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Opposition lawmaker Aram Vardevanyan has reacted to Monday’s phone call between the Armenian and Turkish leaders, accusing Nikol Pashinyan of acting against his statements.

The Armenian opposition maintains that Ankara has not dropped its preconditions for Armenian-Turkish normalization.

“Obviously, any public officer must be accountable for their statements. Moreover, the bar is much higher when the country’s leader is involved. It has been publicly announced multiple times that the normalization of relations with Turkey cannot be considered separately from Turkey’s role based on the circumstances of the 44-day war [in Artsakh],” Vardevanyan, who represents the Hayastan alliance, said on Facebook on Tuesday.

He recalled Pashinyan’s statements regarding Turkey in October 2020.

“Turkey has returned to the South Caucasus to continue the Armenian Genocide,” the premier said.

He accused the Turkish authorities of recruiting terrorists to fight against Artsakh on Azerbaijan’s side.

“Turkey has come to the South Caucasus to continue the policy it is carrying out in the Mediterranean against Greece and Cyprus, or in Libya, or in Syria, or in Iraq. It is an expansionist policy. Turkey’s expansionist plans to the north, to the east, and to the southeast are well known, the point is that Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last impediment on that way. And now Turkey is not tackling the Karabakh issue at all. Turkey is trying to continue its genocidal policy, since Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last remaining obstacle on its path to advancing that expansionist policy to the north, east and south-east,” Pashinyan said in an interview.

“No action has been taken following the statements, no consistency has been demonstrated. Turkey has not changed its policies, signing the disgraceful Shushi declaration. In response, the ‘Armenian prime minister congratulated the Turkish president on Kurban Bayram’,” he wrote.