Tag Archives: Armenia

Armenia and Turkey’s version of century-old killings face-off in rival films

YEREVAN, APRIL 17 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — It has been billed as the Battle of the Big Screen.

Two films, one produced with Armenian backing and the other with Turkish money, are going head-to- head to deliver the propaganda results asked for by their paymasters over fighting and killings in eastern Turkey 100 years ago.

Armenia accuses Turkey of genocide and the systematic murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenians at the end of the First World War. Turkey has always refuted the charges and said that the deaths of the Armenians were linked to general fighting and chaos as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

Armenia’s government has been on a mission to persuade various governments to recognise the killings as a genocide. Many have, possibly motivating Armenia to switch its focus to foreign audiences.

This appears to be the driving motivation behind ‘The Promise’ which is released worldwide on April 28. And it’s been heavily-backed with a cast including Christian Bale, Charlotte Le Bon and Oscar Isaac. The story starts off in Istanbul in 1915 with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals. Bale plays an American reporter who is swept up in the action, heading out to eastern Turkey, witnessing murders by Turkish soldiers.

Despite its powerful cast and $100m budget, ‘The Promise’ has received mixed reviews, although perhaps the message that its backers were aiming to project gets through.

Peters Travers from Rolling Stone wrote: “Director Terry George delivers a scalding dramatization of the Ottoman Empire’s 1915 genocidal annihilation of its Armenian citizens, and then dulls it with a soapy, invented love triangle.”

But it’s the audience reaction which has been more telling and triggered more controversy.

Media reported that in October 2016, after only three small pre-re- lease screenings, the IMDb website said that around 86,000 people had rated the film with heavily polarised results. IMDb said that 55,126 voters had given the film a one star and 30,639 had given the film 10 stars.

In an interview with the Sunday Times Mr George, director of ‘The Promise’ said that he thought that the Turkey-funded ‘The Ottoman Lieu- tenant’ had been commissioned and produced to derail the impact of his film. It focuses on the same historical era and also features a strong cast, including Ben Kingsley and Michiel Huisman. It painted the killings of Armenians as the accidental consequence of war.

Like its rival film ‘The Promise’, ‘The Ottoman Lieutenant’ also attracted equal measures of praise and disgust from online audience reviewers.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)

Armenian Investor’s Club acts

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APRIL 13 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Drawing comparisons with Russia’s oligarch network, the so-called Investors’ Club of Armenia pledged to invest $300m in stimulating business across a range of sectors from tourism to IT to energy. The Investors’ Club is a group of Armenia’s wealthiest businessmen brought together by PM Karen Karapetyan. He set up the group just before an election earlier this month.

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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)

Armenia to hold visa liberalisation talks with EU

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APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Visa liberalisation with the EU is the next obvious step for EU-Armenia relations, Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian said at a meeting with his European counterparts. Last month an enhanced partnership agreement came into play between the EU and Armenia. Georgia won visa-free access to the EU at the end of March, but Armenia is a member of the Russia-centric Eurasia Economic Union and a visa- liberalisation process has not been discussed.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Armenian GDP growth to be higher than expected

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APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The IMF increased its expected GDP growth in Armenia in 2017 to 3% from the 2.7% it had forecast in December. It said that growth had been strong in the first quarter of the year, at 6%, mainly due to higher than expected foreign capital expenditure. The IMF said that it forecast inflation of 2% for 2017. Armenia has been fighting deflation over the past year.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Armenia’s Republican party wins the election

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YEREVAN, APRIL 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Republican Party of President Serzh Sargsyan was confirmed as the winner of a parliamentary election in Armenia on April 2.

Armenia’s Central Election Commission said the Republican party had won just under 50% of the vote (55 seats), the generally pro-government Tsarukyan Alliance won 27% of the vote (30 seats), the opposition Way Out Alliance nearly 8% (9 seats) and the pro-government Armenian Revolutionary Federation 6.6% (7 seats).

No other political bloc passed the 7% threshold to win seats or the 5% threshold needed to be breached by an individual political party in an election that was marked by alleged vote buying. There were no reports of the protests that had been expected.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Republican Party easily wins Armenian parliamentary election

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YEREVAN, APRIL 2/3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s ruling Republican Party won a parliamentary election that will shape the country’s politics for years to come, although its opponents complained of vote- rigging and monitors said that there had been irregularities.

Victory for the Republican Party, though, didn’t trigger the outpouring of frustration and resentment that some had predicted and a Conway Bulletin correspondent in the capital said it was calmer now than in any previous election over the past few years. In 2008, protests dragged on until clashes between demonstrators and soldiers killed at least 11 people.

Much of the Republican Party support came from people unwilling to take a risk with the opposition.

“I had to vote for Republicans as I am a teacher which means I work for the state and I am paid from state and this is kind of a payback,” said a Yerevan-based teacher after voting.

Only four groups won enough votes to enter parliament which will wield more power after a change to the constitution that shifts power from the president to parliament.

President Serzh Sargsyan’s Republican Party won 49% of the vote and will hold 55 seats of the 105-seat parliament. The Tsarukyan alliance led by oligarch Gagik Tsarukyan, generally considered to be sympathetic to the government, won 27% of the vote and will have 30 MPs. For the opposition, the Yelk (Way Out) bloc won 7% of the vote and Armenia’s Revolutionary Foundation party won 6%.

