The Collaborationist’s Manual

A state is not merely a flag over an administrative territory, nor even membership in the United Nations. As it turns out, formal statehood doesn't even guarantee the right to privately use the flag and symbols of Artsakh — historic Armenian territory. Simply because the words colony and sovereignty are incompatible.

Moreover, formal existence does not guarantee sovereignty or even the preservation of this very flag. A state is defined by control over its own territory and borders. The ‘Trump route’ (TRIPP) is being actively prepared for operation, providing Azerbaijan with unhindered use of our southern borders and the opportunity to cut off Armenia from its border with Iran at any time. Territories in Tavush, a region in the North-East, have already been handed over, leaving this stretch of the border with Georgia hanging by a thread. The ‘borders’ of today’s Armenia with Azerbaijan are significantly pulled back compared to those you will see in world atlases and handbooks. For residents of the border areas, these borders run even deeper than what you'd see in real-time satellite images: many pastures, water sources, and communication routes lie within shooting range of Azerbaijani military positions on higher ground, and have become inaccessible to people who have used them for centuries, even millennia. Formerly short routes now stretch for tens of kilometres, and their navigability is now determined by weather conditions and, even more importantly, the ‘goodwill’ of neighbours. Meanwhile, the return of Azerbaijani-occupied territories isn't even on the agenda, and the Turkish satrap Pashinyan makes no secret of his plans to surrender new ‘enclaves’ like Tigranashen – a move that would let Azerbaijan encircle southern Armenia, effectively cutting the rest of the country off from Syunik, our southern region bordering Iran.

Genuine statehood is also defined by a nation's independent choice of its own future. This choice is determined by a set of values and symbols that are included in or excluded from the discourse of public officials, the school curriculum, and the state-controlled media. Without a coherent historical and symbolic policy of one's own, there is no state. Armenia's public television is run by a henchman of the Turkish satrap – a man whose wife, the Minister of Education, calls Garegin Nzhdeh, our national hero and the leader Syunik’s resistance against the Turks and their Bolshevik accomplices, a fascist. The official history is being rewritten to suit the ‘era of peace’, Mt. Ararat is removed from border stamps, deliberately excluded from images in future passports. An employee of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute is fired for drawing the attention of visitors to ethnic cleansing in Artsakh, while the person holding the position of Prime Minister instructs children not to draw Ararat in their own notebooks. All of this is only the visible tip of the iceberg. Far more important is everything beneath the surface — in historical politics, what goes unspoken is what truly matters.

Finally, statehood is the apogee of nation’s (not people’s!) development – therefore, it is impossible without a nation, without historical memory and Homeland, without national symbols and values, without national identity and national heritage with system-moulding institutions, such as the Armenian Church. Our peace-loving-yet-bloodthirsty neighbours possess none of this, yet – fully aware of how fundamental these concepts are – they are urgently fabricating it all – while their collaborationists in Armenia squander our heritage and urge us to focus on filling our stomachs. Our neighbours are building statehood; their satrap and their collaborationists are advancing animal instincts.

The purpose of the campaign launched against the Church is to discredit a two-thousand-year-old institution that has guaranteed the preservation of the Armenian identity and, as a result, the Armenian world. The Turkish satrap has turned the lives of Armenian parishioners across the country into a lottery: his every unannounced appearance at Sunday liturgy, in whichever part of the country it happens to occur, brings with it a violation of the sacrament rules (the names of the Catholicos and the Bishop go unmentioned, undermining the local community's unity with the universal Church and its primate), acts of idolatry (his inserted sectarians applaud him), and skirmishes within the monastic walls.

Along with discrediting individual clergy, Turkish collaborationists have begun raising questions about the Church's asset ownership and taxation, and started casting doubt on its special status under the Armenian Constitution. In addition, the courts of ‘Real Armenia’ have begun to interpret decisions on defrocking within the framework of ordinary labour legislation, as if it was not about a special mission and sacrament, but about the relationship between an employee and the boss. Finally, at the Turkish satrap's own instigation, the puppet ‘state’ and party-controlled media cesspools began denying clerical ranks and names altogether, referring to clergy by their secular names instead. The municipal elections in Vagharshapat (Etchmiadzin) were declared a referendum on support for the anti-church campaign.

