkey, has placed itself as a go-between in the most urgent problems facing the Middle East — Palestine and Iran. “Peace in the Middle East holds the key to a peaceful and stable future in the world,” Gul told the UN Millennium Goals Summit — in English. The world now watches to see if their efforts will bear fruit.
Eric Walberg writes for Egypt’s Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at .
Newly-arrived Baku Armenians worshipping in New York
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Hundreds of thousands of Armenians fled Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the Karabagh conflict and violence against Armenians in Azerbaijan culminated in pogroms in Sumgait in February 1988, in Kirovabad (Ganja) in November 1988 and Baku in January 1990. It has been roughly 20 years now that members of this unique group of immigrants have lived in the United States. The purpose of this article is to examine how they have fared in the United States. This is admittedly an unscientific survey based on interviews of only a handful of individuals either involved professionally with this community, or active members of this community.
Most Armenians from Azerbaijan came to the US from roughly 1989 to 1996. The first wave came after the US agreed to give them refugee status. Before this time, it was very hard for Soviet Armenians except for repatriates (who came to settle in Armenia from outside the USSR in earlier years) and political dissidents to emigrate from the Soviet Union.
Armenians were settled in nearly every state of the US. The government divided them up between different non-profit American organizations located in different states. Sometimes there were not many American-Armenians at their destinations, which included far flung places like Fargo, ND and Boise, Idaho. In 1994, for example, seven families were sent to Alaska. Michael Guglielmo, who was director of the Social Services Department of the Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern) from 1992 to 1997, remembered that an old Armenian woman would call occasionally from Idaho. She had lived in large cities like Baku and Moscow all her life, and now, stuck in the boondocks, she would wake up and see elks. She was depressed.
The largest groups ended up in Brooklyn and adjacent parts of New York, though substantial communities also settled in Los Angeles and parts of New England. The Congressional program allowing visas for Azerbaijani Armenians ended around 1994. By the late 1990s it became much harder to come to the US. Those who had initially come to Russia could no longer show any immediate threat to themselves because they were no longer in Azerbaijan.
Armenians from Baku and Azerbaijan are still trying to come to the US for family reunification, but it is very hard because of the limited numbers of visas available — 25,000 per year for people throughout the world with family in the US.
The khachkar in front of St. Vartan Cathedral dedicated to the pogroms in Baku
There is no reliable estimate as to how many Armenians from Azerbaijan now live in the United States. Three different State Department agencies were contacted while this article was being researched, and none of them had access to the necessary information. Neither did a number of Armenian-American organizations. Individual Azerbaijani-Armenian informants have given estimates ranging from around 10,000 to as high as 100,000. It should be kept in mind that there were approximately 400,000 Armenians in Azerbaijan, which included around 150,000 in Nagorno-Karabagh, in 1989, and most of those outside of Karabagh went to Armenia and Russia.
Guglielmo explained that there were several ways that Armenians from Azerbaijan came into the US. People involved in politics came to the US directly with tourist visas, and then applied here for asylum status as political refugees. The majority were already recognized as refugees however even before coming to the US. The United States government worked with nonprofit resettlement organizations, and it was the latter, which could choose the people they wanted, and where they wanted to settle them. These organizations were largely religious in nature, and included Catholic services, Church World Service, Lutheran Services and Catholic Migration.
Anna Baghdassarian, who was involved in helping refugees from Azerbaijan in the 1990s, and now works at the Interfaith Refugee and Immigration Service, explained how the process worked with the Church World Service program in Los Angeles. At that time, they brought roughly 800-900 people annually from various countries like Azerbaijan, Iran and Africa. The Armenians included Pentecostals as well as members of the Church of Armenia. Those who came to Los Angeles, “had to have a relative to meet them at the airport. We did the rest of the work. The relative would take them to find an apartment, but we assisted with furniture, objects for daily living, health exams, social security cards and employment services. If they could not find work, they went on welfare. Welfare would provide assistance for nine months for single people, and several years for families. Then we would do follow-ups with 30-day home visits to see if there were any other needs.”
