‘Turkey Has No Moral Right to Blame Us for Anything’: Sargsyan in Euronews Interview

The March 4 resolution is neither a surprise nor a new approach for us, said Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in an interview with Euronews TV channel late yesterday evening.

Asked by the interviewer why he though the US House Foreign Affairs Committee made the vote now, Sargsyan said:

“Discussions on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide are not new in the political life of the United States of America. Several times at least in the past 10 years, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives has tried to vote on the resolution. Forty-two states in the US have recognized the events as Genocide.”

“I think that Turkey has no moral right to blame us about anything or to impose any conditions. Re-establishing relations without preconditions means we are not under any obligations to stay away from any of the possible topics.

“Let’s say that, by some miracle, the Turkish Parliament ratifies the protocols, the Armenian Parliament does the same, we re-establish our relations and a third country, which is against us re-establishing our relations, on purpose takes up the genocide issue. Will the Turks, therefore, use this as a pretext and break off relations?” said Sargsyan, in response to the interviewer’s question of whether he could think of a reason of why the US congressional panel would vote on the resolution now, in the context of Armenian-Turkish rapprochement.

Asked “If Armenia’s major problems now are unemployment, economic isolation and long- running disputes with Turkey and Azerbaijan, can these problems be more easily solved now?”, the Armenian president responded:

“Our difficulties with Turkey did not begin yesterday. For 17 years, Turkey has kept the Armenian border under blockade. Was there such a resolution 17 years ago? We fully understand that Turkey is a big country — in terms of population, territory and power… vastly bigger than Armenia. And if we lived apart from each other we would [also] understand. But since Armenia and Turkey are part of the international community, and the United States, France and the European Union are too, then the international community must assess the developments and situations as they unfold.”