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Armenian nationalism has its roots in the romantic nationalism of Mikayel Chamchian (1738–1823), the Mekhitarist historiographer who calculated the date of Hayk's legendary battle with Belus, the legendary point of origin of the Armenian nation, to 2492 BC.
Armenian nationalism is characterized by irredentism, based on the the maximal extent of Armenian Empire under Tigranes II, from 95 BC to 66 BC, comprising much of what is today northern Syria, eastern Turkey and northern Iraq and northwestern Iran, notably with significant overlaps with the equally irredentist Kurdistan.
The Armenian national movement emerged in the 1800s striving for independence from the Ottoman Empire. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the Armenian National Assembly and Patriarch Nerses II of Constantinople sent Catholicos Mgrdich Khrimian to the Congress of Berlin to represent the the Armenians in the debate on the "Armenian Question". In his famous patriotic speech “The Paper Ladle,”; Mgrdich Khrimian advised Armenians to take the National awakening of Bulgaria as a model as the hopes of the Armenian people for self-determination were ignored by the European powers.
The fate of the Armenians, instead, took a worse course with the last throes of the Ottoman Empire with the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1917. Following World War I, the Armenians not scattered in the Armenian diaspora after the fall of the short-lived Democratic Republic of Armenia found themselves reduced to a minor republic within the Soviet Union, the Armenian SSR.
"Greater Armenia" as advocated by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation during Soviet times claimed Nakhchivan and Eastern Anatolia as far west as the Trabzon Province but did not extend into Syria. Armenian nationalism in the 20th century never tired to emphasize the "ancient origin of the Armenians", and consequently embraced the Armenian hypothesis of Indo-European origins forwarded by Soviet scholars in the 1980s. During Soviet times, Armenian nationalism was distinguished from other nationalisms of peoples absorbed into the Soviet Union, such as Georgian, Ukrainian or Estonian, in that it did not direct itself against the dominant Russians, but continued to focus on the traditional enemy, the Turks, and was consequently subtly encouraged by the communist government.
Armenia emerged as an independent state in 1991. Since then, Armenian nationalism has notably been opposed to Turkish nationalism, especially over the refusal of the Turkish government to recognize the Armenian genocide. As noted by Brannen (2004), to the Armenian diasporic communities in the United States and Canada, historical memory of the Ottoman Turkish and Kurdish genocide of Armenians in April 1915 has taken on the role of a "central nationalist fetish", around which formation of Armenian identity takes place. Armenian diasporic nationalism has a strong nostalgic component for a lost time and place, powerfully symbolized by Mount Ararat, which although visible from Yerevan, is a Turkish militarized zone. The need of the Armenian diaspora to derive its identity from anti-Turkish sentiment has been denounced as detrimental to the normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey, to the disadvantage of the Armenian state.
References
- (Haig Ajemian, Hayotz Hayrig, page 511-3;
- P. Kohl and G. Tzetzkhladze, 'Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology in the Caucasus', in: Kohl, Fawcett (eds.), Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, Cambridge University Press (1996), ISBN 0521558395, p. 176
- Brannen, Sam. Diasporic Armenian Nationalist Invocations of Metaphorical Space, Frozen Time, and the 1915 Genocide Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Le Centre Sheraton Hotel, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Mar 17, 2004
See also
External links
- Turkey and Armenia A Conversation with Elif Shafak
- Transcaucasian Independence Movement by Vugar Seidov
- Armenian Diaspora is Egoist by Sedat Laciner