Although I had mentioned this in the comments section of an entry on the Armenia Election Monitor at the beginning of December, a meeting with EurasiaNet’s Central Asia and Caucasus Editor last night reminded me of it once again. She asked me for my opinion on the election so far and I said pretty much I’ve been writing, but added that for now, I don’t see that Levon Ter Petrosian — or any of the other candidates for that matter — stand a chance of winning against Serzh Sarkisian.

Factor in Ter Petrosian’s low popularity rating in Armenia — seemingly below 10 percent whatever sympathetic journalists might have you believe — and the fact that street protests have always been the tactic of choice for the radical opposition, and there’s not really much chance for any “colored revolution” to occur let alone succeed. There’s also one other factor that makes the question of street protests all the more difficult after the presidential election on 19 February 2008.

That is, as Karabakh Open reported, it will be the 20th Anniversary of the Karabakh Movement the following day and there are plans to stage a number of events to celebrate the fact. It is unclear from the article whether the celebrations will be held in Armenia, Karabakh or both.

However, as the 20th Anniversary of the Sumgait pogroms occurs nine days later, it looks as though events will stretch through the entire week following the election. One has to wonder how possible it is for the opposition — radical or not — to stage effective protests when other Armenians will be celebrating and mourning two of the most significant dates for an independent post-Soviet Armenia immediately after the presidential vote.

20TH ANNIVERSARY OF MOVEMENT WILL BE MARKED THE DAY AFTER THE ARMENIAN ELECTION

KarabakhOpen
03-12-2007 10:33:23

The government set up a state committee to prepare the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Karabakh movement. The starting day is February 20 when in 1988 the Soviet of People’s Deputies of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region and Shahumyan extended a request to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for the unification with Armenia.

By the way, the Armenian presidential election will be held on February 19, and the outcome may influence the celebration. Especially that most controversies among the candidates of the Karabakh issue. What will the stance of the new Armenian government on the settlement of the Karabakh issue be?

Will the stance of the Armenian government on the Karabakh issue change 20 years after the movement? What new can the Armenian government offer Karabakh in the current situation? The options are quite few.

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While there are many reasons to criticize the situation the country found itself in under the former president, Levon Ter Petrosian, there is perhaps one area of policy which might endear himself to the international community and which could result in dramatic changes inside Armenia and the South Caucasus. That is, when it comes to foreign policy, Ter Petrosian is said to favor a concessionary peace deal with Azerbaijan to resolve the long-standing conflict over Nagorno Karabakh and normalized relations with Turkey.

When Ter Petrosian held his first pre-election public meeting in Yerevan’s Liberty Square in October, such a possibility was not lost on the international news wires. The Associated Press was particularly upbeat on the prospect for regional stability and integration.

If successful, his return to office could signal a major shift in Armenia’s fraught relations with neighbours Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Ter-Petrosian, 62, is an advocate of compromise with the two countries, which have closed their borders and imposed economic embargoes over Armenia’s support for the breakaway Azerbaijani region of Nagorny Karabakh.

[…]

Armenia needed to end its regional isolation by normalising relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, he said.

“Until we have resolved the questions of the blockade of Armenia, relations with our neighbours and Karabakh, Armenia cannot develop and strengthen,” he said.

“As a result of the criminal policies of the current government, Azerbaijan has only toughened its position and will not seek compromise,” he added.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.

In countries such as Armenia where the mainstream broadcast media is firmly under the control of government-connected businessmen and/or officials, while the traditional print and online media largely reflects the opposition in the country, there is no doubt that blogs have an important role to play in the dissemination of information, news and views.

[…]

But rather than change as the result of alternative, opposition voices seeking to involve themselves in the internal political life of the country, the situation might now be changing because of four bloggers who protested on and offline against an event staged early this week at a Yerevan school to promote peace and reconciliation between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

[…]

The four Live Journal bloggers — Uzogh, Pigh, Aerial_vortex and Akunamatata_ser — were however angered by the attempt to hold such an event at a school run by Armenia’s former Minister of Education, Ashot Bleyan, who is notorious for what many consider to be “anti-Armenian” positions on Nagorno Karabakh and Genocide recognition. Speaking to Global Voices for this post, Uzogh explains why the four bloggers staged the action.

On December 14, the day when the press release announcing the event at Bleyan’s school was sent to public, I wrote a post [RUS] expressing my anger towards the organizers and sponsors of this event. The post resulted in many comments and a rather long discussion with Mark Grigoryan (Armenian journalist now residing in UK).

