Armenia is on the verge of turning into a Turkish-Azerbaijani state. The “creeping” processes of recent years have led to the fact that the Republic of Armenia almost does not exist as a sovereign entity. About this 168TVof Revue announced on the air of the program Raffi Hovhannisyan, the founder of the “Heritage” party, the first foreign minister of the newly independent Republic of Armeniatalking about Armenia’s current challenges.

“What is heard from the international podiums is not the speech of the representative of the sovereign Republic of Armenia, but the speech of some leader of the Armenian state, which is already an object. Therefore, the change that we have experienced with the last years, months and every passing day, really means that we are living in existential identity, sovereignty and statehood anxiety,” Raffi Hovhannisyan thinks.

According to the leader of “Heritage”, regional and international developments are such that many things are already happening around Armenia: war, military operations, geopolitical changes.

Raffi Hovhannisyan considers “creeping pan-Turkism” as one of the biggest threats, for which we are not ready nationally and state-wise.

“I think that first of all, there is the existential problem of the Armenian man, the RA citizen, there is the question of the existence of our statehood. In the past, we used to say “governia, gubernia”, now, really, I shouldn’t say vilayet, but we are on the verge of turning into a Turkish-Azerbaijani province,” adds Hovhannisyan.

According to the political leader, without the Armenian national identity, memory and history, one cannot expect a strong, far-reaching, self-confident future as a state, and trampling on our values ​​and national symbols by the current government, the path we have taken, has brought Armenia to the edge of the abyss, which “either we must accept, reconcile, or we must change within these weeks and months.”

According to him, one of the ways of this change is the upcoming parliamentary elections, but there are also other constitutional ways.

“All possible legal means and methods should be implemented not to guarantee the salvation of Armenia, but at least to create sufficient conditions so that Armenia, the Armenian people have the opportunity to breathe, to reform, to look to the future, and finally to have state representatives who are not only self-confident in front of the world, but also represent the rights of the Armenians, the rights of the Armenian people, the rights of the state, the nation. We have put all possible rights on the altar, we have refused, and there is not a single word, a government rhetoric, that speaks about Armenians and Armenians, Armenian rights,” said Raffi Hovhannisyan.

To the question of when the RA Declaration of Independence was a reason for war or a source of conflict, as Nikol Pashinyan tries to present in order to justify his desire to remove the reference to the Declaration of Independence from the preamble of the Constitution, Raffi Hovhannisyan emphasizes in response that the Declaration of Independence is an unchangeable part of our Constitution.

“I will not comment on them. They came to gradually implement the positions of the neighboring dictators, not having the courage to say at that moment that we should talk about Armenia’s interest: statehood, sovereignty, territorial integrity, we should write some maps, but in the end, we will come to the point that we should implement all their preconditions and demands, and they are doing that, and the Declaration of Independence is only a preamble expression, which also summarizes a part of our national rights, and it is clear that it is part of our Constitution. is an invariable part, it is not subject to change.

If we have legality, constitutionality in our country, it is not subject to change. But we should not be surprised that with one trick or another they will be able to present it as a necessity. Let there be change, let there be improvement, let us have a Constitution that is finally acceptable and accepted by the people, but not at the expense of our national interests, rights, and values. They think that they are writing a new history, but they are not writing the history of the Republic of Armenia, but the history of the Yerevan province as part of Azerbaijan,” says the leader of “Heritage”.

In this context, Raffi Hovhannisyan emphasizes that, of course, we should have lived in a different way for 30 years, but under the conditions of statehood, this government and its leader are primarily and entirely responsible for our depatriation, the loss of thousands of our bright boys, and the concession of Armenia’s territorial integrity.

“I can say that as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I was in favor of the recognition of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic from the very first day. I can justify it now, why it was right from the beginning or at least parallel to the 1994 Tripartite ceasefire, but that doesn’t change anything now. We were not prepared as systematically as possible. We thought that security was given to us, that there was an “umbrella” over Artsakh, that everything was protected, but we did not understand that the interest of the state is higher than our personal and partial interests.

We did not realize it and did not protect it, but I can say that in diplomacy, also from the point of view of providing a border line, a front line, we protected the minimum, that is, the minimum threshold of our integrity, sovereignty and independence, and dedication to the same principles of the Declaration of Independence were secured, with big reservations, big mistakes and sins, but they were secured,” recalls the former Foreign Minister.

According to him, no figure or leader of any region is above criticism, everyone has his own fault, but this total fault does not change the direct and direct responsibility of today’s government and the ruler for our losses, defeats and humiliation.

