Those Rendered Subjectless in an Age of Normalization: Armenia and the Kurds

By Nurnisa Erismis, Denizli, Turkey, 1 February 2026

This article was written by reading together Harut Sassounian’s warnings regarding the historical continuity of intent and David Davidian’s critique of Armenia’s lack of strategic subjecthood. It seeks to examine how Armenians and Kurds are rendered subjectless within contemporary geopolitical developments, at the intersection of imperial, regional, and internal dynamics.-Ed.

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In recent years, the language dominating regional politics has become strikingly uniform: peace, normalization, stability, security. In diplomatic texts, leaders’ statements, and international reports, these concepts are presented almost as unquestionable markers of goodwill. Yet developments on the ground reveal a deep rift between this rhetoric and lived reality. At precisely this point, a fundamental question becomes unavoidable: normalization for whom, and at whose expense?

Although Armenians and Kurds emerge from different historical trajectories, they are today trapped within the same strategic logic shaping the Middle East and the Caucasus. Both peoples are encircled by the rhetoric of “peace,” pressured into surrendering military and political capacity through security promises, and ultimately rendered subjectless—reduced to objects of regional and global bargaining. The continuity of intent highlighted by Harut Sassounian through historical documentation, together with the absence of a strategic subject-position emphasized by David Davidian, offer two essential warnings that must be read together to understand this condition.

Historical Background: Intersecting Fates and a Legacy of Exclusion

The relationship between Armenians and Kurds cannot be understood solely through the present. During the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Armenians were subjected to annihilation, while Kurds were instrumentalized in various ways during the empire’s reorganization. With the advent of the Republican era, this distinction became more explicit: the Armenian question was coded as a “foreign issue,” while the Kurdish question was designated an “internal matter.” Yet the outcomes were shared—statelessness, insecurity, and political erasure.

The postponement of Kurdish status at Lausanne and the framing of Armenia’s very existence as a perpetual threat constitute elements of a state tradition reproduced today through the language of “national security.” Rhetoric may have changed and actors may have shifted, but the fundamental reflexes of state power have largely remained intact. This inherited legacy of exclusion, when combined with the logic of contemporary imperial and regional powers, has only deepened.

Imperial Reason and the Regime of Half-Guarantees: The United States’ Ambivalent Support

The role of the United States in the region is particularly significant in this regard. Its policy toward Armenia has largely revolved around diplomatic encouragement and peace-process advocacy, while deliberately avoiding concrete and binding security guarantees. In the Kurdish case, the picture is even starker: a military partnership was forged against ISIS, only to be rapidly abandoned once the immediate threat receded. The fact that “support” for Armenia has never translated into NATO membership or a bilateral defense pact, and that weapons supplied to Kurdish forces remain subject to withdrawal under Turkish pressure, are emblematic of this approach.

This strategy points not to a classical imperial occupation, but to a system that produces half-guarantees. The United States does not build political subjects; it manages balances, contains crises, and withdraws when expedient. Those left behind are often rendered acutely vulnerable. By maintaining Armenians and Kurds in a constant state of insecurity, this approach entrenches dependency on greater powers rather than fostering genuine autonomy.

Turkey: Security Discourse, Expansionist Continuity, and Unchanging Reflexes

Turkey’s role in the region offers one of the clearest illustrations of the continuity of intent emphasized by Sassounian. From the Ottoman era through the Republic and into the AKP period, a security–homogenization–expansion axis has largely been preserved. Today, this reflex is articulated through concepts such as “counterterrorism,” “corridor security,” and “national interest.”

The permanent military presence in Rojava, the systematic encirclement of Armenia via Azerbaijan, and the escalating repression of Kurdish politics within Turkey itself are distinct manifestations of this continuity. While the language has evolved, the geopolitical objectives remain fundamentally the same: to establish a homogenous security zone and expand influence across neighboring regions. Within this framework, both Kurds and Armenia are positioned as “problems to be resolved” within Turkey’s security paradigm.

Russia and Iran: Actors that Balance but Do Not Protect

Russia’s role as a principal security provider for Armenia has significantly eroded, particularly following the loss of Artsakh. With the war in Ukraine, the Caucasus has receded from Moscow’s strategic focus, leaving Armenia in a de facto strategic vacuum. Iran, meanwhile, maintains a principled opposition to Kurdish autonomy while engaging in tactical and often contradictory alliances. Its ambivalence toward Rojava and its complex relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government reflect this duality.

What unites these two actors is clear: neither Russia nor Iran supports the political subjectification of Armenians or Kurds. Their priority is preserving stability and balance within their respective spheres of influence—balances frequently constructed at the expense of smaller actors’ political rights and security needs. For both, Armenia and the Kurds function as instrumental pieces on a larger geopolitical chessboard.