Some of the participants of this discussion suggested doing something to make this event a failure, but I preferred to take some time out for reflection before resorting to action. A day later, I concluded that an aggressive action would not result in the failure of the event, but would rather turn the organizers into some kind of victims which would lead to increased publicity and additional fund raising opportunities.

That’s why I instead preferred to pursue a tactic of mockery and shared this idea with a few bloggers that had already expressed their intention to join any protest action. We had a brainstorming at my house on Sunday and figured out what could be done.

I didn’t want to make this a public protest action, and none of us are members of any political party or non-formal group etc, so we did not aim to attract a lot of supporters. This was the protest by a few men and citizens, and not a civic action. At its core was the concept that we didn’t like the strategy of unilateral reconciliation through the brain-washing of children.

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.

Myrthe from The Armenian Odar has a new blog, The Armenian Odar Reads, and as I just picked up accesses coming from her latest post I decided to take a look. Anyway, a little surprising given that the new site is a book review one, but after reading about Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes I discovered why. About a week ago I gave her a copy of Armenia: Poverty, Transition & Democracy by yours truly, and she has indeed taken a look. Not really a review, but it’s always nice to read such nice words even if they are from a friend.

After finishing Sherlock Holmes, I got up, did some chores in the house and then sat down again to read. This time I read Armenia: Poverty, Transition & Democracy by Onnik Krikorian. He is a friend of mine who works as a freelance photographer and journalist here in Armenia. His blog is in my opinion the best English language blog on Armenia and one of the best sources of news on Armenia (and no, I am not saying that because I happen to know the guy). He runs another blog here covering the run-up to the presidential elections in Armenia on February 19 next year. Onnik’s book consists of several articles on Armenia accompanied by his pictures. His website and blogs are well worth a look and a read.

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After this week saw the first action of note by a group of bloggers in Armenia, others outside of the country have started to weigh in. In particular, Simon at Blogian is particularly upset about the staging of a Days of Azerbaijan held at the school of controversial former minister of education, Ashot Bleyan. What is most interesting about Simon’s post is that he is not a nationalist opposed to any peace deal and that he mentions the fact that the event came during the second anniversary of Armenian khachkars (stone crosses) in Nakhichevan.

The selective Radio Free Europe report on a British Embassy-sponsored event called “Days of Azerbaijan” in Armenia has been brought upon fierce criticism from bloggers after the U.S. State Department-sponsored news agency failed to mention that a group of bloggers in Armenia had protested the event by handing a soap to the Armenian organizers of “Days of Azerbaijan” as reported by sources such as PanArmenian.net and ArmeniaNow.

Being one of the few bloggers that has spoken for Armenian and Azeri rehumanization, I still have to protest “Days of Azerbaijan” for my VERY PERSONAL reasons.

VERY PERSONAL, because I treat every medieval Armenian cross-stone that Azerbaijan reduced to dust two years ago as my own dead relative and I don’t want a group of idiots organizing ”Days of Azerbaijan” in Armenia during the second anniversary of Djulfa cemetery’s destruction.

[…]

If “Days of Azerbaijan” included commemoration and condemnation of Djulfa’s destruction I’d be for the event. But since one of the organizers, Ashot Bleyan, has suggested in the past that Armenian students shouldn’t learn about the Armenian Genocide, one can’t expect much from morons like him.

The full post is here.

PanArmenian.Net reports that Armenian bloggers have protested the opening of the Days of Azerbaijan posted earlier. Well, it’s fair to say that they don’t represent Armenian bloggers as a group, but it is interesting to see the use of the word blog in a headline or story. Usually local publications here take news from time to time off blogs, but fail to quote the source while the rest of the world’s media see no problem in doing so at all.

Anyway, the group of bloggers do not speak for all of us, and it’s interesting to note that such an event could not have taken place without the permission of the Ministry of Education and Science (I assume). Certainly, those coming from Azerbaijan would have had to receive visas, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have welcomed the initiative as well, so perhaps this group of bloggers should have instead sent bars of soap there too, but anyway.

What is interesting, however, is that this protest appears to have been staged before RFE/RL published its story so why wasn’t it mentioned? On the other hand, this PanArmenian.Net article is hardly objective either, but at least doesn’t leave out a significant incident which RFE/RL appears to have done.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A group of Armenian bloggers handed a symbolic present – a peace of soap - to Georgy Vanyan, the initiator of “Days of Azerbaijan” in Yerevan. The present was handed with a wish “for better work.”

