Armenia Now reports that a new study concludes that corruption is tolerated by students in Armenia. Actually, it’s tolerated by almost everyone here who wants to get ahead. From the health to the education sector, from the traffic police to high level officials, corruption is the way the entire system in Armenia functions. However, this is the first time that the phenomenon is described as such in a report that I know of.

Armenian students have developed a tolerance toward corruption, according to a new study released last week in Yerevan. In “Corruption and the Social Dynamics of Transition Period; Positions and Tendencies of the Yerevan Studentship on Corruption”, author and advisor with “Campaign against Corruption Friendly Social and Legal Settings in Armenia” Samvel Manukyan says social tendencies have contributed to students’ coming to accept corruption with less resistance than a generation before them.

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The study has shown that corruption is understood as necessary and a universal means for social success. The lower the tolerance, the lower is the individual’s inclusion into social-economic relations. In other words, the book concludes, intolerance towards corruption increases the risk of marginalization of an individual and the children from relatively more well-off families are more tolerant towards corruption.

The full news item can be read online here while the online publication has more on another visible form of corruption and abuse of power in Armenia — the land grab in central Yerevan.

Via Blogrel, Inside Higher Ed has an interview with Yektan Turkyilmaz, the Turkish scholar of Kurdish descent who was arrested in June by Armenian National Security Service agents, the successor to the Soviet era KGB, but released two months later.

Four months ago, Yektan Turkyilmaz was a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at Duke University, well-regarded but little known outside his field. Then, on June 17, authorities at the airport in Yerevan, Armenia ordered him off a plane and placed him under arrest, confiscating nearly 100 books and CDs of research he had done as the first Turkish scholar ever granted access to the National Archives of Armenia.

The full interview can be read online here.

Sister of Yezidi (pictured in poster) killed fighting for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in South East Turkey, Alagyaz, Aragatsotn Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 1998

Reuters reports that two members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been killed by Turkish soldiers in South East Turkey. It is the second incident in two days.

The clash occurred on Wednesday when rebels ignored a call to give up their weapons and opened fire on a military patrol in a remote part of Sirnak province near the border with Iraq, the governor said in a statement.

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Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast has seen an upsurge in violence in recent months despite a decision by the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to extend a unilateral ceasefire declared last month until Oct. 3.

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Some 30,000 people have been killed since the PKK began its armed struggle for an independent Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey in 1984.

Incidently, yesterday I interviewed Robert Langer, an academic from the University of Heidelberg, who was visiting Armenia to conduct further research on Armenia’s Yezidi minority. Kurdish nationalism in the community was the main focus of our conversation, and how it had impacted on Yezidi ritual and tradition.

The interview is an addition to work already undertaken on the division within the Yezidi community regarding their ethnic origin. Interestingly, compared to 1998 when I first started to examine Armenia’s largest minority, the division seems to be larger than it was, with more Yezidi distancing themselves from the Kurds. More on that later.

RFE/RL reports that the Georgian Prime Minister has reassured Armenia about plans to build a railway that runs from Turkey to Georgia, bypassing Armenia. Zurab Noghaideli gave these reassurances while visiting Armenia.

Noghaideli said that while pressing ahead with the $400 million project’s implementation, Tbilisi will try to convince Ankara to reactivate the currently sole railway linking Turkey to Armenia and the rest of the South Caucasus.

“Georgia will certainly take part in all economic projects that are beneficial for Georgia,” Noghaideli said after a meeting in Yerevan of the Georgian-Armenian intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation. “At the same time, we will do our best to contribute to the development of alternative transport routes for Armenia and the reactivation of the Kars-Gyumri railway in particular. But as you can understand, that does not depends only on us.”

Armenia fears that the planned Tbilisi-Akhalkalaki-Kars rail link will dash its hopes to become a regional transport hub after a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the normalization of its relations with Turkey. An Armenian government statement said Prime Minister Markarian raised the issue during a tête-à-tête meeting with Noghaideli which was followed by a session of the bilateral commission. But it gave no details.

It’s interesting to note that under Saakashvili, Armenian relations with Georgia have never been better. In fact, not only did
tens of thousands of Armenians take their holidays in Georgia this year but it would appear that Saakashvili is now spearheading the process of economic integration in the region. In return, Yerevan is even quiet about calls for autonomy from Armenians living in Georgia’s Samtshke-Javakheti region.

