YEREVAN. - PACE President Mevlut Cavusoglu is exerting pressure on the PACE Secretariat, Chairwoman of the Committee on European Integration, Parliament of Armenia, member of the Armenian delegation to PACE Naira Zohrabyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.
The Turkish delegation members recently finished speaking at PACE. Turkish Premier Recep Erdogan made a speech as well, she said.
Zohrabyan got registered for questions to Erdogan. She called in at the PACE Secretariat to know she was third in the list, and Zaruhi Bostanjyan, another member of the Armenian delegation, was the fourth. However, after Erdogan’s speech, the list was read out with a major delay. Zohrabyan “turned out” to be 21st, and Bostanjyan 27th.
“So I lost the opportunity to ask the Turkish premier a question,” Zohrabyan said.
The Armenian delegation will certainly demand explanations from the PACE Secretariat for the “oversight.”
“I am sure that our names suddenly turned out much lower on the list due to PACE President Mevlut Cavusoglu’s pressure,” Zohrabyan said.
Moreover, the secretary of the Armenian delegation to PACE was attacked by the Turkish Premier’s bodyguard.
“His retinue included women-bodyguards. One of them had stood near me. The secretary standing beside me was to interpret for the Armenian delegation. The bodyguard was bothering us as much as she could, and even gave him a shove,” Zohrabyan said.
However, after Edrogan made his speech, despite all the attempts by his bodyguards and members of the Turkish delegations, Naira Zohrabyan “broke [her] way through the crowd” to the Turkish premier and gave him a “present”, an album with pictures of Armenian children murdered during the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey.
"I told him to look into the eyes of the innocent children and see anguish there. He said he would certainly do that. But, he added, ‘if Armenia goes on holding such positions, Turkey will show some pictures as well’. I wonder what pictures is he going to show?” Zohrabyan added.
She told Erdogan she wanted to ask him a question about notorious Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code. This article was particularly applied to the Turkish novelist and Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.
After a short talk, some Turkish officials “took Egrogan away.”