Beniamin Matevosyan: Pashinyan’s aggression in the metro and the “Western Azerbaijan” Constitution

(They are choosing “Western Azerbaijan” – and you?)

The leaked draft of Armenia’s new Constitution is not merely a legal document, it is a full-fledged act of surrender and a strategic roadmap for transforming a sovereign state into a subjectless protectorate of Baku and Ankara, operating under the working title “Western Azerbaijan.” The central blow is aimed at the very foundation of statehood: the removal from the preamble of any reference to the Declaration of Independence, at the direct demand of Ilham Aliyev, legally nullifies the Third Republic, reducing Armenia to a territorial entity stripped of national purpose and historical memory.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is working toward the systematic dismantling of Armenia’s layered defense and external security architecture. To this end, amendments to Article 205 have been incorporated into the draft. These changes would allow the authorities to withdraw from the CSTO, the EAEU, and the CIS without holding a referendum, relying solely on a controlled parliamentary majority. This opens a direct path to a final break with former allies and to Armenia’s absorption into the “Turkic world,” in the absence of any alternative security guarantees.

A particularly prominent feature of this draft is the deliberate deconstruction of ties with the Diaspora. The abolition of the simplified citizenship procedure for persons of Armenian ethnicity is not a technical amendment, it is the fulfillment of a core objective of Turkish foreign policy. For decades, Ankara has sought to isolate Armenia from its global resource, depriving the country of the intellectual, financial, and political support of Armenians worldwide. Transforming Armenia from the “homeland of all Armenians” into an isolated entity renders it maximally vulnerable to external pressure and strips it of any ability to draw upon the national potential beyond its borders. This is the institutional entrenchment of vassal status – one for which the connection to its own roots has been deemed “superfluous.”

This draft is being advanced against the backdrop of Pashinyan’s own deepening political isolation, with his approval ratings, especially in Yerevan, approaching zero. His behavior is becoming increasingly erratic and aggressive, as evidenced both by U.S. intelligence reports and by personal incidents that have entered the public domain. A high-profile scandal in the Yerevan metro, where the Prime Minister lashed out at a woman deported from Nagorno-Karabakh, lays bare a profound psychological fracture within the ruling power. His sharp reproaches directed at victims of war and ethnic cleansing (“we spent billions… so why don’t you stay?”) and his shift to an aggressive tone (“I will speak to you this way”) reveal cynicism and an attempt to shift responsibility for the failure of his own policies and his own betrayal, onto the people. Pashinyan is openly at war with his own electorate, apparently believing that his legitimacy rests not on public support, but on fear of a new war.

The drive to secure a constitutional supermajority and restructure the state is an attempt to construct a legal shell protecting power from the will of the people. Yet it is precisely this nervousness and open hostility toward his own citizens, including refugees from Artsakh, that provides the opposition with fertile ground for action. The authorities are, in effect, waging war against their own sovereignty and against the people’s right to live on their historical homeland, and making this fact register in the public consciousness has become a critical imperative.

Think about this…