Restructuring the Armenian Diaspora – Part 1

NORAYR EBLIGHATIAN

Recently I read an article titled “Mer Oughin (i.e. OUR PATH) is not a Dissention”, and a paragraph struck a chord. The section read as follows:

Այնուամենայնիվ, քանի դեռ Սփյուռքը չի միացել ՆՈՐ ազգային, քաղաքական, տնտեսական, սոցիալական, էկոլոգիական և մշակութային հայկական նոր վերածննդի գալակտիկային՝ ՄԵՐ ՈՒՂԻՆ այդ երկբեվեռային ամբողջական համադրությունը կատարելու առաքելությունը ունի։

“As long as the Diaspora has not united over a NEW national, political, economic, social, ecological, and a cultural Armenian paradigm, MER OUGHIN (OUR PATH), will have the mission of coordinating all these.”

The Current Structure of the Armenian Diaspora

The Armenian national identity has come a long way from geographical locale tribalism (I am from Aintab, or Tbilisi, or Istanbul). Now, we have Armenians across the globe who have a common national identity. In contrast, our Diaspora is structured in micro-units (e.g. the Armenian community in Amman, Jordan that closed its school lately) that make each component vulnerable. A simple proof of this fragility is the incident where a statement by an Armenian individual unleashed (pre-planned) demonstrations against the Armenian community in Lebanon. It is quite significant that the Armenian Leadership in Lebanon responded by contextualizing these protests as a law & order issue. While I understand the need to calm the situation, a question comes to mind: Was the destruction of the Armenian communities in Iraq and in Syria (especially Mosul, Aleppo and the Deir-Zor region) a law & order and judicial issue? Will law and order stop a concerted asymmetric assault on the Lebanese Armenian community?

I was born and raised in the Middles Eastern Diaspora units, and my identity is linked to the Armenian Diaspora. Furthermore, as a result of the implosion of the Middle East in general and the ME Diasporan units in particular, I have come to the realization of the lifecycle and ephemeral aspects of Diasporan units (other examples are Polish and Indian communities). The latest evolution of my perspective towards this idea is the ‘discovery’ in Armenia of the Armenian Republic Diaspora in Russia. Therefore, my conclusion is that Diasporan units are ephemeral and subject to a lifecycle (emergence, vibrancy and decline), BUT the Diaspora structure itself seems much more lasting (for example, there are Italian and German communities in the USA, and Lebanon has had a Diasporan community for centuries).

Furthermore, there are geographic regions where there are Diaspora unit clusters that are similar to each other and are in similar life-cycle stage; for example, the Middle East, Western Europe, the US and Canada.

Another interesting phenomenon is that we (even the Diaspora Armenians) do not know about the Diaspora. We know a unit or two because we have lived in it, but we do not have a clear picture of the whole. And, more importantly, our current mass media does not reflect reality, they show a facet of it. Have you read any serious analysis of the current state of the communities in Syria and Lebanon? When I was a kid, I would wait impatiently for the book “Amenun Darekirke”, because it gave me stories of people and places far away (Ethiopia, Egypt, the US and elsewhere). My compatriots lived there, and it was fascinating how their life was different than mine.

Finally, the inter-relationship of the Diaspora units is limited to compatriots moving from one unit to another, and there are some multinational organizations (HMEM, AGBU and a few others). But there are no formal links between the units themselves; even between units within the same cluster, for example, relationships between the English and French Armenian Diasporas. Most people focus (sometimes exclusively) of the inter-relationship of the Diaspora with Armenia, as opposed to the inter-relationship of the Diasporan units. My personal opinion is that this approach was the policy of the Communists who had political agendas of ascendency and were able to instill the concept of a centripetal force (a star and the planets revolving around it). The Diaspora units constitute a network, specifically a cluster network topology.

To sum up: There is the Armenian Diaspora, that is composed of clusters (Diaspora units in the same geographic area), each cluster has its own evolutionary life-cycle stage and finally there are the Diaspora units themselves. The Armenian Diaspora has a cluster network topology and we have little information about it because there are no formal links between these units and between these clusters. I call this Diaspora-1.