Day: February 25, 2025
.. another night, another “negotiation” with the terrorist state https://t.co/pvYHg2XlJ6
— Alex Raufoglu (@ralakbar) February 25, 2025
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced last week that he has ordered the preparation of a new constitution, which will need the approval of the citizens of Armenia in a referendum.
I hope the majority of Armenian voters will reject the new constitution, thereby compelling him to resign. This is a golden opportunity to get rid of him. All previous efforts to remove him from office have failed over the past seven years.
The split among the opposition groups has prevented them from forming a coalition large enough to remove Pashinyan from office. Even though his popularity has considerably decreased in recent years, from 80% seven years ago to about 10% now, his ruling party’s political rating is larger than any single opposition group. Many excuses have been made for not uniting, but none of them are more important than the need to save the country. Regrettably, with its disunity, the opposition is keeping Pashinyan in power.
To form a successful anti-Pashinyan coalition, no one group should try to dominate. The leadership of the coalition should be rotated until new elections are held. A shadow government should be composed of all the opposition groups based on professional expertise.
The groups should temporarily set aside all their internal differences and unite to save the nation. Should Armenia no longer exist, none of these groups’ ideologies will matter. Once they save the country, they can go back to pursuing their own goals.
Knowing Pashinyan’s egotistical modus operandi, he will crisscross Armenia to ensure that citizens vote for the new constitution. He will leave no stone unturned to achieve his objective, using pressure and threats. He has the resources of the government at his disposal to carry out a vast campaign and resort to vote tampering or collecting a large amount of campaign contributions that exceed the legal limit, just as his party did during the last Yerevan City Council elections. This is a critical goal for Pashinyan, because Azerbaijani Pres. Ilham Aliyev has made it clear that without a new Armenian constitution, he will refuse to sign the “peace treaty” that Pashinyan has been begging for. Pashinyan needs that signed piece of paper to fool voters in the 2026 elections into thinking that he has brought them “peace,” even though it will not last long.
Initially, Pashinyan dismissed Aliyev’s demand to change the constitution as interference in Armenia’s internal affairs. Furthermore, Pashinyan said that there is no such need, as the draft of the peace treaty contains a clause that both countries agree to recognize each other’s territorial integrity. In the case of a dispute, the terms of the peace treaty will take precedence over their respective constitutions. Pashinyan added that Azerbaijan’s constitution itself contains indirect references to demanding territories from the Republic of Armenia. However, Pashinyan said that he will not ask Azerbaijan to revise its constitution.
In addition to changing Armenia’s constitution, Pashinyan has accepted the following demands from Aliyev: Armenia will turn over certain villages located inside Armenia to Azerbaijan; Azeris who formerly lived in enclaves inside Armenia will return and live there; the OSCE Minsk group will be disbanded; EU border monitors will depart from Armenia; Armenia will drop its international lawsuits against Azerbaijan; and the road from the eastern part of Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan will be a corridor under Azeri sovereignty, rather than a mere road (while objecting to the corridor, Pashinyan has agreed to facilitate the access).
Even though the 2020 agreement allows both Armenia and Azerbaijan to cross each other’s territory, Pashinyan has repeatedly said that Azeris are welcome to cross Armenia, without once stating that the agreement should be implemented reciprocally.
Armenia’s Justice Minister Srbuhi Galyan said last week that the new constitution will be ready before the June 2026 parliamentary elections. It is not clear if the electorate will be asked to vote on the constitution at the same time as voting for the parliament members or after that election.
There is nothing wrong with amending the constitution from time to time as the need arises, but to be compelled to write a brand new one at the enemy’s demand is totally unacceptable. It is critical that Armenian voters reject the new constitution. A no vote is a vote of no confidence in the prime minister. He can no longer remain in his position after the people reject his key initiative. He will have no choice but to resign.
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Sadly, recognition of human atrocities on the magnitude of the Armenian Genocide is a privilege reserved for relative peacetime, which proved elusive during much of the 20th century. For Armenians specifically, ongoing episodic pogroms occurred pre-1915 and continued until 1923, at which time the world unwittingly hurtled toward its most volatile and deadly period in recorded human history. Given the chaos, Genocide survivors had scant opportunity to process the unfathomable events perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire.
Practicality displaced emotion, as Armenians had to determine their most pragmatic option going forward: where to go in the world, how to get there and how to become economically relevant in a foreign land. They needed to escape the unbearable pain and grief of the past and the possibility of more uncertainty and misfortune going forward. No concerted effort to campaign for Genocide recognition could be mounted while our ancestors were preoccupied with where to resettle and how to build a prosperous future.
Much academic study is written about the psychological effects of experiencing such a traumatic event. Perhaps grief and suffering were obscured, both consciously and unconsciously, in order to blunt the pain. Perhaps our ancestors were stunned, leading to an emotional inertia. These effects are deep-rooted and can be perpetuated for many years.
