Those areas had for centuries accounted for most of the territory of ancient Armenian kingdoms before being incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. Their indigenous population was forcibly deported and/or massacred by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War.
In an interview with Armenian Public Television aired late on Friday, Pashinian again criticized his country’s 1990 declaration of independence which calls for international recognition of the genocide of Armenians “in Ottoman Turkey and Western Armenia.” He drew parallels between that reference and the Azerbaijani government’s regular description of much of Armenia as “Western Azerbaijan.”
“We get so upset by … the fact that some people in some place use the term ‘Western Azerbaijan,’” said Pashinian. “But when we say ‘Western Armenia,’ don’t we think that it irritates some people? Just like they irritate us by saying ‘Western Azerbaijan’ we irritate others by saying ‘Western Armenia.’”
The remarks sparked uproar from Pashinian’s political opponents who portrayed it as further proof that he has been kowtowing to Ankara and Baku and trampling on Armenian national interests and dignity in the process.
“Comparing Western Armenia with Western Azerbaijan is scholarly bankruptcy, civilizational color blindness, national denial, political suicide,” Lilit Galstian, a parliament deputy from the main opposition Hayastan alliance, wrote in a weekend Facebook post.
Ashot Melkonian, the director of the Institute of History of Armenia’s National Academy of Sciences, expressed outrage at Pashinian’s statement on Monday, accusing the premier of legitimizing Azerbaijan’s “historical falsifications.”
“In Azerbaijan, the phrase ‘Western Azerbaijan’ is used at the state level, it comes from the lips of their top leader [Ilham Aliyev,] and naturally his entourage also defends that idea, laying claim to Armenian territory,” Melkonian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Aliyev stated in July that as part of a resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict Yerevan must ensure the safe return of ethnic Azerbaijanis who had fled “Western Azerbaijan” in the late 1980s.
Western Azerbaijan is also the name of a province in Iran bordering Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave and Turkey. France’s ambassador to Armenia, Olivier Decottignies, emphasized this fact in a weekend post on X (formerly Twitter).
“The one and only,” Decottignies wrote over a map of the Iranian province.
The French envoy’s comment was interpreted by Armenian opposition figures and media commentators as veiled rebuke to Pashinian.
“France is strongly responding to Pashinian's nonsense,” said Eduard Sharmazanov, the spokesman for the opposition Republican Party of Armenia. “It is doing so through its ambassador.”
The Armenian opposition has also accused Pashinian of being willing to give ground on the Armenian genocide issue.
Pashinian’s statement on the 109th anniversary of the genocide commemorated in April was markedly different from his previous messages issued on the occasion. The premier no longer called for wider international recognition of the genocide and said instead that Armenians should “overcome the trauma” generated by the slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. He also put the emphasis on the Armenian phrase “Meds Yeghern” (Great Crime), rather than the word “genocide.”
Up until recently, Armenia welcomed and encouraged growing international recognition of the genocide resented by Ankara. Pashinian’s foreign minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, declared on October 31 that that is not a top foreign policy priority for Yerevan anymore.