In 2009, Armenia had a population of around 3 million people. The majority of the population were ethnically Armenian, followed by Russian and other minorities. The main language spoken was Armenian. The Armenian economy was largely dependent on exports, with much of the population living in poverty. In terms of foreign relations, Armenia had strong ties to neighboring countries such as Russia and Turkey as well as other Eurasian countries. Politically, Armenia had recently gone through its first free elections in 1991 but had been struggling to establish a stable government since then. In 2009, the government faced widespread protests from citizens due to rising unemployment and economic hardship. See internetsailors for Armenia in the year of 2011.
Yearbook 2009
Armenia. The mass protests in 2008 against the election of Serzh Sarkisian as president created continued conflict in 2009. Seven leading oppositionists were accused of organizing the demonstrations in Yerevan. In March, a year after the protests, new mass demonstrations were held, demanding the release of political prisoners. In June, the Sarkisian dissolved the commission investigating the circumstances surrounding the deaths of ten people in police and demonstrator violence in March 2008. Relatives and opposition claimed the government wanted to hide the truth. Prosecutors had identified four police officers as guilty. Subsequently, an amnesty was issued for a couple of thousand people sentenced to prison for participating in the protests against alleged electoral fraud in the presidential election. Critics said that the amnesty did not include those who were political prisoners.
The rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey continued during the year. The countries agreed on a so-called framework for normalizing relations. However, the difficult question of Armenia’s demand that Turkey recognize the Turkish genocide of Armenians in 1915 was not resolved. In April, the nationalist party Dasjnak, with strong support among Armenians in exile, left the government in protest. President Sarkisian traveled to France, Lebanon, the Russian Federation and the United States to seek peaceful and convincing Armenian exile groups. An important argument for the government to settle with Turkey was that it would bring great economic benefits. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for abbreviation AM which stands for the nation of Armenia.
In October, the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Turkey signed an agreement to establish diplomatic relations and open the common border within two months, when the two parliaments approved the agreement. A joint commission, including with international experts, would investigate the “historical dimension” of the two countries’ relations, which have been bitter since 1915. Armenian press considered Turkey to have escaped the issue of mass murder, while insisting that normalization of relations was inevitable. Members of the Nationalist Party Dasjnak protested the agreement through a hunger strike.
According to countryaah, media freedom is further cut during the year, and journalists are exposed to threats and violence. In April, the editor-in-chief of Armenia Today was beaten by three men with bat. In October, a trial was launched against opposition editor Nikol Pasjinian, who was accused of organizing the mass protests in 2008. The international financial crisis hit hard on the country’s important mining industry as prices fell on important export goods such as copper and gold. Many industrial workers were released and the gold mining in the south was occasionally silent.
LANGUAGE
The Armenians speak an Indo-European language documented from the 5th century. AD (classical Armenian), but spoken since the 6th century BC in the area between Mesopotamia, the southern Caucasus and the south-eastern coast of Black Sea.
Modern Armenian is divided into Eastern Armenian, the official language of the Republic of Armenia, and Western Armenian (minorities in Turkey). The first is the closest to the classical language.
Classical Armenian today serves only as the liturgical language of the Church. Compared to reconstructed Indo-European, it is a very innovative language. A significant change concerns the vocalism: in prehistoric times the penultimate syllable received a strong expiratory accent which caused the weakening or fall of many vowels and diphthongs in the previous syllables, while the ancient ending disappeared. In consonantism, the voiced aspirates of Indo-European have become voiced (except in Eastern Armenian), voiced ones have become deaf, the unvoiced have passed to aspirated deaf or have disappeared. In the declension, any gender distinction has disappeared. In conjugation, the ancient perfect has been replaced by a periphrastic perfect;
The Armenian alphabet, invented, according to tradition, by the saint Mashtoc or Mesròb, at the beginning of the 5th century, renders the phonological system of the classical language in a perfectly bi- univocal way (to each phoneme a grapheme).