During a discussion at the Warsaw Security Forum Foreign Minister of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan addressed democratic developments in Armenia and the democratic choice of the Armenian people:
Anja Wehler-Schock: "How has this development impacted your government’s efforts to democratization in Armenia?"
Ararat Mirzoyan: "Well, not only this influx of refugees but roots of this issue, I mean attack of Azerbaijan, it happened in 2023 but the whole story started in 2020 when war was launched by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh, and then in the course of the war and during the aftermaths Azerabaijani forces entered and invaded also into the sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia, this is the whole story. Of course, in this situation many in Armenia came up with the questions, and they started questioning the efficiency of democracy. Interestingly, the questions were the following: “Okay, democracy is probably good internally for the prosperity of people, etc but whether democracy is able to ensure our security as well?”.
So, after the war which I spoke about, a series of internal crises emerged in the Republic of Armenia and to give some solution to this situation we decided to have snap parliamentary elections. We had a snap parliamentary election in 2021 and democracy was among the main things which was discussed during the electoral campaign. Well, fortunately, the political party that was lobbying for democracy, my political party, won the elections and formed the government. This means that the citizens of Armenia supported 2 things: first of all, the peace agenda of the government and also the further democratization of the country."
