“Our official position is that international recognition of the Armenian genocide is not among our foreign policy priorities today,” he told Turkish journalists in an interview publicized by his office late on Thursday.
What is more, Pashinian questioned the wisdom of genocide resolutions adopted by the parliaments of dozens of nations and resented by Turkey, saying that they undermine stability in the region.
“When even very distant countries make such decisions and when enthusiasm or joy [in Armenia] from that decision fades, the next question arises: what do those decisions give us in our relations with our immediate neighborhood?” he said. “When we have tensions in our immediate neighborhood, to what extent do those tensions contribute to stability, peace in our country, in our region, etc.?”
Pashinian provoked a storm of criticism at home when he essentially questioned the genocide during a visit to Switzerland on January 24. Pashinian said Armenians should “understand what happened” in 1915 and what prompted the subsequent campaigning for international recognition of the slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians as genocide. He seemed to imply that foreign powers, notably the Soviet Union, were behind that campaign.
Armenian historians, opposition figures and retired diplomats expressed outrage at the remarks, saying that Pashinian cast doubt on the fact of the genocide officially recognized by over three dozen countries, including the United Staes. Some of them claimed that this is part of his efforts to cozy up to Turkey, which continues to deny a deliberate government effort to exterminate the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. Some Armenian Diaspora groups that have long been at the forefront of the recognition campaign also deplored Pashinian’s remarks.
The premier insisted later in January that he did not deny the genocide and is not helping Ankara do that. He repeated those assurances in his televised comments to the Turkish journalists, who reportedly visited Armenia at the invitation and expense of the Armenian government.
But he also stressed in the same context: “We must draw a line between the history and the present.”
Pashinian had caused a similar uproar with his statement on the 109th anniversary of the genocide commemorated in April 2024. The statement put the emphasis on the Armenian phrase “Meds Yeghern” (Great Crime), rather than the word “genocide,” and said Armenians should “overcome the trauma” generated by it.
In his latest interview, Pashinian also touted his policy of rapprochement with Turkey similarly criticized by the Armenian opposition. He said that there has been a “very significant change” in Turkish-Armenian relations despite Ankara’s failure to implement a 2022 agreement to partially normalize them.
“Diplomatic representatives of Armenia and Turkey are in constant direct contact with each other,” he said.
Ankara continues to make the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border and establishment of diplomatic relations with Yerevan conditional on a resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict acceptable to Baku. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal should call for a land corridor through Armenia to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave bordering Turkey.
