By Jirair Tutunjian
One late night a few weeks ago in the bedroom of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his wife, the self-described beauty, eminent journalist, and military guru Anna Hakobyan.
NP: Anna, Anna…wake up. I want to show you something.
AH: Nikol, please. I was having such a spectacular dream… I dreamt I was gliding in a golden gondola in Venice or was it the Seine in Paris? I was surrounded by such movie stars as Catherine Deneuve and the late Jean-Paul Belmondo who praised my exotic beauty.
NP: Can you forget the dream for a minute? I am writing of a greater dream: Our Dream.
AH: You mean we will finally leave Armenia, empty our European bank accounts and live happily ever after on the Riviera?
NP: No, no. I have written my protocol…a sort of my last will and testament. It’s my vision of Real Armenia.
AH: All right, but keep it short. I have to go back to sleep.
NP: I call it “The Pashinyan’s 10-Point Protocol: Steps toward brave new Real Armenia.”
After writing the obligatory preamble, here are points:
1. Our knowledge of our history is unreliable because it has been written by foreigners. Like sheep, we have accepted it as the truth. Arnold J. Toynbee and other foreigners have been writing our history. The sorry tradition has continued in recent times by David Marshall Lang and Elizabeth Bauer. It’s high time we threw away our “history” books and started from Ayb, Ben, Gim…
2. There is no Western Armenia. There never was. Its proper name is Eastern Turkey or Kurdistan. Why call it Western Armenia when not a single Armenian lives there? Mischievous and ignorant Armenians, mostly in the diaspora, who say Armenia’s territory is shrinking should consider that Armenia is larger than Lebanon and Israel. We should stamp out irredentism.
3. We should renounce Cilicia…the phony kingdom which somehow managed to last three-hundred years through guile, aggression, treachery, and alliances with disreputable parties such as the pagan Mongols.
4. Our religion is an import from Palestine. It’s a foreign religion. It has been harmful to our nation. We should erase the Church from our lives and culture.
5. We agree with the international view that Nagorno-Karabakh legally belongs to Azerbaijan. Armenians living there were interlopers…crude, uncouth, and violent people who were a burden on Armenia.
6. We are being selfish when we deny Azerbaijan passage from Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan. How can we be good neighbors when we refuse to cooperate on a project which will not hurt us? We will build a six-lane highway to facilitate Azeri transportation. To avoid unnecessary friction with Azeri drivers, we will place Azeri custom officers—along with Armenian officers–at both ends of the Corridor.
7. It’s high time—after more than a century—to get rid of lugubrious genocide commemorations, especially when we don’t know what exactly happened, why it happened, and if it really happened. International historians, including Turk and Azeri, should participate in a new and robust research to determine what happened and whether it happened because of Armenian irresponsibility. And until scholars present their conclusions, the Tsisternagabert Monument would be closed. At the same time we will also modify our coat-of-arms by removing aggressive and dated symbols.
8. To demonstrate our trust and friendship with Azerbaijan, we should also ask the EU to remove its pointless observers from the Azerbaijan/Armenia border.
9. Since the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians have always been a headache for Armenia, we will facilitate their departure from Armenia. We will also restrict visits from the diaspora and order diaspora Armenians who own real estate or businesses in Armenia to leave. They are a source of dissension and sow mental sabotage.
10. To purify our blood lines, we will launch “The DNA Project” whereby every citizen will undergo a mandatory DNA test. As a result, we will deport people who have alien DNA and all “citizens” whose ancestors settled in Armenia after 1920.
As a result of the above positive measures, Armenians will receive immediate benefits from brotherly Turkey and Azerbaijan. The two borders will open, vacations to Antalya and Istanbul will be cheaper; the Turks will be able to pray at Yerevan’s Blue Mosque, fuel prices will come down, and Turkish film-TV stars and singers will entertain us in the Opera.
NP: Anna, Anna, are you awake? I counted the words. My protocol is exactly 666 words. I hope nobody notices.