Armenians did garner immediate Western endorsement and press at the time of the Genocide; however, World War I and ultimate U.S. involvement moved Ottoman atrocities off the front pages. It was not until 1944 that Polish-Jewish academic Raphael Lemkin coined the phrase “genocide,” though he did not refer specifically to the Armenians. By that time, the horrors of the Holocaust were starting to emerge, and that became the topic of the day.
The Genocide did, however, induce the establishment of a far-reaching and robust diaspora, especially in France, Russia, South America, the United States and the Middle East. However effective these growing tendons were at disseminating Ottoman atrocities, progress was gradual.
As Mr. Peter Balakian duly noted in his article for the Armenian Weekly, Turkey obstructed recognition efforts by exploiting the chaotic onset of World War I and, in the ensuing years, staging a systematic campaign of denial and gaslighting. History carves out strange alliances. This is no more evident than post-World War I when the Allied Powers had to court what was left of the Ottoman Empire due to its strategic location vis-a-vis an encroaching Russia and a more volatile Middle East.
The Republic of Turkey filled that void. Realpolitik dictated that the Republic of Turkey could not be outright blamed, shamed and held accountable for the unspeakable crimes committed against the Armenian people. Turkey had been rendered unassailable, which in itself was an equally egregious crime.
From the 1920s to the 1950s, global chaos and suffering reached inconceivable heights. Europe was devastated, among other regions of the world. Astonishingly, the Turks took indecency several standard deviations higher by blaming the Armenians for their unfortunate fate, citing their alliance with Russia. Even more astonishingly, they used the specious argument that it was wartime, and many innocent Turks had died as well. The Ottoman Empire shamelessly used the cover and chaos of current events to dilute and deny their atrocities.
Incredibly, the attitude of some non-Jewish Europeans after the Holocaust was that their Christian and Protestant populations had also been decimated in the two World Wars, so why should they feel sorry for the Jews? Such rationale did not help promote the Genocide recognition effort.
Finally, as Mr. Balakian also noted, the 1945 Nuremberg trials, followed by the decolonization movements in Africa, triggered a thawing of recognition inertia. The mid-1960s saw the crescendo of the African-American civil rights movement and its intellectual cousins—women’s rights, anti-war protests, gay rights and environmental movements.
American culture drastically embraced change, at long last providing a clearer path for Armenians to make their tragic story known to the world. In 1965, the first April 24th Genocide Remembrance Day gathering was held in New York City’s Times Square, petitioned by about 40 parishioners from New York and New Jersey and endorsed by the Knights of Vartan fraternity.
In my childhood and early adolescence during the 1960s and early 1970s, the Armenian Genocide was more a concept than an actual event to my young mind. I would often ask my paternal grandmother, with whom I was very close, what exactly the Turks had done. Why didn’t my father have any relatives, like my maternal grandparents did, who had been fortunate enough to emigrate to America prior to 1915? Who better to ask than a family member who had actually experienced it?
But the second she heard the word “Turks,” I sensed, even at my young age, immediate revulsion. She would swing her arm in an upward motion, thrust her head down and quietly utter, “Go-ddam Tur-ks.” I will never forget that look on my grandmother’s face. She did not want me to see the pain in her expression. She would not discuss it. She did not want to relive it. Above all, she did not want to frighten me with it.
In my later years, I understood that my grandmother was trying to protect my impressionable mind from being desecrated by the same hate, pain and suffering inflicted upon her entire family during the Genocide. She wanted me to grow up “clean,” tabula rasa, with no emotional baggage and nothing to fear in life—a privilege never bestowed upon her and her family.
What tremendous sacrifices our ancestors made for us, enabling us to lead such charmed lives. How lucky we are to have descended from them.
Peter Hamptian has a bachelor’s degree in economics with a minor in English from Rutgers College and a master’s degree in international finance from Columbia University School of International Affairs. He has worked in finance since 1985.
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Vaughan H. Totovian, a lifelong resident of Watertown and a civil engineer behind many of the most essential public transportation projects in Massachusetts’ history, passed away on Feb. 9 at age 66. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for several years.
Totovian, the husband of Lily (Tossounian), was a graduate of Watertown High School and Northeastern University, where he completed a degree in civil engineering in 1981. Over the next quarter century, Totovian worked on and completed numerous projects that re-made highway and public transportation history in Greater Boston.
His projects included the Big Dig, which submerged the overhead main travel route through Boston into a tunnel; the entrance to the Ted Williams Tunnel, which provided a second artery to Logan Airport by extending the Massachusetts Turnpike to East Boston and points north; the Boston Engine terminal in Somerville; commuter rail stations between Canton and Fall River; and the easing of monumental Cape Cod traffic jams from the rotary at Sagamore Bridge.
While civil engineering is a collaborative effort, largely the result of consensus among numerous professionals, Totovian stood out as an ultimate authority because of his technical expertise and a historic memory, said several co-workers.
