Pashinyan vs the Church

0:00The head of the Armenian Apostolic Church is standing trial. But how did church state relations in Armenia get so bad? Your listening to the Caucasus digest. Hi, I'm Robin. Hi, I'm Mariam. Hi, I'm Arsolouis. So it's good to be back on the podcast with my co-host, Mariam Nikorazeg. And it's been a while. It's been a while both of us have hosted this podcast. I think it's been over a month now. I mean, we've been busy. We're sitting now in our new podcast studio after moving off-sys. And it sounds different. Yeah, I hope you'll hear the difference. We also might in the coming weeks or months, let's see.

1:00Maybe you will get a chance to see inside. But I want to just give a little sneak peek to our listeners how it's been. So first of all, let's say how our previous podcast office, like podcast room looked like. You mean our previous podcast corridor slash storeroom? Exactly. And like three or four phones just randomly on the wall put up, which our previous landlord did not like. And the current one, which like sounds way better, it's calm, it's nice, but there is always a downside. It stinks. It does appear that the previous tenants may have used this room as a smoking room. So we'll see how that goes. And actually, we also have the pleasure of having you here in person in our to-beliece the office. Yeah, I'm very excited to be here. And this is actually my first recording of podcast in a podcast studio.

2:03So it sounds different from you as well. Actually, it's not just actually, but our entire team almost, right? Is in Tbilisi at the moment. And I think it's the first time we have four team members from Armenia visiting us at the new office. It's been hectic to say the least. OK, so got again the second. His trial is sort of starting. I mean, it's been a bit of a mess, right? Yes, the case is struggling to find a judge to examine it. So currently it seems like finally it found the judge, but there were three judges who pulled out from the case within a month in a row. First, it was examined in Atmaviya, where the mother sees located. However, the first judge decided to rescue himself because he had a conflict of interest in the case.

3:04Then it was sent to the second judge from Atmaviya court. However, he decided to send the case to Yerevan. And from Yerevan, it is sent back to Atmaviya again. So the second judge will examine it. However, aside from the judges, the prosecutor of the case also decided to resign. So he is not prosecutor anymore. And there are some rumors in media that his resignation is connected to Karakin's case. However, he and also the prosecutor's office rejected it. So what do you think? Do you think all of these judges and this prosecutor are they just avoiding to go? No, no. I'm sure they all have great legitimate reasons not to prosecute one of the most influential people in Aminia. And this case is actually unprecedented because in the modern day in Armenia, no head of church was prosecuted. So I think Robin is right. And also there are, like, Armenia is the Christian country, right?

4:05And there are, I believe there are some superstitions around it saying that he should not make it very difficult. Around the head of the church or other religious figures. And not just make a verdict. Maybe you should not send the head of your religious institution to jail, right? Because these are fairly serious charges that could end up with the Catholicos going to prison. Yes, that's true. And I mean, what would happen to the church if the Catholicos is in prison? He would remain Catholicos, but do you have any idea how that would actually go? No one knows. I agree. But like the Catholicos made it clear a few months ago that they are not going to take any steps back from their positions. So it was like, if the state decides that I should go to the prison, like I will follow the law. I will follow the order. But meanwhile, he was like, we're not going to make any concessions from our side.

5:06However, we didn't discuss the case. Do we want me to explain briefly what the charges are and the details of this case? It is regarding one of Prospasinian, who has been dismissed from his position as a head of one of the diocese of Armenia. So the church, leadership decided to remove him from his position. And then he took the case to the court against the church. And the court decided to take a temporary measure to reinstate him into his position before there will be a final verdict over the case. However, the church leadership never reinstate him to his position. And this is when the court case started. However, firstly, it involved a few high-ranking priests and later charges were brought against the Catholicos as well. So, okay, this kind of whole spat, or I don't know what to call it, conflict, you could kind of trace maybe the start of it, like the outbreak of it,

6:10to these comments Prospasinian made around a year and a half ago, where he said that churches were being used as storerooms, right? And that's kind of where, like the Declaration of War, I don't know. I think that was the starting point of this escalation. And then since then, of course, there's been, I'm sure, a list of seen some of these crude comments, you know, I mean, one of our most popular articles from last year with the headline, Passionian offers to show his penis to the Catholicos because to prove he is not circumcised. I mean, these very bizarre things, they keep accusing him and other high-ranking clergy of having children. To be honest, I got so much ashamed for authoring that piece, especially in Armenia, people were like, you're portraying Armenia in such a light, and I was like, but that's not my fault. Like the head of the country was operating it.

