Argentinian-Armenian Team, Vazgen Sarkisyan Stadium, Pan-Armenian Games, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia for EurasiaNet 2007

EurasiaNet has just published my text and photos from the Pan-Armenian Games held last week in Yerevan. Although the idea of the game in itself is great, serious problems continue to emerge in attempts to unite Armenians through this sporting event. Moreover, although the spectacular opening and closing ceremonies were well-attended and broadcast live, the sporting events themselves appeared to be considered less important — especially as Armenia has entered into the unofficial campaign period for the 2008 presidential election.

It should also be noted that attempts to portray the event as symbolic of an Armenia-Diaspora unity that many consider does not exist were very draconian in practice. For example, many teams such as the Argentinian-Armenian one above brought the national flags of their country of origin to proudly display their dual identities, but security and organizers at the opening ceremony confiscated them instead.

In their defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told myself and another journalist covering the games that the official rules of the Pan-Armenian Games specifically prohibit the display of any flag other than the Armenian tricolor. Before they were confiscated, however, I saw teams with Argentinian, Lebanese, Australian, Canadian, Spanish, Georgian, German, English and Greek flags, and other teams apparently had theirs as well.

In theory, it was all about unity. But the tensions on display at the IV Pan-Armenian Games, a mini-Olympics style event that attracted some 2,500 competitors from Armenian communities worldwide, indicated that divisions can run as deep as consensus in Armenia’s far-flung Diaspora.

On the surface, though, positive PR prevailed. Diaspora members make up the bulk of the estimated 10 million Armenians worldwide, and already play a critical role in providing investment in Armenia’s economy and support for its cultural and educational institutions. The August 18-26 Games, with events ranging from table tennis to volleyball and swimming, were meant to strengthen those ties still further.

As a sign of that aim, Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian chairs the Games’ executive committee. Mohammad Aliabadi, vice president of Iran, which has an estimated ethnic Armenian population of a few hundred thousand, attended the event’s August 18 opening ceremony in Yerevan’s Vazgen Sarkisyan soccer stadium.

But domestic politics also played a role. Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, who has announced his intentions to run for president in 2008, took center stage in the August 26 finale, handing out awards and crowning the most beautiful sportswoman, Miss Pan-Armenian Games.

[…]

Opposition political activists were given a less warm official welcome. At the opening ceremony attended by Armenian President Robert Kocharian, Foreign Minister Oskanian and Armenian Apostolic Church Catholicos Karekin II, police detained three activists from the anti-Kocharian Impeachment bloc as they handed out leaflets calling for the release of alleged political prisoners.

One parliamentary deputy from the opposition Heritage Party, Zaruhi Postanjian, who works as a human rights lawyer, alleges that stadium police took a bag containing client documents from her.

Most events, however, were poorly attended, with many local Armenians unaware of where the venues were situated, and media access was tightly controlled. Despite accreditations, only film crews from Public Television H1, which was beaming the Games worldwide via satellite, were given unrestricted access to competitions.

[…]

On August 19, things turned ugly when a basketball team from Glendale, California, attacked their counterparts from the Armenian community in Istanbul. Local media were not present at the game.

Turkish Armenian players charged that the American-Armenians called them “dirty Turkish dogs.” Representatives of the California team denied the allegation. Police intervened on court to break up the ensuing fight and separate the two teams.

Police were again called on court in the game that immediately followed after local basketball players attacked Egyptian players with their fists and chairs. Four Diaspora Armenians from Cairo were reportedly hospitalized as a result. The Yerevan basketball team was disqualified from the Games the following day allegedly in return for the Cairo team not pressing charges.

[…]

Local reaction to the Games was muted, with many potential spectators disinterested or unaware that they were even happening. Zara Gevorgian, a 21-year-old recent university graduate, attended only because she says she knew some of the local players taking part. “The opening ceremony was terrible and reminded me of Komsomol events during Soviet times,” she said. Nor are player fights a rare occurrence, according to Gevorgian. “Every time I go something happens…”

For the vast majority of those taking part in the Games from the Diaspora, however, such spars barely registered. Speaking on the sidelines of a women’s basketball match, athlete Valya Efstathiou Vajraduni, a 23-year-old Greek-Armenian on her first visit to Armenia, termed the event “wonderful.”

One Lebanese-Armenian academic, however, was more critical and argued that more systematized and efficient activities than the Pan Armenian Games, which started in 1999, or Armenia-Diaspora conferences are needed to engage the Diaspora.