“He was simply a genius in reading plans. He saw problems before anyone else did—and solutions, as well,” said Richard Ferrante, who worked beside Totovian at L.W. Lochner between 1993 and 2001. “He was our miracle worker.”
Michel Issa, another colleague on the Big Dig project, added: “In many meetings, Vaughan’s voice was the most insistent that we had a responsibility for the public and ourselves to make sure we’d done everything the right way.”
One such breakthrough he authored solved the problem of how to maintain southbound traffic emerging from the Dewey Square tunnel while rebuilding a mile-long stretch of the Expressway. Totovian’s fix was to reroute the traffic over a short bridge and then onto Harrison Avenue and a road that paralleled the Expressway.
Such extensive projects present a continued sequence of complications, and Totovian’s co-workers remember his ability to roll with the most serious of them. Vincent Nguyen recalled the time Totovian realized that a planned cement pillar upholding a portion of the Expressway would have been erected in the driveway of a gas station, 100 feet away from its intended location.
“Vaughan saw it before any of us did,” Nguyen said. “But that’s the way he worked. He had the greatest confidence in his skills.”
Yet it was his final project, modernizing the rotary at Sagamore Bridge, that gave Totovian the most satisfaction. With his two brothers, Totovian bought a summer home in Falmouth and was experiencing first-hand the mind-numbing ordeal of getting on and off the Cape on summer weekends.
In 2001, he was hired as project lead engineer by a state joint venture to come up with the fix, and by 2005, the work was completed. The rotary that had stalled traffic for generations was discarded, and two highways were able to pass one another on their own roads.
“The design Vaughan’s team worked out for it was perfect,” said Ferrante, Totovian’s co-worker and friend.
Vaughan exhibited such know-how from his youngest years. His wife Lily showed me a letter he wrote in 1972 at age 14 to then Massachusetts Governor Francis Sargent after noticing from volunteering at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown that many of the students were fearful of crossing busy intersections along Arsenal Street or in Watertown Square.
As he told Sargent in his letter, Totovian had devised a fix: set up devices at the busiest intersections that emitted loud buzzes as well as metal tracks that would accommodate the tip of a blind person’s cane and allow them to cross safely.
That ability to use his technical skills to overcome everyday adversities was common for Totovian. When technology first arrived with home products like Atari, Totovian disassembled the equipment and told the company that its software would never develop beyond kids’ games unless they figured out how to show images and type on the screen. The Atari executive offered him a job over the phone.
While he let that opportunity go by, Totovian was intrigued by the idea of developing a handheld device that used electricity to perform simple household chores while the occupant was out of the house. Think of Alexa before the Internet. In fact, Totovian developed a device to turn his television on and off at his Watertown home, open and close the shades, and control the thermostat, all through home automation technologies.
Lily, who began dating Vaughan in 2004, said she started calling him “boy genius” soon after their marriage in 2007 because of his numerous inventive ideas when remodeling their home. He would also bring home highway blueprints from work to show her the progress that he and his team of engineers were making on a project.
Vaughan’s technical skills likely came from his father, Kayzag Totovian. Raised in Marseille, Kayzag was a builder of racing bikes as a youth. He joined the French Resistance at the outset of World War II, and upon moving to the United States in 1940, joined the U.S. Army Intelligence Service.
From his mother, Isabelle (Gureghian) Totovian, the first woman to become trustee of St. James Armenian Church, he would have inherited his confident manner and a passion for knowing right from wrong.
And from his brothers, James Totovian, who died in 2018, and Mark Totovian, Vaughan gained an enthusiastic love of sports, whether competing with friends or following Boston’s professional sports teams.
In addition to the friends he made in his profession, Totovian shared his life with a rich circle of friends, much built around his association with St. James Armenian Church and its ties to the Armenian Church Youth Organization of America. It was also through the youth organization that he first became acquainted with Lily Tossounian, who was living with her family in Toronto, and again as adults at a sports weekend.
In his eulogy for Totovian at St. James Church, Der. Shnork Souin, retired pastor at St. Sahag and St. Mesrob Armenian Church, reflected on the large number of friends that he maintained during his lifetime and who came to his service.
“Such rich friendships are part of the miracle of the Armenian diaspora here in the new world,” said Der Shnork, a lifelong family friend of Lily’s. “Faith and fellowship brighten our days and ease the pain from such a loss.”
Stephen Kurkjian, a 40-year veteran reporter for The Boston Globe, was Vaughan Totovian’s first cousin.
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On the night of February 25-26, 1992, amid the crumbling remnants of the Soviet Union, the world witnessed a horrific chapter of human brutality in the Khojaly region of what is now Azerbaijan’s Garabagh. Armenian military forces, bolstered by heavy artillery, tanks, and an infantry regiment, surrounded the region in a calculated assault that lasted for two agonizing hours. By the end of this relentless barrage, 613 innocent Azerbaijani civilians were dead, including 116 women, 63 children, and hundreds of others who were left wounded.