Islamic Committee of Russia chairman: ...this will give a chance to overthrow Armenia's current president Serzh Sargsyan

As you know, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will trip to Turkey on May 11. What are you expectations from the visit? How can you assess the current Russia-Turkey relations?

Russian President's visit to Turkey can be seen as an attempt to smooth over an unfavorable impression from failure of Ankara's policy to normalize Turkish-Armenian relations. This failure affected the efforts to build a powerful Ankara-Tehran-Yerevan-Damascus bloc.

Armenian side’s recent move questioned realism of Turkish PM Erdogan’s efforts on foreign policy arena. Russian President's visit to Turkey aims to offset unfavorable impression from Turkey's failure in the Armenian issue in the eyes of Turkish public to some extent. Of course, Northern Cyprus issue will be discussed during the visit and the Turkish leadership will try to enlist Russia’s support in its bid to separate the two Cyprus.

So, the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will not be prevalent in talks between the Turkish and Russian leaders.

Of course, the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be discussed during the talks. But it will be just habitual conversation the core of which will be Russia’s unwillingness to abandon support for Armenia and Turkey unwillingness to solve any issue related to Nagorno-Karabakh without consulting with Azerbaijan. So, one should not expect a new project to resolve the Karabakh conflict to be developed. Such projects have no chance to be realized without consent and participation of Baku.

Meanwhile, we can say that Armenia lags behind Azerbaijan and Georgia for the level of economic development more and more each year. Why Armenia is not interested in ending this regress, giving consent to de-occupy Azerbaijani territories and granting status of highest autonomy to Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan?

It is wrong to consider Armenia a hypothetical entity who takes steps considering their pros and cons. Armenia is ruled by President Serzh Sargsyan, who faces hatred of the opposition, which, in turn, has hatred towards Azerbaijan and Turkey. The Armenian opposition is ready to take advantage of any mistake by Serzh Sargsyan to hasten his departure from the post of president.

The current Armenian political elite is more interested in balance of powers within the country, than more global issues, including the settlement of Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Moreover, they are confident that the superpowers have no desire to finally abandon support for Armenia. They believe that the military threat from the Azerbaijani side will consolidate the Armenian diaspora which nowadays has very strained relations with the Armenian leadership. In other words, those in Armenia are interested in aggravation as this will give a chance to overthrow the country's current President.

Are there any real prerequisites to overthrow the current Armenian president?

Prerequisites for overthrow of Serzh Sargsyan from the presidential post do exist. The position of those who will come to power in Armenia will be tougher in terms of settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In my opinion, once current authorities are overthrown, the new grouping in the Armenian authorities will be more pro-Russian and anti-Western.


/Day.Az/