Armenia (Continuación)

MundoCáucasoEuropa, ,

Turquía está conmemorando con grandes fastos su victoria de 1915 en Gallípoli; este año ha adoptado un cariz conflictivo al coincidir con el centenario de los sucesos conocidos como el genocidio armenio, en el que la población de armenios otomanos perdió más de un millón de personas. Las celebraciones del aniversario de Gallípoli comenzaron el 18 de marzo, fecha en la que una fuerza naval franco-británica entró en el estrecho de Dardanelos para intentar tomar Constantinopla (hoy Estambul) y fue rechazada por los cañones turcos. Tradicionalmente, este es el día fundamental para Turquía, mientras que el 25 de abril (ANZAC Day) es el que recuerdan Australia y Nueva Zelanda, miles de cuyos soldados murieron en la batalla.…  Seguir leyendo »

Armenia: el primer genocidio del siglo XX

MundoCáucasoEuropa, ,

"¿Quién habla hoy aún del exterminio de los armenios?”. La frase de Hitler, pronunciada el 22 de agosto de 1939, aludía a la inminente campaña de Polonia y anunciaba la dimensión genocida de su política de guerra, culminada con la Shoah. Años atrás, la matanza de los armenios había herido la sensibilidad de un joven judeopolaco, Rafael Lemkin, quien en lo sucesivo empleará todos sus esfuerzos para crear una normativa internacional dirigida a impedir la repetición de tales crímenes. Más aún tras subir Hitler al poder. No lo consiguió y ello supuso que en Núremberg los crímenes nazis fueran condenados desde la inseguridad de normas establecidas ex post facto.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa, ,

La Turquie se désintègre de l’intérieur sous les coups incessants de l’homme fort, l’omnipotent monsieur Erdogan. Chaque jour apporte son lot de déconvenues et de mauvaises nouvelles touchant pratiquement à tous les aspects de la vie d’une société. Comment la Turquie, pays phare de la région il n’y a pas longtemps, a pu finir ainsi ? Sommes-nous frappés d’une malédiction couplée d’un mensonge centenaire. C’est peut-être l’imprécation de femmes et d’hommes privés de cercueil et de prière, de ces Arméniens sans arme qui ont péri sur leurs terres. Il s’agit peut-être d’interminables tempêtes dans nos âmes, lancées par leurs fantômes qui planent depuis cent ans dans notre ciel, escortées par ceux des Grecs et Syriaques et plus tard des Alévis et Kurdes, de tous nos concitoyens qu’un sombre destin a foudroyés.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa, , ,

Ukraine isn’t the only place where Russia is stirring up trouble. Since the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Moscow has routinely supported secessionists in bordering states, to coerce those states into accepting its dictates. Its latest such effort is unfolding in the South Caucasus.

In recent weeks, Moscow seems to have been aggravating a longstanding conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan while playing peacemaking overlord to both. In the first week of August, as many as 40 Armenian and Azerbaijani soldiers were reported killed in heavy fighting near their border, just before a summit meeting convened by Russia’s president, Vladimir V.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Exterior,

L'impolitesse que vient de faire l'Arménie à l'Europe en revenant sur son engagement de signer l'Accord d'association de l'Union Européenne pour lui préférer, in extremis, l'Union douanière eurasienne promue par Vladimir Poutine, est très illustrative de l'âpreté des batailles d'influence auxquelles se livrent Moscou et Bruxelles sur les Etats de la zone eurasiatique et des déchirements qui en résultent. Si dans ce duel à fleurets à peine mouchetés la partie russe déroge rarement à sa rudesse coutumière, en mettant notamment dans la balance tout le poids de sa puissance énergétique, Bruxelles ne s'en laisse pas compter, même si ses arguments sont plus subtils.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucaso, ,

Five years after the Russian-Georgian war captured world attention, the South Caucasus — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia — continues to face huge challenges. The region’s geopolitical importance is ebbing as global energy production expands and NATO winds down in Afghanistan. The three countries also face major security risks, unmet popular expectations and governance failures. For the South Caucasus, this is a time for choices.

