YEREVAN — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, accompanied by President Vahagn Khachaturyan, National Assembly Speaker Alen Simonyan, and other senior officials, visited the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex to mark the 111th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and pay tribute to the memory of the 1.5 million victims.
The Prime Minister laid a wreath at the memorial and placed flowers at the eternal flame commemorating the victims of the genocide.
In his address marking the anniversary, Pashinyan stated:
“Today, we commemorate the victims of the 1915 Armenian Genocide — the Meds Yeghern — and pay tribute to our compatriots who were subjected to massacres, deportation, and starvation in the Ottoman Empire simply for being Armenian.
The Meds Yeghern is the greatest tragedy that has befallen us, one that our people have endured for 111 years.
Each year on April 24, tens of thousands of our citizens march to the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex to bow before the memory of our martyred compatriots. This nationwide procession is also an act of reflection — a moment to evaluate our history and reaffirm our determination to prevent the recurrence of the Meds Yeghern.
It is upon this reflection and determination that the policies of the Government of the Republic of Armenia and the ruling majority in recent years have been built.
With your mandate, the citizens of the Republic of Armenia, we have demonstrated the determination to more deeply understand our people’s past — a history marked by repeated tragedies — in order to prevent its repetition and to improve our present and future.
Today, we have made progress toward that goal, including by recognizing that the Meds Yeghern must not be allowed to become a tool in geopolitical struggles between international actors.
As documented by our National Academy of Sciences, the genocide was, among other factors, the result of a longstanding practice of drawing the Armenian people into international intrigues — a pattern that began in the mid-19th century and reached its tragic peak in 1915.
Dear people, dear citizens of the Republic of Armenia,
Our greatest aspiration has been realized: we have a state, and we have peace. Statehood and peace are the guarantees that the Armenian Genocide will never happen again.
To achieve this historic goal, we must stop searching for a homeland beyond the internationally recognized 29,743 square kilometers of the Republic of Armenia.
This territory is not small for the prosperity and development of the Armenian people. Today, dozens of our communities remain empty, and our country as a whole is underpopulated.
The reason has been the absence of peace and the lack of understanding that the homeland is the state — that identity, security, and sovereignty are rooted in the state within 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 borders, can become a home for 5 to 10 million Armenians. Singapore’s territory is smaller than two-thirds of Lake Sevan, yet it is home to 5.5 million people, because its state is built on education, self-awareness, peace, and human-centered aspirations.
Today, we are guiding the Republic of Armenia based on this very logic — the ideology of a ‘Real Armenia’ — understanding that peace and security are first and foremost achieved through normalized relations with neighbors, grounded in mutual recognition of territorial integrity, sovereignty, the inviolability of borders, and political independence.
Forces that call for ‘restoring lost homelands,’ ‘historical borders,’ or ‘historical justice’ place Armenia back on the path of the 1878 San Stefano framework — a path that inevitably leads to the loss of statehood and homeland, because every nation has its own history, its own sense of justice, and its own lost lands.
We have finally escaped this trap, and any attempt to return Armenia to that path is an invitation to disaster for our state and people.
Through sacrifice, we have found and regained our homeland — and that homeland is the Republic of Armenia.
The continuity of the Republic of Armenia is the fulfillment of the sacrifices of all our martyrs.
The freedom, security, and prosperity of the citizens of the Republic of Armenia are the realization of their dreams and aspirations.
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.”
