BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE ISSUES REPORT ON ARMENIAN DIASPORA
13:00, 16 Dec 2014
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office released a report entitled
“Armenia’s Diaspora – Its Role & Influence.”
The report presents the UK’s assessment of the realities of the
Armenian Diaspora and editorializes some of the real achievements of
the Diaspora, while at time minimizing the role the Diaspora plays
in the every-day life of Armenia.
Keeping in line with its long-held policy of denying the
Armenian Genocide, the report refers to the events of the 1915 as
“inter-communal violence of 1915.”
Below is the full text of the report:
Armenia’s Diaspora – Its Role & Influence
KEY POINTS
Armenia has, in proportional terms, the largest Diaspora of any former
Soviet state, much of it concentrated in Russia, the US and France.
This has been a huge source of support for the Armenian state. But it’s
also periodically acted as a brake on Yerevan’s scope for manoeuvre,
particularly over the Nagorny Karabakh dispute and relations with
Turkey. This is likely to remain the case in future.
The most politically active Armenian Diaspora community is the US one,
whose focus on achieving official US recognition of the 1915 ‘genocide’
is likely to intensify over the coming two years. By contrast, the
Armenian community in Russia remains largely disengaged from political
lobbying – but might we see this change over time?
DETAIL “We live different lives, Armenia and the Diaspora. Here it
is real politics, while the Diaspora lives with the ideas of unreal
politics, and they cannot change their ideas so quickly.” (Levon
Ter-Petrosyan, then-President of Armenia, 1993)
Of all the former Soviet states, Armenia has the largest global
Diaspora community, in proportion to the size of its national
population, by some margin. Whilst precise figures are open to debate
(given in particular the tendency of some Diaspora activists to
inflate the numbers), it is generally reckoned that there are around
8-10 million people of Armenian descent currently living outside
Armenia (whose own population is currently estimated at around 2.9
million). The largest Armenian communities are based in Russia (2.3
million), the US (1.5 million), France (400,000) and the Lebanon
(230,000), with sizeable populations (80,000 or more) also residing
in Ukraine, Syria, Argentina, Poland, Turkey1, Iran and Canada.
The ‘gap’ between the size of the Diaspora and Armenia’s own population
is growing. It’s estimated that Armenia’s population has shrunk by
almost 1 million since 1992 as a result of an exodus of Armenians to
join these Diaspora communities. Most (70%) of these are believed to
have gone to Russia and other CIS countries, with only 10% joining the
Armenian community in the US. The latter remains largely comprised of
descendants of former residents of the Ottoman Empire who fled the
territory of modern-day Turkey during and after the inter-communal
violence of 1915 – this was supplemented by a ‘second wave’ of Armenian
immigration into the US from the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Iran)
in the 1970s-80s.
Estimates of the true size of the Armenian population of Turkey
are particularly problematic, given the reluctance of some ethnic
Armenians there to identify themselves as such, and also in view of
the seasonal fluctuations in the size of the Armenian migrant workers’
community in Turkey (often based there illegally).
Britain’s Armenian Diaspora remains fairly small (around 18,000),
and drawn from a wide number of other Diaspora communities (Cyprus,
Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon).
What role does the Diaspora play in Armenian society?
Diaspora support has played a crucial role in Armenia’s economic
survival and development. Since 1991 Armenia has received several
billion dollars’ worth of financial support from US-based Diaspora
Armenians alone. Among the most prominent donors has been the
Lincy Foundation run by California-based magnate Kerk Kirkorian
[sic], which on its own has invested nearly $300 million in Armenia
since independence. More recently, however, it has been the Diaspora
community in Russia that has provided the most significant financial
flows into the Armenian economy – as of 2008, remittances from
Armenians working in Russia accounted for 15% of Armenia’s official GDP
(some believe the real figure, taking into account ‘shadow’ payments
outside the official banking system, may in fact be twice as high).
But the Diaspora’s contribution cannot be measured purely in
terms of investment and aid levels. It has arguably played an
even greater, although less easily quantifiable, role in terms of
developing Armenia’s ‘human capital stock’, providing generations
of young Armenians with training & study opportunities in the West,
and exposing them to a world outside the confines of the former USSR.
Diaspora Armenians have also made significant ‘in-kind’ contributions
to improving the Armenian economy, health and education systems through
technical advice and support. This also extends to the unrecognised
‘Nagorny Karabakh Republic’, which has received proportionally very
high levels of Diaspora support since 1992 in the form of both funding
and technical assistance (e.g. Armenian Diaspora doctors, teachers,
engineers, etc. undertaking voluntary secondments to institutions
in NK).
The Diaspora plays a key role in leveraging support for Armenia
from foreign governments – nowhere more so than in the US, which has
provided $2 billion in aid to Armenia since 1992, making it one of
the largest recipients of US aid per capita in the world. Lobbying
of the US government and Congress by Armenian Diaspora groups has
been crucial to securing this outcome. The most active of these are
the Armenian Association of America (AAA) and the larger Armenian
National Committee of America (ANCA), the latter being affiliated
to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaks), a nationalist
Armenian political party currently in opposition to the ruling regime.