It is also well known that those who initiated this confrontation are followers of various cults outside the fold of the Armenian Church. One of them is ‘Word of Life,’ a favourite cult of Pashinyan's ‘Civil Contract’ party. It was the hand of its leader that the Turkish collaborationist warmly shook in Washington in February 2025 – a couple of months before escalation of his dirty campaign against the Armenian Christendom. After that, the Holy See of Etchmiadzin was suddenly branded ‘contaminated’, and the churches under its authority reduced to ‘storage closets’. Apparently, the churches and khachkars desecrated under Azerbaijani occupation are a different matter altogether. The 'peace-loving’ neighbours set the bar for the Turkish satrap on how to handle church property.

Moreover, in this struggle, the Turkish satrap Pashinyan relies on criminal elements within the Church who can be blackmailed by the threat of prosecution. One of the most illustrative examples is the infamous Archbishop Navasard Kchoyan, who is known for his large-scale financial scams and thuggish habits. It is with such bishops and archbishops that the Turkish collaborationist intends to ‘purify’ Etchmiadzin. As for election of his own puppet Catholicos, he had intended to arrange it through a ‘spiritual council’ consisting of 10 people – one you could join simply by email. All that was required was to report back to the ‘new messiah’ that one had read the Bible cover to cover, fasted at least once in the past five years, and prayed daily. The ‘messiah’ himself, though, seems to believe God helps those who help themselves: just in case, he financed the renovation of the Avan Mental Health Centre.

In the end, the persecution of individuals quickly turned into a ‘discussion’ about the public role of the Armenian Church as a national institution. Without any evidence, the Church has been accused of aiding and abetting Russian influence, while being subjected to persecution comparable to that experienced at the end of the Russian Empire and at the height of Stalin’s repressions. Turkish collaborationists consign to oblivion the role of the Armenian clergy in regaining the First Republic’s independence and liberating Artsakh, calling the Church an ‘anti-state structure’. To prove their own moral righteousness, they shamelessly compare the Turkish satrap to King Pap, who nationalised the Church’s possessions.

The struggle against the Church is also part of the campaign for eventual separation of Armenian communities from Armenia. The Church is currently the only pan-Armenian institution (despite its internal shortcomings and contradictions). In many communities, Armenian churches are the epicentres for preservation of national identity and community interaction. Moreover, the Catholicos is elected collectively and represents Armenians in all corners of the world. Therefore, it is natural that the governing clique, seeking to create a split between and within the communities, targets specifically the clergy. If they cannot force today on how our Church should be governed and in which direction it should move, they will not be able to set moral guidance for their own flock tomorrow.

Despite the unpreparedness and disorganisation of Armenian communities, such a powerful intellectual, spiritual, business, entrepreneurial, and financial resource in the largest metropolises of the world is the dream of any nation-state – large and small. The proof of this is the large-scale government programs, educational projects, lobbying efforts, international investments of China and India, Kazakhstan and Turkey that have been pursued for decades. Even such large countries still need the resources of established transnational political nations (TPNs) that have formed over centuries. Ireland, Israel, and Poland are states that demonstrate the usefulness of their own diasporas. Against the backdrop of Israeli lobby's recent decline of influence and the Jewish state's waning popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, a future Armenian TPN stands out as one of the most logical and long-missing global players — one badly needed for shaping a new, sustainable global order.

Instead of leading the process of building an Armenian TPN, what remains of the Armenian state today – faithful to the traditions of the Third Republic – is trying to sell off the Armenian world as cheap export, not even as an intermediate product or service, but as raw material sold to a monopoly importer. However, what kind of exports and imports can we even talk about when a raw material appendage interacts with the metropolis? The Turkish clique is thus engaged not in uniting these communities into a capable and influential Spyurk (Diaspora) with a unified purpose and structure, but in fabricating ‘Real Armenia’ – a construct that leaves no room for this most precious of national assets, for its millennia-old history, its historical Homeland, its national symbols and values, or its national heritage.