Once the refugees received their residency papers and became US citizens, they were on their own.
The Social Services Department of the Armenian Diocese was the main Armenian organization in the United States providing assistance to the newcomers. Most of them had no financial means. In the New York area some had friends or family who helped them until they found jobs paying cash. The Diocese gave some food or clothing as direct help initially through a small fund, and helped do visa paperwork, if necessary. Guglielmo traveled to other parishes in the Diocese to try to help, as well as to get these local parishes to also participate in the effort. At that time, many Armenian-Americans still felt the refugees should have settled in Armenia but there was no light or heat there, and these people were traumatized after massacres.
Guglielmo pointed out that “in New York there were a lot more of the asylees. There was the crazy situation of people who were intermarried. They had no religious identity before 1989 and now it meant everything. Where were they going to go? Sometimes they themselves were already half-Jewish, half- Armenian, and were married to spouses who were half-Azerbaijani and half-Russian.”
When the asylees got here, they had to make their case to the government. Guglielmo stated that “proving Jewish ancestry helped, or if you were actually injured there in a pogrom and could prove it, that led to asylum.” The Diocese had a pro bono network of lawyers who assisted individuals, a Hebrew service and some committees of human rights lawyers. However, some people had no documents or proof, and could not prove their case. Many of these stayed illegally, without papers, or married an American citizen.
The immigrants themselves also made at least one attempt to organize in order to help one another. A group in Rhode Island, supported by Guglielmo and the local Diocesan priest, created the Armenian Refugee Social Economical [sic] Development Association. Garen Bagdasarian, who was a founder of this organization, described its work: “The main goal was to have a representative like a non-profit organization in Congress to act like our lawyer. Every year in Congress, there are debates over which groups will receive priority, or continue to receive priority, as refugees permitted to enter the US. It is necessary to explain why a particular group or nationality is in danger in a country.” At the time, a nonprofit group in Colorado that lobbied on behalf of Russian Jews was willing to help the Armenians, but asked for around $30,000. This group would have represented the Armenians to a committee of seven national organizations that helped refugees. The Armenians attempted to raise money through parties and other efforts, but it did not succeed. The main problem apparently was that the Armenian-American community at large felt that Armenians from Azerbaijan should go to Armenia, not America. Meanwhile, the Congressional program allowing Azerbaijani Armenians to receive a priority refugee status expired by the mid-1990s. The organization still exists, but only in Rhode Island and it chiefly helps local Armenians. For example, it provides assistance for the burial of needy Armenians.
Brooklyn and the New York Metropolitan Area
The New York City metropolitan area, and Brooklyn in particular, contains one of the largest communities of Azerbaijani-Armenians in the US. It is difficult to make an estimate of its Azerbaijani-Armenian population precisely because of its largeness. Fr. Mardiros Chevian, Dean of St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral in Manhattan, estimated that there are several thousand in New York City and New Jersey.
Dr. Svetlana Amirkhanian, chairwoman of the St. Gregory the Illuminator Mission Parish Council, felt it was not possible to give an accurate number. There were approximately 400 families on the parish mailing list, but it was unclear what percentage of the total population of Azerbaijani-Americans this represents. The majority were in Brooklyn, but some moved out to Manhattan, Bronx, Queens and New Jersey, as their economic circumstances improved. They arrived at different times.
Angela Kazarian, treasurer of the same mission parish, had heard a figure of 5,000 bandied about for the NY metropolitan area.
Marina Bagdasarova, vice chair of the Brooklyn mission Parish Council and Armenian school principal, pointed out that the first wave of immigrants were those with some connections. They moved first to Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Greece and even Argentina, and from there came to the US. Some had money to go on their own. However, the majority came in the second wave, which began in 1993-4, but the biggest wave was in the spring of 1995, because it was done on a governmental level. More than 90 percent of the second wave came to Brooklyn originally and only moved out later.
