Return to the Homeland May Be Patriotism, But Perhaps More So, Self-Love: Anna Hakobyan

The wife of the Prime Minister, Anna Hakobyan, wrote on her Facebook page: “The first center for Repatriation and Integration of the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs was opened in Yerevan. I wish that lines would form at this center so that the government would be forced to open dozens more.”

“P.S. Having visited hundreds of communities in the Diaspora over the past five years and meeting thousands of compatriots, I have long noted for myself that they are all united by one thing. Regardless of education, social class, public position, wealth, or surplus or lack of means of subsistence, all their gazes are directed toward the same thing. And that is not longing. It is incompleteness. A sense of inadequacy. The absence of something very important. The good news is that this important thing is not a myth, nor a mental torment, nor a mirage, fiction, or a heart disease. It is very real and tangible, and it has a name: the Republic of Armenia.”

“Return to the homeland may be patriotism, but perhaps more so, self-love,” she wrote.