According to itypeusa, Armenia is a South Caucasus republic independent of the Soviet Union (USSR) since September 1991. Although the independence request was, in Armenia, deeper and more widespread than in the other former Soviet socialist republics, independence did not lead to a removal of Yerevan from the political and military sphere of influence of Moscow: indeed, in recent years Armenia seems to have become even more dependent on Russia. Although it was not directly affected by the secessionist movements of the South Caucasian region, the support given to Armenian separatists in the Nagorno Karabach conflict actually resulted in an interstate conflict with Azerbaijan. In this context, the support guaranteed by Turkey to the Azerbaijani neighbor was counterbalanced by the relaunch of the strategic understanding between Russia and Armenia which, de facto in Nagorno Karabach, on the other hand, it ended up trapping Yerevan in a game of regional polarizations whose effects are still evident. The Nagornian issue hindered the first attempts to open diplomatic relations with Turkey, cementing the link between Moscow and Yerevan and preventing Armenia from following the pro-Western path taken by Georgia and Azerbaijan. Nagorno Karabach was once again a hotbed of tensions when in July 2014, some clashes on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan caused the death of 16 Azerbaijani and 6 Armenian soldiers. Although in August of the same year, the heads of state of the two countries met in the Russian city of Sochi in an attempt to block an escalation of tensions, the question still remains open and destined to remain unsolved in the coming years. The attempt to break the geopolitical isolation had led Yerevan – even before opening channels of dialogue with Ankara – to deepen ties with NATO and the European Union (Eu), with which it collaborates in the context of ‘European policy neighborhood ‘and the’ Eastern Partnership ‘. Thanks also to the presence of an influential diaspora (estimated at about 8 million Armenians), the country has traditionally benefited from solid relations with the United States. An abrupt change of course with respect to attempts to get closer to the West was represented in 2015 by the announcement of Armenia’s entry into the Eurasian Economic Union (Eeu).
To the unfavorable geographical location of the country are added the dangerous elements of Armenian political-institutional and economic instability. The constitutional architecture centers in the office of the president of the republic considerable powers and influence: elected for a five-year term renewable once, determines the foreign policy of the country, appoints and dismisses the executive, and can dissolve the parliament, as well as appoint the president and members of the Constitutional Court and the Courts of Appeal. It is a strict Constitution and any amendment to the Charter must be approved by qualified majority and by referendum. The initiative of President Serzh Sargsyan to amend the Constitution in an attempt to obtain a third term in 2018 fits into this context,
The Armenian parliament, unicameral, is made up of 131 deputies, 90 of whom are elected proportionally on the basis of party lists, while the remaining 41 by popular vote in single-member constituencies. In the electoral round of May 2012, the Armenian Republican Party (PRA), led by President Sargsyan, confirmed itself as the country’s main political force, obtaining an absolute majority of parliamentary seats and giving life to a one-color government. RPA had already led the government coalition in the 2007-12 five-year period with the support of the Rule of Law party and Prosperous Armenia (Bhk), now in opposition. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Arf), nationalist formation. Another novelty introduced by the elections of May 2012 was the entry into parliament of the Armenian National Congress (ANC), led by former president Levon Ter-Petrosyan.
ARMENIA
Vast historical region of anterior Asia that, towards the secc. 7th and 6th BC, it began to assume its own physiognomy due to ethnic-cultural characters deriving perhaps from the fusion of local elements with Indo-European populations from Thrace and Asia Minor. The country, where the national language was imposing itself over Greek and Persian, also acquired political unity with King Tigranes II (95-55 BC), called the Great, ruler of a vast territory extending from the Mediterranean to the Middle and Pontus, who, after being a fierce opponent of the Romans, was their ally (66 BC). Having become a sort of buffer state and the site of clashes between the Romans and the Parthians, the Armenia (which was a Roman province only for two years, 114-116 AD, under Trajan) maintained its independence until the Persian occupation of 225, after which it was again the scene of the conflicts between Byzantium and the Sassanids, culminating in the 6th century. After the Arab occupation (from the middle of the 8th to the middle of the 9th century), the Armenia recovered autonomy and independence thanks to some feudal families, especially the Bagratids, who through dynastic alliances and connections came to dominate almost all the northern regions, and the Arcruni, who extended from their headquarters to the South of Lake Van, in a policy of agreements with Byzantium, its influence towards the West, obtaining in fief in 1021 the region of Sebaste (od. Sivas, Turkey), also known as Armenia Minore. After the fall of Ani in 1064 and the decisive Byzantine defeat at Manzikert in 1071, the cultural and political unity of the Armenia survived, until the whole century. 13th, in the northern regions ruled by princes supported by the kings of Georgia.A principality, later kingdom, Armenian, formed in 1080 on the eastern Mediterranean coast in Cilicia (see; since then also called Little Armenia), preserved its independence, even without territorial continuity with the motherland, up to the Mamluk conquest of 1375. it can be said to be geographically bounded to the North by the eastern part of the Pontici mountains and by the southern slopes of the Little Caucasus, to the South by the mountains of the Armenian Taurus; it is made up of a system of vast plateaus, including the large internal basins of Lake Sevan and Lake Van, and crossed by a system of watercourses, the largest of which are the Arasse and the Eastern Euphrates. The territory of the Armenia historical is now divided between the Soviet Socialist Rep. of. and some prov. Eastern Turkey, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan and Iranian Azerbaijan.
