"Azeri" barbarians are destroying what's left of the ancient Jugha cemetery

[phantom]

Have you read anyting about Armenian history other then Turks version?
If your Ataturk was so respectfull of nations why did he De-Armenianized and De-minoritized the new Republic so effectively?
Thanks to him my maternal Grandfather didnt have a job under his rule because he passed a law where Christians not to be hired for any job only Muslims.Another words after Kemal took power Armenians were not allowed to work unless they had their own busines.

This must be why so many BolsaHyes are independent businessmen.

[Joseph]

This must be why so many BolsaHyes are independent businessmen.

This is true but regarding larger enterprises, I have met some Armenians that unofficially own businesses but keep a Turkish silent partner. They keep them on the books and pay them a salary and have them pose as the business owners so they can avoid paying additional taxes ( often unofficial-baksheesh) or face too much gov't scrutiny which can be very painfull in Turkey . Most of the money made in the enterprise is then transfered to Swiss Accounts. This is standard practice and has been so since after WWII. It serves two purposes; Allows for profits not the be double taxed and also in case the family has to flee for whatever reason, their wealth can be maintained if they relocate to the diaspora. The days of Armenians being forced to sell their businesses and capital goods at firesale prices are long gone.

[Joseph]

Artsakh

Tinderbox Caucasus
*
Sparks Flying along the Pipeline

By Walter Mayr

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, a new billion-dollar conduit for Caspian oil, will finally start operations this week. But the long-awaited pipeline already has one significant problem: it's vulnerable to attack by Armenian fighters from separatist enclave Nagorno-Karabakh.




A BP pipeline terminal in Azerbaijan.

The future of Azerbaijan lies hidden beneath the earth, in steel pipelines, 107 centimeters (42 inches) in diameter.

Signs posted in freshly raked soil marking the path of the new pipeline read: "Warning -- Extreme High Pressure -- Crude Oil." The pipeline is intended to bring oil from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean for the next few decades, supplying fuel for energy-hungry Western economies.

Shepherds with sun-tanned faces guide their herds across the pipeline's path, which crosses pastureland with rapeseed and poppy fields in full bloom. It's a bright Sunday morning in the lowlands of Azerbaijan. British Petroleum security guards, motorized and on horseback, haven't reported any unusual activity along the pipeline -- that is, until a military vehicle approaches the city of Geranboy from the south, where the cease-fire line lies.

The vehicle is carrying the corpse of Ektan Hadjikaibov. Fellow soldiers say he was killed at 6:30 a.m. this day by a bullet from the Armenian side of the cease-fire line. He was a recruit stationed along the southern course of the pipeline, which runs along the border to Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region that occupies a fertile highland plateau wedged between the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and the Little Caucasus Mountains.

Ektan had just been born when ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave began separating from Azerbaijan. He was six when the war ended officially, a conflict that claimed 30,000 lives and displaced a million people. And he was 18 when he died, directly along the strip of border territory separating the warring Azerbaijanis and Armenians -- known as the cease-fire line since 1994.

The Azerbaijani inhabitants of the village of Tap-Karakoyunlu, which Ektan was sent to protect, have lived in a state of high alert for almost a generation. Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh begins just a few hundred meters south of their settlement, on a road that's been closed for 16 years. The Shahumian district begins a few hundred meters west of the village. Once inhabited by Armenians and the site of a bloody ethnic cleansing campaign during the war, Shahumian remains part of the territory the Armenians are demanding from Azerbaijan.

Oil for the West


DER SPIEGEL
Click on the map for a larger view.

Finally, the strategically important and heavily guarded Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline runs along the northern edge of Shahumian. After 12 years of planning and construction, the BTC will finally be opened in an official ceremony on July 13. A BP-led consortium invested $3.9 billion in the pipeline, which is expected to pump 50 million tons of oil each year from Azerbaijan through Georgia and on to the Turkish Mediterranean coast, where it can then be shipped onward to North America and Europe.

