Calling Ararat the highest mountain in Armenia: Pashinyan voices possible threats from Turkey
YEREVAN, May 22. /ARKA/. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan explained today the consequences of Armenians' belief that "Ararat is the highest mountain in Armenia."
At a press conference on Monday, Pashinyan said that at his meetings with schoolchildren, when asked what is the highest mountain in Armenia, half of the children name Ararat.
"Speaking of Ararat and Aragats, I am talking about the territories that are or are not the sovereign territory of Armenia. Mountain Aragats is in Armenia, Mountain Ararat is not. In the case of Turkey, we have a specifically delineated border. Is it good or bad? Of course it is a good thing," he said.
He suggested looking at the situation from Turkey's perspective. "Ararat is in internationally recognized Turkish territory. How do children in Armenia learn about this (that the highest mountain in Armenia is Ararat)? In schools, as a result of the government's educational policy. (In Turkey) they say, "Okay, if children call Armenia's highest mountain Ararat and not Aragats, does that mean that Armenia has territorial claims against Turkey? If it does, why should we promote or even ignore Armenia's development? On the contrary, if they have claims, we should do everything to destroy them. And now I ask a question: what is the highest mountain in Armenia? The answer is Mountain Aragats," he said.
The Prime Minister stressed that this is the policy that will give Armenia the opportunity to develop, and everything else will drag the country into a historical cycle, the final of which will lead to the loss of the state.
Although Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Armenia’s independence from the former Soviet Union, the countries have no diplomatic ties and Turkey shut down their common border in 1993, in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan which was locked in a conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Turkey also refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide, committed during 1915-1923 when an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman government. The overwhelming majority of historians widely view the event as genocide.
In 2009, Ankara and Yerevan reached an agreement in Zurich to establish diplomatic relations and to open their joint border, but Turkey later said it could not ratify the deal until Armenia withdrew from Nagorno-Karabakh.
In 2020, Turkey strongly backed Azerbaijan in the six-week conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh which ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal that saw Azerbaijan gain control of a significant part of Nagorno-Karabakh.
On February 9, 2023 Armenia sent 100 tons of aid to quake-stricken Turkey by five trucks through a border gate between the two countries that was opened for the first time in 35 years.
In December 2021, the two countries appointed special envoys to help normalize relations who have had 4 meetings already.-0-
