“Azerbaijan is a country where the chances of a regime change can be ruled out by 99 percent at least today. It is impossible for crowds of people to gather in Azerbaijan with demands to ‘Return Artsakh.’ Those protests were organized by the government to justify its aggression so that the international community would believe that the actions of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces were in the best interests of society,” the founder of the Helsinki Initiative-92, winner of the International Prize of the Interchurch Peace Council for the award of the Institute of International Relations for outstanding achievements to humanity, and activist from Artsakh, Karen Ohanjanyan, told Aravot Daily in an interview. He was referring to the protests in Azerbaijan that took place after the clashes at the Armenia-Azerbaijan border in July and the arrests of opposition members that continue today.
“It is a different issue that members of the opposition joined the crowds during the protests. They wanted to take advantage of the situation and remove people who were dissatisfied and tired of living under the rule of the Aliyev dynasty. That is why the arrests continue of opposition members who speak out against the authorities of Azerbaijan. The ‘protest’ movement showed that Aliyev’s authority is not that strong. This can turn into something else and put an end to the Aliyev dynasty,” Karen Ohanjanyan added.
Emma Gabrielyan
