Yesterday, Sargis Hatspanyan, a French citizen and veteran of the Artsakh War, who has been fighting to obtain RA citizenship, compared former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan to the Young Turks.

“I have lived in Armenia for the past 22 years and have put down roots here,” said Hatspanyan, a native of Turkey. “Now they are pulling up those roots by not granting me residency status”

Hatspanyan recounted that while serving time in an Armenian prison after being found guilty of false denunciation, he read a book stating that in 1915 the Young Turks only gave the Armenians of Kharberd five days before exiling them.

“The order handed down by Kocharyan, in the aftermath of the March 1 events, to banish me from Armenia sounds a lot like the Young Turks’ order. I am from a generation that was exiled in 1915. How can those who have tried to exile me twice from Armenia be called Armenians? Is it possible for anyone to debase themselves to the level of the Young Turks?” noted Hatspanyan.

The aravot.am news website contacted Robert Kocharyan’s press secretary Viktor Soghomonyants for comment. He never answered their telephone calls.

Hatspanyan was a bit embarrassed to confess that, from a legal perspective, it’s his son that has kept him in Armenia.

“My son goes around school boasting that ‘I am keeping my father here’. International law states that you cannot exile a person whose children are still minors. My son is eight and I don;t want him to grow up.”

(Excerpted from Aravot; December 3, 2011)