The "deal of the century," conceived in 1994 during the administration of US President Bill Clinton, reflects the bitter struggle for dominance in an area that has traditionally been the site of conflicts of interest among Russian, Turkish and Persian rulers. But once it opens for business, the BTC pipeline will reflect Washington's strategic interests in the Caspian region: to secure long-term access to its oil and natural gas reserves and provide a source of income for long-time NATO ally Turkey and for its more recent, pro-Western partners, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Former US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, to this day an untiring champion of American interests in the Caucasus, helped move the project forward. When conflict in Chechnya flared up in September 1999, Russia abandoned its original plans for an oil pipeline from Baku to the Black Sea via the Chechnyan capital, Grozny. Instead, Moscow is now making do with a pipeline that transports oil from Kazakhstan's Black Sea coast to the Russian side.

After years of geopolitical wrangling, the 1,768-kilometer (1,099-mile) BTC pipeline will pump fuel for the West to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, bypassing a number of states known for their lack of a pro-Western orientation. The pipeline's planners chose the route to avoid the risks of doing business with the mullahs in Iran, the rulers at the Kremlin in Moscow or the Armenians, who emerged victorious from their conflict with Azerbaijan.

Geopolitical premium

The price they'll pay is that a section of the pipeline lies within range of heavy rocket-propelled grenades positioned on the hills of Karabakh. The route also forces investors to do business with the authoritarian Aliyev regime in Baku, upgrading that government to a position of favored business partner of the West. Following the 2003 death of former KGB general Geydar Aliyev, the self-proclaimed "Father of all Azerbaijanis," his son and successor in the presidency, Illham, will now be able to reap the prestige and oil dollars the pipeline project promises to bring.


Pawel Kassin
An Armenian soldier in the frontier zone with Azerbaijan.

The regime in Baku expects the BTC pipeline to yield annual revenues of $1 billion until 2025, a vast sum for a country in which 40 percent of the population lives below the poverty line and the average monthly wage in rural areas is only $40. About 750,000 refugees still live miserable lives in railroad cars, corrugated metal shantytowns and government shelters. And an eighth of Azerbaijani territory, an area much larger than Nagorno-Karabakh, remains occupied by Armenian troops.

The people of the border village of Tap-Karakoyunlu, where young recruit Ektan Hadjikaibov lost his life, also live precarious lives marked by the deaths and injuries that come from constantly living in the line of fire, the loss of pastureland behind the cease-fire line and a lack of clean drinking water whenever the river running along the border becomes clogged with debris.

The Muslim villagers lost the war with Armenia at the cease-fire line, and the pipeline isn't likely to change their lives significantly. In the days when, on May 9 of each year, they used to join the Christian Armenians in Talysh, a village across the border, to celebrate victory over fascism, the days when they still purchased wine and cognac from the Armenians, the two hamlets were linked by a three-and-a-half-kilometer (two-mile) unpaved road. Today the trip from Tap-Karakoyunlu to Talysh passes through 1,002 kilometers (622 miles) of Caucasus detours, through three states and a miniature republic recognized by no one.

The route begins along the pipeline, in the shadow of 3,500-meter (11,483-foot) Mraw Mountain, then crosses the "Red Bridge" to Georgia, finally veering sharply to the south into the Armenian highlands.

Armenia is a poorhouse among the Caucasus states. Its borders to Azerbaijan and Turkey closed, the country is paying dearly for its victory in the war over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, as it struggles with a weak economy and costly imports. The snow-capped peak of Mount Ararat, Armenia's holy mountain, seems almost within reach just behind the capital, Yerevan. Ararat, the legendary resting site of Noah's Ark, today represents the faraway vanishing point of the Armenian soul -- but the mountain lies on Turkish soil.

The two-hour trip to the Lachin corridor leads past convoys of howitzers being hauled through the mountains toward Karabakh. Lachin serves as an umbilical cord between the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

Isolated enclave


Pawel Kassin
The city of Stepanakert.

The corridor ends at Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. Aside from government business, the rulers of this republic, which is not recognized by any other country, spend much of their time providing security for the enclave's special economic zone, where Swiss manufacturers produce clock parts and Russians polish diamonds.

It takes another two hours to reach Talysh, the Armenian's outpost in northeastern Karabakh, along unpaved roads and, finally, steep paths accessible only by Jeep. Talysh, founded in 461 A.D., has traditionally been the Armenians' eagle's nest and lookout point over the Azerbaijani lowlands. The region settled by the Armenians' Muslim neighbors lies directly beneath Talysh like a succulent platter of delicacies -- first the village of Tap-Karakoyunlu, then Naftalan, a resort town and, finally, the new pipeline along the horizon.