“The Diaspora is tired of the last 17 years,” said Asbed Kotchikian, a visiting lecturer and political analyst from the University of Florida at a press conference earlier in the week. “The Diaspora assists Armenia, but receives only declarative gratitude… There is no unification or practical policy.”

One local journalist, deriding the event’s “lyrical digressions,” agreed with Kotchikian’s take, but considered that the Games did at least highlight the prejudices and problems facing Armenians.

“[A]ll the sides of the Fatherland should be shown to the Diasporans,” wrote Hakob Badalyan in the Lragir newspaper, an online publication often critical of the government, the day after the Yerevan-Cairo fight. “Not only the sights, but also the hospitals.”

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It seems hard to imagine, but as mentioned in the previous post, the possibility that the former first president of Armenia, Levon Ter Petrosian, might be considering running for the 2008 presidential election is fast becoming a major talking point in Yerevan. It should be pointed out that Ter Petrosian has remained in Armenia since his resignation from office which means that the current authorities have not seen fit to prosecute him for alleged corruption during office.

This is significant given the fact that the incumbent president, Robert Kocharian, would also need to remain immune from any retribution or prosecution when he has to step down next year. Unlike some other potential opposition candidates, it also means that Ter Petrosian does not necessarily threaten the business interests of the current ruling political and economic elite, an important issue and one that is noted in an analysis written by RFE/RL’s Emil Danielyan for EurasiaNet.

The full post is here.

RFE/RL reports that the Armenian President, Robert Kocharian, has congratulated his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, on his election this week. The BBC says that Gul “is the first politician with an Islamist background to become president since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey as a secular, Western-oriented state in 1923.”

RFE/RL also reports that congratulations were sent from the Minister of Foreign Affairs and opposition Heritage party leader Raffi Hovannisian.

Kocharian’s office did not release any details of what is a rare congratulatory message sent from Yerevan to Ankara.

[…]

“There is much work to be done in this region, and I am sure you will bring your contribution to global peace and prosperity,” Oskanian said in a separate letter to Gul released by the Armenian Foreign Ministry.

[…]

Armenia and Turkey have no diplomatic relations, with successive governments in Ankara making their establishment conditional on a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and an end to the long-running Armenian campaign for international recognition of the 1915 genocide in the Ottoman Empire. The current Turkish government, formed by Gul’s Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP), has essentially stuck to those preconditions despite showing signs of a softening of Turkish policy on Armenia.

[…]

[…] Stepan Safarian of the opposition Zharangutyun party, predicted that Turkey will now come under stronger Western pressure to establish diplomatic relations and open its land border with Armenia.

Incidentally, Zharangutyun leader Raffi Hovannisian also congratulated the new Turkish president. “It is to be hoped that, during your tenure and that of the next Armenian president to be elected in several months’ time, Turkish-Armenian relations will enter a wholly new phase of reflection, exploration, discovery, and ultimate normalization,” Hovannisian wrote in a letter made public by his party’s press service.

The construction boom has hit the capitals of all three Republics of the South Caucasus, and each country, although to a lesser extent in Georgia, significant concerns have been raised regarding the entire process in what is often corruption-driven urban development. In Yerevan, for example, architects, seismologists and environmentalists are deeply upset by the anarchic construction of the new Northern Avenue which many allege breaches the law, construction standards as well as human rights.

In May 2005, one person died on the controversial Yerevan construction site, and the BBC today reports that a high-rise building under construction in Baku, capital of the Republic of Azerbaijan, has collapsed. Workers on the construction site have died.

Baku city prosecutor Aziz Seidov told reporters that initial evidence pointed to shoddy construction work as the cause of the collapse.

High-rise buildings are springing up across the Azeri capital, thanks to a construction boom fuelled by the oil industry.

Local media have said that much of the construction is of a poor and in violation of safety standards.

They also say developers bypass building regulations by bribing corrupt officials.

Baku mayor Hajibala Abutalybov told the Reuters news agency the building that collapsed was being built without official permission.

The head of the construction company and another company executive have been arrested, Prosecutor-General Zakir Qaralov told the Associated Press news agency.

In what is an incident that should raise concerns here in Yerevan, where I doubt buildings are built to any higher standards than in Baku and where construction is also often illegal, Ria Novosti reports that the death toll now stands at 14. It goes without saying that the accident in Azerbaijan should result in actions against similarly sub-standard constructions in Armenia.

