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.
Pashinyan and other officials had already boycotted services held at Etchmiadzin and at the very end of last year Armenian Public Television refused to air Karekin II’s annual address to the nation for the first time ever. Step in Galstanyan three months later as the visible face of protests to oppose the April agreement between Yerevan and Baku to delimit the Gazakh-Tavush section of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. One political scientist alleges this was to provide the Catholicos with some kind of plausible deniability by “sacrificing” members of the clergy instead.
Whether knowingly instructed or not, Galstanyan gathered around 31,700 people in Yerevan’s Republic Square on 9 May, the largest rally since Pashinyan’s own in 2018, though the next two that immediately followed could only gather 11,300 and 9,400 respectively. Even so, the moderately sized rallies at first rattled the government. “It is obvious that the leader of the process is the Catholicos of All Armenians, and the beneficiary is Robert Kocharyan,” Pashinyan charged days earlier. A fourth held on 26 May gathered 23,100 according to one monitoring group.
Normally, this should not have been cause for concern but on the eve of a national holiday to commemorate the anniversary of the short-lived 1918 Armenian Republic, Galstanyan assembled supporters at the Sardarapat memorial complex outside of Yerevan with the aim of blocking Pashinyan’s attendance the following morning. The cleric had already appointed himself the opposition’s candidate for prime minister, despite his ineligibility and adequate active support from the population or in parliament. Some argued he needed a clash given his dwindling numbers.
Nonetheless, it was an embarrassment for the premiere who could only arrive at the official event once Galstanyan had left. Clearly irked, Pashinyan appeared to accuse the church of elitism and subjugating the population in a fiery speech quite unlike the official statement he had released earlier that same day. Karekin II and accompanying clergy were also temporarily and forcibly denied access to the site by police, sparking some public outrage. Galstanyan called it blasphemous.
But for now the protests appear more of a nuisance than anything else though it does demonstrate how vulnerable the government could become as the next elections approach. However, it is more the issue of Pashinyan not being able to form a majority government. For now, Galstanyan has so far not been able to attract any sizeable numbers elsewhere in the country, including last weekend in the second largest city of Gyumri. Galstanyan has roughly the same popularity rating as Kocharyan. Moreover, his recent rallies lack a noticeable youth presence.
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.
Onnik James Krikorian is a journalist, photojournalist, and consultant from the U.K. who has covered the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict since 1994.
