Politics

Armenia’s president signed a decree on March 1 announcing the controversial Armenian-Turkish protocols null and void. Now that the the protocols are a thing of the past, Vahram Ter-Matevosyan writes that the time has come to draw some lessons from an initiative that was long dead.

Ten years after the worst post-election clashes in the history of Armenia’s independent statehood that left ten people dead and hundreds injured, the wounds are still fresh and the pain raw. In this personal essay, Hamazasp Danielyan writes about the events leading up to March 1, 2008 and reflects on his personal transformation.

Harutyun Marutyan writes that the Karabakh Movement was not only the first of the Eastern European revolutions, but it played a considerable role in the democratization of Soviet society, was pivotal in the deconstruction of the Soviet Union and consequently in the elimination of the threat of communism.

City councillor Marina Khachatryan was attacked by a group of male colleagues when she attempted to hand a glass jar of raw sewage to Mayor Taron Margaryan to highlight the issue of seeping sewage in the Nubarashen district of the capital city.

Under the old governance system the president was the most powerful figure in Armenia. But if the prime minister is going to replace the president as the leader of the executive branch of government, what is the role of the president? In this opinion piece for EVN Report Jenny Paturyan explores the scenarios.

The Karabakh Movement was a crystallizing moment in the collective and historical memory of the Armenian nation. In this first in a series of articles about the Movement, EVN Report presents a chronology of the events of 1988 which eventually paved the way to independence.

Dr. Nerses Kopalyan takes a look at the role some of the most powerful Diasporan organizations have played in “reinforcing and indirectly legitimating the country’s existing political system” and draws parallels between the relationship of Armenia’s ruling administrations and their politics of co-opting the powers of the Diaspora.

A close look at cyber operations against Armenian state and non-state institutions, as well as individuals highlights a number of well known cases behind which are state-sponsored hacker groups or even state structures themselves. Samvel Martirosyan writes about how Armenia, in recent years, has become a subject of interest in almost all major cyber investigations.

Since 1997 and the coming to power of reformists in Iran, Western countries have refused to see anything else in Iran other than the symbiosis of the so-called reformers and hardliners within the regime. Sohrab Mobasheri, an Iranian political activist and journalist in exile explains: "The writings on the wall were present...Anybody who was willing to do so could see the signs..."

Iran was rocked by a number of protests last week that caught many by surprise. Loosineh Markarian writes that while many have been focused on the interrelation of the elite and the protestors, recent developments in inter-elite relations could be the significant factor informing the recent outburst.