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March 28
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This week the Lebanon-based Aztag daily has published the reasoning of Gegham Sareyan, one of the members of the Armenian community in Lebanon. He speaks of the importance of preserving the pure Armenian language. Sareyan considers it inadvisable to use foreign words while the Armenian language has equivalents for all of them.

According to him, “during the personality cult, it was not only humans, but also art, literature and language that suffered. Without having necessary knowledge of their native language, some statesmen, made arbitrary decisions making some Armenian words ‘obsolete’ and putting their foreign equivalents into use. All that had no scholarly basis, being the result of personality cult. It should be noted, however, that attempts to restore the pure Armenian language were made: teachers, writers and public representatives addressed the problem. Even world-famous scholars addressed the problem, but, for some unclear reasons, all that remained &‘voice crying in the wilderness.’ In modern times, a language is a vital factor for both individuals and entire nations. Is it necessary to prove one that knowing his or her native language is each person’s sacred duty? It is through the use of mother tong that a person’s life and mental and spiritual world is shaped…”

The Asbarez newspaper reports that “the Philadelphia Museum of Art will present a major traveling retrospective celebrating the extraordinary life and work of Armenian American artist Arshile Gorky, a seminal figure in the movement toward gestural abstraction that would transform American art in the years after World War II.

”The exhibition, which will run from October 21 to January 10, 2010 in Philadelphia, will travel to Tate Modern, London (February 10 – May 3, 2010) and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (June 6 – September 20, 2010) following its debut in Philadelphia. A Retrospective will premier at the Museum and present 180 paintings, sculptures and works on paper reflecting the full scope of Gorky’s prolific career.

The exhibition has been organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and will be accompanied by a major publication, published in association with Yale University Press.

Born Vosdanig Adoian around 1904 near Lake Van in an Armenian province of Ottoman Turkey, Gorky witnessed as a young boy the ethnic cleansing of his people, the minority Armenians. Gorky’s mother died in his arms…

Gorky took his own life on July 21, 1948, leaving behind an impressive body of work that secured his reputation as the last of the great Surrealist painters and an important precursor to Abstract Expressionism…

The Argentina-based Komitas choir, 35 singers, has marked its 80th anniversary. On the occasion a Diario Armenia reporter met with Makruhí Eolmessekian, Director of the choir. Ms. Eolmessekian has been directing the choir for almost 40 years. She says she loves music, and all that has to do with the Armenia and Armenians, best in the world. When a child, she loved Komatas’ works and dreamed of becoming a pianist. She entered the National Conservatoire of Music and Scenic Art (Conservatorio Nacional de Música y Arte Escénico). Ms. Eolmessekian tries to speak Armenia as often as she can. She thinks Armenian is a very beautiful language and advises young Armenians living in Argentina to learn their mother tong. She also admires Armenian literature. During concerts Ms. Eolmessekian often recites poems in both Armenia and Spanish.

The Komitas Choire was founded in 1929, and has since been doing its best to take the ancient Armenian cultural heritage to people everywhere. On August 29, the choir is to start the celebrations of its 80th anniversary with concerts, including solo performances.

Diario Armenia also addressed politics. Specifically, Jorge Rubén Kazandjian, Editor of Diario Armenia, speaks of the passivity, laziness and inconsistency of Armenian diplomats, which allowed the Turkish foreign office to achieve success in pursuing its Armenian Genocide denial policy not only in Europe, in the Middle East, but also in South America.

Specifically, Turkish diplomats launched vigorous activities in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Chile. Under the circumstances, the resignation of RA Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan, whose response was nothing but worthless comments, is quite logical in the context unfavorable for both Armenia and the Diaspora. Meanwhile, the Turkish diplomats’ activities produce results…

The Antelias agency reports that an international academic conference on the Armenian Genocide and International Law will take place from September 2 to 4 at Haigazian University.

Organized by the Haigazian University and the Armenian National Committee-Middle East, the conference will discuss the Armenian Genocide from the perspective of international law and tackle issues such as professional ethics and genocide denial, the consequences of the Genocide and the rights of the Armenian nation within the context of international law, and means of further promoting the field of Armenian Genocide Studies.

A number of scholars in genocide studies and experts in international law have been invited to the two-day conference. They will be arriving from Armenia, Canada, Egypt, Ireland, Lebanon, England, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.