Official Yerevan has never backed the Javakheti Armenians’ demands for autonomy, offering instead to help to alleviate the region’s problems. Noghaideli and Markarian toured Javakheti in July, pledging joint efforts to improve the difficult socioeconomic situation there.

In particular, the administration of President Mikhail Saakashvili has pledged to invest a large part of additional multimillion-dollar assistance provided to Georgia by the United States in the local infrastructure. Saakashvili has also said that local farmers will be the primary suppliers of agricultural produce to the Georgian army.

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RFE/RL reports that the Armenian Government has approved its draft budget for 2006 that anticipates a 20 percent increase in public spending that would see it reach or exceed $1 billion for the first time since independence was declared in 1991.

The Armenian military would remain the single largest recipient of the still modest public funds. The government wants to increase its budget by 21 percent to 74.3 billion drams ($166 million). The continuing large share of military spending in the national budget reflects Armenia’s unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia’s defense budget increasingly pales in comparison with that of Azerbaijan which is using growing proceeds from oil exports for a military build-up. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev pledged recently to double his country’s defense spending to $600 million next year.

However, spending on education and social services would remain lower than military expenditures although salaries for teachers should be increased but will still remain low. Nevertheless, it’s got to be good that such trends are evident.

The proposed 2005 budget sets side a total of 69 billon drams for Armenia’s education sector and 54 billion drams for social programs. According to Deputy Finance Minister Pavel Safarian, the overall increase in social spending would lead to a sizable rise in public sector salaries and poverty benefits. He said the average monthly salary of school teachers would rise by 16 percent to 58,300 drams ($130).

The full news item can be read online here.

The International Herald Tribune has an op-ed by Farhad Husseinov on Azerbaijan’s imminent parliamentary elections.

Azerbaijan is the latest victim of this sacrifice of freedom in the pursuit of stability. A country of 8.5 million people - roughly half of whom live in poverty - on the Western shores of the energy-rich Caspian Sea, it is preparing for parliamentary elections in early November. Baku, the capital, is the next obvious candidate for a democratic revolution of the kind witnessed in Georgia and Ukraine. At stake are the multibillion-dollar investments of oil giants like BP and Chevron.

The incumbent president, Ilham Aliyev, is a Soviet-educated autocrat who inherited power from his late father, Geidar Aliyev, in late 2003 as a result of rigged elections followed by a ruthless police crackdown. Opposition activists were imprisoned and tortured. Yet the creation of the first dynastic regime in the post-Soviet space was, incongruously, blessed by the administrationof George W. Bush.

So far, Aliyev junior has proved less adept than his ex-Communist father at playing political cat-and-mouse with Western capitals. His regular consultations with President Vladimir Putin of Russia have not escaped analysts’ attention. One development that apparently infuriated Washington was the security arrangement he made with Iran in May. This was followed by news that Azerbaijan had been used as a conduit for supplying Russian nuclear technology to Iran.

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In today’s globalized world, democracy requires support from without. The Bush administration’s “freedom agenda” is a praiseworthy step in this regard. It should, however, also be extended to illiberal countries that possess oil or host a NATO military base. Democratic turnover in the post-Soviet states is not Western imperialism by another name, as some would like us to believe. What they represent, rather, is a shift toward the rule of law, democracy and national reconciliation.

Azerbaijan presents the next opportunity for Western leaders to prove their commitment to the founding principles of their own nation-states. With time, this moral choice will prove to be a smart strategic choice as well.

The full op-ed can be read online here. Meanwhile, Eurasianet carries an interesting story on the appreciation of the Azerbaijani Manat against the dollar. Reminds me of when the Armenian dram recently gained ground against the dollar here.

Rouzana and Mikhail, Ijevan, Tavoush Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / UNICEF Armenia

When Mikhail Simonyan’s mother noticed that her son was finding it difficult to walk, she at first thought nothing at it. Instead, she wondered if her three-year-old had fallen and hurt himself. However, when Rouzana eventually took her son to a traumatologist, the news devastated the toddler’s mother. Mikhail had contracted measles and the infection had spread to his inner ear. Later, it spread to the muscles that kept his spinal cord straight.

“I fell ill for seven months,” she remembers. “I had a nervous breakdown. Gradually I recovered, but it wasn’t until I approached various NGOs and public organizations that I began to come to terms with Mikhail’s condition. I met many children who were able to live with their disabilities, some of whom were in a worse situation than my son. This somehow filled me with hope that there was a way for Mikhail to live with his disability as well.”

