Pre-election Visit of Turkish Journalists to Armenia

GPoT Center, in collaboration with Yerevan Press Club (YPC), brought five Turkish journalists to Armenia between the 3rd and 9th of May, 2012 under the "Pre-election Exchange of Journalists" program which is a part of the Support to Turkey-Armenia Rapprochement Project.

During their trip, journalists had several meetings with the political party representatives, candidates, and journalists. On their first day, they attended a journalism award ceremony entitled "Time for Free Speech" at the Journalists' Union. After the ceremony, they had a round table meeting at the YPC's office on the current political situation of Armenia. Following the meeting, they visited Yerkir Media and had an interactive discussion with Gegham Manukyan, the director of Information and Political Programs at Yerkir Media. On the following days, journalists met with the representatives from the political parties and think tanks such as Artak Zakaryan from the Republican Party of Armenia, Stiopa Safaryan from the Heritage Party, Aram Safaryan from the Prosperous Armenia, Giro Manoyan and Spartak Seiranian from the Dashnaktsutyun Party and Levon Zorabyan from the Armenian Natioanal Congress. 

On the 6th of May, the election day journalists visited the electoral precincts and interviewed with the voters about their choice. Results were discussed on the following day at a press conference of the OSCE ODIHR monitoring mission.