ARMENIAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY:
HOW TO CURE IT?

Great tragedies and maturation of peoples

The Irish

For over two centuries, the Irish were not merely colonial subjects. They were serfs. Their national identity, methodically eroded, was poised for eradication.

Their British masters initiated their subjugation with the aid of the most greedy and evil locals, ready to oppress their own people for a few hectares of land. It was a winning strategy as the collaborators zealously humiliated their own kinsfolk to propitiate their patrons. Once the quislings were done with the dirty work, they were cast aside without pity, and the lords and earls from London assumed direct administration of the completely suppressed people.

Several generations of Irish worked on their land for the opportunity to live in their homes and grow potatoes – just to save their families from starvation and death. From time to time, there were signs of life and some liberation movements arose. The outcome of each uprising remained the same, however: rout, followed by intensified oppression.

The situation changed after the Great Famine of 1845, when the infected soil deprived the Irish of potatoes. This calamity affected all Irish, who finally realised that servitude and slavery lead to mass death. The master not only didn’t help. He even banned other countries from helping. Those in need were barred from receiving bread. Out of eight million people, more than a million died and more than two million embarked on the treacherous voyage to American shores on “floating coffins”.

The tragedy, affecting everyone in Ireland, gave impetus and became the critical prerequisite for the subsequent success in forming the Irish elite and quickening the struggle for the independence of Ireland.

There was not a single Irishman who had to be convinced of the necessity and righteousness of this struggle. They volunteered for it, they coveted and longed for it.

The all-powerful energy of the people steered by leaders devoted to the idea of independence forced the British Empire ultimately to capitulate. And the success of the Irish in reclaiming their sovereignty demonstrated to other nations that tragedies need not be platforms for eternal mourning: they can be wake-up calls that inspire a thorough re-examination of a nation’s way of life and a fundamental internal overhaul.

History is indeed ruthless. It punishes without hesitation. But it also opens new opportunities.

The Jews

The story is very similar with the Jews.

The difference is that they were driven away from their native lands in ancient times and thereafter had integrated well into the social and economic realities of their new host countries. They served the interests of the countries they lived in, created wealth there, tried not to set themselves apart from the majority, and honoured local traditions and customs.

Nevertheless, no matter how hard they tried, they were treated as aliens by the locals. Persecution and pogroms became a recurrent tragedy for European Jews and, in a sense, prompted the formation of a transnational elite that sought out alternative solutions for their plight.

The ultimate practical consensus was triggered by a great tragedy: the Holocaust. More than 6 million Jews were killed by Germany – a country for the strengthening, prosperity and development of which the Jews had done more than for any other community.

That is why the Jews began to leave comfortable apartments in Vienna, Rome, Madrid to return to the Old Testament desert, where there was nothing but sand and squalid shacks.

The State of Israel, as well as free Ireland, were raised on foundations drenched with blood and fortified by memories of horror and violence that fundamentally altered the attitude of these peoples not only vis-à-vis the outside world, but also towards themselves.

Rejection of self-deception

At the heart of their inner transformation was the rejection of self-deception, which breeds false hope, imitation, obscene myths, self-defeating wishful thinking, and most dangerously, the expectation of inevitable salvation orchestrated by celestial forces.

In reality, however, salvation is contingent upon constant self-improvement. It requires diligence, purposefulness, ambition, and relentless introspection.

Armenians – myths come first

Big tragedy

Like the Irish and the Jews, the Armenians endured a great tragedy: the Genocide of 1915-1923. More than 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered. Survivors were forced to disperse to different parts of the world.

Failure of the First Republic of 1918-1920

The failure of the First Republic may, to some extent, be considered a consequence of the Armenians’ lack of experience in mature politics and geopolitics in general.

Even though Turkey fought on the losing side in World War I, the Turks won by keeping their country and evading all responsibility for the crimes they committed. Moreover, they settled with all the key players and took back most of the territories populated by the Armenians whom they had just exterminated.

Besides, the last remaining threat to Turkey – the remnants of the Armenians and what remained of Armenia – was safely parked inside the frontiers of the most friendly country to the newly-incarnated Turkish Republic: the Soviet Union.

The Second Republic of 1920-1991: Split into Diaspora and Soviet Armenia

The Armenian World was fragmented into two factions:

• Soviet Armenia, with its fate and security entirely in the hands of its imperial centre; and

• the Diaspora (Spyurk), where, instead of consolidation and formation of a national elite, an intense, damaging, uncompromising competition between the parties of the Dashnaks, Hnchaks and Ramgavars prevailed.

