Opposition MP slams Pashinyan's Western Armenia remarks
Opposition Hayastan faction MP Levon Kocharyan has blasted Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's remarks on Western Armenia and Baku’s fake “Western Azerbaijan” narrative.
In an interview with the Public TV on Friday, Pashinyan compared the two concepts with each other, stating that using the term “Western Armenia” “irritates some people the same way it irritates us when we hear Western Azerbaijan.”
“Genocide was perpetrated against 1.5 million Armenians [in the Ottoman Empire in 1915] and many were forced to flee their homes and cities, leaving everything behind, including cultural heritage. This has been acknowledged by around 30 countries around the world,” Kocharyan wrote on social media on Saturday.
“It’s precisely for this reason that the eastern part of present-day Turkey is called “Western Armenia” by Armenians. Likening it to the Azerbaijani leadership’s use of "Western Azerbaijan” to refer to present-day Armenia is not only ignorance, but also a despicable move,” he added.