When will the Western Azerbaijan channel replace Shoghakat TV in Armenia?

The most important principle that the Armenian authorities have been guided by since 2018 is the principle of political expediency. We can confirm this, at least by studying the personnel policy of the authorities. If in the “bright days of the velvet revolution” there were statements that the principle of meritocracy (the power of the worthy) would be established in the country, then all subsequent years proved to us that Nikol Pashinyan was guided by the principle inherited from his “ideological fathers”, i.e., from the Armenian National Movement.

The essence of the principle was that when appointing a candidate to a particular position, it was not the candidate’s competencies, path, or biography that were taken into account, but their political loyalty. We see the same thing in “velvet Armenia,” where a historian chairs the Foreign Ministry, another historian is in charge of the Defense Ministry, and Nikol Pashinyan’s personal English teacher, who initially led the Pashinyan faction in the National Assembly, a few days before the war, declaring that Turkey would not interfere in the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Artsakh, is today the Ambassador of Armenia to the United States.

The same principle of political expediency applies in other matters, with Pashinyan flirting with official Kremlin, visiting the 102nd military base in Armenia, sending military personnel to Syria, etc. Today, the changed political expediency pushes him to make extremely anti-Russian statements. Of course, from an ideological point of view, Pashinyan has always been a Russophobe, but we cannot overlook the change in public political trends.

Today, political expediency pushes Pashinyan to openly attack the Armenian Apostolic Church, which is why hundreds of materials defaming the Armenian Apostolic Church and defaming specific priests appear on the web. It was this expediency that led to the fact that the day before, Chair of TV and Radio Commission Tigran Hakobyan said that the religious component should be reduced on Shoghakat TV.

Moreover, it was mentioned that one should go and find the “real owners of this channel.” Add to this the statements that “representatives of the Armenian Church are KGB spies” and the desire of the authorities to revise the interstate agreement with Russia on broadcasting Russian channels in Armenia in a way that will allow them to close these channels, and you will understand that soon both Russian channels and Shoghakat TV may disappear from the Armenian list of channels.

But what kind of channel can replace them? Judging by the policy of the authorities, which is based on the principle of political expediency, it would not be surprising if Azerbaijani television would replace these channels, for example, the Western Azerbaijan TV channel, the new building of which was opened in Baku on May 1.
The chair of the board community of the so-called “Western Azerbaijan”, MP Aziz Alekperli, said that the TV channel aims to convey the truth about the alleged deportation of Azerbaijanis from their allegedly native lands over the past 200 years and “the destruction of Azerbaijani heritage in Western Azerbaijan.”
Would you be very surprised if, at some point, Nikol Pashinyan declared that broadcasting this channel in Armenia would help establish an era of peace? You will still be very surprised if this happens, even despite the fact that Arayik Harutyunyan still remains in the hands of Baku and can give one more interview to the local media.

Think about it…