They came from different places in Azerbaijan, chiefly Baku, Sumgait and Kirovabad. At the beginning of the second wave of immigrants, Bagdasarova related, Lutheran and other Christian churches and organizations provided help, but when the numbers became huge, it was very difficult. She said, “Although people had been in Russia a few years by then, they had to start from scratch. I myself only had $100 in my pockets.” In addition, before and after the Diocese had its Social Services Department, Jewish community centers filled the void and Armenians got pulled into their world of activities.
New immigrants still keep arriving via Russia or Armenia every year. Some manage to come through their relatives here, while others win green cards in the lottery.
Chevian pointed out that most of them initially connected with the Diocese for a variety of reasons, including the larger complex and resources of the Diocese, its direct affiliation with Echmiadzin, about which they would have at least some knowledge, and the fact that the Diocese was fairly tolerant of their not speaking Armenian. Individually, of course, some refugees also did join Prelacy-affiliated churches.
After the Department of Social Services of the Diocese was closed in 1997, some of the Azerbaijani Armenians were already attached to the Diocese, and made the cathedral their place of worship. There is no physical church in Brooklyn closer to them.
The Diocese soon intensified its efforts on behalf of the new group. A mission parish in Brooklyn had already been established with a visiting pastor. Then in 2000, the last Primate of Azerbaijan, former Archbishop Anania Arabajyan, came to the US, and focused his energies on the immigrants. For three years, through 2002, Arabajyan performed the Divine Liturgy monthly in Brooklyn in a rented church. The weekend school for the new immigrants was moved from St. Vartan to Brooklyn too. Arabajyan frequently traveled to other parts of the Eastern Diocese where there were communities of Azerbaijani-Armenians. These places included Hartford, Philadelphia, Nashville, Providence, Charlotte (North Carolina), Greenfield and Lansing (Mich.), Erie (Penn.), Columbus (Ohio), Syracuse (NY), Richmond (Va.), Kansas City (Missouri) and Jacksonville (Fla.).
In hopes of attracting more Russian-speaking Armenians to church, Arabajyan began a primarily Russian-language magazine (with several pages in Eastern Armenian) called Vera Nadezhda Lyubov/ Havadk hoyser, which was published for several years. After this was halted, he translated the Armenian Church periodical into Russian for several years. Arabajyan also translated various booklets about prayer and the church into Russian. His Russian translation of the Armenian Divine Liturgy was published in 2002.
In recent years, as there is no permanent priest for the Brooklyn mission parish, occasionally Chevian went to Brooklyn for sacraments and pastoral work, while Deacon Sebuh Oscherician visited the school to help with religious instruction. Oscherician exclaimed, “The kids are wonderful! They are learning Armenian, and recite without papers — unlike many Armenian-American children.”
At present, the Armenian School of Brooklyn is the main institution in the area for Azerbaijani-Armenians. The school was initially established at the Diocesan complex in Manhattan in 1995. Bagdasarova, the present principal of the school, explained that it was difficult for the parents who largely lived in Brooklyn to bring their children each week to Manhattan. It later was moved to Brooklyn, and then stopped for two or three years. Afterwards, it was revived, and worked continuously for the last eight years.
When Amirkhanian became involved in the administration of the school in 2001, there was barely a student. By the end of that year, there were 20, and soon the total number reached 40 to 50. “We teach Armenian history, music, dance and religion. There are English language classes for parents. I hope that we will have computer classes for adults this year.”
Bagdasarova explained that it took place on Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. There are now five teachers, including three for Armenian language (one also teaches kindergarten-age children), one for Armenian music and recitation, and one for traditional Armenian dance. The afternoon begins with Armenian language classes, then music, and finally dance. The children range in age from 2 ½ to 14-years-old, and are largely from Azerbaijan, though there are some from Armenia who are largely the newest arrivals in the area, as well as a few from other Soviet countries.
The children are grouped by age, but a complication is that some already have learned to speak some Armenian at home (though they don’t know how to read or write), while others do not know any Armenian at all. Textbooks are brought from Armenia and copied here, while Gilda Kupelian, Armenian Studies coordinator at the Diocese, provides some other materials.