Like previous dictators of the Third Republic, Pashinyan needs a disparate and controlled bunch of communities, not a consolidated and influential Diaspora. He therefore goes further still: not only does he exclude these communities from nation-building, he casts them and their values as the cause of his own failure – accusing them of revanchism and hostility toward neighbours who, to this day, deny their own original sins: the Armenian Genocide at the birth of the newly-minted Turkish Republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, and the Armenian pogroms at the birth of the newly-minted Azerbaijani Republic on the ruins of the Soviet Empire. Both – new creations with newly fabricated claims to historic heritage to cover up their original sins.

The Third Republic, the Republic of Armenia, committed its own original sin when its first President Levon Ter-Petrosyan alienated those who survived these tragedies. Today, Nikol Pashinyan, his faithful acolyte, continues not only to stigmatise refugees – this time from Armenian Artsakh in its entirety – but also to push them out into those same disparate communities abroad, while separating those communities from current Turkish-subjected Armenia with an impenetrable wall. Whereas the accusation used to be aimed at those who allegedly ‘don't consider Armenia their homeland’ (today, only the Turkish satrap pits 'homeland' against 'state'), it now extends to Armenian citizens, active community organisations, and individuals who reject the collaborationist course charted by Yerevan's time-servers — all of the above are now excluded from Armenia's internal life and future.

The global Armenian world is the only Armenian-centric guarantor of Armenian statehood — one that has proven its strength and remains unconquered to this day. This resource is the main target of the bloodthirsty Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem. Let us remind you: the Armenian world is the main victim and the primary witness to the original sins at birth of both the Turkish and Azerbaijani state projects. It is also the main obstacle to their expansion, including the complete absorption of geographical Armenia. The real question isn't Turkish appetite or pliability of Young Janissaries in Yerevan — it's whether Armenia can be swallowed without choking on it. The Section 907 of the 1992 United States Freedom Support Act, which still persists despite the tireless efforts of Baku, Ankara and contemporary Yerevan, is a vivid confirmation of this ultimate dilemma of Turkey and the Turkish world.

Only an agent of a strategic adversary can throw aside the enormous potential of the Armenian world and deliberately limit its capabilities to scarce and rapidly depleting and sold out, yet fully controlled, resources within ‘Real Armenia’. And only exactly the same kind of agents outside of ‘Real Armenia’ can agree to such an arrangement.

Colonial administrations reduce nations to little more than exploitable population and a tax base under direct administrative control. Sovereign states expand their political nation. Armenia has a outstanding opportunity to step beyond the borders of every empire and be bound by no borders at all – not on land, not at sea, not even in space. This doesn't even require extraordinary efforts – we only need to prevent that the Armenian world's efforts are devalued and intentionally confused by intense collaborationist rhetoric. It is hard and counter-intuitive for an outsider to comprehend why the Armenian state would disavow the Armenian world, especially in the interests of the Turkish world. It is beyond their imagination that an Armenian government may be a Turkish subject. In return, the Turkish collaborationist and his Young Janissaries wall themselves up within ever-narrower land borders, impotently renouncing the Armenian world.

The only way for Turkey to put a permanent end to the Armenian Question is through the irreversible fragmentation and demoralisation of Armenian communities. In its ideal world, Turkey would still use them to pursue ambitions that reach far beyond the notorious South Caucasus. Perhaps this is precisely why the Turkish world is willing to tolerate, for now, the existence of a reservation officially called ‘Republic of Armenia’ – and would happily herd as many Armenians as possible into it, even into Western Armenia. A 'Real Armenia' that fails to attract Armenian communities poses no threat to Turkish national interests. Turkey has mastered the lessons of the US–Soviet Cold War like no one else, and in this new round of global confrontation, it is once again thriving in it, rather than shying away from it. It's no accident that Pashinyan, echoing Turkish propaganda, repeats – in a rather Freudian slip – that he opposes turning recognition of the Armenian Genocide into a weapon. Turkish diplomacy, of course, fears an Armenia armed with the influence and capital of the Armenian world, not anyone's verbal recognition of the Genocide (even though it’ll still pull all breaks to pre-empt such moves as well).

