We Are Not Giving Four Villages to Azerbaijan; We Are Taking Four Villages from Azerbaijan: Pashinyan

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan addressed the citizens on the occasion of Citizens' Day in Gavar, noting that having citizens is an important and necessary condition for a state, but it is not sufficient. "What is the next condition for having a state? That is territorial integrity. There cannot be a state without territory," said Pashinyan.

He highlighted that before reaching Gavar, a citizen asked him at a bakery, "Why are we giving villages to the Turks?" He emphasized, "This is a very important question. I don’t want to say that such villages have never existed in Armenia at any political level, and I don't want to discuss that part. But I want to say what decisions we are making and why: we are making decisions to affirm Armenia's territorial integrity. Have you seen those photos of Syunik that were published? That pillar is the cornerstone of Armenia's territorial integrity. We are making these decisions under the premise that if one of the essential prerequisites of a state is the citizen, the second is the territory and territorial integrity."

Pashinyan explained that territorial integrity means the internationally recognized territory of a given country, since territory can exist without international recognition. "When we try to mix our internationally recognized territory with our internationally unrecognized territory, we risk compromising our state’s internationally recognized status. Exactly what we have done for many years," said Pashinyan, noting that he does not wish to talk about this further.

"It was a closed conversation in a party format, and I was asking the question that is being raised by the public: why are you giving four villages to Azerbaijan? I say we are taking four villages from Azerbaijan as an argument that Armenia is an aggressor state, as evidence that there are stakeholders in pursuing aggressive policies against Armenia, not only from those we typically perceive as enemies but also from those we consider or will consider friends. This is a very important moment in our political maturity, to be able to understand the world as it actually is. And the world is a very dangerous place; it is a good place, a pleasant place, of course, but we must not forget that it is a very dangerous place. If we continue to perceive the world in two dimensions, we will have problems. And we already have these problems, one of the reasons for this is that we have perceived the world and, unfortunately, sometimes we do not continue to perceive it as a dangerous place," emphasized Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.