Religion and the Production of Legitimacy: Coding the Threat

Another critical dimension of regional conflict and alliance-building is the political instrumentalization of religion. In Turkey and Azerbaijan, the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, and in Damascus, sectarian balances masked by a secular façade, have become tools for manufacturing political legitimacy. To the extent that Armenians and Kurds fall outside these dominant religious frameworks, they are more easily coded as “threats.” Here, religion operates not as faith, but as a mechanism of political legitimization.

Azerbaijan’s discourse of “occupied territories” reinforced through Turkish-Islamic solidarity, or Turkey’s framing of its Syrian operations under the guise of “counterterrorism” with a sectarian undertone, exemplify these strategies. Armenians (as Christians) and Kurds (predominantly Sunni yet often secular or religiously heterodox) remain outside these discursive frameworks, rendering their exclusion and targeting more readily justifiable.

Local Intermediaries and Internal Fragilities: The Internal Dynamics of Subjectlessness

Fragmentation within the Kurdish political field is particularly visible in the role of the Barzani leadership. The KDP’s alignment with Turkey and the United States, combined with its distant and at times hostile stance toward Rojava, has contributed to the disintegration of a unified Kurdish political subject. This represents a localized version of the strategic vacuum criticized by Davidian: a politics dependent on global powers, driven by short-term interests, and lacking a long-term collective project.

The most painful consequences of this internal disunity emerge during moments demanding concrete solidarity. The 2023 blockade and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Artsakh by Azerbaijan were met with a striking absence of meaningful political or humanitarian solidarity from major Kurdish political actors in Turkey. Yet those same actors would soon witness a similar logic unfolding against their own communities. Today, Kobane and all of Rojava endure a severe blockade and deprivation, abandoned to global indifference much like Artsakh before them.

Similar internal vulnerabilities exist on the Armenian side. Strategic coordination failures between Artsakh’s leadership and the Armenian government, political tensions between the diaspora and the homeland, and economic dependency—which severely constrains foreign-policy maneuverability—have all eroded Armenia’s capacity for subjecthood. On both sides, short-term tactical calculations by political elites, insufficient social mobilization, and the absence of a shared long-term strategy have amplified the impact of external pressures.

Normalization for Whom? The Consolidation of the Status Quo

Within this broader context, “normalization” takes on a distinctly political meaning. What becomes normalized is often the gains of status-quo powers: the legitimization of the Turkey–Azerbaijan axis, the international rehabilitation of the Damascus regime, and the fixation of regional balances in favor of dominant actors. What remains unnormalized are Kurdish constitutional status and Armenia’s existential security vulnerability—a vulnerability without a defensible frontier.

If the tragedy met with silence in Artsakh is now replayed in Kobane, we must ask which bonds of solidarity ‘normalization’ severs, and which possibilities for collective resistance it extinguishes.

International law is selectively instrumentalized in this process. The principle of self-determination is dismissed under the rhetoric of territorial integrity where Kurds are concerned, while Armenia’s territorial integrity is readily sacrificed to the geopolitical interests of powerful states. The language of peace thus functions to legitimize power while rendering loss invisible.

Conclusion: No Peace Without Subjecthood

For Armenians and Kurds alike, the central question remains: peace for whom, and at what cost? For those deprived of subjecthood, peace often signifies silence; an undefended peace becomes merely postponed violence. Genuine peace is possible only for those capable of political subjecthood.

Today, the core challenge for both Armenia and the Kurds is not whether to hope for peace or to fear it, but how to define themselves as strategic subjects in the face of enduring hostile intentions and asymmetrical power. Such a process of subjectification requires internal solidarity, institutional capacity-building, effective coordination of diaspora resources, concrete practices of political and humanitarian solidarity, and the pursuit of alternative regional alliances. A political stance that remained silent in the face of Artsakh cannot credibly claim moral or strategic authority in responding to the siege of Kobane.

Absent this transformation, normalization will remain nothing more than a temporary breathing space for power holders. For those without subjecthood, “peace” is often merely the diplomatic term for submission to the politics of others. True emancipation will only be possible for those who refuse to outsource their fate, and who can build a common consciousness of resistance and a strategic vision worthy of their shared struggle.

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Born in Kars  with maternal roots in Yerevan, Nurnisa Erismis now resides in Denizli, Turkey. She is a retired health manager with a degree in sociology. Inspired by the life story of her paternal grandmother, she has dedicated herself to feminism and human rights. She has been active in politics, defending equality among peoples and justice, and opposing racism and xenophobia. She has also been engaged in issues of memory, justice, and reconciliation in Turkey and the Armenian diaspora, with a particular focus on the Armenian Genocide.