These lobbying organisations are highly instrumental in maintaining
international political support for the ‘Armenian cause’, particularly
in the US, where their goal remains to secure official US government
recognition of the 1915 ‘Genocide’ against ethnic Armenians in the
Ottoman empire.
Relatively small numbers of Diaspora Armenians have returned to
Armenia to live permanently, and of these few have risen to prominence
in politics. The most notable exceptions are Raffi Hovannisian
(Californian-born leader of the opposition Heritage party) and Vartan
Oskanyan (Syrian-born Harvard graduate, Armenia’s Foreign Minister
from 1998-2008, now Head of the Civilitas think-tank in Yerevan).
Is the Diaspora’s influence welcome within Armenia?
Yes – and no. Successive Armenian governments have been fully conscious
of the vital asset that the global Armenian Diaspora represents for
a country lacking in mineral resources. Under President Sargsyan,
a separate Ministry for Diaspora Issues has been created, charged
with promoting even greater interaction between the Republic of
Armenia and the global Armenian Diaspora. Significantly Armenian
Diaspora organisations have shown relatively little interest to date
in internal governance/democracy-building issues within Armenia.
However, a view among some members of the global Diaspora is that
the Armenian government over the last ten years has signally failed
to harness the Diaspora’s potential to rebuild the economy or promote
democratisation. Economic policy in particular has remained parochial
and oligarch-bound, and some significant Diaspora investors have
retreated with fingers burned. The political elite have also been
dominated by a narrow group of largely Karabakh veterans, whose main
international links are mostly focused on Russia (through previous
service in the Soviet military, for example).
In the area of foreign policy, there have periodically been pronounced
tensions between ruling administrations in Armenia and the global
Diaspora, most notably over policy towards Turkey and the NK conflict.
This was most visible under the leadership of Armenia’s first
President, Levon Ter-Petrosyan (1991-1998), whose relationship with the
more nationalist elements in the Diaspora was always an uncomfortable
one, given the latter’s distrust of his perceived readiness to make
excessive concessions on these issues (in particular his refusal
to prioritise ‘genocide’ recognition by Turkey as a pre-condition
for the normalisation of bilateral relations). Under Ter Petrosyan,
the Dashnak party was banned in Armenia, and his eventual downfall in
1998 was at least in part triggered by furious Diaspora criticism of
his support for an ‘unacceptable’ compromise solution on NK. For his
part, Ter Petrosyan criticised the Diaspora’s ‘unrealistic’ view of
Armenia’s policy priorities, and more recently, in his reincarnation
as an opposition leader, has bemoaned the Diaspora’s lack of focus
on Armenia’s retreat from democracy under his successors. President
Sargsyan has, by contrast, attracted less ire from the Diaspora
(in part in recognition of his Karabakhi roots and his direct role
in securing NK’s ‘liberation’): whilst the ANCA strongly opposed
his signing of the abortive Protocols with Turkey in 2009 on the
normalisation of relations, the main focus of their criticism was
the US (for allegedly ‘pressurising’ Yerevan into signing), rather
than Sargsyan himself.
Another important impact of Armenia’s Diaspora, of particular relevance
at present, is on its stance towards regimes such as Iran and Syria,
where sizeable Armenian minorities remain. The vulnerability of these
minorities is felt keenly by the Armenian government. In addition to
Armenia’s need, as a small, blockaded country to remain on good terms
with other neighbours, this explains why it has been found voting
against, abstaining or absenting itself during voting for UNGA or
Human Rights Council Resolutions on Iran and Syria.
Outlook & Conclusions The positives in Armenia’s relationship with
its global Diaspora will continue to outweigh the negatives from
Yerevan’s standpoint. The support the Diaspora provides will remain
crucial to Armenia’s economic survival in a hostile neighbourhood. On
foreign policy, however, sentiment within elements of the Diaspora
will remain a significant obstacle to achieving compromise-based
solutions over the NK dispute and Armenia’s relations with Turkey.
An interesting issue to track will be the position of the Armenian
Diaspora in Russia, by some margin the largest Armenian community
outside the country itself. In contrast to the longer-established
Diaspora communities in the US and Europe, Russia’s Armenians have
hitherto shown little interest in lobbying their host country’s
authorities to take a stronger line on e.g. ‘Genocide’ recognition.
Given the nature of the Russian regime, its relationships with Turkey
and Azerbaijan, and the generally ‘apolitical’ nature of many Armenian
labour migrants working in Russia, it is unlikely that this picture
will change soon. Over time, the possibility that this community
could also be mobilised as a political lobbying force in support of
the Armenian ’cause’ should not be entirely discounted, However,
for the time being the public stance of organised Armenian groups
in Russia is focused on proving its loyalty to the Russian state –
a similar dynamic for a vulnerable minority as in Iran and Syria.
Released on the 9th Dec. 2014