Author: Khoyetsian Rose

Opposition lawmaker Aram Vardevanyan has reacted to Monday’s phone call between the Armenian and Turkish leaders, accusing Nikol Pashinyan of acting against his statements.

The Armenian opposition maintains that Ankara has not dropped its preconditions for Armenian-Turkish normalization.

“Obviously, any public officer must be accountable for their statements. Moreover, the bar is much higher when the country’s leader is involved. It has been publicly announced multiple times that the normalization of relations with Turkey cannot be considered separately from Turkey’s role based on the circumstances of the 44-day war [in Artsakh],” Vardevanyan, who represents the Hayastan alliance, said on Facebook on Tuesday.

He recalled Pashinyan’s statements regarding Turkey in October 2020.

“Turkey has returned to the South Caucasus to continue the Armenian Genocide,” the premier said.

He accused the Turkish authorities of recruiting terrorists to fight against Artsakh on Azerbaijan’s side.

“Turkey has come to the South Caucasus to continue the policy it is carrying out in the Mediterranean against Greece and Cyprus, or in Libya, or in Syria, or in Iraq. It is an expansionist policy. Turkey’s expansionist plans to the north, to the east, and to the southeast are well known, the point is that Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last impediment on that way. And now Turkey is not tackling the Karabakh issue at all. Turkey is trying to continue its genocidal policy, since Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last remaining obstacle on its path to advancing that expansionist policy to the north, east and south-east,” Pashinyan said in an interview.

“No action has been taken following the statements, no consistency has been demonstrated. Turkey has not changed its policies, signing the disgraceful Shushi declaration. In response, the ‘Armenian prime minister congratulated the Turkish president on Kurban Bayram’,” he wrote.

The Armenian authorities’ attempts to hold snap Yerevan City Council elections have failed, Pastinfo reports, pointing to a “tough struggle” among Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party members and entourage in the run-up to the next municipal elections.

“As some media reports suggest, former Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan was set to run for mayor in the snap elections, and the authorities planned to ask former and current oligarchs for help to ensure his victory. Our sources tell us that former Yerevan Mayor Gagik Beglaryan had agreed to covertly support Avinyan by securing votes for him. In addition, Samvel Aleksanyan, also known as “Lfik Samo”, was expected to join the race with [his nephew] Artak Aleksanyan, the former head of the Malatia and Sebastia administrative district, forming an alliance and running in the municipal elections. Naturally, oligarch and ruling faction MP Khachatur Sukiasyan [also known as Grzo] would not stay away from the electoral process. Incidentally, the reports have not been refuted to date,” the news outlet says.

“However, opinion polls have shown that even if such schemes are used, it would be very difficult to get 50+1 percent of the votes to install Avinyan as mayor because the approval rating of the authorities in the capital is low and Samvel Aleksanyan’s influence has diminished.

Citing the findings of the polls, the Civil Contract party members persuaded Pashinyan to cancel the plan for early elections to the Yerevan City Council, fearing that this would mark the first step towards the loss of power. The Grzo-led wing of power, which [parliament speaker] Alen Simonyan is an active member of, was especially zealous in postponing the elections.

It was supposed to be like that, because Khachatur Sukiasyan, the number one oligarch in the capital, is waiting with his sleeves rolled up for the elections. The latter, according to the media reports, earlier wanted to win the mayoral race in the person of Alen Simonyan, now he personally offers his candidacy. After all, he must know that to win in Yerevan elections means to extend grip on power.

By and large, it is Sukiasyan who pulls the strings of the different wings of power today: the country’s president was his employee, the National Assembly speaker was his PR man and employee, finally, the judicial system controlled by Gagik Jhangiryan was in his pocket, but events took another turn and the number one fraudster, Gagik Jhangiryan, resigned, which significantly reduced Sukiasyan’s political reach too. But with the Yerevan municipal elections a new room opens up.

As for Avinyan, Civil Contract’s official candidate for Yerevan mayor, it seems that Jhangiryan’s method of tricks worked here too: on the one hand, someone is tricked by being declared an official candidate, on the other hand, Pashinyan and oligarchs come to the conclusion that Avinyan will not win the Yerevan elections even if Samvel Aleksanyan forms an alliance to support him… So, is Khachatur Sukiasyan left now? To make a long story short, Yerevan may find itself in the clutches of oligarchs with a wolf’s hunger.

Even in your worst dreams such a scenario is impossible to imagine, but as long as Nikol is in power, “gray wolves” are also imaginable,” reads the article.