The children are taught some of the major events in and issues of Armenian history, ranging from Vartanants to Sardarabad, and including tragedies like the pogroms in Sumgait and Baku, the Armenian earthquake of 1989, and the Genocide, all presented in a manner appropriate for children. They are also taught some of the basics of Christianity — some prayers and how to participate in services, when Chevian comes to Brooklyn. For example, the Divine Liturgy was conducted in the church whose rooms they are renting. They learn the anthem of the Republic of Armenia, and the meaning of its flag.
One of the unique things about the school is that it is the first school in the tri-state area to teach the Yerevan dialect of Eastern Armenian. Bagdasarova explained that “many of the children would speak the Karabagh dialect at home, like a lot of Armenians from Azerbaijan [whose roots are in Karabagh]. However, there are no textbooks and teaching materials for the latter. In addition, we thought that it is best for children to learn the language of the [Armenia] state, as it is the standard one.”
Bagdasarova stated that the school officially was part of the St. Gregory the Illuminator mission parish, and as such, was supervised by the Diocese. However, financially it is independent and always had to raise its own revenue for renting its hall weekly and paying the teachers a modest salary. Bagdasarova donates her own salary back to the school because the needs are so great and funds are always in short supply. The school organizes fundraising events and tries to get donations through mailings in the tri-state area.
Amirkhanian explained that the school and the mission parish did more than just school work: “We help preparing applications for green cards and other issues for no charge, so we are like a social services organization. We work with adults, as well as children.” Bagdasarova added that “We help newcomers with their English, and with American history. We do as much as we can to help with arranging things like insurance. We can’t help financially since all the money we raise goes to the school. We think that this is the most important thing, to keep our language and heritage alive.”
According to Amirkhanian, “the school participates in all the local Russian festivals and events, thus showing our existence and placing us on the map as an Armenian community. It participates in festivals organized by Jewish organizations with performances wearing Armenian costumes.” This participation is not important solely from a cultural point of view. In the local Russian-speaking world of New York, Armenians face an aggressive effort at propaganda by Brooklyn Azerbaijanis. Urged on by their consulate in the UN, they arrange for shows on Russian television programs which are broadcast throughout the world. On these shows they claim that Armenians were the aggressors who harmed them greatly and committed massacres. Amirkhanian pointed out that “this affects the newcomers who live in this Russian-language environment and makes them feel bad. We are not able to show information on Sumgait or Baku the way they [the Azerbaijanis] do. It is a matter of money, since we have to buy the television time. So our voices are cut off and we are forced to be on the defensive. We have to justify ourselves — it should be the opposite.”
Amirkhanian added, “The parents now are very enthusiastic and themselves have changed. They came from various places, but see the school now as a cultural center for them. We organize family evenings, celebrate various holidays, the children make friends. It is an important environment. Even my own grandchildren living in Baltimore are members of our parish.”
The Brooklyn Armenians feel that they could accomplish more with more resources. Amirkhanian felt that: “the parents are not that well off financially, being the first generation of immigrants here.” Furthermore, there was a different mentality in the USSR, where the government did everything. Thus, the immigrants are not used to paying money, or working as a community. In addition, “They see that Jewish centers provide services for free. They ask why the Armenian community or the church does not do the same. They don’t understand the way things work here.” She felt that hopefully the next generation will be in a better position to be helpful to the community, “but meanwhile more financial or administrative support would lead to even more successes. A cultural center would be helpful, with perhaps a chapel. This would be the permanent site of the school. We need the Church and cultural organizations to help us.”
Hartford, Conn.
Hartford was one of the smaller places on the East Coast which became a settlement site for Azerbaijani-Armenians. They largely came from the beginning of the 1990s to 1995, initially via Armenia and later through Russia, and were often settled through Church World Services or Catholic Charities.