The Armenian state is a core and indispensable value of the entire Armenian world, and it cannot be left at the mercy of a clique of amateurs and collaborationists – accountable neither to the people of Armenia, nor to the deliberately and intentionally fragmented Armenian communities around the world that have yet to become the consolidated Armenian-centric Spyurk. The Turkish satrap Pashinyan, following the instructions of the Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem, will continue discrediting the global Armenian world and obstructing its consolidation around an Armenian-centric doctrine.

Only those intent on denying reality could believe that millions of Armenians — successfully integrated abroad and consciously choosing every day to remain Armenian — are on the wrong side of history. And yet the actual perpetrators – who only yesterday were cutting the ears off Armenian elders, beheading Armenian soldiers, and starving Armenian children to death, and who today hold dozens of Armenians hostage, desecrate Armenian holy sites, and make no secret of their further genocidal intentions – are somehow considered ‘peace-loving partners’ in building ‘statehood’.

Everything our bleeding, sweating, and weeping ancestors spent millennia to secure is now being annihilated, or stands at the very precipice of annihilation, owing to the treacherous instincts of a clique of small-minded, self-important and ignorant Turkish lackeys. And yet the Armenian world acquiesces to the ‘delimitation’ of the very boundaries of its own existence, dutifully playing out its Turkish-assigned role in the final dismantling of the Armenian state. It is a most convenient position to occupy: leave the people of Armenia to face alone a monster that both Armenia and the Armenian world have spent 35 years feeding, then simply absolve oneself of any responsibility. Pashinyan, one of that very monster's heads, is engaged in precisely the same enterprise. The sole distinction is that he knows nothing awaits him but an abyss and everlasting disgrace, whereas the rest of us still have something left to lose.

Infrastructure development is a basic obligation of any government. The real question is whether Armenians will be able to remain in Armenia and make use of it, and whether Armenia will be attractive to the Armenian world at large. Even the Central Electoral Commission, controlled by the Turkish satrap, did not deny before the equally controlled Constitutional Court that handouts from the colonial administration to the population – such as mandatory health insurance (not available to everyone), pension increases, and preferential agricultural loans – served as tools of pre-election administrative resource abuse.

It is worth emphasising here that Pashinyan’s "Civil Contract's" line of defence regarding its hasty deployment of the entire state budget arsenal on the eve of elections runs precisely as follows: ‘elections are no reason to stop fulfilling the state's constitutional obligations’. On the one hand, this absurd excuse amounts to an admission that all these gestures are simply the duty of any government to the people who elected it – not some special act of mercy graciously bestowed to people.

On the other hand, this justification points to an important manipulative fallacy that Pashinyan’s clique imposes on all Armenians: ‘the state = the government’ (see Myth No. 1 above and also recall the Turkish satrap’s infamous statement: ‘The government is me’). This deliberate manipulation is most vividly on display in official propaganda — in claims like ‘whoever is against Pashinyan is against the state, or is pro-Russia,’ and in branding ‘hybrid threats’ and ‘inostrannyye agenty’ (foreign agents, spelled out in Russian, no less) applied to everyone who fails to share the Turkish satrap's preferences. Incidentally, ‘suddenly’ falling into this last category are also those who wish to distance themselves from Russia: it was precisely them whom Pashinyan recently labelled ‘foreign agents’.

Let us return to these band-aid solutions, marketed to us under the guise of a new life, a new era, victory over corruption, and so on. In reality, such projects offer the perfect opportunity for appropriation of public funds and rewarding loyal party members and oligarchs. People quickly forget about the low-quality, drawn-out renovation of kindergartens; about the fact that members of Pashinyan's 'Civil Contract' and their families are the ones winning state contracts to carry out these shoddy renovations across the entire country; and about the Turkish satrap's friends acquiring communal lands outright, without bothering with auctions or tenders. As his party officials continue living the high life, Pashinyan himself cuts ribbons on unfinished construction sites and rides around on his bicycle under the protection of his motorcade, while any movement around Yerevan – whether on foot, by bicycle, moped, or scooter – has become life-threatening. Meanwhile, Tigran Avinyan, the mayor of Yerevan who faces questions about misappropriated billions at the Armenian National Investment Fund (ANIF) fund and is yet another champion of the 'Word of Life' heresy, continues with impunity to damage the health of Yerevan's residents and those of the surrounding suburbs.