The assessment of the OSCE’s election monitoring unit, ODHIR, though, was less than flattering.

The elections were “tainted by credible information about vote-buy- ing, and pressure on civil servants and employees of private companies,” it said in a report.

The Conway Bulletin spoke to one person happy to take money in exchange for their vote.

“I wasn’t going to go at all, but my neighbour learned that they were buying votes,” said a 32-year-old man in Yerevan. “They paid 10,000 dram ($20.66) per person and explained how to vote.”

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Armenia’s new constitution

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APRIL 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — >> Armenia has just held a parliamentary election that many observers have said is its most important since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Why?

>> The parliamentary election on April 2 was the first since a referendum in December 2015 that changed the constitution and shifted the balance of power away from the President to the PM and parliament. The constitutional changes don’t actually come into effect until President Serzh Sargysan finishes his second and final term in office next year, but the point is that the parliament elected this month will have more power than any other in Armenia’s independence.

>> What are the main changes in the constitution?

>> Whereas neighbouring Georgia shifted some power to parliament in constitutional changes in 2010, Armenia went the whole hog and will move from a presidential system to a parliamentary one. The president is to become a figurehead with no decision-making powers. Direct elections for the president will also be scrapped, parliament will instead pick him or her. Instead, the PM will be the head of the military, will appoint ministers and will set the various policies. Previously, the President had controlled all the major decisions, including appointing the PM.

>> So why were the changes controversial?

>> There the suspicion that Sargsyan and his allies were trying to tie up power for themselves. Sargsyan is obliged to stand down as President at the end of his second term. The opposition said that he would then try to become PM to retain all his power. We’ll have to wait and see on this. It was certainly convenient for Sargsyan that only his allies and appointees sat on the commission to draft the new constitution and also that it doesn’t come into force until the end of his second term.

>> How has Parliament changed with the new constitution?

>> The number of deputies is being cut to 101 directly elected, down from 131, with four seats being given to ethnic minorities. The 101 seats will also be elected wholly through a system of proportional representation. A second round vote has also been introduced to ensure that the winning party has a parliamentary majority. Opposition members have criticised the reforms as undemocratic but the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s constitutional watchdog, gave the changes a qualified thumbs up.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Comment: The green shoots of a recovery are visible

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APRIL 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In Edinburgh, where The Conway Bulletin has its editorial HQ, the green shoots of a timid spring are finally beginning to breakthrough after a long, grey winter.

And it’s the same scenario for the economies of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. A deep, bleak winter has enveloped them since mid-2014 but now, finally, data suggests a revival is on the horizon.

In this week’s newspaper, we report that both the Kyrgyz and Armenian Central Banks have kept their key interest rates steady. This, in itself, is a victory. Armenia has been furiously cutting its rates from a high of 10.5% in 2015 to 6% to try to stimulate growth and beat deflation. Now it says this policy has gone far enough and that inflation of around 4% is predicted this year.

In Kyrgyzstan, the economic news is even more upbeat. In its statement explaining just why it had kept interest rates steady, the Central Bank said that it was no longer having to intervene in the money market to keep the som currency from sliding. It also said that the economy had grown by 5.4% in January and February compared to the same period in 2016.

Armenia and Kyrgyzstan are two of the smaller economies in the region but the larger economies are also reporting positive news.

In Georgia, the statistics agency said that the economy had grown by 4.8% in the first two months of the year, pushed up by a growth in exports and an all- important rise in remittances. Georgia may also be benefiting from several local factors. Improved relations with Russia have given exports a major boost, especially wine, and the scrapping of visa regulations for Iranians has encouraged a large rise in tourists and business trips.

For the region’s two major economies the data has been less flattering, although there are still signs of improvements. In Azerbaijan, there is disagreement between economists on whether its economy will grow or not after it shrank by 3.8% in 2016. It’s dependent on oil, and prices are currently hovering around $50/barrel, above the anticipated $40/barrel.

In Kazakhstan, the Central Bank last month cut its interest rate and gave its most upbeat assessment of the economy, pointing out that inflation was under control and growth was expected.

And if you’re still not convinced about those green shoots of economic recovery, and that’s understandable as, just like a Scottish spring, they are fragile, take a look at the Azerbaijani manat and the Kazakh tenge. They are both up against the US dollar by more than 5% this year.

By James Kilner, Editor, The Conway Bulletin

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Armenian PM visits Turkmenistan

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MARCH 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenian PM Karen Karapetyan flew to Ashgabat for a meeting with Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, his first visit to Turkmenistan since taking on the premiership in September last year. According to reports from the meeting, he pledged to boost bilateral cooperation.

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Investors set up club in Armenia

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MARCH 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a major boost to Armenia’s business-friendly PM, Karen Karapetyan, 36 Armenian millionaires living in Russia said that they would chip into a new fund designed to kick-start business in Armenia. At a signing ceremony in Yerevan, Mr Karapetyan said that the Investors Club of Armenia would help to stimulate further economic growth. It will also have helped give Mr Karapetyan and his Republican Party a boost ahead of an election on April 2. The Investors Club has not yet named any target projects.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)