RFE/RL reports that the opposition Orinats Yerkir party has also joined government critics of a bill introduced by Raffi Hovannisian’s Heritage party which would officially recognize the independence of the self-declared Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, a mainly Armenian inhabited breakaway territory in neighboring Azerbaijan. I think nobody expected this bill to be taken seriously, and I’m afraid some concern does has to be raised as to why it was even suggested in the first place.

Raffi Hovannisian, the leader of the Zharangutyun Party, introduced on Tuesday a relevant draft law in the National Assembly and urged the pro-government majority there to promptly debate and pass it. Majority leaders, however, rejected the initiative, saying that it would only undermine international efforts to resolve the Karabakh conflict.

Mher Shahgeldian, deputy chairman of Orinats Yerkir, made similar arguments as he presented his party’s position on the issue. “If it was possible to solve the problem by such acts, many countries with such national-liberation causes would have done so,” he said. “We advocate a pro-Armenian solution to the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh and believe that the conflict’s settlement within the framework of international structures more than corresponds to this principle.”

Parliament speaker Tigran Torosian and other majority leaders claimed on Tuesday that the Zharangutyun bill is a publicity stunt aimed at earning Hovannisian and his party more political points.

Karabakh declared itself an independent state in 1991 shortly after breaking away from Azerbaijani rule but has since failed to win formal recognition by any country of the world, including Armenia. The current and former authorities in Yerevan have resisted domestic calls to recognize the dispute territory’s independence, saying that such a move would only have a symbolic significance and antagonize the international community.

Vernisage, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Over two weeks ago I posted some photographs taken of racist, fascist and anti-semitic graffiti on Yerevan’s Vernisage. A day later, Tirami Su posted some more and so one would hope that something might have been done about this eyesore by now. This is especially the case given that the main government buildings are situated close by as well as the fact that most tourists will also get to see the slogans and emblems when they shop for souvenirs on the weekend.

However, there has been no action by the Kentron district or the Yerevan Mayor’s Office to clean off the graffiti as this photo taken with my mobile phone earlier this evening shows. The sooner we have an elected Mayor in this city, as well as a municipality that actually does its job, the better. On the other hand, maybe such feelings truly represent the mood of a country which is hardly ready for closer integration with Europe even if there was such an inclination among the population.

15.2 km South of Lachin, Kashatagh Region, Republic of Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2006

Not one country in the world recognizes the existence of the self-declared Republic of Nagorno Karabakh, the mainly Armenian inhabited territory situated within Azerbaijan. Despite having its armed forces involved in the conflict, this also includes Armenia. Now, Raffi Hovannisian, founder and parliamentary leader of the opposition Heritage party, has introduced a bill in the National Assembly that would formally recognize the independence and existence of the second Armenian republic.

The Heritage Party’s parliamentary leader Raffi K. Hovannisian today introduced in the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia a law officially to recognize the Republic of Mountainous Karabagh (Artsakh). This first of Heritage’s legislative initiatives, once duly adopted, signed and entered into force, will bestow Armenia’s long-awaited de jure recognition upon the de facto sovereign state established pursuant to international and Soviet laws at Stepanakert in 1991.

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The new headquarters of HSBC Armenia opened in central Yerevan in April 2007. Foreign banks representing more than a dozen countries are active in the Caucasus country and new large investments are expected in the coming months. (Onnik Krikorian for EurasiaNet)

EurasiaNet has a news commentary by Noyan Tapan’s Haroutiun Khachatrian on the booming banking sector in Armenia. According to him, even more multi-million dollar investments in the sector are expected in the coming months, and one local analyst says banking in Armenia is among the best in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Yerevan’s Garegin Nzhdeh Square illustrates the transition involved. The square’s sidewalks are packed with street traders, one of the clearest signs that Armenia’s “shadow economy” lingers. The lines of people at three nearby automatic bank tellers waiting to pay utility bills or get cash, however, suggests a parallel trend: the old Soviet image of banks as just a place where extra money could be stored is beginning to fade.

Armenia’s ongoing high rate of economic growth (12.1 percent for the first six months of 2007, according to official statistics) largely explains the trend. In 2000, average monthly salaries stood at roughly $55, while today they average $205. With incomes rising, residents are turning to bank loans, with interest rates ranging from 15-22 percent, to expand their purchasing power still further.

