Not much time has passed since Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev assigned a homework to Pashinyan – to change the Constitution of Armenia by removing all references to the Declaration of Independence from it. Translated into the language of realpolitik, this means launching the process of legal liquidation of the state, which has already been de facto colonised by the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem. While the commandant was sitting in Washington, begging for a place at a hypothetical future Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for Donald Trump, Sultan Erdogan sent a message of praise, welcoming the process of Armenia’s partition. The Turkish world froze in anticipation, unable to believe its luck – the Armenian question will be closed not only without any resistance from the Armenian side, but also with its direct support.
And this is not about a corridor that will finally link the passionary and rising Turkic world together, nor about the abolition of the Declaration of Independence of Armenia, nor even the renunciation of Artsakh and the right of Armenians to live on the lands of their ancestors. The Turkish world is celebrating a more serious victory – the upcoming assassination of the Armenian dream. History shows that any successful national project always starts with a dream. Modern Israel is the result of the Jewish people’s dream, who have always preserved the idea of returning to the Holy Land and rebuilding the First Temple destroyed by the Roman Emperor Titus. Jews have been wandering around the world for hundreds of years, being persecuted and humiliated, until a number of passionaries (aristocracy) emerged and managed to systematise and structure the Jewish dream. It was them, who have been diligently explaining for decades to an oligarch from London, a doctor from Zurich, a jeweller from Paris and a trader from Marrakech that they were part of the same system, their destinies were intertwined and, as a single whole, they had to serve a unified mission.
They did not expect that all Jews, young and old, would be ready to understand and accept this. And this is completely natural, because not everyone is ready to step out of their usual comfort zone, acknowledge the realities and reflect on difficult topics. This may sound harsh, but the flock always needs shepherds who are able to make decisions and overcome the resulting consequences. Therefore, voluntarily and with full understanding of the most difficult realities, the Jewish national aristocracy assumed responsibility for the entire people, saving them not only from external threats, but also from more dangerous enemies sitting inside: cowardice, indecision, delusion and self-deception. How to deal with it?
It all starts with a dream. The dream of being oneself, the dream of not living in fear in a foreign land, the dream of not being second-rate, the dream of determining one’s fate after the horrors of the Holocaust led hundreds of thousands of Jews from different social classes and parts of the world to squalid shacks in the middle of the desert. Becoming strong and having the right to survive requires hard work, determination, and a willingness to make and endure temporary personal sacrifices for the sake of the universal future. This is not as easy as it may seem from the outside, because it can only be achieved through the realisation of the worthlessness of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, if it does not serve ‘ours’. It is impossible to achieve this without a single national dream. Thanks to the national aristocracy, the dream of having a strong country has come true, and now the established Israeli nation has another dream – to preserve its state and multiply its heritage.
This dream helps to live and work in this desert land, to send children to school, without having guarantees that they will return home safely. They take these risks not because they do not love their children and do not want them to have a safe childhood, but because they understand that one has to pay and sacrifice for safety – anywhere in the world. Therefore, it is better to do this in your native land, where your children will never feel like second-class people. Nothing is given for granted. Only Pashinyan can easily and casually sell to his people the myths that one can get security, freedom and prosperity in exchange for surrendering territories, heritage and historical memory. He does not just deprive the Armenian people of their dreams – he openly says that having a dream is harmful and dangerous. The collaborationist copes with his duties perfectly, because the task of his regime is to do everything necessary to realise not the Armenian, but the Turkish dream.
How to counter this?
The first is to stop engaging in self-deception. As an ethnic group, Armenians will never be perceived as an equal partner by the Turkish world. In the most optimistic scenario, Armenians will be assigned the role of service personnel of the Turkish world, whose national aristocracy, by definition, will receive the right of the first night. The part of the Armenian intelligentsia that believes in Pashinyan and supports him should be ready to pay ‘devşirme’ – the tax of blood. Sooner or later, those who believe in Pashinyan will give their sons to the janissaries and their daughters to the harems. And this is not an exaggeration, but the unequivocal realities of a future Real Armenia. The same applies to those who do not believe in Pashinyan, but at the same time do not believe in their own strength, do not believe that they can influence anything. This is the same kind of self-deception that makes it possible to justify the unwillingness to fight (passive collaborationism).
The second is to prevent the legal colonisation of Armenia and its further partition. Passionaries with knowledge and capabilities should unite around the idea of disrupting the change of the Declaration of Independence, repealing of Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act and the dissolution of the OSCE Minsk Group. The solutions to these vital tasks should unite that part of the Armenian world, which does not want to sacrifice the Armenian dream for the sake of fulfilling the Turkish one. If Pashinyan succeeds in these areas, the collaborationist regime will receive a mandate from the metropolis for further management and will continue to consistently surrender village after village, city after city, region after region.
Now anyone who wants to be and remain an Armenian must make a choice: either to be with Pashinyan and be an active participant in the realisation of the Turkish dream, or to maintain neutrality and be a passive participant in the realisation of the Turkish dream, or to abandon self-deception and fight for the Armenian dream. There is no time left for reflection.