Fr. Tateos Abdalian, now director of the Department of Mission Parishes for the Diocese, but the pastor of Hartford’s St. George Armenian Church from 1993 to 1999, declared that mostly families, some two or three generational, came to Hartford. There were roughly thirty to forty families in all. They were political asylees. According to Karine Abalyan, who came to Hartford with her family from Baku via Armenia as a young girl, there were as many as one hundred families in the Hartford and New Britain areas (there is another Armenian church in New Britain).
The people in Hartford welcomed the newcomers. They found them apartments, jobs, and schools for their children. They took them to doctors. Abdalian continued, “In exchange, the people that came from Baku stayed in the Hartford church community. They took positions in the church. They took over from the Armenian-Americans. They reenergized the community.”
Slowly they got involved. They helped out in the bazaars and picnic functions, sang in the choirs, and began to come to church regularly. Abdalian understood that “they had a simplicity of faith. They knew that there was a God. They did not know who he was, or anything about Trinitarian formulas, but they knew God was with us. I always found them to be really good people.” He felt that they struggled mightily to keep their identity while living in a Turkic land which was part of the Soviet Union: “I would refer to them as the heroes of our people. They kept whatever they were taught by their parents and grandparents as Armenians in their hearts and minds. They had no radio or television programs in Armenian, or books, but transmitted whatever they could to their children.”
Karine Abalyan, today working at the Diocese as coordinator of public relations, left Baku with her family in the fall of 1988. They were assigned to Hartford upon arrival in the US in 1992. Catholic Charities provided initial assistance and job placement.] She thought that one of the greatest unifying factors for the Armenians from Azerbaijan was the church — St. George of Hartford — which organized clothing drives and help for the newcomers. They established an unofficial school in our church club in the first few years where kids would recite poetry, sing songs, and act in plays, all in Russian. Then people developed their own friendships and networks. Most of the families stayed in the area, though they moved from the inner city to the suburbs and purchased homes.” Some children took Armenian lessons on weekends at the parish school, “but it is hard to get fluent with once-a-week classes.”
(Part 2 will appear next week, on Baku Armenians in the US.)
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 27 (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has named a veteran Turkish diplomat as his new special envoy for assistance to Pakistan, the U.N. press office said on Monday.
Turkey’s Rauf Engin Soysal will be replacing Jean-Maurice Ripert, France’s former U.N. ambassador, who was named to the U.N. Pakistan aid post in August 2009. It was not immediately clear whether Ripert would take on another U.N. post, officials at the world body said.
The Turkish diplomat “brings to this position extensive experience in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy and in depth knowledge of the region,” the U.N. press office said in a statement.
Soysal is currently Turkey’s under secretary for political affairs and was Ankara’s ambassador to Pakistan from 2007 to 2009. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Paul Simao)
The new Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dimitris Dollis, stated to “Neos Kosmos” that the decision of the Prime Minister, George Papandreou, to include him in the new cabinet is a “great honor and a great challenge”.
He said that his appointment as one of the two Deputy Prime Ministers is an “honor for the Greeks of Australia but also for the Greek Diaspora in general”.
Mr. Dollis made a commitment that he will do “the best possible for the Greek Diaspora”, from his current position as well, within the framework of the government’s policy.
Dimitris Dollis was born in Kastoria. He developed his political activities in the state of Victoria, in Australia, where his family emigrated when he was 15 years old. Within the 29 years he spent in Australia, he served as City Councilor, Member of the Parliament*, Shadow Minister and Deputy Leader of the Labor Party. When he returned to Greece, he was appointed as the General Secretary for Greeks Abroad of the Greek Government.
He made a close connection with George Papandreou and supported him during his course. As the Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou appointed him as Ambassador-at-Large and Special Envoy of the PM for the release of the Greek teacher Thanassis Lerounis, who had been abducted by the Taliban.
Source: ANA–MPA
* Greek Parliamentarians Abroad
Jim Karygiannis (CANADA)
http://www.karygiannismp.com
KABUL, Afghanistan — Evidence is mounting that fraud in last weekend’s parliamentary election was so widespread that it could affect the results in a third of provinces, calling into question the credibility of a vote that was an important test of the American and Afghan effort to build a stable and legitimate government.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, talked with tribal leaders in Kandahar on Sunday after the election, which brought attacks by the Taliban.
