Tuesday,
Families Of Fallen Soldiers Demand Pashinian’s Prosecution
• Naira Nalbandian
Armenia -- The parents of Armenian soldiers killed in the 2020 war in
Nagorno-Karabakh protest in Yerevan, .
The parents and other relatives of Armenian soldiers killed during the 2020 war
in Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrated in Yerevan on Tuesday to demand criminal
charges against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
The protest stems from remarks which Pashinian made in the Armenian parliament
on April 13 in response to continuing opposition criticism of his handling of
the devastating war that left at least 3,800 Armenian soldiers dead.
“They say now, ‘Could they have averted the war?’” he told lawmakers. “They
could have averted the war, as a result of which we would have had the same
situation, but of course without the casualties.”
The remarks angered the families of some of the fallen soldiers. They said that
Pashinian publicly admitted deliberately sacrificing thousands of lives and must
be held accountable for that.
A group of them submitted a formal “crime report” to Armenia’s Office of the
Prosecutor-General on April 18. Prosecutor-General Artur Davtian said afterwards
that although he does not think that the prime minister admitted to any crime he
forwarded the report to another law-enforcement agency which is investigating
senior government and military officials’ actions during the six-week war.
Davtian addressed on Tuesday more than a hundred relatives of fallen soldiers
who rallied outside the prosecutors’ headquarters after marching through the
center of Yerevan.
“If we had ceded parts of our homeland without a fight, should have there also
been an indictment by the same logic?” he told the angry protesters, questioning
their demands.
Armenia - Armenian flags fly by the graves of soldiers killed during the 2020
war in Nagorno-Karabakh, January 28, 2022.
The protesters were not convinced by that argument. They jeered the country’s
chief prosecutor as he made his way back into the building.
“None of us is satisfied with what we heard,” said one woman who lost her son
during the war stopped by a Russian-brokered ceasefire in November 2020.
“What was Pashinian afraid of [before the war?]” asked the father of another
fallen soldier. “Of being called a traitor? They now say worse things about him.”
Virtually all Armenian opposition groups hold Pashinian responsible for
Armenia’s defeat in the war with Azerbaijan. For his part, Pashinian has put the
blame on former Presidents Robert Kocharian and Serzh Sarkisian, who now lead
two of those groups.
Kocharian ruled Armenia from 1998-2008, while Sarkisian, his successor, lost
power more than two years before the outbreak of the hostilities.
Erdogan Accuses Turkish-Armenian Politician Of Treason
• Tatevik Sargsian
Armenia - Garo Paylan, an ethnic Armenian member of Turkey's parliament, arrives
for an Armenia-Diaspora conference in Yerevan, 18Sep2017.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has strongly condemned an ethnic Armenian
member of Turkey’s parliament for demanding that Ankara officially recognize the
1915 Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire.
Erdogan said that a corresponding parliamentary resolution drafted by the
opposition lawmaker, Garo Paylan, amounts to high treason.
The resolution not only calls for a formal recognition of the genocide but also
says that the Turkish authorities must rename streets bearing the names of
Ottoman masterminds of the genocide and offer Turkish citizenship to Armenian
descendants of its survivors.
Paylan circulated the measure ahead of the 107th anniversary of the slaughter of
an estimated 1.5 million Armenians marked on Sunday. Speaker Mustafa Sentop
refused to include it on the parliament agenda.
Paylan’s initiative provoked a storm of criticism from other senior Turkish
officials as well as a spokesman for the ruling AKP party.
“We regard as clear treason the manifestation of such brazenness in this body
symbolizing the expression of national will,” Erdogan said after chairing a
cabinet meeting in Ankara on Monday.
Erdogan said that the Turkish authorities will take “appropriate actions”
against Paylan. But he did not clarify whether the 49-year-old lawmaker
representing the pro-Kurdish opposition party HDP will face criminal charges.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses the media after a cabinet meeting in
Ankara, Turkey, December 20, 2021.
The authorities have for years tried to strip Paylan of his parliamentary
immunity from prosecution.
Speaking to the CNN-Turk TV channel, Paylan described the furious reaction to
his initiative as unprecedented. He said that similar resolutions drafted by in
the past did not cause such a government outcry.
“I haven’t changed, which means that Turkey has,” he said, adding that Erdogan’s
government is no longer willing to tolerate public actions challenging the
official Turkish version of the events of 1915.
Turkey -- Human rights activists hold placards picturing Armenian intellectuals,
detained and executed in 1915, during a rally in Istanbul, April 24, 2016
The HDP is the only major Turkish party to have recognized the World War One-era
mass killings of Armenians as genocide.
Successive Turkish governments have denied a premeditated government effort to
exterminate Ottoman Turkey’s Armenian population. Erdogan alleged in 2019 that
Armenians themselves massacred Muslim civilians and that their mass deportations
to a Syrian desert was “the most reasonable action that could be taken” by the
Ottoman government.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu underscored Ankara’s stance on
Saturday when he publicly made a hand gesture associated with the Turkish
ultranationalist group Gray Wolves during a visit to Uruguay. Cavusoglu gestured
to members of the South American country’s Armenian community demonstrating
outside the Turkish Embassy in the capital Montevideo.
Armenia Said To Seek ‘Strategic’ Ties With Iran
Iran - New Armenian Ambassador Arsen Avagian hands his credentials to Iranian
President Ebrahim Raisi, Tehran, .
Armenia has reportedly communicated to Iran its desire to turn relations between
the two neighboring states into strategic partnership.
According to an Iranian government statement, Arsen Avagian, the new Armenian
ambassador in Tehran, made this clear after handing his credentials to Iran’s
President Ebrahim Raisi on Monday.
“Armenia is ready to raise relations between the two countries to the level of
strategic relations,” Raisi’s office quoted Avagian as saying.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said Avagian told Raisi that he will do his best
to help deepen Armenian-Iranian ties. A ministry statement on their conversation
made no references to Yerevan’s desire to make those ties “strategic.”
Raisi was cited by his office as noting “potentials for the development of
friendly, long-lasting relations between Tehran and Yerevan.” He said that
Tehran supports the territorial integrity of states.
Raisi emphasized that support in a January phone call with Prime Minister Nikol
Pashinian. “In this regard, Tehran supports the sovereignty of Armenia over all
territories and roads passing through that country,” he said at the time.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are to reopen their border to commercial and passenger
traffic under the terms of a Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped their
six-week war for Nagorno-Karabakh in November 2020. The deal specifically
commits Yerevan to opening rail and road links between Azerbaijan and its
Nakhichevan exclave.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly claimed that it envisages an
exterritorial land corridor that would pass through Armenia’s Syunik province
bordering Iran. Armenian leaders have dismissed his claims, saying that
Azerbaijani citizens and cargo cannot be exempt from Armenian border controls.
Some Iranian officials accused Aliyev last fall of seeking to effectively strip
Iran of a common border with Armenia. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein
Amir-Abdollahian likewise warned that any “changes in the region’s map” are
unacceptable to the Islamic Republic.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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