Parade of revisionist foolishness Why did Dashnak Manukyan take issue with Minister Papoyan?

The “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck is often credited with the saying: “Stupidity is a gift from God, but one should not abuse it.” Unfortunately, it seems that news from neighbouring Armenia regularly indicates that some politicians in that country have made a habit of abusing this “gift.” And once again, this was demonstrated by Gegham Manukyan, a deputy from the opposition bloc “Armenia”.

Before we turn to the pearls of wisdom from this parliamentarian, it is worth recalling that yesterday, during a state visit to Kazakhstan, the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, made a statement that has become a major regional event.

“Azerbaijan has lifted all restrictions on cargo transit to Armenia that had existed since the time of occupation. The first such transit cargo was a shipment of Kazakh grain to Armenia,” the head of state said.

Thus, official Baku has once again confirmed its commitment to establishing comprehensive peace, genuine neighbourliness, and sustainable development in the South Caucasus. Those familiar with the history of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict understand how important and symbolic this decision is. For nearly thirty years, Armenia occupied 20% of Azerbaijani territory, destroying cities and villages, displacing hundreds of thousands from their homes, and committing ethnic cleansing and the genocide in Khojaly. Yet despite all this suffering and pain, Azerbaijan, having restored its territorial integrity, has offered the region peace based on respect for sovereignty and economic cooperation. In this context, lifting restrictions on cargo transit to Armenia is a highly significant step, for which the Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, expressed his gratitude to the leader of Azerbaijan.

“President Ilham Aliyev announced yesterday that Azerbaijan is lifting restrictions on the transit of goods from its territory to Armenia. This is a highly significant statement, and I would like to express my gratitude to the President of Azerbaijan for this initiative. I would also like to thank the President of Kazakhstan and the Prime Minister of Georgia,” Pashinyan said while speaking at the 5th Tbilisi Silk Road Forum.

The significance of this step for building trust and peace in the region is hard to overstate, as noted by representatives of the Armenian government. For example, Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan stated that “the decision of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan to lift restrictions on cargo shipments to Armenia is of great importance for opening regional communications, strengthening mutual trust, and advancing a peaceful agenda.”

Meanwhile, Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan posted on Facebook: “Soon, the first batch of Kazakh wheat will enter Armenia via the Aktau-Baku route, followed by the Azerbaijani and Georgian railways. Peace has been established.”

And it was precisely this simple statement of fact that deeply unsettled the already fragile psyche of Gegham Manukyan. To grasp the full extent of this politician’s folly, consider a quote from his speech in the National Assembly of Armenia:

"The question arises as to who is really the Minister of Economy of Armenia: Gevorg Papoyan or the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev? After his meeting with Tokayev in Kazakhstan, Aliyev announced that Kazakh wheat would, for the first time, be transported to Armenia through Azerbaijan. After that, Papoyan essentially repeated Aliyev’s words."

In other words, according to the “logic” of this speaker, the Minister of Economy was supposed to deny the obvious. Yet Manukyan seems ready to argue, frothing at the mouth, that milk is black simply because it is white in Azerbaijan—especially considering the biography of this self-proclaimed fighter against common sense.

To begin with, Manukyan is a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF – Dashnaktsutyun) and was elected to the National Assembly as a candidate from this party. This veteran deputy clearly remembers the era when the ruling party in Armenia was the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), led by the infamous Serzh Sargsyan—who, during the 2018 revolution, was sent by Pashinyan and the Armenian people straight into the political abyss, from which he occasionally raises his voice even today.

I mention Serzh Sargsyan because Seyran Ohanyan, who served as Defence Minister under his presidency, now heads the “Armenia” faction that includes Manukyan. Meanwhile, the leader of the so-called Armenia alliance is Robert Kocharyan. Taken together, these facts reveal a simple truth: parties led by Armenia’s second and third presidents may adopt new names, but in reality, they are nothing more than Dashnaks in a different guise.

And this conclusion provides an answer to why Manukyan came up with a truly astonishingly foolish statement, even by the standards of the Armenian political scene. After all, he represents the very forces that provoked the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, which led to the temporary occupation of 20% of Azerbaijan’s territory.

After Armenia’s defeat in the 44-day war, they had hoped to exploit the emotions of the Armenian people, but none of them succeeded. Contempt for the Dashnaks and the Karabakh clan proved stronger than the bitterness over the collapse of myths and hopes, the essence of which boiled down to territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

Since then, the positions of these revanchists have only weakened further. The main reason is that today, many in Armenia understand the benefits that peace and neighbourly relations with Azerbaijan would bring to their country, as well as the fact that opponents of this approach have long been abusing stupidity for purely selfish, rather than national, interests.