Authorities Are Either Called 'Turks' or 'Russians': Pashinyan

Can our consciousness still not realize that we are in a situation for the first time in the last 500 years of our history, when our homeland and state are the same? Could it be that we are still inertially continuing to love the homeland and hate the state, perhaps continuing to perceive the homeland as a place to escape from the state? This seems very logical to me. This was noted by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan while speaking at the 'Education is Fashionable' movement.

“To demonstrate this, I bring a very primitive example of acquiring a conditional reflex during my meetings — if we enter through a door and get hit on the head, if it happens a second time, a third, or a sixth, regardless of whether there is a blow or a threat, we acquire a conditional reflex. For 500 years, every day, we have hated the state in which we lived. Was it possible for this to unlearned in 30 years, especially when we have not confronted our problems?” he said.

The Prime Minister stated that today, people are fleeing from the Armenian army at the same rate they fled from the Persian army. He mentioned that there are 13,500 wanted individuals in Armenia, of whom about 12,500 are wanted for avoiding conscription.

“The reasons are not the topic of today’s analysis; I’m saying that today we are fleeing from our Armenian army as much as from the Persian one. When the patrol police entered any province, all the governors would call with the following concern: ‘It’s a rural area; there are no license plates on the cars, they don’t have driver’s licenses, is it possible for the cars not to have insurance?’ I said, ‘What a phenomenon this is.’ A very simple thing: the village is a homeland for a person, not a state. Yes, when they go to Yerevan, the cars will be washed, and the insurance will be there, the license plates will exist. But when the patrol service comes, the human reaction is that the Turks are coming; they must somehow ask the lord to call the Sultan,” he added.

The Prime Minister pointed out that those who do not love the authorities either call them 'Turkish' or 'Russian.' “The authorities are a characteristic of the state, and if you are an authority, you cannot be Armenian — either you are Turkish or Russian; this is our problem. I am saying no, the Armenian is now the authority, the citizen of the Republic of Armenia, because this is a country, this is a state,” Pashinyan stated.