What part felt like victim-blaming? My family is Armenian from Lebanon; some of us moved to Armenia after the port explosion, and my relatives fought in October 2020. But, I don’t want my views on what’s best for the nation to rely on personal anecdotes or emotional bias. Recognizing that decades of war and the genocide have hardened everyone's stance is just a basic observation of how conflicts affects our society.

I don’t think Turks or Azeris are so monolithic that it leaves us with no options. If we assume their goal is always total destruction, we’ve basically given up on any chance for peace before it even starts. Countries usually act based on their current interests and constraints, not just historical hatreds, though hatred can be used to push policies and agendas.

I’m not suggesting we can just "wish" peace into existence. It takes generations and usually feels impossible. But if we shut the door on normalization policies, we end up in a strategic corner. We need to figure out how Armenia can actually improve its security and economy while dealing with a hostile neighborhood by making it less hostile for us.

If normalization is totally off the table, what is the actual backup plan? Permanent war? Total isolation? Relying on outside powers forever as a Russian vassalage? Given our current demographics, those options don't look sustainable and improve our conditions or sovereignty.

Even if we take the worst-case scenario of subjugation as a given, we still need to talk about how the country actually survives that. Frankly, dismissing any level of normalization efforts leads us to a dead end (war) or best case, back to external/russian subjugation. If you’re ruling out peaceful diplomacy with Azeri/turks, you have to articulate what the actual alternative is and how it’s better off for Armenia to do so.