Furthermore, the prolonged and unsuccessful road works are fundamentally altering the city's logistics, creating unprecedented traffic jams along detour routes. Roads that once took minutes now stretch into hours, the number of accidents is rising, and people are losing precious time – and with it, their health and money – all so that some 'Civil Contract' official can pocket a share of public funds, and the Turkish satrap and his cronies can boast that no one under the 'former' governments ever built this much. Unfortunately, those also pretended to build – take the ill-fated 'North–South' highway, still unfinished and under construction to this day, as the money ran out long before its completion. Then again, Pashinyan is keeping pace: the funds allocated for the Ajapnyak metro station also ran out before construction even began. Let's set aside whether underground infrastructure even makes economic sense in this district – by the next ‘election’, if one ever happens, the unfinished Ajapnyak site will most likely reemerge as a pre-electoral promise.

Few people care that these 'brand-new' roads turn into rivers after every rainfall (if, God willing, not overland sewers), that many districts across Yerevan and the rest of the country are often left without water or electricity for days at stretch, or that Yerevan's air is unbreathable in winter – and, for that matter, in summer too, thanks to the mass felling of trees and their replacement with sakura and Judas trees with tiny canopies. All that is left for the eyes and nose is that same old patched-up asphalt.

Moreover, even what could generously be called a cosmetic improvement – although, for that matter, it is essentially an outright sabotage – is being carried out at the expense of a growing national debt and rising taxes, all in service of short-term populist goals and without any thought for the consequences. Armenia's current national debt barely holds within half of gross domestic product (GDP), a figure edging toward levels critical for the country. GDP itself, meanwhile, is artificially inflated by the re-export of goods to and from Russia amid anti-Russian sanctions, while nominal GDP is inflated further still by US dollar's artificially low exchange rate against the Armenian dram (driven, to a large extent, by the avalanche of Russian roubles chasing those US dollars). As a result, real growth in production of goods and services remains severely limited, and the external conditions that could support such growth are highly volatile.

Be that as it may, Armenians will be paying the price for a long time to come – for the national debt, for the enrichment of 'Civil Contract' members' families, for universal health insurance without a functioning public healthcare system (one that would actually work toward disease prevention on national scale rather than merely easing symptoms), and for pre-election bribes disguised as pension increases. In the Turkish 'Real Armenia’, however, the logic runs in reverse, since the only thing holding the colony together is a well-fed life here and now.

After exposing all these myths, the reader is bound to ask: 'Why do we put up with this?' Our answer to that question is the epidemic immunodeficiency of the Armenian ethnos. Yet in so pragmatic a matter as roads and schools, a second question arises: 'What do we even need a colonial government for in the first place?' The truth is, municipal authorities alone would suffice for roads and schools. A national government exists to preserve and develop the state, protect its citizens, and prevent – or at least overcome – catastrophes and tragedies.

Asphalt is a wonderful thing – especially if it is of good quality. But the Goris-Kapan road had asphalt too, and today it is lined with Azerbaijani checkpoints that terrorise Armenian children. Azerbaijan laid brand-new asphalt between Artsakh and Syunik by the autumn of 2022. Armenian cars drove on it for less than three months before the peace-loving-yet-bloodthirsty neighbours shut down this lifeline of a road. When it reopened nine months later, not a scrap of that asphalt could be seen beneath the wheels of the endless columns of Armenians forced from their homeland. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians would give anything for the Yerevan-Stepanakert road to be just as bumpy and slow as it was in the 1990s and early 2000s – so long as it always brought them home safely, whichever direction they were travelling.

All manner of 'lowering the bar' and abandonment of national identity have nothing in common with 'realism' or 'learning from the mistakes of the past'. Realism has never meant relinquishing one's own interests, values, and historical agency. Realism is the ability to soberly assess opportunities and threats, to choose effective tools for exploiting the former and overcoming the latter, and to find a path toward preserving and strengthening the state amid the geopolitical jungle.

