Ahead of next month’s Global Voices Online Summit in Budapest, Hungary, I’ve just compiled a backgrounder on the role blogs played during the recent presidential election and especially in its immediate aftermath. Armenia will be specifically included in a session, The Wired Electorate in Emerging Democracies.

Arguably the most active country in the South Caucasus when it comes to blogging, the content and relevance of blogs on Armenia was at first nothing really worth writing home about. Most posts by foreigners living in the capital almost entirely focused on how good their lives were while others were simply copy and paste exercises reproducing articles without comment. Perhaps the only time when bloggers started to write original posts was whenever the Armenian Genocide came into the focus of the international media.

Even so, the situation slowly started to change in the run-up to last year’s parliamentary election as the political climate intensified in preparation for the inevitable transfer of power which occurred during this year’s presidential election. Under the constitution, the president is prohibited from holding office for two consecutive terms and as the then incumbent head of state was coming to the end of his second, Armenia would elect a new leader.

Of course, this being the former Soviet Union where vote-rigging and vote-buying are as much part of the election process as physically casting a vote, it was make or break time for the radical extra-parliamentary opposition in the country. And with the broadcast media controlled by the government, it was only natural that the Internet would be seen as a natural medium to disseminate alternative information.

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.

Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the murder of ethnic Armenian newspaper editor and journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul, Turkey. Dink was shot outside the office of the Agos newspaper on 19 January 2007. A prolific advocate for civil, human and minority rights in Turkey, Dink was killed by 17-year-old Ogun Samast. His murder shocked the world and marked one of few times when Armenian, Turkish and other bloggers spoke about an event making headline news across the world with one voice.

A year on and the conversation in the blogosphere might be less, but many people the world over — and not least in Armenia and Turkey — remember Dink. A rare voice calling for reconciliation between Armenians and Turks, Dink’s message and legacy is still remembered today. A week ago, Blogian posted information on Hrant Dink memorial events to be held the world over.

Internations Musings makes a short but to the point post consisting of just two photographs taken in Istanbul with the title “I believe darkness will one day reunite with light.” Rastî simply posts various quotes and photographs, including one from the Armenian Foreign Minister, Vartan Oskanian.

The brutality, the impunity, the violence of Hrant’s murder serves several political ends. First, it makes Turkey less interesting for Europe, which is exactly what some in the Turkish establishment want. Second, it scares away Armenians and other minorities in Turkey, from pursuing their civil and human rights. Third, it scares those bold Turks who are beginning to explore these complicated, sensitive subjects in earnest.

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.

With 2008 almost upon us, it’s time once again for me to wish readers a Happy New Year. Under normal circumstances I’d also announce that the number of posts will be less as a result, but with the presidential election in Georgia a matter of days away, that hardly seems likely. On the other hand, with parliamentary elections held in Armenia in May earlier this year and the unofficial pre-election campaign starting at the end of 2006, perhaps the situation is not too dissimilar to that this blog found itself in a year ago when the situation was almost as hectic as it is now.

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With 2008 less than a day away at time of writing, it seems only appropriate to take a look back at the blogging highlights in the Caucasus for 2007. Certainly, although blogging is still largely underdeveloped, the year has seen some major highlights, especially with regards to stories that also made headlines worldwide. In the past this has not been the case, but the signs for Armenian and Georgian blogging look very promising indeed, and not least because the first two months of 2008 will see crucial presidential elections take place in both republics.

Although the same might be true for Azerbaijan as its presidential election scheduled for late next year looms closer, the elections seem to have encouraged citizens, activists and journalists to blog. Other high profile events also seem to have pushed more bloggers to engage in online discussion on key issues, especially in the arguably more evolved Armenian blogging scene. Interestingly, however, the first major blogging event of the year came on 19 January 2007 when journalist and editor, Hrant Dink, was murdered in Istanbul, Turkey.

Although Dink was a Turkish citizen and resident in Armenia’s neighbor to the West, he was also an ethnic Armenian and prolific in his calls for reconciliation between Armenians and Turks. His views might have alienated himself from the larger Armenian Diaspora who consider that Genocide Recognition is the most important issue facing Armenians today, but the point was that his assassination shocked the world, including many Turks in Turkey itself as well as those with no links to Armenian circles at all.

