Christodoulides congratulates Armenia’s Pashinyan on election victory

President Nikos Christodoulides on Tuesday congratulated Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan after his Civil Contract party won a majority in the country’s parliament at Sunday’s parliamentary election. “Warmest congratulations, Nikol Pashinyan, on your election victory. The people of Armenia have reaffirmed their commitment to a European future. Cyprus stands ready to further elevate our bilateral cooperation and relations between the European Union and Armenia,” he wrote in a post on social media. Civil Contract won 64 of the 105 seats in Armenia’s parliament, taking just shy of half of the votes cast across the country, granting Pashinyan, who became prime minister following the “velvet revolution” of 2018, the right to extend his term in office until 2031. The “velvet revolution” was a series of protests held in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, and in cities across the world which host large Armenian populations, which brought down the government of the day, led by Serzh Sargsyan, and predicated a shift away from alignment with Russia which had characterised Armenian diplomacy since the first world war. “The people of Armenia voted for peace, regional prosperity, and regional cooperation, and I hope this will be met with a positive response from Turkey and Azerbaijan,” Pashinyan told a press conference after victory was secured on Mondau, adding, “we need to institutionalise peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan”. He had earlier taken the opportunity to highlight his plans for closer ties with Europe, saying that “the European Union is our main partner in democratic reform implementation, and we will continue that path” when he cast his vote on Sunday. Given this pro-European sentiment, his victory was welcomed in Brussels, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offering him her congratulations, and declaring that “the spirit of the velvet revolution you led in 2018 is alive and well”. She added that “we deeply value our partnership with a democratic Armenia that is drawing ever closer to Europe”, and that “Armenia can count on us”. Pashinyan and supporters in Yerevan’s Republic Square prior to the election Turkey, Armenia’s largest neighbour, also expressed satisfaction with the result, with the country’s foreign ministry saying that it “welcomes” that the elections “were concluded in a peaceful and calm atmosphere”. “In the post-election period, we hope that Armenia will take bolder steps towards peace and normalisation in the region. Turkey will continue to contribute to regional stability and prosperity, as it has done to date, based on the common interests of the countries of the region,” it said. Next for Armenia may be a referendum on a new constitution, with Azerbaijan and Turkey demanding that references to the long-disputed Karabakh region be removed. Karabakh was part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) but then fell under Armenian control following a war in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a second war in 2020 then seeing the region return to Azeri control. Civil Contract had finalised the draft text of a new constitution in March, but despite winning Sunday’s election, failed to win the two-thirds majority in parliament which would have allowed it to unilaterally call a referendum on that new constitution. As such, it will require votes from opposition parties, or defectors from those opposition parties, to call such a referendum. Azerbaijan and Turkey would like to see the preamble of Armenia’s current constitution expunged, as it makes reference to “the fundamental principles of Armenian statehood and the nationwide objectives enshrined in the declaration on the independence of Armenia”. That declaration had referred to a “reunification of the Armenian SSR and the mountainous region of Karabakh” – a point Azerbaijan considers unacceptable, and which Turkey has said must be removed for it to open its border with Armenia.