Armenia

The University of Munster in Germany announced on Friday that a team of its archaeologists has uncovered one of the oldest Christian churches in the world in the Ararat Plain of Armenia.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Wednesday that his country will withdraw from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-dominated security bloc that includes the former Soviet territories in Central Asia.

Armenian organizations were outraged by President Joe Biden’s Armenian Remembrance Day statement on Wednesday because he did not mention modern genocide against Armenian Christians of the Nagorno-Karabakh region completed this year by the conquering armies of Muslim Azerbaijan.

Officials in Istanbul banned a ceremony attempting to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the Armenian genocide organized for Wednesday, an event perpetrated by the last remnants of the Ottoman Empire and continuously denied by Ankara to this day.

Freedom House rates the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Azerbaijan conquered in 2023, as the most unfree place on Earth.

Armenia’s sole synagogue is said to have been targeted by an arson attack, prompting the officials in the former Soviet republic to launch an investigation, according to a report. 

United Nations relief personnel arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh on Sunday to discover that nearly all of the ethnic Armenian Christians who have lived in the region for centuries have fled, leaving only “ghost towns” for invading Muslim-majority Azerbaijan.

Armenian separatists on Wednesday agreed to a cease-fire with Azerbaijan that effectively surrendered control of their territory to the Azeri government. The separatists agreed to disband and disarm their forces, and Azerbaijan agreed to halt military action against them.

The congressional Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), held a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the plight of Armenian Christians trapped by an Azerbaijani blockade in the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. The commission heard testimony from experts who said Azerbaijan’s actions clearly constituted genocide, with complicity from Turkey and the Islamist forces it has dispatched into the region.

Armenia on Sunday observed the 108th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide with a procession of 10,000 torchbearers marching through the capital city of Yerevan.

A German court has convicted a 30-year-old man who drove into groups of pedestrians in Berlin last year of one count of murder.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s remarks to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday focused on what he described as “the latest Azerbaijani unprovoked aggression.” Armenia and Azerbaijan are once again skirmishing along their contested border, each side accusing the other of violating a cease-fire negotiated after they fought a six-week war in 2020.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s address to the 77th U.N. General Assembly in New York City on Tuesday was largely dedicated to his contention that nearly all problems can be solved through “dialogue,” and Turkey is indispensable to every dialogue in the Middle East and Asia.

Turkey’s authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to soften his public image on Saturday by taking a walk through Central Park in New York City, which he is visiting to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

BERLIN (AP) – Investigators are trying to make sense of “confused” statements by a man who drove into a school group in Berlin in what appears to have been a deliberate rampage, the city’s mayor said Thursday.

Members of the Armenian-American community told NBC News in a report published Tuesday that if Turkish talk show host Mehmet Oz is elected to the Senate, his election could grant Ankara a powerful ally across the planet in its campaign to deny the Armenian genocide.

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) – Armenia’s parliament approved a law Friday that would allow employers to fire workers who refuse to provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19 or a negative test result.

Drones are the hot new item in the Middle East’s perpetual warfare, deployed by national armies, militias, and terrorist groups with increasing confidence and proficiency. 

Iran held military drills near its border with Azerbaijan on Tuesday, dismissing complaints from its neighbor by invoking Iranian “sovereignty” and declaring it “will not tolerate the presence of the Zionist regime near our borders.” Azerbaijan is a majority-Muslim nation that has warm relations with Israel, which evidently makes it part of the “Zionist regime” in the eyes of Iran.

U.S. President Joe Biden has frayed relations between Ankara and Washington “beyond repair” with his recent statement using the word “genocide” to describe the 1915 Armenian genocide by Turkey, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency argued Tuesday.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan denounced “an attempted military coup” on Thursday after a group of Armenian army officers wrote a letter demanding Pashinyan’s resignation earlier that day.

Social media platform Twitter announced on Tuesday it has banned 373 accounts linked to the governments of Russia, Iran, and Armenia for violating various policies and “undermining faith in the NATO alliance and its stability.”

The local government in south-central Konya, Turkey, announced this week that it would turn a fully renovated 19th-century Armenian church into a “humor art house” after barring worshippers from using the church for years, multiple reports revealed Thursday.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Wednesday that Azeri forces appear to have deliberately bombed a Christian church in the Nagorno-Karabakh town of Shushi during recent fighting over the breakaway territory between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — Armenian officials and Azerbaijan on Saturday accused each other of breaching a peace deal that ended six weeks of fierce fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan’s leader threatened to crush Armenian forces with an “iron fist.”

Anti-government demonstrations once again took place in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, on Friday demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan after Azerbaijan held a victory parade to celebrate its seizure of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the Armenian people on Thursday that the unspecified “struggle” against them will “continue from now on many other fronts” in remarks at a victory parade in Azerbaijan.

A video allegedly showing an Azerbaijani soldier beheading an elderly Armenian man surfaced online in recent days, the Armenian news site panarmenian.net reported on Tuesday.

Azerbaijan held a victory parade in the capital of Baku on Thursday — with close military ally Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in attendance — celebrating the nation’s capture of territory in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported Thursday.

A video circulating on social media this week appears to show Azerbaijani soldiers desecrating Armenian graves in Nagorno-Karabakh, adding to growing accusations of similar crimes.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has never made a secret of his ambition to become a historic regional leader. His nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire long ago became a source of concern for observers who think he might seriously attempt to bring it back. His detractors mock him as “Sultan Erdogan,” but he might not find that name insulting. Erdogan flexed his military muscle in several recent conflicts. He might be warming up for something bigger, or he may have already overtaxed Turkey’s military strength.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that Turkey sees itself as a part of Europe, but he called on the European Union to “keep your promises” on issues such as the country’s membership bid and refugees.

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick urged the U.S. government to “take action against Turkey” on Wednesday for its “unprovoked and deadly attacks on Armenians” in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Lawmakers in Turkey voted on Tuesday to allow Turkey to send troops into Azerbaijan for “peacekeeping” purposes, despite Azerbaijan and Armenia reaching a peace agreement independently of Turkey over a week ago.

Villagers living in Nagorno-Karabakh burned down their houses before fleeing to Armenia this weekend to prevent Azerbaijan, which will soon control the territory, from using them.

MOSCOW (AP) — The president of Azerbaijan is promising that Christian churches will be protected when the strongly Muslim country takes possession of areas formerly controlled by Armenians.