Protests of Kocharyan’s radicals and revanchists have been going on in Armenia for over a week. At first, they justified their so-called “disobedience” by arguing that the Armenian people was opposed to the signing of a peace treaty with Azerbaijan and the normalization of relations with Turkey, calling it a betrayal on the part of the incumbent authorities. But, as it turned out, the “Resistance” movement created by them is not really resistant: the revanchists admit that they cannot ignore the new reality established in the region by Azerbaijan’s victory.
“While holding protests with the demand to remove Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, the Armenian opposition has no intention of renouncing the statements on Karabakh signed by him, or the negotiations initiated by his government,” says Ishkhan Saghatelyan, one of the leaders of the protest movement, representative of the opposition Hayastan parliamentary faction, Robert Kocharyan’s man.
“Regarding [the trilateral statement on the cessation of hostilities in Karabakh signed on] November 9 [2020], we have already said that this is an established fact, even though we find it unacceptable,” Saghatelyan said.
“We will not provoke a war. We will not stop negotiations with Turkey and Azerbaijan, we will not declare war,” the opposition activist added.
One has to wonder why the opposition is raging in the streets if it recognizes the new reality in the region. The answer is actually quite simple.
First of all, they are well aware that they cannot do anything with this new reality, and the unleashing of a new war by Armenia will simply result in it disappearing from the political map of the world, because the whole world has recognized that Azerbaijan was within its rights to liberate Karabakh from the Armenian occupation. Moreover, the Armenians have nothing to fight with, since Kocharyan effectively robbed the Armenian army, and Azerbaijan ground it to dust in the 44-day war. Kocharyan’s supporters are constantly looking for excuses to take down the incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and return to power, put down roots and continue to rob their people and country, as they did before.
Second of all, the truth is that what Azerbaijan is proposing for Armenia is to the latter’s benefit, at the very least, economically, because the signing of a peace treaty and the opening of the Zangezur corridor will breathe new life into the deceased Armenian economy. This means transit, this means new regional projects, this means investments that will ultimately contribute to the well-being of the country’s population. Kocharyan and the revanchists know this. But, of course, their concern is not the Armenian people. They have a different interest: ravaging the already revived economy. This are the underlying causes of the current protests in Yerevan.
Mehdi Ahmedzade
Translated from Day.az