A book telling the truth about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been published. The Noyev Kovcheg (Noah’s Ark) newspaper recently published an article about the book written by the political scientist and journalists Arsen Melik-Shahnazarov. The book entitled “Nagorno-Karabakh: facts versus lies” deals with information and ideological aspects of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Melik-Shahnazarov’s work contains an in-depth analysis of the history of the conflict between the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh in its broad sense (not to be mixed with the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region) and the pseudo-Azerbaijani nationalist authorities. The author’s father, Ashot Melik-Shahnazarov (1931-2004) was a well-known Armenian and Soviet diplomat. His ancestors were princes in Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1988, Melik-Shahnazarov Senior actively joined his people’s struggle against the colonial rule of the Baku regime.

Melik-Shahnazarov was going deeply into all the aspects of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, paying special attention to well-reasons exposure of falsifications “heaped up” by the Baku-based claimants to Nagorno-Karabakh and their supporters abroad. The result is a most interesting fundamental work for the general public.

“Can Turkey wish away the Armenians and their past, by denying historical facts?” asks the Lebanon-based Daily Start newspaper. The newspaper provides an answer by drawing parallels between some problems.

“Turkey's decision to dramatically switch gears on how it deals with its Kurdish citizens is part of a &‘Kurdish initiative’ by Prime Minister Erdogan, and gives the region a considerable amount of food for thought. Turkey's earlier policies were well-known, if not infamous: erasing the names of villages of its Kurdish community and banning the use of the Kurdish language in public settings, among other measures, all a part of ‘Turkification’,” the newspaper writes. According to the authors, the same “the old-style policies of ethnic ‘cultural cleansing’” can be seen in Palestine.

The newspaper refers to similar cases in North Africa, where “the Amazig people of North Africa, commonly referred to as the Berbers, face similar struggles over asserting their cultural and other rights.” As regards Iraq, the newspaper writes that “[it] provides an example of non-state actors targeting ethnic and religious groups, such as Kurds, Turkmen and various Christian sects, to create a supposedly ‘purer’ country.” The authors arrived at the conclusion that “such policies are doomed to fail.” A striking example is Turkey, which “was mired in a fierce strain of nationalism over six decades…” On our part, we would like to note that Turkey has so far had courage to show goodwill to the Kurdish issue. As regards the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish Government prefers the criminal negationist ideology.

Progress in the Cyprus, Kurdish and Armenian issues will help the region achieve stability, writes Hürriyet Daily News, quoting the British Ambassador to Turkey Nick Baird, whose new post will start next month in London as director-general for Europe and Globalization.

According to the ambassador, “Turkey is making good progress in solving the points of contention.” He expressed the confidence that “we have to make progress on that [Nagorno-Karabakh] issue in order to take a step forward in the Armenian road map more generally.”

The newspaper writes on that “[this] April, both Turkey and Armenia announced a road map to normalize their troubled relations, saying they achieved tangible progress and mutual understanding in talks. Ankara’s move drew criticism from Azerbaijan, which argues that opening the border will block a settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh. Opposition to the road map, both inside Turkey and from Baku, prompted Ankara to return to its original position, with the prime minister assuring that the border would not be opened before a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.” Commenting on Anraka’s position, Baird said the Turkish Government did not “have very much choice.”

He outgoing British Ambassador also mentioned the problem of Cyprus in the context of Turkey’s integration into the European Union (EU).

Mustafa Kemal, the first president of Turkey, who is better known as Ataturk, continued his predecessor’s criminal policy and set a good example to his successors in denying the Armenian Genocide. On March 7, 1920, he sent a telegraph to Admiral Bristol refuting “the claims of so called Armenian genocide, which [were] fabricated to break away Armenians from Turkish community,” reported www.topix.com. In his “righteous indignation” Ataturk asked the U.S. Government and allied forces to enlighten the “World community about the essence of this propaganda of slaughter of Armenians.” He claimed those pursuing their own interests fabricated a lie about the number of slaughtered Armenians.

“What is hampering the normalization of relations between Ankara and Yerevan is a dispute over Karabakh and Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan, not the widely discussed topic of genocide,” the political analyst and journalist Vicken Cheterian writes in Le Monde diplomatique.

Ankara wants Armenia to withdraw its troops from Karabakh and other occupied territories ob Azerbaijan before it opens the border and establishes diplomatic relations with Armenia, the authors writes.

The expert also mentioned Barack Obama’s 24 April speech to the Armenians, when he “used the expression ‘medz yeghern’, meaning ‘great calamity’, and not the word which Armenian militants have been struggling for decades to hear.”

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