Former Yerevan Mayor Urges Entrepreneurs, Businesses to Move to Karabakh

However the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict gets resolved, it will be only through one way, when there are living, working, normal people in Karabakh and they feel powerful Armenia behind them, said Republic party  council member, former Yerevan mayor and police chief Suren Abrahamyan, speaking to journalists today. 

“All major officials must go to Karabakh. [Former president of Armenia] Robert Kocharian has to apologize to the people and open a Stefano Ricci [shop] in Karabakh. Sashik [referring to Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan’s brother Levon Sargsyan] should want to be rector not of Yerevan’s, but of Shushi’s university. 

“Mika [enterpreneur Mikhail Baghdasarov], Flesh [enterpreneur Barsegh Beglaryan and], Fresh [a play on words; most likely referring to the supermarket chain in Yerevan, implying businesses should also establish shops in Nagorno-Karabakh] have to go there; the land will be kept by people there. There shouldn’t be a cemetery for Karabakhis in Yerevan. I’m not saying anything risque, this is life, this is the only way to keep the land,” he said. 

Also participating in today’s press conference, Republican Party of Armenia (HHK, which is the ruling party in Armenia and should not be confused with the Republic party) MP Artak Davtyan disagreed, saying, “we shouldn’t make decisions for those people.”

“Of course, there’s an issue of population figures in Nagorno-Karabakh. We, with our potential, can promote the growth of numbers and then we will have even greater victories in the international arena. But going there must be not only honorable, but also profitable,” said Davtyan. 

The HHK parliamentarian expressed conviction that Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and former president Robert Kocharian would go to Nagorno-Karabakh with their families, if war happens in Karabakh. Davtyan recalled that during the years of the Nagorno-Karabakh War, they were in Nagorno-Karabakh with their families. 

Abrahamyan, in turn, said that 10–15 years ago, if they told him that Robert Kocharian was invovled in corruption or he was killing lions in Tanzania, he, in Kocharian’s defense, “would bite the speaker’s throat.”

“And now I will bite his throat [referring to Kocharian],” said Abrahamyan, responding to a question by a journalist as to what he would do now. 

Note that the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan after a bloody war in the 1990s and is populated mainly by ethnic Armenians. Today it exists as a de-facto independent state under an uneasy ceasefire, and OSCE-brokered efforts to resolve its status have so far been unsuccessful.