October 27, 1999, was a day quite unlike any other. U.S. Secretary of State Strobe Talbott had been in town to talk Karabakh and a new Catholicos was controversially elected in Etchmiadzin. Later that evening, outside the Armenian National Assembly, a crowd had gathered, including myself, where an armed gang was holed up inside. Led by former journalist Nairi Hunanyan, eight senior members of the recently formed government were assassinated, including Speaker Karen Demirchyan and Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan. If there had been any hope for change that morning it disappeared later that afternoon in a hail of bullets.
With hopes for peace dashed by what Talbott called a “human, political, and geopolitical catastrophe,” Demirchyan and Sargsyan’s Unity bloc, a necessary counter to presidential power, would splinter and the Holy See of Etchmiadzin become synonymous with Robert Kocharyan’s rule just as the oligarchs had too. In a leaked embassy cable from 2008, then U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch referred to Karekin II as the “second-most influential member” of the “Aparan clan” led by Prosecutor General Aghvan Hovsepyan, “a perception that serves to reinforce [his] close identification with the [then] authorities.”
Hovsepyan, arrested on corruption charges in 2021, was instrumental in Kocharyan’s crackdown on opposition activists after deadly political unrest in 2008. The Catholicos was also silent as scores were imprisoned, including current prime minister Nikol Pashinyan. Hovsepyan’s investigation into the 27 October 1999 assassinations left many questions unanswered and both events have obsessed Pashinyan ever since. It is no wonder that Pashinyan’s relations with the Catholicos soured when Karekin II called for Kocharyan’s release from pre-trial detention in 2020. Months later he was freed on $4.1 million bail.
Government supporters believe that the Catholicos must therefore be somehow involved in the protests currently underway in Armenia. Karekin II was one of the first to call for Pashinyan’s resignation following the 44-day-war in 2020 and in 2022 permitted senior clergy to participate in anti-government demonstrations organised by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D), the main party in Kocharyan’s Hayastan parliamentary bloc. At the helm was Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, Primate of the Tavush Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church and a die-hard revanchist by his own admission.
[…]
Even so, as the country has seen before, the potential dangers are real. There has never been such a clash between a church now concerned by its own position and a prime minister sometimes hesitant about his own. “Democracy is under attack in Armenia and the Armenian church authorities are implicated in that attack,” one prominent ethnic Armenian historian wrote on social media. “The damage may very well prove to be irreparable, not just in Armenia, but also in the diaspora. Please do not pour fuel onto the fire,” he warned.
The full opinion piece can be read online here.
