The official, Hikmet Hajiyev, showed foreign diplomats around Karabakh and the 13th century Gandzasar Monastery in particular at the weekend three years after an Azerbaijani military offensive that restored Azerbaijan’s control over the region and displaced its entire ethnic Armenian population. Hajiyev repeated Baku’s claims that Gandzasar is a “Caucasian Albanian,” rather than Armenian, worship site and mocked Armenian arguments to the contrary, prompting laughter from some of the diplomats.
The scene sparked an uproar from Armenian opposition and public figures as well as exiled Karabakh Armenian activists. They were also enraged by the fact that the Armenian government did not officially react to it even if parliament speaker Ruben Rubinian described Hajiyev’s claims as “baseless.”
Simonian told journalists that he raised the matter with Hajiyev in a phone call earlier this week. He said he “expressed concern that everything must be done to ensure such incidents do not hinder the [peace] process.”
When asked whether he insisted that Gandzasar had been built as an Armenian monastery, Simonian indicated that Yerevan should tread carefully on such issues.
“We aren't discussing who is right or wrong,” he said. “What I’m saying that there is our perspective and there is theirs. The point of my work is to prevent those perspectives from clashing. For instance, if I were to say that Gandzasar is Armenian, where would that lead us?”
Opposition leaders and other critics of the Armenian government say this stance only emboldens Baku to erase traces of centuries-old Armenian presence in Karabakh.
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian pointedly declined to condemn the destruction of Karabakh’s largest Armenian church, which was confirmed by satellite images obtained by RFE/RL. Baku subsequently defended the demolition, calling the Holy Mother of God Cathedral of Stepanakert a symbol of “Armenian occupation” of Karabakh. Several other Karabakh churches have also reportedly been torn down since the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijan war.