Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan spoke about Shushi several times in his speeches. In one of his speeches, he called Shushi an ‘unhappy and colorless’ city, and in another, he said, “Prior to the war and liberation, Shushi’s population was over 90 percent Azeri.”
Aravot Daily asked citizens in Stepanakert, the capital city of Artsakh, how they feel about the Prime Minister’s statements.
“He’s lying, because I can bring another example: the majority of people living in the city of Masis during the Soviet Union were Turks. Now, should we call that an Azerbaijani city? Nikol Pashinyan is entirely wrong because Shushi was the second city in the Caucasus in 1720. The city had a population of 80,000, of which 60,000 were Armenian, 12,000 were Turks, and 8,000 were from other nations. How can Pashinyan make such a mistake?” one of the citizens said.
This person believes that Shushi is the heart of Artsakh. They believe that Nikol Pashinyan is simply fanning the flames for the Turks with such statements. “We need to fight as a nation so we can get our homeland back.”
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Another citizen said that Shushi has always been an Armenian city, and Azerbaijanis only began living there after procedures that took place during the Soviet Union. “Shushi is a beautiful and wonderful city. We fixed it up nicely. The city was full of Armenian neighborhoods.”
Another citizen said that the Prime Minister should have known that 40,000 people lived in Shushi in 1912, of which 1-2 percent were Azeris. “When the Armenian population of Shushi was deported in the 1960s, only Turks were living there. But that doesn’t mean that Shushi is an Azerbaijani city.”
They added, “Shushi became a colorless city after it was given to Azerbaijan. I don’t understand that logic either: how is it a colorless city? Yes, there was a large preamble before the “colorless city” phrase, and he seemed to be trying to comfort the people with that. Currently, Shushi is a colorless city because it is under Azerbaijani control. And many people, including me, who was born and raised there, don’t want to see it.”
Ami Chichakyan