During the Cold War, not only the two superpowers, but also regional players – and even some groups of influence, political parties and movements – used Armenians as a tool to propagate their own agenda.

In other words, for 70 years after the great tragedy, rather than reflecting and transforming as the Irish and the Jews had done, the Armenians were preoccupied with serving the interests of the very forces which had conspired to deny them the prospect of being independent in their own country.

The Third Republic: Imitation of sovereignty since 1991

It is not surprising that the independent country that materialised from the detritus of the Soviet Union became a historical challenge for Armenians.

The current state of affairs shows not only that the Armenian people failed to understand and appreciate yet another gift of fate – independent statehood – but also that their leaders have made every effort to monetise that statehood and thereby accelerated its decline. Imitation of both independence and statehood has been the defining feature of the Third Republic. The political vector is chosen according to the principle of least resistance – to pass the country’s fate into the hands of the highest bidder.

Armenians’ failure to learn from history meant that the new republic was born in the shadow of yet another tragedy – a methodical ethnic cleansing in 1988-1990 in the newly forming Turkish-rooted Azerbaijan within the collapsing Soviet Union that was almost a reprise of the Genocide in the then newly forming Turkish Republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

Both Turkey and Azerbaijan proclaim a “one nation, two states” doctrine, and both are bound by the same original sin: the annihilation of Armenians. For 30 years, however, the people and their rulers in Armenia have chosen to neglect this existential threat in favour of searching for saviours – internal and external.

Some personalities were held up as heroes before they fell from grace and were cast as enemies, and vice versa.

Consider Levon Ter-Petrosyan: from 1991 to 1996, a hero; from 1996 to 2006, a hated enemy; in 2008, a messiah invited to save the country. Robert Kocharyan was a hero until 2008, a murderer and plunderer until 2019, before being proclaimed the sole saviour of the country from 2020 on.

The Third Republic’s entire life has been shaped by falsehoods, convenient distractions and futile deliberations: what kind of leader is needed – smart or strong?  Who is a friend – Russia or the West? Should Armenia recognise the independence of Artsakh or not? And on it has been going in this vein.

Meanwhile, as 100 years before, fundamental and substantive discussions on the fate of Armenia, Artsakh, and Armenians took place not in Yerevan, but in other capitals, and, obviously, only through the prism of the interests of those capitals.

The bottom line: Turkey wrapping up the Armenian issue

The results hurt, they are bitter, but they are indisputable:

• Armenians are in the midst of an escalating cold civil war, which has every chance of turning hot.

• The patron responsible for their fate is wounded and has stepped back, while keeping intact the flow of dividends from trading away Armenia (yet again).

• Other countries pursue their interests by adding fuel to the flames of bitterness against the deeply wounded patron in the hope of gaining maximum advantage from the favourable circumstances.

• Most importantly, Turkey, the obvious winner, is preparing for the de facto and de jure conclusion of the centuries-old Armenian issue through economic and geopolitical colonisation of Armenia.

The diagnosis: Armenian immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)

Even in such a situation, Armenians remain obdurate: instead of bridging the internal split, engaging in meaningful discussions and seeking out practicable solutions, they search for new culprits and new saviours.

It seems like Armenians, with enviable regularity and thoroughness, deliberately wipe off and re-format their immune system’s memory cells and historically built-up antibodies. This obviously leads to a nationwide permanent epidemic of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and leaves them defenceless against repeat intruders, with predictably fatal consequences.

What else, but the severe AIDS epidemic, accounts for the election of the perfidious Turkish warden in the most recent elections of 2021 – after so many humiliating defeats between 1994 and 2021.

The AIDS has metastasised among voters so extensively that, having been offered as “alternatives” a “choice” of all four rulers of the Third Republic – those who had driven Armenia to the precipice of extinction within a single generation – they again opted for the imitation of elections and self-deception. They never seriously considered boycotting these catastrophic “alternatives”.

The Berlin Wall between Armenia and Diaspora

If not the raging epidemic, then at least the continuing nightmare ought to have encouraged Armenians to recognise the acute need for fresh blood transfusion and urgent formation of a non-partisan team of professionals from the Diaspora to launch vital systemic reforms in Armenia and the Armenian World in general.

Tragically, all rulers of Armenia have embraced the philosophy of the first President, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, who, rather than use the political, intellectual, financial, entrepreneurial and cultural potential of millions of Armenians worldwide to the nation’s benefit, erected an unbreachable Berlin Wall between Armenia and the Diaspora to protect the ruling class.

His fear that the Diaspora might break into his bailiwick and impose checks on the abuse of the rulers’ unlimited power has been shared by his immediate successors. This fear, this Wall have played a crucial role in weakening the country’s national immunity.

