Talaat Pasha, the mastermind of the Armenian Genocide, wrote in a letter in 1915: “We wanted to leave behind one Armenian, and only in a museum.”
If the current disastrous trends in Armenia continue, what Talaat planned to carry out, but did not fully succeed in doing, is being accomplished by the Armenian government.
Arsen Torosyan, a high-ranking official of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s government, announced in the Armenian parliament in May: “We need to organize immigration, even if it doesn’t fit with the so-called national ideas. Tens of thousands of people need to immigrate here. It won’t happen without that. We also need to change this monoethnic mindset in our heads. Because there’s no other way to survive in this region.” Torosyan is the Minister of Labor and Social Affairs of Armenia. He previously served as Minister of Health, Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, member of Parliament and is a board member of the ruling Civil Contract Party.
This is an anti-Armenian notion just like Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s almost every other action. Any sensible Armenian leader, before rushing to import tens of thousands of non-Armenians to Armenia, would try to entice some of the 7 million members of the Armenian diaspora to immigrate to Armenia.
Instead, Pashinyan is busy rejecting Armenia’s history and culture, and now diluting its demographics. He first gave away the Armenian region of Artsakh to Azerbaijan, after sacrificing thousands of young Armenian soldiers. He then permitted Azerbaijan to occupy parts of the Republic of Armenia starting in 2021 and 2022. He is now talking about giving Tigranashen to Azerbaijan.
Pashinyan went on to devalue sacrosanct Armenian nationalistic symbols like Mount Ararat.
Before we worry about the Armenian government welcoming diaspora Armenians, we should be more alarmed about the blocking of its own citizens from coming to Armenia to vote on election day. The Armenian parliament just passed a law that requires that those citizens who are coming home to vote must first live in Armenia for one year. This is an abuse of the citizens’ most basic democratic right.
The government is also making it much more difficult for diaspora Armenians to acquire Armenian citizenship, instead of offering them inducements to move to the homeland, which would increase Armenia’s population.
Several years ago, when Zareh Sinanyan, the High Commissioner of Diaspora Affairs of Armenia, was on his way to visit Lebanon, he told the media that he would like to arrange for Arabs to settle in Armenia. He does not seem to know that his job is working with diaspora Armenians, not encouraging the emigration of Arabs, Chinese or any other nationality to Armenia.
The scariest part of the Armenian officials’ talk about bringing non-Armenians to live in Armenia is paving the way for 300,000 Azeris to move to Armenia, which would be the end of the Republic of Armenia. For months now, President Aliyev has been demanding that the Armenian government accept 300,000 Azeris to emigrate to Armenia. Aliyev has already renamed Armenia “Western Azerbaijan.” Would Torosyan and Pashinyan extend their anti-Armenian positions to welcoming the 300,000 Azeris to Armenia? Sadly, I think this is a distinct possibility. If that is not enough to destroy Armenia, there are millions of Turks who live across the border from Armenia. Would Armenia’s leaders be so brazen as to invite a very large number of Turks to move to Armenia? I am afraid they may.
A non-Armenian analyst, Javier Villamor, wrote in The European Conservative that Torosyan’s remark “has opened a fierce internal debate about national identity, demographics and the country’s strategic direction…. Armenia has spent decades defining itself as a demographic exception in a region marked by ethnic fault lines, wars and mass displacement. A small country of barely three million inhabitants, with a population that is homogeneously 97-98% Armenian, it is built politically around national survival in the wake of the Ottoman genocide, the Soviet collapse and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Now, for the first time, figures close to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan are beginning to speak publicly about breaking that model.”
If the Armenian government were truly interested in increasing Armenia’s population, it would do everything possible to keep those who already live there in the country. It should also provide the necessary housing and employment to keep in the country those Armenians who moved to Armenia in recent years from Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Artsakh to remain in the country: Regrettably, tens of thousands of them have left Armenia already.
Rejecting the Armenian government’s announced intent to bring a large number of foreigners to Armenia is not racism. It is based on the fact that the Armenian nation, after suffering multiple massacres and even genocide needs to preserve its several millennia-long civilization from extinction.
The assertion that Armenia is being turned into “a country without Armenians” under the current government is not only inaccurate, it ignores the single greatest demographic crisis in Armenia’s modern history. The real existential threat to Armenia’s population occurred between 1991 and 2018, when more than 1.5 million Armenians left the country, producing one of the largest proportional peacetime emigration waves in the post‑Soviet world.
By contrast, Armenia has recorded positive net migration in nearly every year since 2018, meaning more Armenians are returning or arriving than leaving. The demographic trajectory has reversed.
Armenia’s population crisis began immediately after independence. Economic collapse, war, energy shortages, and unemployment triggered a mass exodus that dwarfs anything seen in recent years.
Unprecedented Emigration in the 1990s
• 1992: 228,600 departures
• 1993: 141,100 departures
• 1994: 127,800 departures
• World Bank: Over 500,000 Armenians emigrated in 1992 alone
These figures represent the largest single‑year emigration waves in Armenia’s history, far exceeding any migration movement under the current government.
Armenia’s population fell from 3.5 million (1990) to around 3.0 million (2019).
But the real scale is seen in the migration stock abroad:
• 1990: 900,000 Armenian migrants abroad
• 2019: 965,000 Armenian migrants abroad
Combined with natural decline, Armenia lost well over 1.5 million people between 1991–2018.
This is the period when Armenia truly risked becoming “a country without Armenians.”
There have been structural Drivers of Emigration.