The measure had for an object to teach the organizers of the so-called Days of Azerbaijan a good lesson.

December 17, a rather strange event titled “Days of Azerbaijan” took place in Yerevan. The event was organized by well known director of Mkhitar Sabastatsi educational complex Ashot Bleyan and his assistant Georgy Vanyan, who represents a Caucasus center of peace sponsored by the UK Embassy. Not to mention absurdity of the event jointly with a state which tries to justify Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh’s blockade in the eyes of the world community, it’s noteworthy that such an initiative could hardly occur in Azerbaijan.

The RA Armenian Ministry of Science and Education did not react.

Armenian schoolchildren were offered to write a composition with a title “Open letter to my peer”, “How I see Azerbaijan”, “Armenia-Azerbaijan: the future.”

Comments are unnecessary, but taking into account the writings of the schoolchildren who are being filled with the ideas that “Baku and Ankara are Armenia’s best friends and the evil comes from Diaspora and Dashnaks, who keep on speaking of a genocide.” No one wants war, especially Armenians. But there is a difference between desire for peace and treason. Unfortunately, Bleyan and Vanyan are not the people to understand this.

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RFE/RL reports that despite the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh, a Yerevan school is holding an event “Days of Azerbaijan.” Well, that’s perhaps not strictly fair. It’s precisely because of the war which ended in a ceasefire signed in May 1994, but which has not yet seen a lasting settlement agreed upon, that the event is being held.

The Days of Azerbaijan at the Mkhitar Sebastatsi Educational Complex will also feature presentations by the visiting Azerbaijanis and their Armenian partners as well as an arts exhibition and the screening of a documentary film on the conflict between the two South Caucasus nations. The events are sponsored by the British Embassy in Armenia and the Armenian Center for Peace Initiatives, a non-governmental organization.

The Azerbaijani delegation that arrived in Yerevan on the occasion includes three human rights campaigners, a journalist, a writer and an NGO activist.

“This is just an attempt to give our students and teachers a better idea of our neighbors and to discuss our outstanding problems in the process,” Ashot Bleyan, the Mkhitar Sebastatsi director, told RFE/RL. He expressed hope that such initiatives will make Armenian society “more tolerant.”

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One topic that I’ve covered constantly since June 1998 has been that of Yezidis and Kurds in Armenia. Considered to be ethnic Kurds that resisted attempts to convert to Islam, Yezidis in Armenia are the republic’s largest minority. However, local factors such as the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh and a shared history with Armenians of persecution at the hands of Moslem Kurds in Turkey during the Genocide have given way to divisions within the Yezidi community in Armenia.

It’s a topic I’ve constantly returned to with my latest feature article due to be published in the January 2008 issue of Geographical. The last article on this subject was for the Institute of War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) last year and examined the impact this division had on minority education for the Yezidis in Armenia.

At the beginning of September, at an event staged in the Yezidi village of Alagyaz, government officials said that new textbooks in minority languages would be distributed to schools in minority-populated villages, while UNICEF said it would provide stationary and other supplies.

Less than a month later, however, Yezidis in Alagyaz and ten surrounding villages were complaining. Their language is the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish, but the books funded and provided by the government were instead written in Ezdiki. While the latter is still Kurdish by another name, the alphabet chosen for publication was in the unaccustomed Cyrillic alphabet instead of the more usual Latin or Arabic scripts.

[…]

Yezidis are the largest ethnic minority in Armenia, with most having arrived in the country in the mid 19th and early 20th centuries. Widely dismissed as devil worship, Yezidism in fact combines elements from Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Although the Yezidis are generally considered to be Kurds who resisted pressure to convert to Islam, there have been attempts to identify them as a separate ethnic group in Armenia since the last years of Soviet rule.

In 1988, an appeal was made to the Soviet authorities by some Yezidi leaders requesting that they be designated as an ethnic group. This coincided with the beginning of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorny Karabakh, as a result of which, thousands of Muslim Kurds fled Armenia, alongside ethnic Azerbaijanis. Yezidis, however, were spared.

In 1989, the request was granted, and in the last Soviet census conducted the same year, out of approximately 60,000 Kurds who had been formerly identified as living in Armenia, 52,700 were for the first time given a new official identity as Yezidis. The 2001 census put the number of Yezidis and Kurds in the republic at 40,620 and 1,519 respectively.

