Sarksyan's Nod to Greater Armenia

The President of Armenia answered a question:

"Armenian President, Serzh Sarksyan, has hinted at historic territorial claims against Turkey, and implied that he regarded the seizure of Azerbaijani territory as final. Addressing an audience of students from Armenia and the diaspora on July 23, Sarksyan was asked whether the country could regain 'Western Armenia' [the irredentist name for the eastern part of Turkey] in the future. Sarksyan gave a two-part answer. In the first part, he responded that Armenia’s present generation has successfully resolved the matter of Karabakh, 'a part of our homeland,' and the next generation now growing up, he said, has its own responsibility to fulfill with honor. In the second part of this convoluted answer, Sarksyan said that a country’s standing did not necessarily depend on its territory, but required hard work in any case (Armenpress, PANArmenianNet, July 27; RFE/RL, July 28)."

"Western Armenia" is the region of eastern Turkey which had large Armenian populations before the Armenian Genocide during World War I. In 2006, I saw maps which included those "lost provinces" as part of Armenia all over Yerevan. Sarksyan's statement, which left fulfillment of those territorial claims to future generations, simply shows the ongoing force of Armenian nationalism.