"We Armenians are a small group of people, which is why we live in the mountains, the better to defend ourselves," says one resident of Talysh. During the war, their village was occupied by Azerbaijani troops for 22 months, or until April 1994. Many houses are in ruins, and less than a quarter of Talysh's former population of 2,500 has returned. Those who have are once again driving herds of pigs and cows through the streets, as women wring out their laundry at the village well and the elderly sit under acacia trees, recounting the illustrious history of their people.

Armenia is the world's oldest Christian state. Its King Trdat IV was baptized in 303 A.D. Ever conscious of a history spanning thousands of years, today the Armenians live an isolated, cocoon-like existence. Because of their history, Armenian nationalists see the struggle for Karabakh as little more than a tiny fragment of a much larger picture. For Armenians, the genocide committed in the days of the Ottoman Empire, to which about a million of their countrymen fell victim in 1915, merely represents the climax of the long history of suffering of a people that sees itself as a staunch vanguard of Christian civilization on the frontier between Europe and Asia.

As evidence of their own religious tolerance, the Karabakh Armenians like to point out the two intact minarets of the Agdam mosque, towering over a ruined landscape like two exclamation points, drawing attention to the evils of ethnic hatred. But inside the mosque, where the mullah of Agdam once praised the glory of Allah, a cowherd now watches over 27 brown dairy cows standing up to their shackles in dung, while pigs wander the streets of the city. But there is no one left to complain. Agdam, a flourishing city of 160,000 primarily Muslim Azerbaijanis before the war, is little more than a desolate pile of dust and stone today.

Although it has always been outside the borders of Karabakh, the Armenians continue to hold Agdam as part of a "buffer zone" -- a bargaining chip for the day when a decision will be made over the future and borders of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Caucasus region's "Black Garden."

Simmering conflict

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's "Minsk Group," which has spent the last 14 years struggling to find a solution to the conflict, met most recently in May to discuss the situation, but without palpable results. A meeting between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan was also unsuccessful. Armenian President Robert Kocharian, born in Karabakh, and his Azerbaijani counterpart, President Illham Aliyev, who stems from a clan in the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhitchevan, embody to an extreme the two countries' widely diverging positions on the conflict.


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Azerbaijan insists on the full return of all occupied territories, while Armenia wants recognition of the 1991 declarations of independence in Nagorno-Karabakh and a neighboring region. The Armenians have only backed down from their demand that the separatist region be annexed to Armenia.

The powers that be in Karabakh have taken a decidedly poker-faced stance toward the prospect of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline coming into full operation within firing range of their most advance positions. Although the Karabakhians are aware of the most recent threatening language coming from Baku, their deputy foreign minister, Massis Mayilian, hopes the moderating influence of international investors will calm tensions: "The project requires stability in the region. And we are in favor of stability. The pipeline would be in the middle of a war zone the minute the Azeris launched an armed conflict."

The current sparks flying between the two countries could easily turn into a full-blown conflagration along the pipeline. Azerbaijani military expert Useir Jafarov warns that even Tehran's mullah regime could easily respond to a US attack on Iran with rocket strikes against the pipeline. And one of Karabakh's most respected civil rights activist, Karen Ohanjanian, has called for "destroying the pipeline" if Azerbaijan uses its oil revenues to bankroll a new war in Karabakh.

A new war?

Communiqués from Baku clearly indicate that the country is preparing for war, says Seiran Oganian, Karabakh's defense minister. But his small republic, says the former Soviet army officer, a general and veteran of the Karabakh war, is prepared for all eventualities: "Our command structure is in place. We are capable of defending the status quo, but also of responding to attacks or launching our own preventive strikes."


Pawel Kassin
A bilboard in Azerbaijan of Gejdar Aliev and his son Elham Aliev - the current president.

A military force of 25,000 troops defends Nagorno-Karabakh's 137,000 inhabitants. Just how many of these troops were sent to the enclave from the Armenia motherland remains a well-kept secret. But it is undisputed that the Karabakh government is backed by money and logistics from Armenia, and that Armenia enjoys the support of long-time ally Russia, which still maintains military bases in the country. In return, Moscow has been permitted to acquire key sectors of the Armenian economy.

