High-Ranking Etchmiadzin Officials to Attend Akhtamar Mass

YEREVAN (RFE/RL)—Two high-level representatives of His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, will attend a religious ceremony to be held at the 10th century Holy Cross Armenian Church in Akhtamar, official Etchmiadzin said Monday.

The Holy Cross Church will hold its first mass in nearly a century on September 19, three years after its reopening following a $1.5 million renovation funded by the Turkish government. The latter has allowed Turkey’s Armenian community to hold religious services there once a year.

Ankara has promoted the decision as proof of its commitment to tolerance and a gesture of goodwill toward Armenians. Still, it has resisted requests to return the church, perched on the legendary Akhtamar Island in Lake Van, to the community currently led by Archbishop Aram Ateshian.

Catholicos Karekin II’s chief spokesman, Father Vahram Melikian, described the one-day reopening as a positive but insufficient step. “The Mother See of Saint Echmiadzin hopes that the decision will be revised and the church will be returned to the Armenian community that will use in full,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.

Melikian said Ateshian, who will preside over the mass, has asked the supreme leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church to send representatives to the high-profile ceremony expected to draw Turkish state officials. The Catholicos has accepted the request and will be represented at the event by a bishop and another senior cleric from his headquarters, added Melikian.

It is not clear whether Armenian government officials will also attend. The Armenian ministries of foreign affairs and culture said Monday that they have received no formal invitation from the Turkish side yet.

The Catholicos’ decision could cause controversy in Armenia and its worldwide Diaspora where many regard the mass as a Turkish propaganda ploy. The matter was discussed on Monday by a sub-commission of President Serzh Sarkisian’s advisory Public Council.

Ruben Safrastian, a Turkey scholar chairing the sub-commission, said Ankara wants to exploit the mass for its political agenda. “Having scuttled the process of normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations, Turkey is now trying to show the world that it is trying to normalize those relations,” he said. “In all likelihood, it has prepared that event for this purpose.”

The discussion was initiated by the Van-Vaspurakan non-governmental organization uniting descendants of Armenians who lived in the Van region and survived the 1915 genocide. Its chairman, Romik Hovnanian, accused the Turks of seeking to mislead the world and “drive a wedge” between Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora.

Built between 915 and 921 A.D., the Akhtamar church is one of the few surviving examples of the ancient Armenian civilization in what is now eastern Turkey. Hundreds of Armenian churches built there since the early Middle Ages were destroyed, ransacked or turned into mosques during and after the 1915 mass killings and deporations.