Security issues plague the South Caucasus. Russia’s military occupies two “independent” enclaves in Georgia — Abkhazia and South Ossetia — and some contiguous land. A two-decade military standoff persists around Nagorno-Karabakh, populated by ethnic Armenians but lying within Azerbaijan.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa, ,

A woman I met last month in southwestern Turkey is going to die, probably sometime soon. Asiya’s death will not be covered by any news service, and for all but a few people in her small village of Chunkush, she will not be missed. Even the relatives who love her will probably think to themselves, well, she was 98 years old. Or 99. Or, if she survives until 2015, somewhere in the neighborhood of a century. She will have lived a long life.

When I met Asiya in May, her daughter brought me strong Kurdish tea and fresh strawberries from their yard, and when I return to her village someday and find that she has indeed passed away, I suspect I’m going to weep.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa, ,

In 2001, I wrote a story for the Los Angeles Times about April 24, the annual Armenian Day of Remembrance, that had this lead: "The Armenian genocide."

That was it, the entire first paragraph.

I was proud of it because it didn't say "the alleged genocide" or "what the Armenians consider a genocide." It just called the 1915 massacre of a million Armenians what it was, even though the U.S. government — in deference to official Turkish denials and our air bases in Turkey — won't use the word.

When I was a teenager, I used to go with my grandfather Nahabed to April 24 protest marches on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and later on Wilshire Boulevard.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropaUnión EuropeaPolítica Exterior, ,

I recently travelled to Georgia and Armenia to meet human rights groups. After two days in Georgia we drove east, the hilly landscape gradually turning mountainous, sheep and cattle tended by shepherds in littered, post-Soviet villages. For a long time the road followed a small river, plastic trash snagging on rocks and branches. This could have been a landscape of extraordinary beauty; instead it was depleted and scarred by nearly a century of bad or indifferent governance.

Crossing the border into Armenia, the river was still there, the litter now older, almost indistinguishable from the brown water and grey rock. There were remnants of the Soviet state – giant concrete chutes channelling water from the steep mountains, occasional blocks of flats now, like the rubbish, taking on the colour of the dark earth.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucaso, , ,

One frigid day nearly 19 years ago, I found myself standing along a muddy, rutted road in the foothills of Azerbaijan’s 3,000 meter-high Murov mountain range. Hundreds of Azerbaijani internally displaced persons — from the strategic Kelbajar region — were arriving on foot, some nearly frozen to death after a multiday trek through the icy mountain passes. .

They were the latest casualties in the war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. An autonomous region in Soviet times, it is still internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. The dispute over who owns the “historical rights” to the rugged, sparsely populated territory goes back decades or centuries.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropaUnión Europea, , ,

On Monday, the French Senate is scheduled to debate and possibly vote on a bill that would criminalize denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915, along with any other events recognized as genocide in French law. The bill has passed the lower house of Parliament. The Senate should reject it, in the name of free speech, the freedom of historical inquiry and Article 11 of France's pathbreaking 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen ("The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights.…").

The question is not whether the atrocities committed against the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire were terrible, or whether they should be acknowledged in Turkish and European memory.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucaso, ,

The United States, the European Union and Russia don’t seem to agree on much these days. But in the volatile South Caucasus, they concur that Armenia and Azerbaijan need to sign an agreement on Friday if they are serious about finding a peaceful solution to the decades-old Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia has invited the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders to the city of Kazan on Friday and expects they will finally put their signatures on a “basic principles” text they have been wrangling over since 2007. This will be the ninth meeting that Medvedev hosts with his Caucasian counterparts.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucaso

Across an ocean and a continent, on a sliver of land tucked between two seas, a little republic enters its 20th year of independence. I know a man there, an American by birth, who quit his law firm in Los Angeles around this time 20 years ago and decided he had no further business in the United States.

It was a romantic time. One by one the 15 Soviet satellite republics were breaking from the Kremlin’s orbit and exiled sons were returning to their homelands to share in the creation of new states.

My father, Raffi K. Hovannisian, once a football star on the Pali High Dolphins, quit his law firm and moved with wife and children to Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucaso,

Last week, 12 May, marked 16 years since Russia mediated a ceasefire agreement that ended the Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh and started a long period of "no war, no peace" stagnation. Presently, there is a sense that things might be changing.