“We are simply humiliated when we live in our country every day as Armenians and Armenians and watch how those representatives, having already lost their legitimacy, try to represent our country, our values, our identity, our civilization in accordance with the interests and words of the neighboring dictators, those who occupied us, those who subjected us to occupation. I consider that today’s ruler and the government is simply Mr. Aliyev’s authorized representative in the Republic of Armenia,” added Raffi Hovhannisyan.

Recalling Monte Melkonyan’s famous words that if we lose Artsakh, we will turn the last page of Armenian history, and answering the question, what danger is Armenia facing after the occupation of Artsakh, Raffi Hovhannisyan says:

“What we are experiencing today is montheurization.”

The founder of “Heritage” also referred to the statements allowed by the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, about the military and political leaders of Artsakh in an interview with France 24 last month, in particular, comparing the Armenian prisoners of war with the Nazis sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials, and on that occasion, the Lemkin Institute for the Prevention of Genocide. to the announcement, in which Aliyev is characterized as the leader of a genocidal state.

Raffi Hovhannisyan answers: it is hard to imagine anything more shameful, disgusting and reprehensible than the words of that dictator.

“He will have to stand before the Nuremberg court first, Armenian Nuremberg or modern international Nuremberg. He and the representatives of his military-political system should be subjected to Nuremberg justice and not by turning the reality upside down and trying to direct it in a different direction. First, they should experience their Nuremberg personally.

We know that the geopolitical reality is not such that we can expect this to become a priority agenda, and that one episode shows why it is impossible to establish real peace without symmetry, without dignity and equality. It simply depicts the inner world, on the basis of which that man and his government continue to implement their policies to this day. It is a corridor, it is “Western Azerbaijan”, it is the ongoing genocide against the cultural, church and spiritual heritage of Armenia and the Armenian people.

There are different measurements, but that one sentence shows how they treat the Armenian people, the future of Armenia and that vertical expectation that they have. They need an Armenian state, which is subordinate to Baku and Ankara, and which does not have an independent backbone and point of view,” stated Hovhannisyan.

According to Raffi Hovhannisyan, that is why we see what is happening today: the denial of the Armenian Genocide, the dismissal of the director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute for presenting a book to the US Vice President JD Vance.

According to Raffi Hovhannisyan, Vance’s speech in Yerevan, that is, expressing support for Nikol Pashinyan in the upcoming elections, is a direct interference in Armenia’s internal affairs.

“To say phenomenal would be a bit too extravagant in this case, but the ground that they have created in diplomacy and in real life does not surprise us, but when the state representative of the people subjected to genocide already takes upon himself the propaganda of the genocidal regime, their theses, their approaches, even blaming the victim, this is simply beyond this, beyond any reason, when they take the truth of the people subjected to genocide, the rights of the world, etc., turn it upside down and present it are the approach of the perpetrator, where the victim is “guilty”, he added regarding the denial of the Armenian Genocide.

Raffi Hovhannisyan compares Nikol Pashinyan’s government with the Vichy collaborator regime of Marshal Pétain, who collaborated with the Nazis in France during the Second World War.

“These are the same Vichy regime that justifies the genocidal regime and tries to present as a way to save Armenia that five thousand golden boys would die, Artsakh would be denationalized, and these were “ransoms to ensure the future of the statehood of the Republic of Armenia”. I have never seen a more absurd, more vulgar, more inhumane, stupider and meaner approach in my entire experience,” says Raffi Hovhannisyan.

According to Raffi Hovhannisyan, the issue of Artsakh is not closed, it can be returned to the international agenda in the future, that hope and dream must be kept, but it implies a lot of work and nationwide improvement.

“Armenia’s place in international politics must be restored, we must return as a subject, and in relation to the same Minsk Group, I must mention that I was the one who, as a minister, on behalf of the Republic of Armenia in 1992 In March, I accepted the mediation of the Minsk Group in Helsinki, and there, at the diplomatic table, the Republic of Armenia was represented as a full, full member and with the right of veto. There, the elected representatives of Artsakh, Nagorno Karabakh, would participate in the Minsk conference, which would decide the status of Artsakh.

In that same Helsinki document, there was the thing that since there were ongoing war operations, that the organization should open a humanitarian corridor between Armenia and Artsakh, and in fact, months later, the Armenian people themselves opened that corridor, which was decided by that same CSCE, so to say that from the beginning it was like we misunderstood the international situation, that “the Karabakh movement is some kind of dark movement”, I’ll just say them are expressions of anti-legal and criminal meaning, which deny their own history and, beyond their own history, the concept of law itself. You violate the individual and collective rights of your own people, and there can be no forgiveness for that,” recalls the former Foreign Minister of Armenia.

Full interview in the video.

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