Shame of April 23

Karen Aghekyan's article "The Shame of April 23" is devoted to a critical analysis of the Armenian-Turkish diplomatic rapprochement announced on April 23 — the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Armenian Genocide — and is examined by the author as a manifestation of a systemic crisis in Armenian state policy and public consciousness.

Introduction and Methodology

The author rejects conspiratorial versions about a "brilliant strategic plan" of the Armenian leadership, characterizing what happened as the result of the irresponsibility and unscrupulousness of those in power. The analysis is built on a comparison of two models of state behavior: the "shopkeeper's" model, based on narrow economic gain, and the statist model, resting on an awareness of fundamental national interests.

Key Thesis: A Critique of "Shopkeeper Realism"

Aghekyan demonstrates that substituting the logic of a trading firm for state policy inevitably leads to the country's degradation to the level of a "station on a transit road," devoid of its own dignity and strategic subjectivity. The symbolic date chosen for announcing the "road map" is interpreted as a deliberate humiliation of the Armenian people, calculated by the Turkish side and accepted by Armenian "officials" without resistance.

Two Objectives of the Turkish-Armenian Collusion

The author identifies:

• torpedoing the process of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, in particular the prospect of its recognition by the US administration and Congress;
• the systematic "conditioning" of Armenian society to a chain of national humiliations aimed at lowering the collective threshold of dignity ahead of further concessions, including on the Karabakh question.

Historical Context

A parallel is drawn with the territorial delimitation in the South Caucasus during 1918–1920s, when three successive external powers (the Turks, the British, the Bolsheviks) acted uniformly to the detriment of Armenian interests — a pattern the author explains not as coincidence but as rooted political helplessness of Armenian society, conditioned by the predominance of an individualistic, petty-proprietary type of consciousness.

Conclusion

The article's central conclusion is that what is happening is not a regrettable mistake by individual politicians, but a logical consequence of the absence of civil society and a unified nation as a political subject. The author calls for the formation of a "third force" uniting Armenians of the diaspora and the metropole outside the existing power structure and opposition, and insists on the necessity of rejecting the implementation of any agreements concluded without the knowledge of the people, since the fateful choice between "a shop at a station" and a sovereign country determines the very future of the Armenian nation.