As a result, this very Berlin Wall became the key to Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s success. Predictably, the special operation to prevent Armenia from using its principal and only potent asset has been carried out not by the special services of Ankara or Baku, but by their stooges: the leadership of Armenia during the entire lifetime of the Third Republic – from Ter-Petrosyan to Pashinyan.

Even the shameful capitulation in the 2020 war did not compel the Yerevan “elites” to begin the process of tearing down the Wall. On the contrary, the citizens of Armenia continue to be usurped of their natural right to vote in elections when they are abroad: to exercise the right to vote, a citizen of Armenia must travel to the country on the day of polling.

And yet the current Turkish warden in Armenia brags of a democratic mandate that apparently grants him the licence to sign fateful documents for Armenia and Artsakh. He casts doubts on his own claims when he simultaneously declares that he does not have the authority to act for Artsakh and does not bear any responsibility for its people. Suffering from ever more acute variant of AIDS, the voter in Armenia continues to eat popcorn and watch the looming tsunami in his Facebook window.

Indeed, Armenians have reduced themselves into a people that keeps testing and challenging its fate, hoping in the face of a gathering storm that God will deliver a deus ex machina or dispatch another messiah, to save and reward the first Christian people for its suffering.

What next?

Right now, Armenians have two fundamental options.

The first is to succumb to AIDS and accept their colonisation. The upshot of this would be that Armenia becomes a political, economic, and civilisational appendage of the Turkish world.

The colonisation will be implemented in accordance with established Turkish methodology, whereby Ankara will rule over Armenia via the surrogates of Armenian origin it has nurtured. Turkey will underwrite, preserve and reproduce the elite it has created.

At the same time, it will maintain a de facto monopoly in various spheres of life. It will shape Armenia’s culture and education. Control over these domains will ensure control over the future.

In the short and medium term, Armenians will gain the opportunity to earn a lot of money and enjoy all the delights and delusions spawned by Turkish capital. In the long run, however, they will pay extremely dearly for this: with their identity, including the demise of the Diaspora, history and the remnants of their fading sovereignty.

The second option, then, is not capitulate to AIDS, tear down the Berlin Wall between Armenia and the Diaspora and begin building a global Armenian transnational nation much like the Jews and the Irish, which will then influence the shaping and adoption of political decisions in key global centres of power.

To accomplish this, it is necessary to execute with urgency the following principal tasks:

• Carry out an inventory of global Armenian resources;

• Systematise and institutionalise the existing potential;

• Formulate a unifying, transnationally networked mission;

• Create the first pan-Armenian political force in the Armenian World which will be represented primarily by prominent professionals in the Diaspora – Armenia’s transnational network – and united around the mission of constructing the Armenian World as a consequential force in international life;

• Launch a large-scale transnational movement from within Armenia to start from scratch the meaningful nation- and state-building endeavour.

Why primarily from the Diaspora?

• The Diaspora is indisputably the most significant asset of the Armenian World—though not in its current fragmented, secluded, and neglected state.

• The Diaspora in its systematised form will become the foundation of a transnationally networked nation.

• Armenians of the Diaspora are subjects of many countries, and the pan-Armenian political force, connected by a unifying transnationally networked mission, will represent the uniquely Armenian World rather than promote any individual country or its interests. In no single country do Armenians make up more than 5 per cent of its population, and no single country’s Armenian community exceeds 15 per cent of the overall Armenian World.

• Armenians of the Diaspora are not part of any political group within Armenia, and are not interested in gaining power or using the country for their material benefit.

• Armenians of the Diaspora are not prepared to condone Turkish colonisation and live in “Turkish Armenia”. Otherwise, we would have witnessed massive waves of Armenians from all over the world migrating to Turkey.

• Many Armenians aspiring for an authoritative Armenian World are part of the political, economic and cultural elites in advanced countries of the world – both in the West and in the East. These Armenians are driven by lofty ideological concepts and values. Accordingly, the unification and institutionalisation of their potential is not an ideological challenge, but rather a matter of implementation.

• Finally, from purely quantitative perspective, Armenians of the Diaspora represent 75-85 per cent of the Armenian World. The survival and the future of most of the world’s Armenians should not depend on decisions made by a small group of Turkophile officials in Yerevan.

Only with the determination to form a new meaningful configuration of the Armenian World, which will allow Armenians to escape the imitative-populist bubble, can Armenia and its citizens have a chance to survive and free themselves from external colonisation in the foreseeable future. Otherwise, the Armenian World, including Armenia itself, will crumble and be relegated to the dustbin of history. A victim of immunodeficiency pandemic.