In detailed comments published in the Sunday edition of the Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman entitled, “Turkey’s attempt to distract from Armenian centennial commemorations falls short,” RSC Director Richard Giragosian offered his assessment of the Turkish president’s invitation to his Armenian counterpart to attend the April 24 centennial commemorations of the Gallipoli Campaign of World War I, to be held on the same day as the traditional commemoration of the Armenian genocide.

RSC Director Richard Giragosian assessed the recent escalation of clashes in an interview on January 23 with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Armenian Service. Giragosian noted “the significant expansion of the recent clashes, in terms of both intensity and geography, noting the fighting went far beyond Nagorno Karabakh to include the Armenian-Azerbaijani border proper.” Stressing that “this latest escalation began well before this past month, but warned that unlike the past, when ceasefire violations were measured by the number of shots fired, this escalation is now dangerously defined by casualties nearly every day.”

RSC Project Coordinator Haykak Arshamyan appeared in an interview on the Shoghakat TV station on January 22, offering an analysis of Armenian national identity. Hosted by Anna Sargsyan, the interview, entitled “Totalitarian System and Man: National Identity,” included the opinions of anthropologist Mkhitar Gabrielyan. For his part, Dr. Arshamyan noted that Armenian national identity was “national in form, and socialistic in content,” as “this was how the system and the formation of national identity would relate to each other as forced by the Soviet totalitarian system.” Arshamyan then focused on how national identity was transformed in the totalitarian and post-totalitarian period.

In a series of articles, RSC Director Richard Giragosian offered his assessment of the crisis in Armenian-Russian relations in the wake of the tragic murder of an Armenian family by a Russian soldier stationed at the Russian military base in Gyumri.

{youtube}EISLTXpbITA{/youtube}

Participating in the “Հարթակ” (“Platform”) talk show hosted by the Lragir.am electronic news agency on 28 November, RSC Project Coordinator Haykak Arshamyan assessed the latest wave of assaults targeting civil society activists in Armenia. Arshamyan noted that the latest incidents, involving both a physical assault of a young activist and a coordinated series of arson attacks against the vehicles belonging to civil society activists, were part of a broader context of “impunity,” as demonstrated by the complete failure of the police to arrest or even identify any of the assailants involved in such attacks against civil figures.