Vartan Oskanyan

Vartan Oskanyan

Wartan Minasi Oskanyan ( Armenian Վարդան Մինասի Օսկանյան , English mostly Vardan Oskanian, more rarely Vartan or Oskanyan, in scientific transliteration Vardan Oskanyan; * February 7, 1955 as Wartan Woskanjan (Վարդան Ոսկանյան) in Aleppo , Syria ) is an Armenian politician and former foreign minister of the Republic of Armenia .

biography

His father's family comes from the Anatolian city of Marasch ; they had survived the genocide of the Armenians . The mother's family had previously fled to Aleppo, where there is a large Armenian community , due to persecution by the Turks . There he attended an Armenian school. In 1973 he moved to the Armenian SSR and studied civil engineering in Yerevan . In 1981 he emigrated to Boston (in the United States) and changed his name slightly to Oskanian, presumably because this is the pronunciation of his name in the Western Armenian dialect. In 1983 he earned a master's degree in engineering, in 1986 a master's degree in political science from Harvard University and a third master's degree in law and diplomacy in 1991.

His uncle is a major diamond wholesaler in Los Angeles. The nephew should actually follow in his footsteps. But immediately after the independence of the Republic of Armenia in 1992 he returned to its capital, Yerevan. In 1998 he lost his US citizenship and accepted Armenian, but left it with the changed version of his name (the spelling of his name is extremely unusual, because even among Armenians who say Oskanjan according to their dialect , the name is Woskanjan written - there are only a handful of families in Armenia that write their name Oskanjan ). In the same year Oskanjan became foreign minister and was relatively undisputed in this office. He is considered an honest, competent politician. However, he was not one of the most powerful politicians in the country, since according to the constitution, many foreign policy powers are assigned to the president. When Robert Kocharyan resigned as President in 2008, the composition of the external department also changed. Oskanyan's successor was Edward Nalbandjan .

Oskanjan speaks Armenian, Arabic and English. He is with American national Dr. Nani Oskanjan married, she is a pediatrician. The couple have two sons who are also US citizens and live in Yerevan.

Web links

Commons : Vartan Oskanian  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia (with biography of Oskanyan) (Armenian, English)