Speaker of the National Assembly (NA) of Armenia, Alen Simonyan, has thanked Turkey's foreign minister.

"I express my gratitude to the Turkish foreign minister and all regional partners who support the calls of the majority of Armenia’s public to go for peace, to conduct trade, to develop this trade within the framework of TRIPP," Simonyan said during a press briefing at the NA today—and referring to Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan's statements that Turkey supports the role adopted by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

"As you know, elections will be held in Armenia in early June; this will be an important step. But we see that [Armenian PM] Mr. [Nikol] Pashinyan is currently leading in public opinion polls. We [i.e. Turkey] also sincerely support the constructive role he has adopted. This line, this desire, must be continued," the Turkish FM had noted at a press conference Thursday.

Alen Simonyan, however, did not answer the question of how the results of the aforesaid polls conducted in Armenia had ended up in the hands of the Turkish FM, referring to which he had announced his support for Pashinyan.

“I don’t know how it ended up [there]. It’s an opinion, he says,” Simonyan noted.

In his view, however, Fidan’s aforesaid statement was not an insinuation of readiness to interfere in Armenia’s internal affairs.