Narek Aleksanyan

Basing their ideological underpinnings on an Armenian heroic epic poem that traces its roots back to the Sassoun region of western Armenia, portraying the people’s struggle against Arab rule in the 8th-10th centuries, scores of delegates today in Yerevan voted to create a new pan-Armenian political party called Sasna Tzrer (Daredevils of Sassoun).

A party pamphlet describing the tenets of the party reads, in part:“The Sasna Tzrer Pan-Armenian party will strive to gather Armenians around the aim of reassuming the human mission (the mission of the Araratian man) that flows from the faith-based system reflected in the Sasna Dzrer epic.”

The party says it will create a pan-Armenian network that will formulate a national strategy with Armenian statehood at its core.