The territory of Karabakh is essentially a backwater for both countries. It had certain significance for Soviet military planners because of its proximity to Turkey, but otherwise has no prize assets. It is agricultural land, now sparsely populated because of the exodus of ethnic Azerbaijanis who fled the war, with roads leading to closed borders. Remote from Armenia's better-off areas around Yerevan, development in Nagorno-Karabakh is being propped up by the Armenian diaspora.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa, , , ,

While the U.S. House of Representatives might soon be considering a resolution that would recognize the crimes committed by Turks against Armenians in 1915 as genocide, the Serbian Parliament has just adopted a resolution that provides an apology of sorts for the killing of Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica in July 1995 but eschews any reference to “genocide.”

Intense political pressure has been at play in both cases to prevent the adoption of the resolutions — or at least to get any reference to genocide out of them.

Supporters of these resolutions seem to think that legal accuracy is essential to establishing the truth of what happened, and that genocide is the crime that best describes what was done to the Armenian and Bosnian victims.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa, ,

Le 4 mars 2010, la commission des affaires étrangères de la Chambre des représentants des Etats-Unis a adopté par 23 voix contre 22 la résolution H.Res.252 portant reconnaissance du génocide arménien. Ce vote traduit incontestablement une volonté légitime des congressistes de condamner la politique négationniste conduite par Ankara et de restaurer l'une des pages les plus sombres de l'histoire de l'Humanité. Mais l'attitude du département d'Etat américain, incarnée par la secrétaire d'Etat, Hillary Clinton, dévoile la réelle signification des deux protocoles signés le 10 octobre 2009 par les présidents Gül et Sarkissian censés entériner le rapprochement arméno-turc. Les masques sont désormais tombés.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa, ,

The best thing said about the Armenian tragedy was a sermon delivered in the main church in Constantinople in 1894, more than 20 years before it happened. Patriarch Ashikyan had this to say: “We have lived with the Turks for a thousand years, have greatly flourished, are nowhere in this empire in a majority of the population. If the nationalists go on like this [they had started a terrorist campaign] they will ruin the nation.”

That Patriarch was quite right, and the nationalists shot him (and many other notables who were saying the same thing).

Now a US Congressional committee has had its say, by voting to recognise as “genocide” the mass killing of Armenians by Turkish forces that began in 1915, during the First World War.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa,

For a while, it looked like the start of a great reconciliation. Armenia and Turkey have lived beneath the vast shadow of the mass murder of Armenians in eastern Turkey during World War I, and to this day they maintain no diplomatic ties. But in October, the Armenian and Turkish foreign ministers met in Switzerland and signed two protocols to set up relations, open their common border -- closed since 1993 -- and begin addressing the painful disputes that divide them. Each nation's governments must still ratify the agreements. The United States, with its large Armenian American community and strategic alliance with Turkey, threw its weight behind the deal.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucasoEuropa, ,

Après tout, qui se souvient du massacre des Arméniens ?", lançait Hitler aux commandants en chef de l'armée allemande le 22 août 1939, quelques jours avant l'invasion de la Pologne. Cette question terrible pourrait être posée à Culturesfrance, l'opérateur délégué des ministères des affaires étrangères et de la culture chargé de la saison turque en France (juillet 2009-mars 2010).

En effet, on cherchera en vain à l'affiche de cet événement, qui revendique plus de 400 manifestations et débats sur la Turquie, la moindre allusion au premier génocide du XXe siècle. Ce silence est trop systématique pour ne pas être suspecté de complaisance envers les pires turpitudes de l'Etat turc.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoCáucaso

Desde sus imponentes despachos que dan a la plaza de la República de Ereván, los funcionarios del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de Armenia no se equivocan al sentirse satisfechos ante los últimos acontecimientos de la región del Cáucaso meridional: antaño emplazamiento de una enorme estatua de Lenin y con un monumental conjunto de edificios estatales de piedra rojiza - el más admirable legado arquitectónico de la antigua URSS-,la plaza es el centro de esta ciudad, la capital de un país de 3,7 millones de habitantes. Desde su independencia en 1991 o, de modo más preciso, desde la restauración de una independencia que se había proclamado en 1918, la República de Armenia ha mantenido estrechas relaciones con Rusia.…  Seguir leyendo »