The director, Edita Gzoyan, gifted Vance five books after he and his wife Usha laid flowers on February 10 at a memorial to the victims of the 1915 genocide, which is part of the AGMI. Gzoyan also escorted them to other parts of the complex, including cross-stones placed in memory of Armenians killed in 1988-1990 pogroms in Azerbaijan. According to an AGMI press release, she emphasized “the connection between those events and the Armenian Genocide” in Ottoman Turkey.
Gzoyan tendered her resignation earlier this month. Pashinian confirmed that she did so “on my instructions.”
“Yes, I considered [the gift to Vance] an action contrary to the foreign policy pursued by the government, I considered it a provocative action and asked her to write a resignation letter,” he told journalists.
“When the country’s prime minister says there is no Karabakh movement, what does it mean to present a book on the Artsakh issue to a foreign guest? … Foreign policy in Armenia is conducted by the government of Armenia, and any Armenian government official who says anything that contradicts the government’s foreign policy should be fired,” said Pashinian.
Gzoyan has still not publicly commented on her resignation which upset the AGMI staff. The AGMI press release said that the books handed by her to Vance related to “the Armenian Genocide and the Artsakh issue.”
AGMI sources told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that Gzoyan for years gave the same books and organized the same tours for all foreign dignitaries visiting the Tsitsernakaberd memorial. Pashinian’s protocol service did not give her any instructions ahead of Vance’s visit, according to them. Also, the AGMI has a division on “research on the repression of Armenians in the Armenian-populated regions of Artsakh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan.”
The director of the genocide memorial and its research wing is appointed by its board of trustees, rather tan the prime minister or even the Armenian Ministry of Education, Culture and Youth Affairs. Pashinian’s intervention may therefore be portrayed by his critics as abuse of power.
The board’s chairman, French-Armenian genocide scholar Raymond Kevorkian, and several members resigned last week. They included Hranush Kharatian, a prominent historian and sociologist. Kharatian criticized Pashinian’s remarks as a threat to academic freedom in Armenia when she spoke with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service later on Thursday.
“It looks like our prime minister … wants to decide by himself the scope of academic freedoms and what research centers can say,” she said.
Pashinian promptly replaced Kharatian and other board members on March 6. He is expected to install one of his former aides, Hrachya Tashchian, as the new AGMI director on Friday.
Tashchian already occupied Gzoyan’s office on Thursday. He denied that the prime minister is exerting pressure on the AGMI and its scholars.
Pashinian has repeatedly declared that the Karabakh issue is closed for his administration. He recognized Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh even before Baku restored control over the region following the September 2023 military offensive that forced its entire population to flee to Armenia. In a speech at the European Parliament on Wednesday, Pashinian again stated that the Karabakh Armenians should forget about returning to their homeland.
Pashinian has also offered far-reaching concessions to Turkey, which provided Azerbaijan with decisive military support during the 2020 war with Armenia. In particular, he declared last year that Armenians should “understand what happened” in 1915 and what prompted the subsequent campaign for international recognition of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey. Armenian historians, opposition figures and retired diplomats expressed outrage at the remarks, saying that Pashinian cast doubt on the fact of the genocide officially recognized by over three dozen countries, including the United Staes.
