PM Pashinyan’s address on 111th anniversary of Armenian Genocide

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Thursday said the best guarantee against the repetition of the Armenian Genocide is a strong, peaceful, and sovereign Republic of Armenia, stressing that Armenians must focus on strengthening their internationally recognized statehood rather than pursuing “lost homelands” beyond the country’s borders.

Below is the full text of the Prime Minister’s address:

Dear People, Dear Citizens of the Republic of Armenia,

Today we commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 – Mets Yeghern – and pay tribute to our compatriots who were subjected to massacre, deportation, and starvation in the Ottoman Empire simply for being Armenian.

Mets Yeghern is the greatest tragedy that has happened to us, one that our people have been reliving for 111 years.

Every year on April 24, tens of thousands of our citizens march to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial to bow before the memory of our martyred compatriots.

And our nationwide April 24 march is also an expression of reflection, contemplation, evaluation of history, and determination to prevent the repetition of the Mets Yeghern.

It is on these reflections and this determination that the policy of the Government of the Republic of Armenia and the ruling majority in recent years has been based.

By your mandate, as citizens of the Republic of Armenia, we have shown determination to understand more deeply the history repeatedly experienced by our people, so as not to allow that history to repeat itself in the future and to make our present and future better.

Today, we have achieved that goal, including because we understood that we must not allow the Mets Yeghern to become a tool in the hands of international players in their struggle against one another.

The volume of Armenian History published by our National Academy of Sciences clearly records that the Great Catastrophe was also the result of a practice of drawing the Armenian people into international intrigues—a practice that began in the mid-19th century and reached its tragic climax in 1915.

Dear People, Dear Citizens of the Republic of Armenia,

The greatest aspiration of our people has been fulfilled: we have a state, and we have peace. It is the state and peace that are the guarantees that the Armenian Genocide will never happen again.

To realize this historic goal, we must stop searching for a homeland outside the internationally recognized 29,743 square kilometers of the Republic of Armenia.

This territory is not small for the prosperity, development, and well-being of the Armenian people. Today, dozens of our settlements are empty, dozens of settlements—and indeed our state as a whole—are underpopulated.

The reason for this has been the absence of peace and the lack of awareness that the homeland is the state, identity is the state, security is the state—with its internationally recognized borders. Based on this understanding, the Armenian people must move beyond the logic of exile and diaspora.

The Republic of Armenia, within its current territory, can be home to 5 million, even 10 million Armenians. The territory of Singapore is even smaller than two-thirds of Lake Sevan, yet 5.5 million people live there, because the state is built on education, self-awareness, peace, and human-centered aspirations.

Today, we are leading the Republic of Armenia precisely with this logic—the ideology of the Real Armenia—understanding that peace and security primarily mean normalized relations with neighbors, based on mutual recognition of each other’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, inviolability of borders, and political independence.

Those forces that call for “returning the lost homeland,” “restoring historical borders,” and “restoring justice” are placing the Republic of Armenia back on the rails of the 1878 San Stefano Conference, whose inevitable final stop is the loss of statehood and homeland, because everyone in the world has their own history, their own justice, and their own lost homeland.

We have finally escaped this trap, and attempts to lead Armenia back in that direction are an invitation to the scaffold for our state and our people.

At the cost of victims and sacrifices, we have found and rediscovered our homeland, and that homeland is the Republic of Armenia.

The continuity of the Republic of Armenia is the recompense for the sacrifices of all our martyrs.

The freedom, security, and prosperity of the citizens of the Republic of Armenia are the fulfillment of the aspirations and interrupted dreams of all our martyrs.

We are moving along this path. The people of the Republic of Armenia are moving along this path.

Glory to the martyrs, and long live the Republic of Armenia.