The president of “Modus Vivendi” Center Ara Papyan, to the question of Aravot.am whether it was not early for the condolence expressed by Armenia’s Foreign Ministry on the occasion of Azerbaijani shepherd killing by the Russian frontier at Turkish-Azerbaijani border, answered,- “I do not think that we hurried, because the reaction, in fact, was one or a day and a half later. It’s a different thing that the Russian side gave a vague response to the first requests, saying that the shepherd was armed and he was the first to shoot, but the weapon was not presented. I’m still waiting for the Russian side to present the weapon, and as long as there is no weapon, the assertions are ungrounded. If the person is killed, naturally, the gun must be in the territory of Armenia, he could not carry the gun back. We did not hurry; simply we must have clearly demanded the reaction of the Russian side, which was not done.” To the next question whether this case will bring tension to Armenian-Turkish relations, Papyan said: “Of course there will be tension because a man has been killed, Turkish nationalism will use this, but I think that this is also beneficial to other countries because it will wake up fear in Armenians again, and I’m sure that many people will say that relations with the Turks are getting worse. And what European choice, because if we make a European choice, and Russians will not defend us, the Turks we destroy us. This frame of mind instills in the people. And who is interested in any incident or crime? This gives rise to thinking.” To our observation that it was emphasized that the deceased was Azerbaijani, whether it was done on purpose, Papyan said: “Azerbaijani is a very abstract concept, I do not know what an Azerbaijani is. Until recently Azerbaijani was the same Turk, simply it was just the Shiite Turk, who was living in that territory. Now, if he is a Shiite Turk, but, as I understood, was once migrated from Azerbaijan, this is emphasized and here there is a problem of inflaming anti-Armenian, i.e. inflaming Turks against us, inflaming once again Azeri against us. There is a problem of putting Armenians in a difficult situation.”
Eva HAKOBYAN