“I gave this hope to my child and told him there would be a day when he would be able to walk normally,” she continues. “Together, we’re still living with this hope.”

The full article can be read online here. There’s also another article on Bridge of Hope here.

RFE/RL also reports that the Armenian President Robert Kocharian is “cautiously optimistic about prospects for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”

“There were moments when we were pretty close to a settlement but something hampered it and the negotiating process became more passive in the end,” Kocharian said in reference to the decade-long peace talks mediated by the international community.

“The process is now proceeding quite actively and there are some hopes that we can, after all, achieve success,” he added.

The comments made at a news conference echo upbeat statements made by international mediators following Kocharian’s meeting with Aliev in Russia on August 26. Although the two leaders did not announce any peace accords, Yuri Merzlyakov, the Russian co-chair of the OSCE’s Minsk Group, described their encounter as “very positive.” Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian similarly noted on September 6 that “common ground between the parties on key issues is visible today.”

According to the OSCE’s current chairman-in-office, Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, a Karabakh peace deal could be cut as early as this year. However, Baku and Yerevan are unlikely to announce any agreements at least until November which will see parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan and a constitutional referendum in Armenia.

The full news item can be read online here.

RFE/RL has an update on Saturday’s murder in Nor Hajn when the town’s Mayor shot dead the head of the local electricity network. The dead man is apparently supporting a rival candidate in next month’s local elections.

A senior regional prosecutor, Mikael Grigorian, told RFE/RL that Keshishian has already been formally charged under an article of the Armenian Criminal Code that deals with “premeditated murders committed in a way that endangered many peoples’ lives.” He said the criminal investigation into the killing is still going on as there are “certain issues that need to be clarified.” He would not say if Keshishian pleaded guilty to the accusation that carries a lengthy prison sentences.

The deputy chief of the Nor Hajn police, Karen Vartanian, confirmed that the fatal shooting was sparked by the construction of a playground for children which Mkhitarian began without the mayor’s mandatory permission. He confirmed that Keshishian was accompanied by two police officers when he arrived at the construction site and began arguing with Mkhitarian.

Vartanian said the policemen were “15-20 meters” away from the two men when the shooting began and could not have prevented it. “Nor did they know that Keshishian had a pistol with him,” he added.

Residents of Nor Hajn, a town 15 kilometers north of Yerevan, say tensions between the two men were simmering for months and came to a head when Mkhitarian decided not to back the incumbent mayor’s reelection bid and throw his weight behind his challenger, Babken Markarian. The latter heads the local branch of the influential Yerkrapah Union of Nagorno-Karabakh war veterans.

Speaking to RFE/RL, Markarian said he believes the upcoming election was a key reason for the deadly incident, suggesting that Keshishian feared the wealthy power grid executive could cost him reelection. “Both the elections and year-long tensions between them played a role,” he said. “This was definitely the case. Ashot Mkhitarian was supporting my candidacy and platform.”

As RFE/RL reported yesterday, the victim was supported by oligarch Gagik Tsarukian (AKA Dodi Gago) while the Mayor enjoys the support of the Armenian Prime Minister Andranik Markarian who reportedly gave him the murder weapon.

Armadam, the fantastic jazz group that even includes an electric oud, is playing at the Stop Club tomorrow evening. Well recommended for anyone who likes jazz and / or refreshingly intense music. It’s very easy to become immersed in their music, a combination of jazz fusion and Armenian influences.

CORRECTION: Armadam will be playing at Stop on Thursday 29 September.

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Illegal Newroz, Elazig, Republic of Turkey © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 1997

Reuters carries an interesting story on the Kurds in Turkey and what appears to be a gradual relaxation of draconian laws and decrees that forbid Kurdish language, music, broadcasting and festivals. Interestingly, after Erdogan’s recent visit to Diyarbakir, I spoke to a girl visiting Armenia from the Kurdish Institute in Brussels on Sunday and she said that even though these developments are crucial for Turkey’s democratization and EU accession, the military are becoming more and more agitated.

The Kurds have acquired a powerful advocate in the country’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who last month became the first Turkish leader to refer to a “Kurdish problem”, which he said should be resolved by democratic reforms.

In a visit to Diyarbakir, Erdogan vowed solidarity with the southeast and expressed disquiet at the failure of authorities to allow private channels to broadcast in Kurdish.

[…]

At the same time, the government is under pressure to revive restrictions under anti-terror legislation because of growing separatist violence, with militants attacking military targets in the southeast and even tourists in western Turkey.

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