• Unemployment rose from 1.6% (1991) to 17% (2019)
• Widespread corruption and limited economic opportunity
• Post‑war instability
• Energy blockade and poverty
These conditions, not policies from 2018 onward created the demographic catastrophe.
Since 2018: Armenia’s Migration Trend Has Reversed.
Contrary to the claim that Armenia is being “emptied,” the country has experienced positive net migration in most years since 2018.
Documented Net Migration Gains
• 2018: +15,317
• 2019: +10,506
• 2020: +12,093
• 2022: +38,732
• 2023: +75,000 (a record high)
This means more Armenians returned or arrived than left, the exact opposite of the 1991–2018 pattern.
Significant numbers of Armenians have moved to Armenia from:
• Syria
• Lebanon
• Iraq
• Artsakh
Many remain, and integration programs continue.
The article’s claims rely on speculation rather than documented policy.
No Plan Exists to Import 300,000 Azeris.
There is no agreement, no legislation, and no government program proposing such a move.
This is a fear‑based hypothetical, not a factual development.
Armenia Remains 97–98% Ethnically Armenian.
Independent demographic analyses confirm Armenia’s ethnic homogeneity remains unchanged.
Small states with aging populations often use immigration to support economic growth.
This is not “anti‑Armenian”, it is standard demographic policy.
The Real Question: Why Ignore 1991–2018?
The narrative that Armenia is being “emptied” today collapses under scrutiny. The period of genuine demographic danger was the pre‑2018 political‑economic system, which produced:
• Mass unemployment
• Mass emigration
• Declining birth rates
• Persistent poverty
• Corruption and stagnation
These forces pushed over 1.5 million Armenians out of the country. That is the demographic wound Armenia is still healing from.
Armenia is not becoming “a country without Armenians.” The data shows the opposite:
• The demographic collapse happened from 1991–2018.
• Since 2018, Armenia has experienced net migration gains for most years.
• There is no evidence of mass non‑Armenian settlement.
• Armenia remains overwhelmingly Armenian.
The real challenge is continuing to strengthen Armenia’s economy, institutions, and opportunities so that Armenians, both in the homeland and the diaspora, choose to build their future in Armenia.
Pashinyan is the most deceptive, dysfunctional and incompetent leader Armenia has ever had since its independence from now-defunct USSR. He is dictatoriall6y secretive and non-transparent and must never be trusted. His hidden decision-making processes and closed-door meetings with the fascist enemy that often lead to uncertainty and chaos in the country are examples of how this con man works and manipulates people. Like a TRUE con artist, his mode of operation is to put people’s minds at ease first for what is about to come and then surprise them in the last minute by doing a 180 on them so that they won’r have any chance and opportunity to react to his con games. We saw an example of this in the Tavush region of Armenia in the Northeast that led to the well-known “Srbazan-Սրբազան” meaning sacred or holy movement that culminated in the indictment and house-arrest of the region’s archbishop.
The Armenian population of Artsakh did not return to Armenia. They were forced out and ethnically-cleansed of their homes in Artsakh by the hate-filled and vengeful ant-Armenian racist enemy that along with its criminal-collaborator terrorist Turkey have been the only beneficiaries of the con man Pashinyan’s so-called “velvet revolution” supported by a bunch of politically ignorant and gullible zombies.
The return of Middle East Armenians, such as those from Syria and Lebanon and Iraq, is a fallacy. Given the uncertain and chaotic situation that Pashinyan has created in Armenia, i.e. no one knows what other catastrophes are awaiting people in both near and long term future, most of these people don’t go there to stay. Pashinyan’s dysfunctional government has in fact proposed to make the acquisition of citizenship by the Diaspora Armenians much more difficult rather than to encourage them to return. They have to prove they are there to stay permanently in order to be given a serious consideration for citizenship while that requirement does not apply to non-Armenian population. Let’s also remember how they opened a “Diaspora Department” to facilitate Diasporan repatriation to Armenia when they first seized power and then shut it down soon after because they found them as threat to their power, not to mention blocking entry to Armenia more influential Diasporan pro-Armenia activists and politicians.
Whether or not the settlement of the 300K Azerbaijanis in Armenia is real, the fact that it is on enemy agenda for whatever reason while Pashinyan’s dysfunctional government is silent about it and never counters the enemy rhetoric shows that it is not just a hoax. Not only Pashinyan has tried to sweep this under the rug but he has never raised the return of all displaced Armenians, not to mention the recovery of their stolen properties, in response to enemy demands. He in fact considers the Artsakh case itself closed and is rounding up and incarcerating anyone who disagrees with him and speaks about it and keeps their right of return alive and well and on the agenda. Furthermore, the number of enemy population leaving Armenia voluntarily is less than half the number that is being spread around but In reality there are no displaced Azerbaijanis to return to Armenia. Many of them have passed on and the rest most likely moved and reside in Russia for being considered outsiders and viewed suspiciously. The enemy is keeping this propaganda alive because I believe its intention is to populate Armenia’s regions under its control with Azerbaijani criminals who never lived in Armenia to cause a demographic change for future demands with the ultimate goal of cutting off Armenia from Iran! The intention of our enemies is to reduce Armenia to a piece of land without an effective government or one that is controlled and dictated from the outside.
There is also overlooking the decline of the Azeri population of Armenia from the Soviet era especially after communal violence erupted in 1988. Even the Armenian SSR when founded wasn’t as homogeneous as Armenia ended up becoming in later decades, thus Armenia would become more “Armenian” as a result and essentially an enthnostate indeed one of the most homogenous contentental Eurasian nations.