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Afghan Equality and Law, but With Strings Attached (September 25, 2010)
Some 30,000 American soldiers are taking part in the Afghanistan surge. Here are the stories of the men and women of First Battalion, 87th Infantry.
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The complaints to provincial election commissions have so far included video clips showing ballot stuffing; the strong-arming of election officials by candidates’ agents; and even the handcuffing and detention of election workers.
In some places, election officials themselves are alleged to have carried out the fraud; in others, government employees did, witnesses said. One video showed election officials and a candidate’s representatives haggling over the price of votes.
Many of the complaints have come from candidates and election officials, but were supported by Afghan and international election observers and diplomats. The fraud appeared to cut both for and against the government of President Hamid Karzai, much of it benefiting sometimes unsavory local power brokers.
But in the important southern province of Kandahar, where election officials threw out 76 percent of the ballots in last year’s badly tainted presidential election, candidates accused the president’s influential half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, of drawing up a list of winners even before the Sept. 18 election for Parliament was carried out.
“From an overall democracy-building perspective it does not look rosy,” said one diplomat who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The widespread tampering and bare-knuckle tactics of some candidates raised serious questions about the effort to build a credible government that can draw the support of Afghans and the Obama administration and its NATO partners as they re-evaluate their commitment to the war.
American and international diplomats kept their distance from the tide of candidate complaints this week, and NATO and American Embassy officials said little other than that the election was an Afghan process and that it was the Afghans who were responsible for its outcome.
But a less than credible parliamentary election, following last year’s tarnished presidential vote, would place international forces in the increasingly awkward position of defending a government of waning legitimacy, and diplomats acknowledged that it could undermine efforts to persuade countries to maintain their financing and troop levels.
The Election Complaints Commission said Thursday that it had received more than 3,000 complaints since last Saturday’s election. So far they have registered case files on nearly 1,800 of those complaints — 58 percent of which were considered serious enough to affect the outcome of the balloting. That may change in the course of investigations but that preliminary figure is high, election monitors said.
The complaints are not evenly distributed and were markedly worse in 13 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. In those 13, at least half the complaints were deemed to be high priority — forecasting bitter fights over the outcome.
In addition, complaints in four provinces — Kandahar, Nuristan, Zabul and Paktika — have yet to be categorized, but fraud is expected to be extensive and has already been widely reported.
“That preliminary figure is bad,” said a knowledgeable international observer.
Many analysts predicted there would be serious fraud in the unstable Pashtun belt, in the south of the country, an important base for both the Taliban insurgents and President Karzai. But serious complaints were also coming from provinces in the north and west.
Interviews by The New York Times in 10 provinces and discussions with election monitors elsewhere found a resurgence of local strongmen with armed backers who coerced and threatened voters, and the involvement of local government employees in ballot stuffing.
“In general the election has been a free-for-all, in that different power blocs were putting forward their candidates in different places,” said an international official who has been following the elections.
“It’s not necessarily the pro-Karzai bloc that has done so well, it’s that the Parliament will be more dependent on big power brokers,” the official said, adding that they would be more likely to make deals with Mr. Karzai that did not necessarily serve the Afghan people.
Lawmakers and opposition candidates openly accused the Karzais, and in particular Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful official in Kandahar, of fixing the election for a list of favored candidates.
“Of the list of 50, it is already decided who will come” to Parliament, said Izzatullah Wasefi, an opposition candidate from Kandahar.
Nur ul-Haq Uloomi, a member of Parliament who won the largest vote from Kandahar in 2005, and has since become an outspoken critic of the corruption and inefficiency of the Karzai government, accused Ahmed Wali Karzai of manipulating the vote to deny him another term.
He said he had sent one of his campaign managers to the chairman of the Independent Election Commission, Fazal Ahmad Manawi, in Kabul to warn of potential fraud before the election, but he was rebuffed.