"What's really at stake here is global politics -- America versus Russia and, most importantly, oil," says Valery Babajian, the town historian in Talysh. A veteran of the 1990s Nagorno-Karabakh war, he has never forgotten how the Azerbaijanis ransacked the graves of his ancestors as they marched south.

"But someday," says Babajian, pointing down at the flatlands, "we will live in peace again with the people over there in Tap-Karakoyunlu." Those people down there are the ones young recruit Ektan Hadjikaibov died for in the early light of morning. The deadly shot must have come from up here, from somewhere in the hills above Talysh, where the Armenians, barricaded in trenches reinforced with blocks of stone and iron bars, warily watch the enemy through narrow openings in their fortifications.

"In the Soviet days, we calculated the distance to the Azerbaijanis in kilometers by street," they say. "Today we use artillery ranges."

[Joseph]

Another Classic, Nice try Azerbaijan

OSCE Blames Azerbaijan for Karabakh Arsons

YEREVAN--After weeks of monitoring the region, the OSCE concluded that recent
wildfires in Nagorno-Karabakh were a direct result of arson perpetrated by
Azerbaijan, reported Armenia's Foreign Ministry Wednesday in a statement.
A report by a personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Andrzei
Kasprchik was delivered to both the Armenian and Azeri foreign ministries,
concluding that Azerbaijan was the cause of the wildfires in that area.
"We hope that this will put an to Azerbaijan's irresponsible and absurd false
accusations," said Armenian foreign ministry spokesman Vladimir Karapetian.
The Azeri foreign ministry acknowledged the receipt of the report. A ministry
spokesperson said that it will issue a statement after reviewing the entire
report.
On Tuesday, the Armenian Foreign Ministry issued an announcement regarding
this matter. Below is the translated text of the statement:
"The fires on the Nagorno Karabakh territory bordering with Azerbaijan have
been taking place since early June 2006. The situation is a subject of serious
concern for the Karabakh leadership, since it poses a threat for the security
of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and its population.
"A special commission formed by the representatives of the ministries and
departments responsible for security issues has been established in the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic to study the circumstances and reveal the reasons of
the fires. The subunits of fire-prevention service, the Nagorno-Karabakh
Republic Department for Emergency Situations and the leadership of local
administrations and population have been mobilized for the localization of the
centers of the fires and non-admission of fire spreading. A twenty-four-hour
duty has been organized in all the communities to prevent emergency
situations.
"However, the situation in the regions is deteriorating due to the fires and
is ripe with unfavorable long-term consequences for the Nagorno Karabakh
Republic agriculture and food security. The number and area of the fires at
wheat fields on the territories bordering with Azerbaijan have sharply risen.
"As a result of the work of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic special commission,
indisputable data indicate that the reasons for the fires were hostile
activities by Azeris. By these actions official Baku pursues an agenda to
erode
the Nagorno Karabakh Republic's economy and deprive it of the possibility of
development. In order to conceal its intentions, the Azeri leadership, from
the
very outset, has launched a wide-ranging campaign both in the local and
foreign
mass media, in an attempt to lay the blame on Karabakh. This campaign is a
continuation of the propaganda and the psychological war against the people of
Nagorno Karabakh and is blatant attempt to hide this act of aggression.
"We would like to remind that as early as in 2001, the Nagorno Karabakh
Republic authorities suggested via the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmen on the
Nagorno Karabakh conflict resolution, a package of measures on establishing
confidence between the parties to the conflict. In particular, we offered
cooperation in fire prevention on pastures and agricultural territories in the
bordering regions. Regrettably, official Stepanakert's initiatives were not
supported at the time in Baku and were not honored with due attention by the
OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmen.
"Moreover, as early as June 15, 2006, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Ministry
of Foreign Affairs addressed a request to the Office of the OSCE Chairman-in
Office's Personal Representative to hold a crisis monitoring on territory
bordering with Azerbaijan to estimate the real situation on the spot and
refute
the Azeri party's vain accusations.
"We draw the attention of the international community and especially the OSCE
Minsk Group Co-Chairmen to the Stepanakert's right, in the event Azerbaijan's
hostile activities are not addressed, to undertake adequate measures of
response to ensure the Republic's security".

