President Sarkissian gave an interview to Caixin Media, a Chinese news outlet. The following transcript of the interview was released by Sarkissian’s office.

Yesterday, we have seen the all Co-Chairing Countries in Minsk group have urged all parties to end hostility activities and urge you to reconvene the negotiations without pre-conditions. But from your perspective, do you think is there any basis for negotiation with Baku again? Do you still hold the confidence to negotiating with them under current situation.

I would like first to start describing the current situation. In the early 90s, or 1988, when after 70 years of forcibly being part of Soviet Azerbaijan the breakdown of Soviet Union happened, and the people in Nagorno-Karabakh, eventually, in a referendum, voted for getting out from Azerbaijan and declared again their independence that they had for hundreds of years or thousands of years.

Azerbaijan’s reaction was not a sort of a 20th century reaction. It was just sending troops and started killings. And the conflict turned into a war, which was stopped in 1994 with an understanding that there will be negotiations. And here the OSCE Minsk Group started with three Co-Chairs: the United States, France, and Russia.

So, there have been negotiations for 26 years. In any negotiation between states or parties of the conflict, or commercial negotiations, it never happens that everybody is happy and you come to a conclusion immediately. Sometimes you are happy with negotiations. Sometimes you are not happy with negotiations.

That is a normal life. You have to be patient because the alternative is a war. Now Azerbaijan has decided to withdraw itself from the negotiating table and take the path of the war. It has already happened a couple of times. But these were local wars, four-day war in 2016, and another conflict in last July which was a very local one.

But this time it is different. And what is different? What is different today is that Turkey is directly involved in this. Turkey has a lot of military personnel in Azerbaijan, both in mainland Azerbaijan and in a small part called Nakhchivan, which doesn't have a direct connection with Azerbaijan. It is between Armenia and Turkey. That part now is basically controlled by the Turkish side.

Turkey brought with them generals, officers and supervisors to mainland Azerbaijan, and the worse, it hired terrorist groups, Jihadis from Syria. And this is not about 10 or hundreds. It is about thousands of them.

How on earth a 3rd country interferes in the conflict of two states: the state of Azerbaijan and the small state of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is, of course, Armenian, and the Armenians are supporting them. However, as you break into that equation, Jihadis are terrorists and this is not controllable.

The third thing is that absolute modern technology is used by Azerbaijanis and also the Turks, the modern drones and F-16 jet fighters, which is, again, basically breaking all international laws and rules. I am absolutely sure that the contract that Turkey has with the USA doesn't allow them to do that sort of stuff.

I am absolutely confident that the agreements that Turkey signed to become a NATO member are forbidding them to do that. But they have just ignored all that. And now we also have facts that American equipment is used not only in Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh Republic, not only there are drones made in different places of the world, including in Turkey, but they are using them against Armenia. During last night, 4 drones, Turkish made, have crossed the State border of Armenia and were heading towards the capital Yerevan. Four of them were shot by the Armenian defense system.

You mean the conflict now erupt not only in the eastern side but also in your border with Turkey? The drones were sent to Yerevan (Yeah, they have sent it) from Turkey?

I don't have the final information about where they crossed the border from Turkey side. But it doesn't matter. These are Turkey-made drones. And they are controlled by Turkish operators. And they are crossing the border. So, we have all the evidence of Turkish involvement. Then they give some “reasons” of why they are doing that.

One of the reasons is that they are ethnic brothers with Azeris. I'm sorry; Turkish nations are so big, and Turkey has ethnic brothers in the North Caucasus, in every region of Russia, in Central Asia, including in the north of China. But if they are looking for ethnic brothers, they can have the freedom of interfering in each and every of those states in order to support somehow a call from ethnic brothers. Absolutely unacceptable.

Second, they were claiming that there are PKK soldiers or fighters in Armenia. A complete nonsense! There is not even one or a half of a PKK soldier in Armenia. We have a very small minority of Kurdish Yazidis, and other ethnic minorities. But they are not many. And most of them are Yazidis. They are not Muslims. Their faith is Yazidi. And all of them are very good citizens of Armenia, and some of them living in Nagorno-Karabakh. When the danger is there everybody is basically fighting for their own country because they all are citizens of the Republic of Armenia or they are citizens of Nagorno-Karabakh. So, this is another nonsense.

The third one, which is interesting, Turkey has now deployed its military might along the energy pipelines, claiming that there is a danger from Nagorno-Karabakh that they will bomb these pipelines.

And this is another nonsense. If Nagorno-Karabakh or Armenians had the intention to bomb that, they would have been bombing it 20 years ago when this pipeline was going to be built, but they didn't hit it. If the first bombs would fly when the first hundred meters of the pipeline were about to be put in place, there would not be any pipeline at all. Am I right? People, international community, and the companies would be afraid of putting pipeline in a place where it is dangerous.

And if there was a threat from, let's say, Nagorno-Karabakh, so, there would not be pipeline. But Armenians didn't do that, and didn’t do that in the next 20 years. And during all these 20 years Azerbaijan was making billions and billions of dollars selling oil and was using those billions to buy armaments and kill my fellow Armenians? Now they are saying that Armenians will explode it, which is a complete nonsense. I categorically deny this.

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