Armenian diaspora in the context of "Armenians in Turkey"

A diaspora (/daɪˈæspərə/ dy-ASP-ər-ə) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. The word is used in reference to people who identify with a specific geographic location, but currently reside elsewhere.

Notable diasporic populations include the Jewish diaspora formed after the Babylonian exile; Romani from the Indian subcontinent; Assyrian diaspora following the Assyrian genocide; Greeks that fled or were displaced following the fall of Constantinople and the later Greek genocide as well as the Istanbul pogroms; Anglo-Saxons (primarily to the Byzantine Empire) after the Norman Conquest of England; the Chinese diaspora and Indian diaspora who left their homelands during the 19th and 20th centuries; the Irish diaspora after the Great Famine; the Scottish diaspora that developed on a large scale after the Highland and Lowland Clearances; the Italian diaspora, the Mexican diaspora; the Circassian diaspora in the aftermath of the Circassian genocide; the Armenian diaspora following the Armenian genocide; the Palestinian diaspora; the Lebanese diaspora due to the Famine of Mount Lebanon and to a lesser extent the Lebanese civil war; Syrians due to the Syrian civil war; and the Iranian diaspora which grew from half a million to 3.8 million between the 1979 revolution and 2019.

Armenians (Armenian: հայեր, romanized: hayer, [hɑˈjɛɾ]) are an ethnic group indigenous to the Armenian highlands of West Asia. Armenians constitute the main demographic group in Armenia and constituted the main population of the breakaway Republic of Artsakh until their subsequent flight due to the 2023 Azerbaijani offensive. There is a large diaspora of around five million people of Armenian ancestry living outside the Republic of Armenia. The largest Armenian populations exist in Russia, the United States, France, Georgia, Iran, Germany, Ukraine, Lebanon, Brazil, Argentina, Syria, and Turkey. The present-day Armenian diaspora was formed mainly as a result of the Armenian genocide with the exceptions of Iran, former Soviet states, and parts of the Levant.

Armenian is an Indo-European language. It has two mutually intelligible spoken and written forms: Eastern Armenian, today spoken mainly in Armenia, Artsakh, Iran, and the former Soviet republics; and Western Armenian, used in the historical Western Armenia and, after the Armenian genocide, primarily in the Armenian diasporan communities. The unique Armenian alphabet was invented in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots.

Armenian (endonym: հայերեն, hayeren, pronounced [hɑjɛˈɾɛn] ) is the sole member of an independent branch in the Indo-European language family. It is the native language of the Armenian people and the official language of Armenia. Historically spoken in the Armenian highlands, today Armenian is also widely spoken throughout the Armenian diaspora. Armenian is written in its own writing system, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. The estimated number of Armenian speakers worldwide is between five and seven million.

The Armenian Quarter (Armenian: Հայոց թաղ, romanized: Hayots t'agh; Arabic: حارة الأرمن, romanized: Ḥāraṫ al-Arman; Hebrew: הרובע הארמני, romanized: Ha-Rova ha-Armeni) is one of the four sectors of the walled Old City of Jerusalem. Located in the southwestern corner of the Old City, it can be accessed through the Zion Gate and Jaffa Gate. It occupies an area of 0.126 km² (126 dunam), which is 14% of the Old City's total. In 2007, it had a population of 2,424 (6.55% of Old City's total). In both criteria, it is comparable to the Jewish Quarter. The Armenian Quarter is separated from the Christian Quarter by David Street (Suq el-Bazaar) and from the Jewish Quarter by Habad Street (Suq el-Husur).

The Armenian presence in Jerusalem dates back to the 4th century CE, when Armenia adopted Christianity as a national religion and Armenian monks settled in Jerusalem. Hence, it is considered the oldest living diaspora community outside the Armenian homeland. Gradually, the quarter developed around the St. James Monastery—which dominates the quarter—and took its modern shape by the 19th century. The monastery houses the Armenian Apostolic Church's Jerusalem Patriarchate, which was established as a diocese in the 7th century CE. The patriarchate is the de facto administrator of the quarter and acts as a "mini-welfare state" for the approximately 2,000 Armenian residents.

Armenians in Russia or Russian Armenians (Armenian: Հայերը Ռուսաստանում, romanized: Hayery Rrusastanum; Russian: Армяне в России, romanized: Armyane v Rossii) are one of the country's largest ethnic minorities and the largest Armenian diaspora community outside Armenia. The 2010 Russian census recorded 1,182,388 Armenians in the country. Various figures estimate that the ethnic Armenian population in Russia is actually more than 2 million. Armenians populate various regions, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar Krai in the North Caucasus and as far as Vladivostok in the East.

Armenian Americans (Armenian: ամերիկահայեր, romanized: amerikahayer) are citizens or residents of the United States who have total or partial Armenian ancestry. They form the second largest community of the Armenian diaspora after Armenians in Russia. The first major wave of Armenian immigration to the United States took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands of Armenians settled in the United States following the Hamidian massacres of the mid-1890s, the Adana massacre of 1909, and the Armenian genocide of 1915–1918 in the Ottoman Empire. Since the 1950s many Armenians from the Middle East (especially from Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Turkey) migrated to the United States as a result of political instability in the region. It accelerated in the late 1980s and has continued after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 due to socio-economic and political reasons. The Los Angeles area has the largest Armenian population in the United States.

The 2020 United States census reported that 519,001 Americans held full or partial Armenian roots either alone or combined with another ancestral origin. Various organizations and media criticize these numbers as an underestimate, proposing 800,000 to 1,500,000 Armenian Americans instead. The highest concentration of Americans of Armenian descent is in the Greater Los Angeles area, where 166,498 people have identified themselves as Armenian to the 2000 census, comprising over 40% of the 385,488 people who identified Armenian origins in the United States at the time. The city of Glendale, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, is widely thought to be the center of Armenian American life (although many Armenians live in the aptly named "Little Armenia" neighborhood of Los Angeles).

Armenians in France (Armenian: ֆրանսահայեր, romanized: Fransahayer; French: Arméniens de France) are French citizens of Armenian ancestry. The French Armenian community is, by far, the largest in the European Union and the third largest in the world, after Russia and the United States.

Although the first Armenians settled in France in the Middle Ages, like most of the Armenian diaspora, the Armenian community in France was established by survivors of the Armenian genocide of 1915. Others came through the second half of the 20th century, fleeing political and economic instability in the Middle Eastern countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Iran) and, more recently, from Armenia.