19 July, 2016: Yerevan residents gather in protest near the occupied police station building. (c) Grant Khachaturyan / RIA Novosti. All rights reserved.2016 was a year of tumultuous change and continuous challenges. It was a year of crisis for liberal capitalist democracies in the west, which witnessed the rise of right-wing nationalist political parties and movements. The Brexit referendum and Trump’s electoral victory in the US are only the most conspicuous examples of how populist politicians capitalise on people’s sense of economic insecurity, frustration and the desire to change the status quo. In former Soviet states, where the rise of nationalism was simultaneously a trigger and an outcome of the Soviet collapse, ultra-nationalist discourses and right-wing populism without real politics are all too familiar phenomena.
Of course, localised political events are immediate factors too. In Armenia, the rise of the country’s nationalist discourse of “national unity” was strongly linked with the country’s “united and nationwide” movement for Nagorno-Karabakh during the 1980s and 1990s. This discourse prevents more direct criticism and the discussion of alternatives in favour of the national security status quo. And just as peace talks stutter on, so does the conflict periodically resurge, fuelling this discourse further.
Twenty five years after independence and 22 years after the ceasefire, anticipation of a new war has become a part of daily conversation both at home and in public