[Joseph]

Armenian art celebrated at Louvre
JENNY BARCHFIELD
Associated Press
PARIS - Mongolian dragons, Persian peaxxxxs and radiating Arabic stars are just some of the foreign motifs that embellish Armenia's sacred Christian relics - showing how the oft-invaded nation has drawn on outside influences to strengthen its own identity.

A new exhibition at the Louvre Museum in Paris showcases the resilience of Armenian culture. "Armenia Sacra," which runs through May 21, brings together more than 200 of the country's most spectacular religious objects, many of which survived and flourished during centuries of foreign domination.

Geographically, Armenia is at a crossroads, long tucked between the rival Roman and Persian empires, and later dominated by Russia and the Soviet Union.

"They're stuck right in the middle of things," said Ioanna Rapti, one of the exhibit's curators. "They borrowed foreign tastes, motifs and symbols, adapting them to fit their own culture."

Objects in the exhibition - which include dozens of manuscripts, a national specialty - come from museums throughout Armenia and beyond. Relatively small and portable, manuscripts were often taken abroad by Armenians fleeing the recurring invasions.

Other times, they were removed from the country for more sinister reasons.

"When hostile powers pillaged Armenia, they often took manuscripts hostage," Rapti said. "Armenians had to pay large ransoms to get them back."

Thank goodness they did. The exhibit's manuscripts, with their intricate texts and hand-painted miniatures, are stunning. They are also a remarkable record of Armenian thought, culture and history.

Widely considered to be the world's oldest Christian state, Armenia adopted Christianity as its national faith in 301 A.D. A thick, 1569 volume tells the fable of the country's conversion: In a color-drenched miniature, a monk appears to cast a spell over a boar draped in the purple cloak of royalty.

The monk is Saint Gregory, who would become Armenia's patron; the wild pig represents the country's fourth century king, Tiridate IV, who according to legend became a boar after he persecuted early Christians. He supposedly recovered his human form upon embracing Christianity, which he made the state religion.

A miniature from a 1776 manuscript depicts a fifth century monk, national hero Mesrop Mashtots, hunched over a desk, developing the Armenian alphabet. Mashtots looks hard at work, though legend has it that all he did was copy down the letters God revealed to him.

The alphabet is at the heart of Armenian identity. The rounded, horseshoe-shaped letters emblazon not only the manuscripts, but also more unlikely objects such as reliquaries, pulpits and carved doors.

Other objects testify to the imprint left by Mongolian, Ottoman and Arab invaders.

Chinese dragons grimace from the yellowing page of a 13th century manuscript. The dragon is thought to have entered Armenia on the backs of Mongolian invaders, delicately embroidered on their silk gowns. Arab-influenced stars radiate across a 12th century monastery door, while exotic animals like elephants, peaxxxxs and unicorns march around its walnut frame.

The exhibit also features some 30 "khatchkars" - massive stone slabs carved with lace-fine crosses - that dotted the Armenian plateau as early as the fourth century. Some were tombstones.

One, the Djulfe Khatchkar, comes from a cemetery in Nakhichevan, an enclave of neighboring Azerbaijan separated from the rest of the country by Armenian territory. Armenia claims Azerbaijani soldiers have systematically destroyed Armenian crosses there over the past few years. The issue is sensitive, and last year, Azerbaijani officials denied a report that the cemetery had vanished.

Rapti said the Djulfe Khatchkar is one of the cemetery's few survivors.

The exhibition is part of the so-called year of Armenia in France, an initiative promoting Armenian culture. French President Jacques Chirac and his Armenian counterpart, President Robert Kocharian, inaugurated the exhibit, which Chirac called "sublime."

It "shows the singularity of Armenian civilization, which throughout its tumultuous history gave the world masterpieces," the French leader said.

For curator Rapti, the show is helping to boost Armenian moral.

"It shows they are not alone, although they are a little country with very little power," she said.

[bell-the-cat]

A photo I received recently.



UNESCO / ICOMOS inspectors observe the site of the destroyed Julfa Cemetery from Iranian territory. This was done in the context of the September 2007 UNESCO / ICOMOS inspection of the Armenian monastery of St. Stephanos (which Iran has submitted to UNESCO's World Heritage Committee for registration in UNESCO's List of World Heritage Sites).