The seat of the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate has been vacant ever since the Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan fell ill with dementia and continued to live in a vegetative state in 2008. Archbishop Aram Atesyan, who got himself appointed as Acting Patriarch, devised several arrangements with the help of the Turkish government to delay the election of a new Patriarch and remained in power for the past 11 years. Patriarch Mutafyan passed away in March 2019, and now there have been left no more legal and illegal loopholes to avoid the patriarchal election. The Turkish government finally relented to have the Patriarchal election to take place in December 2019 but also presented another obstacle against a fair and democratic election process. It imposed a condition that ‘the only eligible candidates would have to be clergy in the employ of the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate,’ thereby eliminating at least ten other potential candidates who could have been eligible, based on the historically legitimate condition of eligibility applied in previous Patriarchal elections, which was to be born into an Armenian family from Turkey. It should be noted that two of the last elected Istanbul Patriarchs were clergymen born in Turkey, but serving the Armenian Church outside Turkey and not in the Istanbul Patriarchate.
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Thank you Raffi for your passion and the intelligence you apply to these important issues. It is important
for Armenians to understand that while we may have many grievances against the Turkish government t
for its meddling and impact on the community, none of these will improve until we have effective leadership
in the Patriarchate. Of course the Turks want to narrow the options as a means of control . Ateshian has proven
his ineptness as a leader and his duplicitous collaboration with the Turkish government… thus facilitating
a divided community. I do not know much about Mashalyan I was encouraged by his role during the early
days of the crisis. If he will will not confront the government , perhaps he is at least not corrupt. We know that Ateshian
will not lead the community based on his past performance.
It is puzzling why a diaspora that talks so much about Western Armenia does not connect with the two
most tangibles issues we have relative to that area….. hidden Armenians and reclaiming our assets.
The church’ position is fraught with short sighted thinking and corruption. Shameful .
Keep the faith Raffi….. your leadership is appreciated.
appreciate the insightful and informative piece. one can live in a country and may completely oblivious to not what the others are experiencing. questions are provocative and fair that deserves responses. Not knowing Ateshian’s leadership skills, I am not sure how much it is survival skills, how much is it ineptitude, but one needs to agree that it must be difficult to operate in Turkey specially with this Islamist government that still sees minorities as Dhimmis!