Pashinian stressed the need to “revisit the history of the Armenian genocide” when he met with a group of Diaspora Armenians in Switzerland late last week.
“We must understand what happened and why it happened, how we perceived it and through whom we perceived. How is it that in 1939 there was no Armenian genocide [recognition] agenda and how is it that in 1950 the Armenian genocide agenda emerged?” he said, implying that foreign powers were instrumental in the decades-long Armenian campaign for international recognition of the genocide.
Critics expressed outrage at the remarks, saying that he cast doubt on the fact that the World War One-era slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians constituted genocide.
Vartan Oskanian, a vocal critic of Pashinian who had served as foreign minister from 1998-2008, accused him of “parroting” Turkey’s continuing denial of the genocide. Another former foreign minister, Ara Ayvazian, likewise decried “the beginning of the denial of our national tragedy.”
Pashinian and his office did not react to these accusations by Tuesday evening. The chorus of condemnations was dismissed instead by several senior members of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party.
“The well-known information troops of the empire are … trying to prove that the prime minister questioned the fact of the Armenian genocide in Switzerland, which is an absolute lie,” said Vahagn Aleksanian, the party’s deputy chairman.
In his words, Pashinian simply made the point that “when you look at your tragedy with your own eyes, when you don't need a mediator to mourn and face your tragedy, then the empire doesn't have much to sell you.”
Like Pashinian, Aleksanian seemed to refer to Russia and the Soviet Union as the driving force behind the genocide recognition drive. Speaking to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service at the weekend, Suren Manukian, an Armenian scholar specializing in genocide studies, countered that Moscow reluctantly allowed Soviet Armenia to mark genocide anniversaries only in 1965.
Pashinian himself stated in 2021 that the Ottoman regime of the so-called Young Turks was solely responsible for the genocide. He said the purpose of its deliberate effort to exterminate the Armenian and other minorities of the Ottoman Empire was to “create a monoethnic and expansionist Turkey.”