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ANKARA: Hovannisian: Armenia Is Less Democratic Than Turkey

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  • ANKARA: Hovannisian: Armenia Is Less Democratic Than Turkey

    HOVANNISIAN: ARMENIA IS LESS DEMOCRATIC THAN TURKEY

    Journal of Turkish Weekly
    April 2 2006

    Richard Hovannisian, a renowned U.S. academic of Armenian descent,
    named Armenia a "failed state", Armenian press reported.

    Richard Hovannisian, a senior professor of Armenian and Near Eastern
    History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), claimed
    that domestic policies pursued by the administration of President
    Robert Kocharian have alienated a large part of the country's
    population and the influential Armenian community in the United States.

    "Watching from the outside, we follow with pain the continuing
    electoral and other illegalities committed in Armenia," he told RFE/RL
    in an interview.

    "We would have loved to see freedom of speech and thought in Armenia,
    instead of repression, secret police persecution and lies spread by
    state media" Prof. Dr. Richard Hovannisian added.

    Hovannisian, who is arguably the most famous of Armenian-American
    historians, believes that Armenia is now less democratic state
    than Turkey.

    Richard Hovannisian argued that Turkish press is freer than the press
    in Armenia.

    According to Ruzanna Stepanian from Armenia Liberty "The remark is
    extraordinary for a scholar who has spent several decades researching
    the 1915 Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire and campaigning for
    its recognition by modern-day Turkey and the international community."

    Hovannisian serves on the board of directors of nine scholarly and
    civic organizations, including the International Institute on the
    Holocaust and Genocide and the Washington-based Armenian National
    Institute. He also became in 1990 the first foreign social scientist
    to be elected a member of Armenia's National Academy of Sciences.

    "We must not become a failed state. If this state also fails, we will
    have no future," he added.

    "As long as our rulers fail to realize that they are not on the right
    track, that they must accept the people's will, that they must allow
    political freedoms, I won't be able to say that there will be positive
    change in this country."

    Similarly Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sedat Laciner, director of Ankara-based
    USAK, shares the idea of "failed state":

    "Armenians failed to preserve their first independent Armenia. They
    sacrificed it for the so-called revenge. If they seek to survive as
    a state, they should have good relations with the neigbours. That's
    the first and foremost thing they have to realise. They relied on the
    Russians, British, French and Americans. Time passed and all of them
    went to their homes. And the Armenians with the Turks shared the same
    fate. Now the Armenians should not sacrifice their independent state.

    They need Turkey, if they want an independent Armenia. Otherwise,
    Armenia will be a tool in other nations' national interests."

    http://www.turkishweekly.net/news.php ?id=29133

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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