Since 2004, the banking sector has expanded at a rate of between 10 to 20 percent a year to stand currently at more than $1.6 billion. In the first six months of 2007, banking assets’ value climbed by $244 million, or about 83 billion dram, according to the Central Bank. Nonetheless, in terms of the ratio of total bank assets to Gross Domestic Product, Armenia ranks as an outsider country. This ratio, commonly used by specialists to evaluate the banking sector, was just over 19 percent by the end of 2006. In most post-Soviet countries, it can stand as high as 50 percent.

[…]

But more banking activity could mean higher inflation, a situation often seen in rapidly growing economies which consume large sums of money in a short time. The Central Bank has hoped that a stock market, planned for introduction in the coming year or two, could help keep that risk even lower, but, for now, as bank investment grows, the outcome is far from certain.

Bankers say that inflation could provide a clue. Despite earlier fears that inflation for July 2007 compared with December 2006 might be as high as 4 percent, the increase ranked a mere 0.6 percent. This slight jump, despite above-average growth in the banking sector, has suggested that money supplies have not yet outstripped economic activity. For now, the bets are on that the Armenian economy has room to absorb still more.

The full article is here.

Despite many analysts and election observers believing that any idea of the return of Levon Ter Petrosian, first president of the Republic of Armenia, to the political scene is unlikely, something interesting happened last night. One local businessman who can be considered somewhat close to the ruling Republican party (HHK) asked about the likelihood of Ter Petrosian running in next year’s election.

The full post is here.

Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisyan, Pan-Armenian Games Finale, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia for EurasiaNet 2007

Yesterday saw the close of the fourth Pan-Armenian Games although soon into proceedings the event turned into something more like a publicity exercise for the prime minister, Serzh Sarkisyan, ahead of the 2008 presidential election. Still, fair play to him. Despite all the problems with the competition, the night was a spectacular one. Soprano Anna Mailian sang the Armenian national anthem, Miss Armenia 2003 Lusine Tovmasian was there to provide the eye candy, the new Minister for Sport and Youth Affairs, Armen Grigorian, even made an appearance, and for once it was possible to be within a meter of Sarkisyan and Gagik Tsarukian without some bodyguard on steroids pushing citizens and journalists out the way.

Noyan Tapan has more. It’s interesting to note that both Istanbul and Cairo (Kahire) were awarded special prizes as if to help them forget the attacks on them earlier in the games.

YEREVAN, AUGUST 27, NOYAN TAPAN. The fourth Pan-Armenian Games finished in Yerevan on August 26. The teams from Yerevan won in the competitions of basket-ball, volley-ball and football. The team of Stepanakert was the first in the football tournament. Chess players Gor Virabian (Nor Hatchn) and Diana Mnatsakanian (Abovian), table tennis-players Murad Sargsian (Gyumri), Anna Poghosian (Yerevan), Hasmik Matevosian - Tatev Yengibarian (Yerevan), and Alexandre Diarian (Stepanakert) - Arshak Haroutiunian (Yerevan) couples received the championship title.

Hovhannes Davtian (solo games, Yerevan) and Haroutiun Saringulian - Henrik Nikoghosian, Lusine Davtian - Ani Amiraghian couples (all from Yerevan) were the best in the men’s tennis tournament.

The obvious leaders with the number of the gained medals are the sportsmen from Yerevan: 36 golden, 22 silver, and 19 bronze medals.

Gayane Tunian (Yerevan, tennis) was recognized as the beauty of the games. The prize “Fair game” was handed to the volley-ball team of Los Angeles. The team of Istanbul was recognized as the best sporting delegatation of the Diaspora. The prize “Sporting soul and patience” was given to the men’s basket-ball team of Kahire.

Serge Sargsian, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia, was awarded with the “Sign of Honor” order of the world committee of the Pan-Armenian Games.

The closing ceremony of the games took place in the Opera and Ballet National Academic Theatre after A. Spendiarian. A great concert was organized in the Azatutiun (Freedom) square after the official ceremony.

The fifth Pan-Armenian Games will take place in four years, that is, in 2011.

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MDP, Puppet Theatre, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Last night saw a break from the Pan-Armenian Games and a rock festival staged in Yerervan. Actually, I missed most of the bands such as Oaksenham and Bambir, but at least got to catch the last two acts — MDP and Vostan Hayots. MDP were particularly good and I had forgotten how heavy these guys were. Anyway, for those of you interested in rock music in Armenia, interviews with MDP and Vostan Hayots are here and here.

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