Both diplomatic missions had functioned throughout Syria’s bloody civil war in large measure because of the existence of an ethnic Armenian community there. The once thriving community has been in limbo since the unexpected fall of Assad’s regime. The Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist militant group, which controls the country’s new government, has assured its leaders as well as representatives of other minorities that their security and rights will be protected.
In Aleppo, which is now home to an estimated 10,000-15,000 ethnic Armenians, life seems to be slowly returning to normal. Local Armenian schools as well as some shops and other businesses reopened earlier this week.
“They are not yet working as usual because the country’s airports remain closed and communication with the outside world has still not been restored,” Zarmig Boghigian, the editor of the local Armenian newspaper Kantsasar, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Thursday.
“People do travel from city to city and the roads are open,” she said. “But trade has not yet been restored. So people remain out of work.”
Boghigian also spoke of Aleppo Armenians’ lingering security concerns, saying that many of them still do not leave their homes after dark due to increased crime and the absence of visible police presence in the city.
So far have been no signs of a mass exodus of the Armenians remaining in Syria. But some of them have already migrated to Armenia via Lebanon. Aida Momjian, a pianist from Damascus, was among several dozen Syrian Armenians who arrived in Yerevan on Tuesday on a flight from Beirut.
“We bought one-way tickets,” Momjian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “The situation is dangerous and we don’t know how it will develop and what the future holds. These Islamists are not showing their true colors for the moment.”
Another Syrian Armenian woman, Seda Sefejian, reached the Armenian capital two days after leaving another war-torn Syrian city, Homs. She too was not fully convinced by the security guarantees offered by HTS. In her words, many other members of the city’s small community also want to leave the country but lack the money to do so.
“It's a state of suspense, we don't know what will happen,” said Bedig Chalbachurian, an Aleppo resident who arrived at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport with his wife and two young children. They will therefore stay in Armenia for now, he said.