Ashot Grigoryan, President of the Forum of Armenian Associations of Europe, sent a letter to the PACE President Mevlut Chavusoglu. He requested Chavusoglu’s “intervention in the war-threatening rhetoric and tensions in the South Caucasus caused by the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev”.  

“We have already presented our views on President Aliyev’s absurd and unsubstantiated remarks regarding Armenia’s centuries-old history and statehood, in particular Aliyev’s ideas regarding the southern regions of Armenia and Yerevan, which we do not wish to interpret. You personally should be much more sensitive to territorial demands towards your neighbours, especially as these are invented to a ridiculous extent and leave impressions of utter fabrication.

We ask you to approach the response given by the Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan with understanding; a response in which the President offers a brief explanation of the origin of the Armenian ethnicity and statehood based on reliable and entirely indisputable scientific, historical and linguistic facts. We agree with the President of the Republic of Armenia in that appropriating the history of the neighboring countries with the intention of adopting it as their own and thereby committing cultural genocide (e.g. destruction of the millennia-old cross-stones in Nakhichevan and other cultural heritage), the President of Azerbaijan generates anger not only among Armenians but also Iranian Azeris, as well as a number of other ethnic minorities in the South Caucasus. We firmly believe your intervention would be particularly appropriate with regard to preventing Azerbaijan’s potential war and sustaining peace.

Given your high position, the FAAE anticipates an unbiased, professional intervention in advance of which we extend our deep appreciation,” the letter reads.