In a September 19 article in Azg Daily of Armenia, Hasmik Harutunyan reported Mihranyan as saying that “The Genocide and the issue of Armenian-Turkish relations are a rotten nail in the head of the Armenian people.” Harutunyan then goes on listing Mihranyan’s diatribes about the worldwide Armenian activists that are opposed to the Armenia-Turkey Protocols.
Long-established is the fact that Mihranyan is a devoted apologist of failed presidential candidate Levon Ter-Petrossyan’s damaging foreign policy during the latter’s tenure as President until his resignation in February 1998. Ter-Petrossyan fell from grace and lost his mandate because he officially toyed with the idea of surrendering major chunks of newly liberated Armenian territories of Artsakh to Azerbaijan, and of outright handing over Meghri, Armenia to Baku.
Apparently, Mihranyan has either forgotten or refuses to recognize the fact that Ter-Petrossyan’s self-defeating policies and ideas caused him the loss of power. And now, he is eager to liken Ter-Petrossyan to the current President, thus giving Pres. Sargsyan a suffocating political bear hug by attempting to misguide Pres. Sargsyan into the newest Turkish trap by sugar-coating the content of the grossly unfair and unjust preconditions imposed by Turkey?
Mihranyan has also characterized Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian as a veteran diplomat who is widely criticized for having initialed the Protocols.
How can anyone forget the fact that Mihranyan is one of the individuals who attempted to promote the defrauding “Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission” in early 2000? Thanks to a worldwide outcry by Armenians in Armenia, Artsakh and the Diaspora, TARC was derailed.
How can a clear-thinking Armenian ever accept Mihranyan’s false notion that the signing of the Protocols will constitute a victory for Armenia and its worldwide Diaspora and their Cause?
According to Azg Daily, Mihranyan went on to criticize former Pres. Kocharian for not giving in to the Washington-based neocons, alleging that Kocharian “lost” a historic opportunity in Key West, Florida in April 2001 on settling the Artsakh (Karabagh) conflict with Azerbaijan. But in reality, to his credit, Kocharian refused to give into the pressures applied on him by the neocons to “return” Artsakh to Azerbaijan.
I hope Mihranyan remembers that he was an active member of the same Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission which produced the conclusion of a 3rd party report that TARC had commissioned on “whether the actions of the Ottoman authorities constituted genocide.” The conclusion of the International Center for Transitional Justice report was that yes, it did.
So, how can Mihranyan convince the Armenians to accept the current Protocols agreement which calls for the establishment of a joint commission between Armenia and Turkey to find out “whether the actions of the Ottoman authorities constituted genocide.”
Contrary to TARC I members’ repeated assurances that it has terminated its activities, it apparently was kept alive, well, and plotting in the “comfort” of total darkness.
In TARC II’s days in 2004, it was TARC I all over again. Now it’s all too clear that neither TARC I nor TARC II ever vanished into oblivion and somehow continued to join forces with Ankara in order to produce the current Protocols.
Finally, one wonders if Mihranyan takes his cues from pro-Turkey neocons in Washington and elsewhere?
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