Pashinyan's associate labels nationalist party "traitors"

Vahagn Aleksanyan, an MP from the ruling Civil Contract party, criticised the nationalist Dashnaktsutyun party during his speech in the Armenian parliament today.

"If you think that the narratives of our opposition are somehow different from what a 5th or 6th grader says, you are wrong. There is absolutely no difference," he said, Caliber.Az reports.

"Dashnaktsutyun positions itself as the forefront of the resistance. I would like to ask: what did they resist and what are they resisting? What was the resistance front and what is the resistance front now? Yes, I agree that after the creation of the USSR, for a while the resistance front of Dashnaktsutyun was Armenian independence. It was for a while. In my last speech, I didn't only give an example from the book of the head of the foreign intelligence of the USSR that from a certain point the Soviet KGB managed to introduce so many agents into the ranks of 'Dashnaktsutyun' that the whole 'Dashnaktsutyun' party came under their full control and no longer fought against the Soviet Union. But in that case, what became of the resistance front of 'Dashnaktsutyun' when it left the resistance front against the USSR? Türkiye became the front of this resistance. And if we don't understand this, we won't be able to move forward.

But why Türkiye, that is the question. Why not, for example, Iran or some other state? You only have to look at the inter-state relations of the Soviet Union with Türkiye, Iran, with other countries, and everything will be clear.

If you look back 100 years ago, in 1918, during the First Republic of Armenia, when Dashnaks led, Armenia declared that Armenia's only future was friendship with Türkiye. I stress that this happened 3 years after the 'historical tragedy' (our quotation marks - ed.).

If I am not mistaken, the leader of your alliance, Robert Kocharyan, responded to a reporter's question at one of the pre-election press conferences. The reporter asked a very direct question: 'Mr Kocharyan, do you see Armenia as part of a state or do you value Armenia's independence?' The leader of your alliance replied as follows: 'I am not ready to answer this question now'. You know the difference between us and you, you are not ready to answer this question, but we are. We are ready to say that the independence of Armenia is an absolute value," the MP said.