Corruption

YEREVAN, ARMENIA We are at the brink of a pair of wars, civil and regional, and it is better to speak now. Armenia, that ancient civilization deprived by the tragedies of yore of its capacity for contemporary statecraft, needs immediately to put its house in democratic order. Finally responsible for its own record, it also has legitimate expectations of the international partnership. In this global and so contracted century of ours, where resources and rights often compete for precedence, domestic demeanor and foreign affairs form part of one and the same policy agenda....

YEREVAN, ARMENIA That an Armenian repatriate, American-born into a legacy of remembrance inherited from a line of survivors of genocide nearly a century ago, feels compelled to entitle his thoughts with a focus on Turkey– and not Armenia– reveals a larger problem, a gaping wound, and an imperative for closure long overdue on both sides of history’s tragic divide. The new Armenia, independent of its longstanding statelessness since 1991, is my everyday life, as are the yearnings of my fellow citizens for their daily dignity, true democracy, the rule of law, and an empowering end to sham elections and the corruption, arrogance and unaccountability of power....

Abstract The current post-Soviet bureaucracy in South Caucasian republics, and notably in ethnically diverse Azerbaijan and Georgia, has yet been unable to link ethnicity, territory, and political administration in the process of state-building and democratic development. Bureaucratic evolution from communism to liberalism has simply contributed to the establishment of a handy “electoral democracy” and lucrative economic liberalism for the elites. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, particularistic identities, reinforced differences, and fragmentation of societies have been the dominant characteristics of the South Caucasian republics of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan (or Trans-Caucasus)....

Yerevan, Armenia On October 27th, 1999 five gunmen broke into the chamber of the National Assembly of Armenia during the weekly session of parliamentary inquiries addressed to the Government and opened fire. Within seconds they had killed the Prime Minister of Armenia as well as the Chairman of the Parliament, his two deputies and 4 other members of the Parliament and the Government, whose nearly total membership was present at the session....

President Kocharian dismisses senior ambassador in continuing power consolidation. On Wednesday, April 20, 2000, President Robert Kocharian dismissed Armen Sarkissian, Armenia’s Ambassador to the United Kingdom and the country’s most senior diplomat in Europe. President Kocharian did not provide any explanation for Ambassador Sarkissian’s dismissal. Foreign Ministry sources only said that his sacking was in line with recent efforts to reduce ambassadorial tenures to a “maximum of four years”, but Sarkissian’s sacking reveals a deeper political malaise in Armenia....

After being pursued from Syria to Moscow, Abdullah Ocalan-leader of the PKK, the separatist guerrilla insurgency which seeks autonomy for Turkey’s large Kurdish minority-has fled to Italy. An Italian court has ruled that its country’s constitution prohibits Ocalan from being extradited to Turkey because he would most likely be executed. The State Department and much of the American media have criticized Italy for upholding its constitution while overlooking a far more important consideration: that Turkey has reacted more like a militant Mideast backwater than a NATO ally....