[…]

Some experts believe that the government has only succeeded in alienating the Yezidis through its education policies. One academic from Europe speaking to IWPR on the condition of anonymity said, “The state seems to be distinctly encouraging the Ezdiki faction and has not latched on to the fact that Kurmanji and Ezdiki, which were the same language for the entire Soviet period, are still the same. […]

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ARF-D Polling Booth, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

As the presidential election scheduled for 19 February 2008 draws ever closer, the political temperature in the Republic continues to rise. At stake is the issue of succession to the incumbent president, Robert Kocharian, who under the Armenian Constitution can not run for a third consecutive term in office. Yet, although many election observers focus on the unfolding battle between the prime minister, Serzh Sarkisian, and former president, Levon Ter Petrosian, there are other candidates who will soon be known.

One of them will be nominated by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) who have opened up their own “polling stations” around the country apparently to not only select their candidate from two nominees, but also to gauge popular support for the party. I ran into one of those booths near the Komitas marker earlier today and snapped it with my mobile phone (photo above). RFE/RL also says the party is confident of victory.

A top leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) claimed on Monday that the February 19 presidential election will be won by his party’s candidate, rather than Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian. Hrant Markarian, the de facto head of Dashnaktsutyun’s worldwide Bureau, also sounded upbeat about the vote’s freedom and fairness.

“Serzh will not be elected, and there will be no fraud,” Markarian told RFE/RL. He said he is confident that his party, which is represented in Sarkisian’s cabinet by three ministers, will emerge victorious from the contest.

Markarian predicted that the Dashnaktsutyun candidate, who will be nominated later this week, will at least reach the second round of voting which he said will be necessary for determining Armenia’s next president.

Local commentators agree that a run-off vote is a real possibility. But many of them believe that it would most probably pit Sarkisian against his most bitter opposition foe, former President Levon Ter-Petrosian, rather than the Dashnaktsutyun hopeful.

Like other Dashnaktsutyun leaders, Markarian refused to speculate on whether the nationalist party, which has long been at loggerheads with Ter-Petrosian, would endorse Sarkisian in that case. “I don’t want to comment on that variant because I am sure we will go into the second round,” he said. “I don’t know if we will face Serzh or Levon but am sure we will reach the second round.”

[…]

Dashnaktsutyun, meanwhile, continued on Monday its improvised national vote aimed gauging popular support for its two potential presidential candidates, Vahan Hovannisian and Armen Rustamian. The party opened at the weekend makeshift polling stations in Yerevan and the rest of the country, urging Armenians to cast ballots for one of the two men. The vote, the first of its kind ever organized in Armenia, will end on Thursday, the day before Dashnaktsutyun’s pre-election congress.

The full post is available on the Armenia Election Monitor 2008.

Transitions Online’s Steady State reports that Mr. Eldar Namazov, a possible candidate in next year’s presidential election in Azerbaijan and the former head of the administration under Heydar Aliyev, has accused the Azeri government of “selling out the occupied lands.” By this, of course, he means Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding territories currently under Armenian control.

However, what was most interesting about the speech which Namazov gaveis that he accused the Azerbaijani authorities of supporting President Robert Kocharian in Armenia when they should be doing all they can to ensure the return of his predecessor, Levon Ter Petrosian. The blog implies that a concessionary peace deal which “favours Azerbaijan” is more likely with the first president in power again.

In Armenia, Mr. Petrossian is a candidate with democratic credentials, who is supported both by US and the EU. He also champions the “step by step” approach to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution, which benefits the Azeri side more than the Armenian. It could be argued that the reason why Petrossian was overthrown in 1998 is precisely his approach to the conflict resolution.

Now USA pressures the current President Kocharian through its open support to the candidate Petrossian and through messages that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict should be resolved as soon as possible.

In fact, Azerbaijan will win more if Petrossian succeeds in elections, simply because he is for the “step by step” peace talks. HOWEVER, notes Mr. Namazov quite correctly, due to certain reasons, the Azeri media backs the Kocharian administration and portrays the Petrossian as the initiator of the war over Nagorno Karabakh.

[…]

From my own research work I can surely state that Mr. Petrossian was completely against the war and was the main broker of all cease-fire agreements. The question arises: why does the Azeri government support Kocharian and not Petrossian?

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A1 Plus reports that the Armenian handball team was defeated by its Azerbaijani opponents 41 points to 15 in Tbilisi. However, that’s not what is interesting about this story. Instead, after Armenian wrestlers recently competed in Baku, it’s encouraging to see that both sides are playing against each other in some sporting competitions at least. Of course, there was one recent notable exception.