Partners, Not Just Patriots: Reimagining Armenia-Diaspora Relations for the 21st Century

8-minute read

The aftermath of the 2020 Second Nagorno-Karabakh War has served as a sort of platform for the seven-or-so million people scattered around the world who make up the vast Armenian Diaspora to reevaluate their relationship with their home country. As part of an ongoing engagement with the global Armenian community, Armagora.am, a project powered by The Future Armenian Foundation, continues an ambitious series of comprehensive public attitude assessments aimed at mapping Armenians’ views on the foundational challenges and opportunities facing the nation. This week’s focus is the Diaspora’s new catalyst for reexamining their future intertwined with their homeland.

In the Armenian national psyche, the three constituents of the Armenian nation are usually divided as follows: Armenia, Artsakh and the Diaspora. While the realities of Armenianness are, in practice, infinitely more nuanced, these clean brackets help us condense and conceptualise thousands of years of differing history, partially-overlapping cultural influence and clarifying divergence into a simple formula for what it means to be Armenian. While “Armenia” and “Artsakh” generally don’t require extra clarification, the fact that the “Diaspora” apparently doesn’t either is shocking. Indeed, as much as the Diaspora can be considered distinct from Artsakh and Armenia, it is equally distinct from itself. “The Diaspora” is in fact many diasporas, and diasporas within diasporas. Of Lebanese-Armenians drawing roots from Iskanderun now living in Montreal, rubbing shoulders with co-ethnics forced to leave Egypt by Nasser. Each with their own subset of the Armenian faith, dialect of the Armenian language – or even neither.

It is this very diversity of “Diasporisation”, and its own relationship to the Homeland which makes the results of the latest Armagora poll that much more interesting: essentially, the Diaspora remains a capital D Diaspora in the ways that truly matter:

Shifting from the symbolic to the strategic:

Unsurprisingly, a Diaspora largely formed as the result of the act of Genocide remains vurtually unanimously supportive of pursuing Armenian Genocide recognition as a foreign policy priority for Armenia. This is a cause they share with their compatriots inside of Armenia. As Anthony Barsamian, Co-chair of the Armenian Assembly of America, said in a recent Ask me Anything (AMA) session, “The genocide recognition is now an international fact, not just an Armenian issue”. Indeed, there is now consensus among historians that the Armenian Genocide is historical fact, something which so far 34 countries, including the United States, have also recognised; but as Barsamian points out in the context of the recent ethnic cleansing of 150,000 indigenous Armenians of Artsakh (thus extinguishing one of the three aforementioned branches of the Armenian nation), a genocide denied is a genocide repeated. Concern over the urgency of this foreign policy matter has been amplified since the Second Nagorno Karabakh war, with some worried that the Armenian government, negotiating with two hostile and triumphalist neighbours might be inclined to downplay this foreign policy priority for the sake of self-preservation, though as of yet, the Foreign Ministry’s website continues to prominently display this issue.

Addressing a trust deficit:

The fact that “strengthening mutual trust” was voted as the second-highest priority for the future of Diaspora-Armenia relations, suggests that many in the Diaspora who would otherwise hope to be more included in the goings-on of their homeland feel either out of the loop, or sensing underlying tensions and misunderstandings. While it should come as no surprise that a century of division between the Homeland and the various diasporas have left many who feel themselves to be Armenian disconnected from the political culture of the Republic of Armenia, Armenians have always known that salvation came in the form of mutually beneficial interactions between the two Armenias. The Diaspora needs Armenia to remain relevant, and Armenia needs the brains and bodies of its Diaspora communities to fulfill that ask.

Democratic Legitimacy vs. Practical Concerns

An interesting–if not unsurprising–take away from this recent poll is the amount of Armenians who believe that the Diaspora should have a representation inside the Armenian National Assembly. The concept of representing the Armenian Diaspora (and thus highlighting its key role as an integral part of the Armenian nation, and now, the body-politic) has been discussed ad astra for over three decades now. That isn’t to say that sons and daughters of the Diaspora haven’t individually played shaping roles in Armenia’s politics. Indeed, the Syrian-born Levon Ter-Petrosyan served as the nation’s first post-independence President, while the first and second foreign ministers were the US-born Raffi Hohannisian and Syrian-born Vartan Oskanian respectively. Still, with the inherent complexities of even organizing (let alone accurately gauging the Armenian Diaspora in all its forms) as a singular political entity, ways to legitimately and democratically represent such a vast grouping of people in the legislative body of a country they are not citizens of, and whose decisions they would not be affected by remains without a practical workable solution. Interestingly enough, despite 63 percent of respondents being in favour of such a representation in the National Assembly, only 5.5% of the multiple answer votes placed “democratic institutions” as a top priority for Diaspora organizations to advocate for, behind Genocide Recognition with 25%.

Evolving Security Paradigm

Polling results also show that the Diaspora’s view over the long term security of the Homeland has quickly sobered up following the war and subsequent security challenges. When once a prevailing view among many, especially among the more militantly nationalist, was that Armenia could not be defeated by virtue of our stronger will and right to the homeland, recent events have reminded the general public that advances in modern warfare have changed the calculus to the point where cruise missiles and UCAVs are unconcerned with the power of bellum iustum. While few of the poll respondants will necessarily move to Armenia to join the Armed Forces immediately, there are many ways for the Diaspora to be involved in solving Armenia’s security gap, including advocacy in their own countries. As part of the AMA, Barsamian discusses the AAA’s work in encouraging young diaspora Armenians to go into local and national government in their adoptive countries; both to learn how government works, but also to become strong voices for advocacy from within.

Separate functions with a common goal

Taken together though, these poll answers paint a very rational picture, one which depicts the Armenian Diaspora and the Armenian state as being united by common goals, yet fulfilling entirely different-but-mutually-supporting missions. While the Diaspora remains a pool of knowledge, resources and experience for Armenia to leverage as part of its larger mission of sustaining a safe homeland for the Armenian people, its unique organizational culture, and versatile holacratic structure enables it to advocate for the Armenian cause in a way that both complements, and supports Armenia. Still, one should still ask if, in the long term, the healthiest relationship between a homeland and its diaspora is for the diaspora to return.

(key elements of this visualization:

The Bridge Metaphor: The arching bridge represents the transition from traditional to strategic relations, with solid foundations on both sides.
Three Key Metrics: Represented by the floating circles:

Red (95%): Strong consensus on Genocide recognition
Green (63%): Support for Diaspora representation
Orange (60%): Preference for selective alignment

Design Elements:

The dashed line underneath represents the ongoing evolution
The size of the circles corresponds to the relative importance of each issue
The color scheme is chosen to be both engaging and professional
The foundations are labeled “Traditional Focus” and “Strategic Partnership” to show the transition

This visualization helps readers quickly grasp: