“Denial of the genocide is a criminal offense in Armenia,” he told a news conference. “The fact of the genocide is indisputable and undeniable.”
Speaking during a visit to Switzerland on January 24, Pashinian said Armenians should “understand what happened” in 1915 and what prompted the subsequent campaigning for international recognition of the slaughter of some 1.5 million as genocide. He seemed to imply that foreign powers, notably the Soviet Union, were behind that campaign.
Armenian historians, opposition figures and retired diplomats expressed outrage at the remarks, saying that Pashinian cast doubt on the fact of the genocide officially recognized by over three dozen countries, including the United Staes. Some of them claimed that this is part of his efforts to cozy up to Turkey, which continues to deny a deliberate government effort to exterminate the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire.
Some Armenian Diaspora groups that have long been at the forefront of the recognition campaign have also deplored Pashinian’s remarks. Catholicos Aram I, the Lebanon-based number two figure in the Armenian Apostolic Church hierarchy, on Thursday urged Pashinian not to “make the undeniable fact that the Armenian genocide was masterminded by the Ottoman Empire a subject of discussion.”
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, a U.S. legal think-tank, joined in the chorus of criticism, saying that Pashinian is helping Turkey deny the genocide.
“By implying that basic questions about the Armenian Genocide, such as ‘what happened and why it happened,’ have not yet been adequately answered, Pashinian’s statement works to challenge the Armenian Genocide as an established historical fact,” it said.
Pashinian countered on Friday he simply wants Armenia and its worldwide Diaspora to rethink their “formulas for perceiving the world.”
“We may not have accurately perceived the realities at the beginning of the [20th] century, in the middle of the century, at the end of the century and even today,” he said. “Perhaps we place too much hope in some external encouragement.”
Pashinian caused a similar uproar with his statement issued in April 2024 on the 109th anniversary of the genocide. In that statement, he no longer called for its wider international recognition. He also put the emphasis on the Armenian phrase “Meds Yeghern” (Great Crime), rather than the word “genocide.”
Earlier in April, a senior Armenian pro-government lawmaker, Andranik Kocharian, called for “verifying” the number of the genocide victims and ascertaining the circumstances of their deaths. He said Pashinian wants to “make the entire list of compatriots subjected to genocide more objective.” Faced with strong condemnations from opposition leaders, civil society figures and genocide scholars, Kocharian claimed the following day that he only expressed his personal opinion.