Thousands in Yerevan Demand Scrapping Armenia-Turkey Protocols
Armenia’s nationalist forces on Friday evening marched to the Office of President Serzh Sargsyan demanding that the authorities refuse to sign the controversial Armenia-Turkey protocols on normalizing bilateral relations that they view as detrimental to the state and national interests of Armenia.
The march commencing in Republic Square, the main venue for a nearly month-long protest of opponents of the current Armenian-Turkish thaw, was initiated by several political parties, including the main government critics on Turkey, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) and the Heritage party of ex-foreign minister Raffi Hovannisian.
While, typical of protest marches in Yerevan, organizers released attendance figures exceeding reality, the mass clogging Baghramian Avenue creating headaches for late-afternoon commuters was an impressive show of discontent. Independent reporters on the scene measured the crowd comparatively to those collected during Levon Ter-Petrosyan-led marches that were objectively approximated at 30-40,000. (Though organizers of those marches claimed up to 100,000.)
Dashnaktsutyun and its allies submitted 50,000 signatures that they have collected against the protocols to the Office of the President.
After gathering near the presidential palace and making calls for Sargsyan to stop his foreign minister Edward Nalbandyan from singing a deal with Turkey, expected in Switzerland Saturday, the protesters moved to the 1915 Genocide Memorial Tsitsernakaberd where they were to hold a rally late into the evening.
Protesters during the march and at the rally held banners condemning “Turkish preconditions” and saying “No” to Armenia-Turkey normalization at “too high a price.”
Dashnaktsutyun leaders Hrant Margaryan, Giro Manoyan, Zharangutyun’s Armen Martirosyan, Aram Karapetyan from the opposition New Times party and others led the demonstration.
A limited police force was on standby accompanying the demonstration that appeared peaceful despite passionate statements and calls.
Source: ArmeniaNow - Original Article
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