Question: The Spokesperson of the MFA of Azerbaijan commented on your statement issued a day before. Her statement once again contains territorial, historical claims, as well as negative assessments of the domestic political and democratic processes in Armenia. At the same time, the Azerbaijani side claims that your brief comments reflect  the limited thinking of the Armenian side. Do you see a need to comment on that? 

Answer: There is a need only for a very brief comment. I do not think that the number of words can somehow demonstrate the veracity and value of the expressed idea. The best example of that is the statement by the Spokesperson of Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry, which attempts to cover up the lack of arguments by the barrage of words that have nothing to do with reality.  

In this regard I would like to refer to two points - history and democracy.

In general, I would like to discourage from using the expression “historic Azerbaijan” while voicing historic claims towards Armenia. The name Azerbaijan has only a century old history in the South Caucasus both in political and even geographical terms, while the usage of the very name of Azerbaijanis is even more recent. We understand that throughout a century that country has been undergoing the process of formation of a new identity, to which we have never aimed to interfere. However, it does not mean that from time to time we should not recall that the history is not a strong side of Azerbaijan.    

As far as democracy is concerned, probably we and the Azerbaijani side have extremely divergent understanding on that. For example, we cannot assume that transfer of power within the members of the same family has been a democratic practise. Our assessment on the poor democracy record of Azerbaijan has been repeatedly confirmed  by various indexes of different international actors which evaluate human rights and democracy in Azerbaijan. In this case as well, we have to state that democracy is not a strong side of Azerbaijan either. 

In conclusion we would like to underline that even in the environment of diverging perceptions it is possible to attain respectful tonality of communications and we are also conveying this message to the Azerbaijani side.