After Armenia's declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in September 1991, Ter-Petrosyan was elected president in October 1991 with overwhelming public support.

He was reelected in the 1996 presidential election, which was marred by accusations of electoral fraud, sparking mass protests led by runner-up Vazgen Manukyan.

After a week of mass protests, the government used police and military force to disperse his supporters, resulting in the deaths of ten people on 1 March 2008.

[2] Ter-Petrosyan was born on 9 January 1946 in Aleppo, Syria to an Armenian family descended from a long line of priests living near Musa Dagh in the region of Hatay (now located in the south of Turkey).

[8] From 10 December 1988 to 31 May 1989, Ter-Petrosyan was imprisoned in Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina prison together with other members of the Karabakh Committee; they returned to Yerevan after their release and continued their activities.

[5] In 1989, Ter-Petrosyan and the other members of the Karabakh Committee founded a political party called the Pan-Armenian National Movement (ANM, also known by its Armenian acronym HHSh).

According to Vazgen Manukyan, on several occasions, the more cautious Ter-Petrosyan was, he deliberately not fully informed about the extent of the Armenian military's participation in operations in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In early April 1993, the Armenian forces captured Kelbajar, a city outside the originally contested areas, causing international attention to the conflict.

[17] It was estimated that during Ter-Petrosian's presidency, the significant amount of military expenditure, played a key role in the outcome of the war and the formation of the army.

As the Gosplan, which had set up production chains to cross SSR lines, broke down, the inter-republic economic connections were also disrupted, leading to an even more serious breakdown of the post-Soviet economies.

In 1992, Ter-Petrosyan's prime minister Hrant Bagratyan adopted an economic reform program to rapidly marketize the Armenian economy.

The reform adopted by Hrant Bagratyan also made a good start on developing the basic legal framework necessary for a market economy.

He was qualified as Leader of the Armenian economic reforms end of the 20th century, defined by the World Bank as one of the best among former Soviet Union republics and countries of Eastern Europe.

On 29 June 1992, Ter-Petrosyan delivered a televised address where he accused the ARF of collaboration with the KGB and pilfering funds raised from the diaspora intended for Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

[19] Although Ter-Petrosyan was initially expected to win the 1996 presidential election by a large margin due to the opposition being divided, three other candidates dropped out of the race and endorsed Vazgen Manukyan.

On the same day, Defence Minister Vazgen Sargsyan stated that "even if they [the opposition] win 100 percent of the votes, neither the Army nor the National Security and Interior Ministry would recognize such political leaders.

Ter-Petrosyan was forced to step down in February 1998 after advocating a compromised settlement of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh which many Armenians regarded as undermining their security.

The plan, accepted by Ter-Petrosyan and Azerbaijan's leader Heydar Aliyev, called for a "phased" settlement of the conflict which would postpone an agreement on Karabakh's status, the main stumbling block.

[23] When Levon Ter-Petrosyan stepped down from the presidency, he compared himself to the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and stated that he was resigning was to avoid destabilizing the country.

[25] After his resignation, Ter-Petrosyan rarely appeared in public and avoided contact with the media, although there were speculations that he would run for the office of president of Armenia in the general election in February 2003.

[3] On 21 September 2007, Ter-Petrosyan made his first public speech in nearly ten years at an event in Yerevan marking the 16th anniversary of Armenia's declaration of independence.

[29] In the early morning hours of 1 March, reportedly acting on evidence of firearms in the camp, the authorities moved in to inspect the tents set up by demonstrators.

[33] As leader of the Armenian National Congress opposition bloc, formed two years prior to the outbreak of protests, Ter-Petrosyan accused President Serzh Sargsyan, elected in the disputed 2008 election, of being "illegitimate" and called for the release of political prisoners, the resignation of the government, and a full inquiry into the violence that claimed the lives of ten people on 1 March 2008.

Ter-Petrosyan talked about groups promoting pro-Western and pro-Russian divisions within the Armenian society and the political parties calling them "dangerous forces".

[37] Few days after the convention on 25 December 2012, Ter-Petrosyan gave Chorrord Inknishkhanutyun an interview eventually declaring his decision not to run for the office.

Raffi Hovannisian, the main opposition candidate who earned 37% of the total, claimed victory and started mass protests the next day.

[49] In October 2020, Kocharyan and Ter-Petrosyan requested that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan give them permission to go to Moscow as special negotiators.

[51] He called for the prime minister's voluntary resignation and accused him and the opposition candidate Vazgen Manukyan of leading the country to civil confrontation through their refusal to compromise.

[52] On 5 May 2021, Ter-Petrosyan declared that the reason for the meeting was for him to propose an electoral alliance between the former presidents (his long-time political opponents) in order to unseat Prime Minister Pashinyan in the 2021 Armenian parliamentary election.

[52] He is married to Lyudmila (née Pleskovskaya); the couple has one son, David, who is an economist and businessman, and four grandchildren (Levon, Hakob, Lusia, Areg).