The Diaspora and the Karabagh Movement: Oppositional Politics between the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Armenian National Movement (original) (raw)

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2001

Abstract

“At this stage [March 1995], it is possible to assert with a clear conscience that the situation would have been preferable (to the presidency of Levon Ter-Petrossian) if Armenia was directly occupied by Turkey … .” This is not a quote from the Turkish or Azeri press. It is from an article published in a diasporan Armenian-language Dashnak2 newspaper at the height of the Ter-Petrossian–ARF antagonism in early 1995.3 This is a far cry from the euphoria of 1991 when the diaspora and the home- land were metaphorically presented as two wings of the same bird. In four or five short years relations between the newly independent homeland and a significant element of the diaspora had disintegrated to the level of declaring the rule of Armenia’s first post-Soviet President as worse than Turkish occupation. Of course, one can over-generalize from a single case. Levon Ter- Petrossian was not and is not Armenia, and the Dashnaks do not embody the heterogeneous diaspora, with its many ideological, cultural, and geographic divisions. My focus is on the politics of the homeland–diaspora relationship from the late 1980s to the resignation of Ter-Petrossian as President in the “constitutional coup” of February 1998. Furthermore, the diaspora I have in mind is the “western” diaspora of North America and Europe, and to some extent the Middle East. Even so, the topic remains broad, and as a result, some omissions and generalizations are required.

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