World history is a ruthless and impartial witness to the outcome of every confrontation. It has never been won by one who refused to face it. As it happens, that refusal never spared anyone from being remembered for it. Voluntarily renouncing one's own goals and ambitions, abandoning historical memory, symbols, and institutions, denying one's own advantages and character – all of this can only benefit the enemies of the Armenian factor in the region and the world. Survival does not favour those who abandon their ambitions faster than their neighbours, but those who learn the lessons of their own defeats and tragedies more quickly, exploit the enemy's weaknesses, and never lose the will to resist and win.

Poland was the first victim of Nazi Germany, having been repeatedly partitioned even before the Second World War. German, and later Soviet, occupation could not force the Poles to resign themselves to a bitter fate or take the submission path. On the contrary, the moment they had the chance to rebuild their own state, they mobilised every resource toward building a transnational political nation. This process is not yet complete, but it is already hard to imagine any of Poland's near or more distant neighbours contemplating a 'short victorious war' against it.

Nor did Ireland surrender to the whims of a cruel fate. Centuries of oppression had destroyed its national culture, faith, and even language. Then came the Great Famine that could be dealt with only by crossing an ocean. All of this drove Irishmen – by then their ethic compatriots splendidly integrated into the American aristocracy – not to resign themselves to the vagaries of fate on their windswept home island. Instead, they did everything in their power to ensure that no one would ever again dare encroach on their right to live and create on their own soil. There were 'realists' among the Irish too: fighting for the British-controlled north of the island, with its predominantly Protestant population, seemed impractical. Yet Ireland did not receive independence across the 26 southern counties as some pleasant bonus, the way the Third Republic did. Ireland tore that independence out of the British Empire with its teeth.

Yet harsh reality showed the native inhabitants of the six northern counties, and to the entire Celtic world, that foreign control can never substitute for independence – even when that foreign power is the relatively civilised United Kingdom, within which one enjoys a fairly broad autonomy. This realisation has followed a prolonged stretch of bloodshed. Even so, it never drove the native inhabitants to 'lower the bar', abandon the struggle, or simply relocate a few dozen kilometres south into the free Republic. The northerners felt the solid backing of the Celtic world behind them. Much of that assurance came from the support of their countrymen on the other side of the border, and across the Atlantic. Today, the United Kingdom is forced to reckon with the Irish factor in all its foreign and domestic political affairs, and the reunification of the entire Emerald Isle is, thanks to the Celtic world's perseverance, merely a matter of time.

The mistake, therefore, cannot lie in the goal itself — only in its absence. Our tragic situation is not the fault of national values and ambitions, but of every single leader of the Third Republic since 1991, without exception, who in reality never adhered to those values and ambitions at all, and often acted directly against them. Here is a short list of their collective crimes against Armenians:

• Pre-emption of consolidation of Armenian communities abroad into a solid and consolidated Spyurk and alienation of Armenian communities from Armenia
• Undermining trans-national institutions, foremost among them the Armenian Church
• Renunciation of ‘Miatsum’ (Reunification) of Armenia and Artsakh, relinquishing military and political responsibility for the future of Artsakh
• Surrender and de-armenisation of Artsakh
• Failure in army-building and in establishing of own advanced defence industry
• Allowing foreign intelligence networks free rein
• Search for patrons and metropolises, not allies
• Diminishing Spyurk’s role to that of a ‘cash cow’ – without any influence in Armenian state-building

As we can see, everything the Turkish clique did in reality contradicted the goals it proclaimed – or that all of us naively assumed it held. Today, a new goal has been announced: to preserve what remains of our land (partially occupied by our 'peace-loving' neighbour). That goal is, of course, a fairly noble one, but endless concessions have never once, in our long history, achieved it.

After all, any layman is able of setting such a goal. Why do we need a government so collaborationist and incompetent, if all it will do is give up pieces of the Armenian ethnos's ancestral homeland one after another, and blame the spatial ambitions of the Armenian world's passionaries for it? The state and its leadership exist to draw and defend red lines, and to solve problems that are difficult, and sometimes may appear impossible. If a government's function is simply to relay the coloniser's threats word for word and declare them justified, then it is nothing more than a superfluous middleman. One can find bread to eat and genuinely good roads to drive on in plenty of other countries.

First, political competition is not determined by the number of unviable contenders, amateurs, pretenders and individuals – who have historically repeatedly proven themselves to be betrayers of the interests of the Armenian nation – taking part in staged ‘elections’. Rather, it is defined by the competition of ideas and alternative visions for the future. Such parties, parliamentarianism, and a genuine culture of political debate never emerged in the Third Republic. The results of the last two elections to the ‘National Assembly’ (2021 and 2026) reflect both the depth of the Republic's decline and the true nature of its feudal-clan system. The only arena in which the party groupings compete is the scale of their oligarchic financing and the absurdity and aggressiveness of their rhetoric.

None of them challenged the Turkish satrap’s false ‘peace agenda’, because designing an independent political vision requires expertise, time and effort. It is far easier to attach one's own adjectives to the word ‘peace’ and then complain that voters preferred the ‘classic’ or ‘original’ version. This is why the interview on the state TV channel by the Turkish collaborationist’s chief propagandist of the leading candidate of the new ‘main opposition force’ was virtually indistinguishable from an interview with a member of the Turkish-aligned ‘Civil Contract’. There has been no substantive debate over the defining issues of the Armenian statehood: control over Syunik, the surrender of the ‘enclaves’, immigration and emigration, the future of the deported Armenians of Artsakh, nation-building, or the future of Spyurk. Instead, the message amounts to little more than: ‘I will do the same as Pashinyan, only better’ – whatever ‘better’ is supposed to mean.

Second, the Armenian political landscape has never been as barren as it is today, in the twilight of the Third Republic. Levon Ter-Petrosyan rigged his presidential re-election in 1996 in order to avoid a second round; even the highly authoritarian Robert Kocharyan had to face a runoff; Serzh Sargsyan's rule was contested continuously from his first day to his last, and he was repeatedly forced to answer uncomfortable questions about Artsakh and corruption, even if his answers were rarely convincing. Ultimately, it was under Sargsyan (and with his party’s votes) that Pashinyan entered parliament and eventually took power from him. In Pashinyan's sterile parliament, there are no new Pashinyans. These comparisons, however favourable they may appear vis-à-vis the current state of affairs under the Turkish satrap, should not be mistaken for evidence of greater pluralism or tolerance under his predecessors. Rather, they illustrate just how far he has fallen even by their standards.

Third, in the ninth year of collaborationist Pashinyan's rule, oligarch-controlled media continue to operate freely, while government critics are arrested like hardened criminals. In ‘Real Armenia’, Robert Kocharyan has been all but rehabilitated after his crimes against Armenians and Armenia, thanks both to the work of his media outlets and to the toothless attacks of the Turkish satrap (mainly – to use him as a red rag to extend hold on power). The Pashinyan-Kocharyan duo (or its updated version in Pashinyan-Samvel Karapetyan duet, though many people see little difference) continues to reap the benefits of cartel-style governance in Armenia. Both understand perfectly well that their political survival depends entirely on the continued existence of the other; should one leave the political stage, the other would inevitably follow. That is why Kocharyan remains free to finance media outlets and political parties, while insulting remarks directed at junior Janissaries such as Alen Simonyan – or even comments about the satrap himself – can immediately result in a forceful detention. Even European human rights organisations, despite their compliant failure to notice Turkish satrap’s wrongdoings, have criticised the authorities' routine use of arrest in cases involving non-violent offences where there is no threat to public safety.

Finally, what the collaborationists describe as a ‘competition of ideas’ has in reality been reduced to a pretense of confrontation between the ‘former’ and the ‘current’ rulers – a contest between two cliques over control of the state treasury, access to Turkish-Azeri financial inflows, influence over the judiciary, and parliamentary immunity. This is precisely why none of the oligarchic factions has any interest in reforming the political swamp of the Third Republic, just as none genuinely seeks to remove the Turkish satrap from power. Likewise, he has no interest in facing competent rivals with clean reputations either. The feudal-clan system has no incentive to embrace political renewal or allow new actors to emerge. Its primary concern is preservation of internal distribution of power and resources while transferring the resulting wealth to cohabitating Turkish beneficiaries.