As the grandson of Nishan Paparian of Kharpert, who stepped onto Ellis Island a century ago carrying the unfinished business of survival, I have watched with growing concern another exchange in Armenia’s National Assembly. In August, Civil Contract lawmaker Arman Yeghoyan questioned whether a stronger diaspora strengthens Armenia and challenged the standing of long-serving advocates abroad. I answered here that the nation is broader than any government. Three weeks later, during debate on a new oath for members of government, the same majority completed the thought.
Yeghoyan said Dashnak ideology must be “uprooted” from Armenian political thought. Kristine Vardanyan, he added, must be the last Dashnak. Speaker Ruben Rubinyan called the speech aggressive and offered a cleanup: she should be the last Dashnak to accept “Real Armenia” and say goodbye to harmful Dashnak ideas. That is not a correction. Conversion is still a way of declaring a people finished, spoken more politely.
This debate is not abstract for my family. Three of my nephews were born in Pasadena and repatriated to Armenia as youngsters. Two later married in Yerevan and are raising their children there. My firstborn son spent years working at the TUMO Center and owned a home in Yerevan. My father-in-law, born in Aleppo, served with the Free French Army in World War II and is buried in Armenia. The bond between diaspora and homeland is personal, enduring and freely chosen. It is not something that can be managed by decree, and it does not become illegitimate because an MP wants a final representative of the older idea of the nation.
The fight was dressed as drafting. The Justice Ministry would drop “pan-national goals” and “homeland” from the oath and replace them with the perpetuity, independence, sovereignty and development of the Republic of Armenia. Words matter. An oath tells an official whom he serves. After Artsakh was emptied, retiring “homeland” and “pan-national goals” is not housekeeping. It tells the displaced, the diaspora and the church that they are no longer inside the “we” a minister is sworn to serve.
You do not have to be a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation to know that what is being branded “Dashnak ideology” here is older and larger than a party card: the idea that the nation is broader than the sitting government and broader than the present map. My grandfather carried that definition through Ellis Island. My nephews live it when they raise children in the Republic without surrendering the rest of the name. Uproot that idea and you do not modernize a form. You change the meaning of the word Armenian.
Yerevan has every right to define the policies of the Republic of Armenia. People who live under fire are not required to take instruction from abroad. Repatriation is a worthy goal. A government may decide it will not fight this decade for lands it cannot hold. None of that requires a purity test in parliament. A state can accept the borders it will defend without declaring that the nation stops at the last checkpoint it still controls.
That distinction matters because our neighbors already have a story about the checkpoint. Baku’s “Western Azerbaijan” narrative treats the Republic itself as land destined for “return.” A government that reduces Armenia to the resident population of the present map, with no living obligation beyond it, does not automatically produce peace. It produces a quieter, smaller Armenia — easier for others to describe as temporary. I do not say the prime minister is doing Azerbaijan’s work. I say a nation that turns against its own scattered sons and daughters weakens itself.
The practical signals are already visible. Pathways to citizenship for ethnic Armenians are being narrowed, not opened. Voting by citizens living abroad is being fenced. Partnership with the diaspora is praised when it looks like TUMO and treated as a problem when it looks like advocacy for prisoners, Artsakh and the Cause. Keep the labor. Manage the voice. That is the bargain. It is also why an MP can move, in one month, from “who do you represent?” to “she must be the last.”
Legitimacy in the diaspora does not flow solely from an electoral mandate in Yerevan. It is earned through decades of service: Western Armenian language and culture, recognition of the Genocide, the 1988 earthquake, Artsakh, the prisoners still held in Baku and doors opened in foreign capitals the Republic could not always reach alone. Governments are temporary. The Armenian state endures. The Armenian nation is broader still. Honest disagreement with any government’s foreign policy is not disloyalty. At times, it is the highest form of service to the nation.
Yerevan may set the policy of the Republic. It does not have the authority to decide who may advocate for Armenian rights outside its borders, or which historical obligations the nation may set aside. The diaspora will continue to act from conviction, history and mutual obligation. We will not leave our prisoners behind. We will not forget Artsakh. And we will not accept the premise that a weaker, quieter diaspora somehow benefits Armenia.
The choice before us is not complicated, and it is not optional. Either we treat the global Armenian community as a full and equal partner whose diversity multiplies our strength, or we hand our adversaries the division they have sought for generations. A nation that stands together — homeland and diaspora, one people across continents — remains unbreakable.
Our history demands more of us. Our future depends on it. Our homeland and its diaspora deserve a state that can pursue peace without requiring the last Armenian of her kind.
The views expressed by the author are his own and not those of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office or the California Military Department.
