Gagik Melikonyan Scolds Journalist Over Handed Territories

Gagik Melikonyan, during an interview with Aravot.am, scolded a journalist regarding the territories given up, saying, "Girl, don't give it up, who told you to give it?" Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan provided clarifications during the recent parliamentary Q&A session related to the situation in the Vorotan area and explained why he had mentioned Azerbaijani toponyms such as Chayzami and Eyvazli. He also pointed to Soviet maps and the 2010 amendments to the 'Law on Territorial Division'.

In response to why the Armenian side relies on Soviet maps or how the law on territorial division, which pertains to the division of villages and communities in Armenia, leads to confusion and manipulation with the state border, Gagik Melikonyan, former Deputy Minister of Defense and KPP faction MP, replied: "The Prime Minister mentioned Chayzami, Shurnukh, and Eyvazli. If those villages are named that way, what should we call them? What do we call Eyvazli, New Erzurum? You haven’t put that name down. If you had named it New Erzurum, we would say New Erzurum. But it remains Eyvazli to this day. If the opposition constantly says, 'You addressed it with an Azerbaijani name,' yes, say a name, let’s address it with Erzurum! Or come up with an Armenian name for Chayzami and say, 'From now on, call it Armenian.' Everyone in Syunik knows that those villages are there by those names; they travel that way and know what is what. Those people who have never been in Vorotan, don’t know where Vorotan is, are talking about it. Therefore, I advise anyone who wants to speak about something for Syunik to at least once pass through that road to Meghri; when they come back, they will see that Chayzami and Eyvazlar are there."

When we pointed out that Azerbaijani forces had previously been 70 km away from there, and now they are approaching, claiming that Yerevan will become Erivan, Melikonyan responded: "Listen, whether we go to demarcation or delimitation, we must be separated according to Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan’s borders, right?" When we expressed surprise that there has not yet been a demarcation, why are we initially accepting it as Azerbaijani, Melikonyan stated: "When delimitation occurs, if something happens, we can talk, but neither demarcation nor delimitation has happened. We stand on the borders of former Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan at this stage. We don’t have any other border. Tomorrow, when delimitation occurs, for example, Vorotan is a river, the right of Vorotan River is Azerbaijan, and the left is Armenia; we must agree like that, right? Now the boundary present, Eyvazli, which we mention, is the area that crosses the river towards our border. Now during this delineation, I think we should draw the line like this and say, ‘What remains ours stays with us, and what remains of you goes to you.’ The same with the Shurnukh area and the same with Chayzami; the line must be marked, and we should say, ‘Below the line is yours, above the line is ours.’" When we mentioned that it hasn't been delineated yet, but the Prime Minister is already saying it's Azerbaijani, implying that he has already decided, Melikonyan replied: "Now that area is Azerbaijani, it's part of Soviet Azerbaijan; let’s understand it correctly."

We countered that these are our historical territories, what Azerbaijan; Gagik Melikonyan scoffed: "These are your historical territories; you can say that all of Turkey’s territories are your historical territories. You could say that Kars is ours, this is ours, he is ours. But we only say. We barely took territories back, liberated our territories, and we didn’t become armed, we were not united; that’s why we gave those territories back. The whole world had been behind us for 20 years, saying resolve these issues. We didn’t resolve them because we were afraid they would call us traitors. For 20 years, we brought leaders to our country from Karabakh to resolve these issues; they didn’t solve them. Not only they didn’t resolve them, but they didn’t assemble the army either. The armament we needed, we didn’t have. Ask them, why didn’t you do this? Ask them, what did you achieve? Now they want to run this country; they have made themselves the opposition and brought them here. There’s not a single thing those people are supporters of this country and this government."