After 11 days of peaceful protests, the Armenians have saved their democracy, and accomplished peaceful transition of power away from the illegitimate: Serzh Sargsyan has resigned.
After having served two terms as president, then being limited by term limits, Sargsyan led in passing a bill to transition the country to a parliamentary system—whose majority Republican Party then appointed him prime minister, despite his explicit promise that this would not happen. From The Hill:
A key moment in the protests occurred when hundreds of soldiers broke ranks and joined upwards to 100,000 protesters in Yerevan’s central square. In the manner of the recent popular protests in Iran and the earlier Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the protests were fueled by social media and spontaneous support from ordinary citizens that overwhelmed the government’s ability to control the narrative on the ground. When the protest leaders in Armenia were taken into custody, the leaderless protests swelled in numbers and continued.
http://thehill.com/opinion/international/384661-armenians-peaceful-revolt-could-reverberate
As the article notes, the Armenians have a pattern of successfully taking to the streets to put a brake on corruption and effect some measures of change. The country suffers from extreme poverty and an oligarch class that loots its wealth, much as Russia does. But they are not afraid to protest—maybe because no one as ruthless as Putin leads them.
In this case, people taking to the streets, day after day, finally brought about the change they wished to see—or started to. Construction of an interim government before elections is still in process, and protests continue.
Is Turkey taking note? Are we?