“Armenians should not even give one rusty penny to the Turkish treasury. That is humiliating. And today, the Turkish Bayraktar drones that are being used to kill our youth and destroy our tanks… you paid for those drones and missiles,” the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs, Zareh Sinanyan, said during a Facebook live on October 11th.
At the same time, he could have mentioned that people buying Russian-made goods and Armenians paying taxes in Russia (this is no less than one million people) have also paid for the TOC-1A systems, the T-90C tanks, BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles, and the Grad missile systems, which the Azerbaijani army also used to kill our youth and elderly.
In any case, in accordance with a resolution passed by the Armenian government on October 21st, the import of Turkish goods to Armenia will be banned starting on December 31st for six months. The government has not canceled that decision yet, but the newly-appointed Minister of Economy Vahagn Kerobyan mentioned on November 26th that he held discussions with Turkey and Azerbaijan to improve trade relations. It is a matter of discussion as far as which of these approaches is correct, and which is not. It’s another matter entirely that the state cannot be governed by ‘shows,’ political advertisements, and populism.
To be fair, it is important to mention that the show business elements in society and political life is not just an Armenian issue. The Internet, and social networks in particular, have shaped what is referred to as post-truth in the West, which is when a virtual reality is created for the masses using methods of special manipulation that is fundamentally different from reality itself. But no matter how many countries have show people like Trump and Zelensky in power, the system demands that they act as statesmen as well. We do not have such restrictions, and the industry of lies, indecisiveness, and fakes that has developed over the past 2.5 years has brought upon us a catastrophic situation.
We have written a lot about people who blockaded courts and the National Assembly. But I recently remembered “smaller” episodes. For example, when the Prime Minister attacked the customs official who allegedly placed the national flag in the wrong spot. Or, when the Minister of Education and Science went to the Yerevan State Institute of Theater and Cinematography and started wiping the dust (this was, by the way, exactly what happened in an episode of Revizorro on Russian TV). Now, those incidents seem extremely meticulous and unimportant, but you likely remember the chaos they caused on Facebook and how long people discussed those incidents.
And now, let’s compare that to the destruction of Armenian positions along the Syunik border and their transfer to the enemy. That is not a ‘show.’ That is the bitter reality, but that is not interesting to the populist-fed public.
Aram Abrahamyan
