ArmInfo.The future of Armenia lies in a foreign policy based on the foundation of national identity. Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, Turkologist Ruben Safrastyan, expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.
"As a nation, we must finally realize that the most powerful, real, far from utopian weapon is the national idea. Against a nation soldered by such an idea, weapons, geopolitics, and economics are powerless. I do not exclude at all that this year may be even more difficult for us than the past, which may be due to impulses in the region and the world. To counter the existing and potential challenges and threats, we need a national idea, through and on the basis of which it will be possible to unite Armenia, Artsakh and our Diaspora," he emphasized.
Commenting on the preconditions put forward by Ankara in the light of the first meeting of the special representatives of Armenia and Turkey scheduled for today, the academician characterized them as part of the national identity of the Armenian nation. In this light, he is convinced that by making concessions to Turkey, the Armenian people will thereby give up a very important segment of their own identity.
The special representatives of Turkey and Armenia have already arrived at the reception house of the Russian Foreign Ministry for their first meeting on the normalization of bilateral relations. Ankara has appointed former Turkish Ambassador to the United States Serdar Kilic as a special representative for the normalization of relations with Yerevan. Deputy Speaker of the Parliament Ruben Rubinyan has been appointed from the Armenian side. In this light, Safrastyan expressed hope that the Armenian authorities would avoid to make concessions on international recognition of the genocide and other related issues, as it would sacrifice the people's identity for the sake of world geopolitics. In this light, he considers the decision to negotiate with Turkey the right one, however, only if Yerevan observes clear and hard red lines in these negotiations.
Assessing the revolution of the spring of 2018 as a result of political and social movement in Armenia, the academician noted that as a result of the change of power, the country found itself on a kind of watershed. And then the need to make a decision to continue the current vector in the construction of statehood or to choose a new one came to the fore. And, in fact, this choice never happened. "Our wealth is in the spiritual values created by our people over the millennia, values that are an inseparable part of world civilization. In this light, we needed to embark on the path of building statehood based on the national idea, of course, using the achievements of Western civilization. And the fact that we did not do this, the fact that we blindly copied the Western model of social structure, in my opinion, was a wrong decision. Armenia initially had to develop statehood primarily on the basis of its own, national model," Safrastyan summed up.