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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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Ara at Martuni or Bust posts that his wife has given birth to a baby boy. Alex Manoogian was born on 10 December 2007 at 2.17am weighing 3.7 kilos and measuring 49 cm. Congratulations, Ara.

Unzipped also weighs in on the latest act of stupidity and fear from the authorities ahead of tomorrow’s rally by former president Levon Ter Petrosian. Because the event is scheduled for an earlier time on a Saturday it is likely that the number of those attending would be far in excess of before. No wonder then, that the authorities are running scared, but sorry guys, that’s democracy, I’m afraid. Obviously the EU and CE need to explain this to the government in more certain terms because it appears that they don’t give a damn.

As a result, and although I am not a supporter of Ter Petrosian, I will express my concern with the situation by posting the offending leaflet above in the hope that others will make a stand against increased political persecution and oppression in Armenia by actually attending the rally the authorities obviously want everyone to remain unaware of. If this is the game the authorities are going to play then damn sure they have to fail.

Similar crackdown on leaflets with far more serious consequences happened ahead of Ter-Petrosyan second (16 November) rally too.

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I want to join my voice in solidarity against the atmosphere of fear […] which Armenian authorities are trying to impose ahead of upcoming presidential elections. Today - it’s leaflets, tomorrow - it could be something more serious. Actually, ‘tomorrow’ is partially happening ‘today’, in a form of tax war with pro-opposition supporters or anyone who could even remotely pose a threat to the authorities or express discontent. This is not Armenia we want to see after 19 February (day of elections).

Unzipped’s full post is here.

With less than three months before next year’s presidential election, a campaign site for Levon Ter Petrosian has been set up under a number of domains. Nazarian lists them here while Artmika at Unzipped offers his thoughts on the first election site by a candidate to emerge so far.

News on its launch came via Aramazd. All previous attempts failed to deliver proper content. This one seems like a decent website. It contains biography, current news and archive material, including photos and speeches by Ter-Petrosyan dating back to 1988-1990. Site is predominantly in Armenian. According to Aramazd, English version will be available soon. There is also interactive content there - blog, comments, but these are in their early stages. I assume site will develop further to become fully functional, with more contents added.

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Interesting to note, that Ter-Petrosyan programme section is still “under construction” and divided into 5 headings: Karabakh issue; combating corruption; economic reforms; foreign relations; and army reform. I assume these will be the main issues which Levon will address during his upcoming speeches.

Levon Ter Petrosian, Opposition Rally, Liberty Square, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2007

Without a doubt, the most significant event this winter has been the return of the first president, Levon Ter Petrosian, to the political scene in Armenia. Resigning in 1998 and living virtually as a recluse, Ter Petrosian came out of self-imposed retirement on 21 September — the 16th anniversary of Armenia’s independence — to launch a blistering attack on the government and his successor as president, Robert Kocharian. Most observers took the criticism as indication that Ter Petrosian intended to again run for office.

On 26 October, at his first public rally, he confirmed such speculation by declaring that he would indeed run, but not everybody was happy. While considered an educated and formidable politician and statesman, many Armenians still hold Ter Petrosian responsible for the dire economic situation they found themselves in during the early to mid-90s when electricity shortages were commonplace, and corruption and cases of political persecution sky-rocketed.

In 1996, it is widely believed that the presidential election which secured his second term in office, was falsified.

In the wake of opposition protests following the ‘96 election, Ter Petrosian sent the tanks out onto the streets of Yerevan and opposition activists were persecuted and harassed. No wonder then, that not only did many expect the first president to account for his time in power, but they also demanded it. A rally staged Friday in the capital’s Liberty Square was billed with that intent. Unzipped sets the scene.

Friends report from Yerevan that there are leaflets all over the capital inviting people for a (second) mass rally by ex-President and presidential hopeful Levon Ter-Petrosyan on 16 November. The main expectation of people who plan to go to the rally is that Levon at last will answer to the criticism over his period of presidency. They hope to hear his reflection over such issues as corruption, 1996 presidential elections (which many consider was a green light to all subsequent election frauds), Karabakh and so on. People expect and hope. Will Ter-Petrosyan deliver? We have to wait and see.

The full post is available on Global Voices Online.