On May 9, thousands of Armenians gathered in Yerevan’s Republic Square to protest the return of four villages de jure part of Azerbaijan but de facto under the control of Armenia since the early 1990s. According to the Union of Informed Citizens, the crowd contained around 31,700 people. It was the largest protest in Armenia since Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rose to power in 2018. This time, however, the demonstration was led not by the political opposition but by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan, a prominent cleric in the Armenian Apostolic Church. Other senior clergy have also joined.
The Armenian Apostolic Church, despite being recognized in the constitution as having the “exclusive mission … in the spiritual life of the Armenian people,” had stayed away from politics. Under Pashinyan’s six years in office, however, a schism has emerged between the Church and government. “A process is being generated to carry out a coup in Armenia in an undemocratic way. … The church is fully engaged in this,” one ruling party member of parliament stated this month. A senior member of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party has gone further, accusing Moscow of being behind the alleged coup. More recently, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan accused those against demarcation of undermining the “sovereignty, statehood, and territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia,” at the “dictation of another country,” a thinly veiled reference, most likely, to Russia. There remains, however, a lack of evidence to support such allegations.
Galstanyan, who had for several weeks been leading small acts of civil disobedience in villages close to the Armenia–Azerbaijan border where demarcation has been taking place, issued a one-hour ultimatum for Pashinyan to resign. When he did not, the cleric met with the two opposition parliamentary factions led by former presidents Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan for consultations. A second rally the next day attracted only 11,700 people. The crowd was even smaller two days later, but despite the drop in numbers still highlighted Pashinyan’s vulnerability as his opponents accuse him of defeatism and making unilateral concessions.
These events have also raised questions over the separation of Church and State. Pashinyan had already warned that the church should stay out of politics. In a live televised interview earlier the same week, he said, “A cleric cannot say a political text without the permission or instructions of the Catholicos of All Armenians [the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Karekin II]. … It is obvious that the leader of the [demonstrations] is the Catholicos of All Armenians, and the beneficiary is [former president] Robert Kocharyan.” Despite the real concerns, that is a far cry from last year when Pashinyan instead urged the church to do just that. “If the church wants to carry out political activities, Armenia is a democratic country, [and] it is possible. … Nothing prevents … creating a party and developing political activities,” he said.
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However the standoff develops, the lines in the sand have been drawn not only between Yerevan and Etchmiadzin, the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church, but also between what Pashinyan has termed a Historical Armenia, synonymous with previous governments and hardline elements in the diaspora, and his vision of a Real Armenia that looks to the future.
The full analysis is available here.
