Arman Babajanyan, the chairman of the “For the Republic” party, wrote on his Facebook page:
“Erdogan announced yesterday that Armenia and Azerbaijan are close to signing a peace treaty, and Turkey is preparing to advance the Armenia-Turkey normalization agenda with “symbolic steps” starting in 2026. According to the information I have, Armenia and Turkey will soon establish diplomatic relations and, in all likelihood, open the border to citizens of third countries.
This is actually a tremendous progress not only for the two countries, but for the entire region. Our task regarding Turkey is not to burn the flag. That is done by those states that do not have statehood. If we burn someone else’s flag, we must be prepared for others to burn our flag as well. And the question is, can they “burn” something else besides the flag, and we remain just flag burners?
We can gather as a whole nation at the Armenian-Turkish border and shout that the Turk is our enemy. What will change from this? Our power will not increase from this, and Turkey’s will not decrease. In fact, nothing will change from this, and that is precisely the trap that is formulated in the extremes of Turkey or Russia, “enemy” or “savior”. Thus, for centuries, we have been kept between these two extremes, so that Armenia neither decides anything in the region nor changes anything. Not changing anything would maintain the dominance of the Russian-Turkish format in the area, which was strengthened by the “brilliant Russian-Turkish operation in Karabakh,” as described by Russian Defense Minister Shoigu.
Any radical rejection of relations between Armenia and Turkey serves only the interests of Russia to firmly position itself in the region, which is precisely Turkey’s goal, because Turkey knows its advantage over Russia and knows that whoever comes to the area instead of the Russians, the US, France, India, the Arab world, does not have the same advantage that it has over Russia. Turkey cannot reach an agreement with any of these countries, as it did with Armenia’s “ally” Russia, and did so at the expense of Armenian lives and territories.
A state is built not by emotion, but by cold calculation, sometimes at the cost of tough decisions. Talking and establishing relations with Turkey does not mean brotherhood. It means taking responsibility, managing the situation, protecting Armenia’s interests, and finally doing the most important thing – creating realities in the region that depend on Armenia.”