“Mr. Manawi said: ‘We can do nothing about Kandahar because he is the brother of Karzai,’ ” Mr. Uloomi recounted. “It is a kind of preparation for fraud.”
Mr. Manawi was too busy to take individual calls last week, his spokesman said.
In one Kandahar border district, Abdul Karim Achakzai, an independent candidate from Spinboldak, said three groups of election workers were handcuffed and detained for the entire day of the election by border police officers and prevented from conducting the vote in the Maruf district.
In the evening the polling papers with the results were brought to them to sign, but they refused. They were freed the next day after promising not to complain, he said.
Mr. Achakzai accused the provincial head of the border guards, Abdul Razziq, an ally of Ahmed Wali Karzai, of orchestrating the detention. Mr. Razziq, who has influence in several border districts, was also accused of ballot-stuffing and intimidation in favor of President Karzai in the 2009 election, according to election observers.
A cellphone video from an adjoining district showed men ticking dozens of ballots in favor of certain candidates. The video, which was recorded surreptitiously by a candidate’s agent, also captured a candidate’s representatives and election officials inside a polling station haggling over the price of votes.
“You will get as many votes as you asked, just pay 72,000 Afghanis ($1,500),” said the election official, who identified himself as the head of the polling center.
In the northern province of Takhar, several witnesses described gunmen threatening election workers and dragging voters to polling stations to vote for their candidate, Adbul Baqi. The abuse happened in Farkhar district, according to one witness, Hassibullah, 35.
“Mr. Baqi and his gunmen were slapping and pulling people to the ballot boxes to vote for him,” he said. “He is a very cruel man.” After that, he added, they went to the women’s section of the polling station and forced the female employees of the Independent Election Commission to put more than 200 votes in their ballot box.
Abdul Haq, 50, another voter in Farkhar district, said that when he asked the security guards to stop beating people, one of them attacked him with a knife. “The candidate himself is a good man and people do like him, but his dogs around him are not good,” he said.
Mr. Baqi could not be reach by phone for comment. The Independent Election Commission official for the district, Engineer Kebir, said that the supporters of the candidate “did make some disturbances and violent acts and were threatening each other.” But, he insisted, “They did not disrupt the election process.”
Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul, and Carlotta Gall from Kandahar, Afghanistan. Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, and an Afghan employee of The New York Times from Kunduz.
A version of this article appeared in print on September 25, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Turkey hosted the tenth summit of Turkic-speaking countries in Istanbul on September 16. The Istanbul summit, bringing together Turkish, Kazakh, Azeri, Kyrgyz and Turkmen leaders, took steps towards furthering institutionalizing this inter-governmental platform, in line with the conclusions of the previous meeting in Nakhchivan in October 2009. Through the Nakhchivan declaration, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan had formed a Turkic-Speaking Countries Cooperation Council –or Turkish Council, as Turkey seeks to promote it. In Istanbul, the leaders agreed to implement measures to make the new bodies operational, including the Council of Heads of State, Council of Foreign Ministers, Council of Senior Foreign Ministry Officials, Wise Men’s Council and Permanent Secretariat. Moreover, they agreed to set up other institutions to protect joint cultural heritage, form a union of universities, and create a fund to support research activities (Anadolu Ajansi, September 16; for an English text of the final declaration, see: Today’s Zaman, September 17).
Turkish President, Abdullah Gul, the host of the summit, emphasized the importance of the meeting to strengthen the commonalities among the brotherly nations in terms of language, history, religion and cultural values. He called upon the leaders to diversify relations in various areas. The leaders attending the summit highlighted the role of this burgeoning cooperation in contributing to peace and pledged to deepen solidarity to boost regional stability, human rights and a market economy.
