Russian–Armenian tycoon Samvel Karapetyan, the leader of the Strong Armenia Alliance of Parties, has claimed that the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan were discussing settling ‘300,000 Azerbaijanis in Armenia’. He said that such a move would turn Armenia into a ‘Turkish–Azerbaijani enclave’, claiming former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had turned the western Georgian city of Batumi into such an enclave.

The comments came in an interview with Armenian media outlet Aysor, in response to a question about whether ‘Azerbaijani businesspeople can be trusted and allowed to invest in Armenia’.

Earlier, the interviewer asked Karapetyan about statements in which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that the resettlement of Azerbaijanis displaced from Armenia at the height of the conflict between the two countries and the return of Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh were both off the table in the peace talks.

‘You can be sure that if [Azerbaijani President Ilham] Aliyev and Nikol Pashinyan manage to resettle 300,000 Azerbaijanis in Armenia, they will buy land, build factories, where Azerbaijanis will work. We have such an example in neighbouring Georgia. Due to Saakashvili’s mistakes, Batumi has become like a Turkish–Azerbaijani enclave’, claimed Karapetyan.

He claimed that his party would ‘stop all that’ and create 300,000 jobs for Armenians.

During the interview, Karapetyan additionally claimed that ‘all decisions about Armenia are made in Azerbaijan’ and that Pashinyan ‘did everything to antagonise relations with our main allies’ — an allusion to the continuously deteriorating ties between Armenia and Russia.

‘We should have very friendly relations with the US, with England, with France, with China, as well as with our friend, Russia. Only in this way can we secure serious guarantees from the superpowers’, Karapetyan said.

Asked about Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister Shahin Mustafayev’s visit to Armenia on 29 May, Karapetyan accused Pashinyan of shying away from asking the Azerbaijani official ‘all questions related to Armenia’s interests’, such as the destruction of Armenian heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh and the fate of the 19 Armenians — including former Nagorno-Karabakh officials — in Azerbaijani prisons.

‘When the deputy boss comes, Nikol [Pashinyan] has no right to ask any questions, he is only in the role of the listener’, Karapetyan said.

According to recent public opinion surveys, Karapetyan and his Strong Armenia Alliance are poised to be Pashinyan and his ruling Civil Contract party’s biggest opponents in the June parliamentary elections.