Background:
The frist part of this recording is an interview with the Archbishop of the Aremenian Church in Turkey, Mesrob Mutfayan about the state of the church and the Armenian community in Turkey. The second part is a press conference with Natig Aliyev, the Director and President of the State Oil Company of The Azerbaijan Republic about their new projects and contracts with foreign companies.
Side A:
The Archbishop starts out by notifying that the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul is one of four hierarchical seats of the Armenian Orthodox Church, which in a strange historical fashion was instituted by a Muslim sultan, Mehmed II, conqueror of Istanbul. After conquering the city in 1453, in 1461, he wanted to institute a patriarch in the new capital who would be responsible for all the non-Chalcedonian Christians in his domain, for administrative reasons. It remained during the Ottoman Empire as a very forceful patriarchy, but shrank dramatically after World War One, due to the deportation of Armenians. However the patriarchate still caters to communities in Istanbul and Anatolia and still has a big number of different publications in Armenian and Turkish. Their main problem is a lack of a seminary, as they are in dire need of educating new priests and Armenian language teachers for the parish schools. They also provide social and Armenian cultural services.
The church’s two missions are to preach the gospel and to keep the tradition of the Armenian input to worldwide Christianity. The spiritual and ethnic are intermingled, very much like the Church of England. The fact that the people elect the patriarch distinguishes them from any other Eastern Church and the Diocese and bishop have to be reelected every four years. They also allow sisters to be deacons. Mutfayan is not afraid of this system leading to politicising, as Armenians look at candidates credentials and don not like clergymen to interfere in politics. This has been the line in the church since the 1860s and they have a separation between temporal affairs and religious affairs. Additionally, Mutfayan doesn not see this as something that couldd become a problem in the future because Armenian politics is banned in Turkey, and if you take the patriarchy away, the Armenian community in Turkey will fade away.
The church was politicised in the 19th century because the Ottoman Sultan regarded the patriarch as the head of the Armenian community, not only of the church. The press and the state still try to push them to make political statements, on terrorism or churches being converted into mosques. However, the interviewee is not against churches being converted into mosques. He is also in favour of a secular state and does not want to go back to the Ottoman millet system. There is no official Muslim-Christian dialogue in Turkey, but there is a “very positive and very efficient dialogue of life” and good neighbourly relations, but it might not be the same in Anatiolia.
The events of 1915 are not talked about in the community, as they can not live in the past nor build their future on a culture of hatred. Still, they have to learn from the past. It is difficult to continue the Armenian Church as 70% of their people don not know the Armenian language because there is no Armenian college. This leads to a decrease in the level of Armenian literature, language, and thinking. However, the Armenian press is fighting against this efficiently.
Side B:
The Archbishop goes on to compare the situation of the church to a person who has cancer, in the sense that they must believe that there is hope and that they will live, and not resign until the last moment. He adds that he also still has hope for the future of Turkey as a whole as well.
Natig Aliyev, the director and President of the State Oil Company of The Azerbaijan Republic starts his press conference by assuring the audience that the country is in a stable position under the president’s foreign and domestic policy, and that big economic reforms are taking place. The oil industry is the main part of the Azerbaijani economy, eespecially because many foreign companies want to invest in Azerbaijan at the moment. According to Aliyev, Azerbaijan is a very famous and old country, and they have been producing oil for more than 150 years. They only have 56 oilfields, offshore and onshore, but they are all developed in Azerbaijan and the country has big industrial potential. Azerbaijani industry had a main role in the industry of the former Soviet Union, but after its fall Azeri oil production has fallen, but this doesn not mean that the capacity of their oil resources is lower. There are a lot of resources in Azerbaijan, offshore and onshore, their recoverable reserves are about 4 tons and this figure is equal to the Western European countries.
Their main problem is financing, as they have high quality professional specialists and many plans. All their deposits lie in deep waters offshore, therefore they need a lot of investment for deep drilling in order to explore and develop new fields. They signed their first central contract, with 11 companies from seven countries, in September 1994, in a very difficult time for the country. It assures a total investment of 8-10 billion dollars by firms like Amoco BP, Unico, Lukoil, TPAO, Penzoil, Exxon and Itochu. This investment is distributed over five fields, whereas two are located in deep waters. They hope to produce 500 million tons within 30 years. These oil fields are considered amongst the biggest oil deposits in the world, as they hold between 175 and 200 million tons each and a deposit that holds more than 100 million tons is classified as big.
Russia blocks their borders, and they have no connections because the main cargo route cones from Russia. They don not use the Astara route as it only connects them with Iran and doesn not have a big capacity.
Furthermore, the situation in Georgia is very complicated because they had a war with the Abkhazians. Other countries also create problems for Azerbaijan, but they signed the “contract of the century” despite this. That sends a message to other countries indicating that their economy is open for investment. The Director sees this as proof that their current domestic and foreign policy is working and stresses that all their resources belong to the Azeri people. They signed a second contract in November 1995 which included new countries, amongst them Egypt. The third one was signed the year of the press conference with companies like Elf Aquitaine from France and an Iranian oil construction company. Over 100 companies are represented in Azerbaijan and I Norway has more than 45 companies represented. Export is very important for the the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic and the contract has articles specifying export agreements. As part of these agreements they are now constructing a pipeline from Russia and another one from Georgia to the Black Sea and plan to finish by the 15th of December.