The conclusions of the meeting reflect the Turkish government’s desire to play a greater leadership role in the Turkish speaking world. Although Ankara sought to forge closer ties among these states in the early post-Cold War period, it failed to realize this ambitious objective. However, in recent years, the Turkish government has demonstrated its willingness to revitalize cooperation among Turkic countries. The recent decisions are, thus, products of Ankara’s determined moves in that direction (EDM, November 23, 2008). After the Nakhchivan declaration was passed last year, Gul presented it as a major success on Turkey’s part (www.euractiv.com.tr, October 6, 2009). Turkey expects the Turkish Council to develop based on the model of other similar organizations, such as the Commonwealth, Arab League or Francophonie (www.tcbb.gov.tr, September 16). Nonetheless, in an example of the limitations before this objective the Kazakh, Turkmen and Kyrgyz leaders spoke at times in Russian during the summit (Dogan Haber Ajansi, September 16).
In a move that underscored Turkey’s leadership role, the first rotating presidency was assumed by Turkey and a senior Turkish diplomat, Halil Akinci, former ambassador to Moscow, was appointed as the Secretary-General of the council (Zaman, September 16). So far, there have been irregular summits as well as bilateral meetings between different states. Ankara believes the establishment of a permanent secretariat in Istanbul would increase the visibility of the council in regional and international affairs and contribute to the institutionalization of governmental ties.
Speaking at the summit, Gul went as far as maintaining that “from now on, we are one nation, but six states.” The phrase “one nation, two states,” has been used to define the warm ties between Turkey and Azerbaijan. It remains to be seen if other Turkic states will embrace it to the same extent to identify themselves so closely with Turkey. Ankara has been unable to convince all Turkic states to participate. Uzbekistan has deliberately avoided attending the summits since the early 2000’s. Turkmenistan has also been aloof to this platform for some time. In that sense, Turkmenistan’s representation at the Istanbul summit can be considered as a positive step. Nonetheless, referring to its foreign policy principle of “positive neutrality,” Turkmenistan did not sign the Nakhchivan declaration. Uzbekistan again was absent from the Istanbul summit, underscoring continuing divisions.
Besides its importance for intra-Turkic cooperation, the Istanbul summit also provided a venue for the participating leaders to hold various bilateral meetings with their counterparts to discuss issues of specific relevance. Turkey, for its part, used that opportunity to deepen ties with Azerbaijan. On the margins of the summit, Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Azeri President, Ilham Aliyev, signed a framework agreement to form the High Level Strategic Cooperation Council (Hurriyet, September 15). Ankara has signed similar agreements with several countries, mainly its Middle Eastern neighbors. The agreement with Baku was in preparation for some time, and its conclusion further highlights Ankara repairing its ties with Azerbaijan following the row caused by the Turkish-Armenian normalization process.
Moreover, the energy ministers from Turkey, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan discussed energy cooperation. Ankara already has an agreement to purchase Turkmen gas, provided that transit problems are resolved. Thus, Turkey wants to contribute to the resolution of the disputes between Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, for it would also deepen cooperation as part of the East-West energy corridor and enable the export of Turkmen gas to Europe through Turkey. Turkish Energy Minister, Taner Yildiz, noted that they avoided discussing the status of the Caspian Sea, especially border issues. He stressed that it could still be possible to develop trilateral cooperation in some undisputed sectors of the Caspian even before other major issues were resolved. Azeri Energy Minister, Natiq Aliyev, also expressed hope that the remaining disagreements could be resolved so that Turkmen gas could be exported through the Caspian and Azerbaijan. The Turkish side welcomed this meeting as a positive step, which might boost prospects for the Nabucco pipeline (Anadolu Ajansi, September 15).
For some time, the Turkish government has been criticized for its neglect of Central Asia in its foreign policy priorities (EDM, June 25). In contrast, the government has presented its recent steps in the South Caucasus and Central Asia as proof that it has been pursuing a multidimensional foreign policy. Therefore, Ankara widely publicized the Istanbul summit as a great success. Nonetheless, those skeptical of the government urge caution and argue that one should wait to see if the declaration will be matched with deeds before judging the success of the government’s recent initiatives within the Turkic world (www.211yyte.org, September 17).