7:12The army of the people, this piece of it. His piece, oh yeah. Who should hide it or what? So, yeah, basically that was the escalation and did let to the rest of several high-ranking priests. However, the ties between the church and the Passionian's government were not that good, since probably shortly after when Passionian came to power in 2018. However, they were not this bad as well. The church, we should mention, that had good ties with all previous governments, and they were happy with it. However, Passionian's government decided to take a few steps, like removing this church history from the Mandatory, of course, at school, which church didn't like at all. And they all, during also the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, Karakian off-tip, sorry, after the war, Karakian called Passionian to resign. He was unhappy with it. And later in 2024, when Azerbaijan started this delimitation process in the north of Armenia,

8:14it was followed by grassroots movements, which started in Davos region and later this bridge, Vagrat Archbishop, to offer the protest, and he eventually launched the Davos for Motherland movement, also known as Holy Struggle. And it was the biggest, actually. Right, I mean, to me this is maybe what drove Passionian over the edge, was this seeing these huge protests in Yerevan, led by a bigist? That was the biggest since he came to power. The biggest against the whole, exactly. But how the general public currently feels, if you know about this trial and what is going on, because I imagine if similar thing was happening in Georgia, we would have protests in support. Is that civil war? Yeah, like it would be just total, it would go insane here, because the charge has still huge support. Maybe the new patriarchy is not as popular as the previous one.

9:15But I imagine, let's, if we, as an example, take, that there would be case against Ilya, the second... I think we would even have a revolution, I don't know. So I'm curious how the Armenian public is... I mean, how is the government getting away with it? Exactly, this is... In general, church has very high popularity. Among Armenia society, we just predominantly considering itself as Christians, as followers of Armenian and post-Lic church. And if we look at the public surveys, like from International Republican Institute, church is the second most trusted institution in Armenia. However, it is interesting to notice that, that trust has gone down in the past years, especially it was in its lowest point after this big protests, which did not have any success. However, in the past years, that satisfaction rate is going up. And this whole situation around the church is lasting over a year now, so people are in a way accustomed to it.

10:18However, we're being surprised how worse and worse it can get. So, and also, I remember when he was first brought to the court, we had some videos from it. When he first appeared, I mean, post-polloned, but there was some crowd, but it looked very small. And again, like, this is quite surprising to me. Right, in Georgia, you would have the streets to be filled with protesters. And they would like be burned down the court. But you were also surprised when there were no protests in Armenia following the elections. I know it's different. I know it's different. It's just still weird. But OK, the issue has also been highly politicized, right? I mean, the opposition kind of falling in line behind the church and obviously panning against the church. Yes. So, yeah, definitely, this is, we cannot ignore the political component of this issue. And the church is highly seen as aligned with the opposition.

11:19And even before the elections, Karakin met with the opposition leaders, Somalgara Bedan, who actually came to enter the politics after this, in the middle of this conflict between the church and the government, when he made a statement, defending the church, he said that they will interfere in their own way. And this led to criminal charges. And this was an issue in the elections, right? Or at least the opposition tried to make it into an issue. Yes, that was actually one of the main talking points of the opposition, where they are portraying Pashinyan's government as anti-church, who is trying to church one of the well-established institutions of Armenia. And we can also talk about the timing of all these events, because it actually came a year ahead of the elections, roughly a year ahead of the elections. And many were seeing it as part of Pashinyan's tactics to discredit the church and attract more of its supporters to come and vote for him, because he was also attempting

12:22to picture Karakin and other high ranking clergymen as agents of foreign intelligence forces and throughout this period they even leaked documents. Armenia National Security Service gave that document to a government-affiliated media, which proved that Karakin's brother, who is the pre-med of Armenian diocese in Russia, was actually recreated by KGB, that is the Soviet... The Soviet intelligence agency? Yes. And that was used as a basis to confirm that there are ties between them and probably Russia, because Armenian authorities never clearly said that those people have ties with Russian intelligence now. And I mean, I think this is where it gets... It gets interesting in that, like, is it all just political, right? Is it Pashinyan trying to remove a threat to his own political power?

13:22Or is this actually legitimate counterintelligence? I mean, is the church infiltrated by Russian security services? Is Russia... I mean, of course, there is probably at least a bit of an element of both, but I mean, how much control does Russia have? Because... We can, again, mention Georgia here, because remember, we had these leaked files from the State Security Service. We've seen them... The Georgia Security Service. The Georgia State Security Service. We've seen them... We've seen this, like, what... Beges or, like, I don't know, certificates from the KGB that high officials of clergy had in Georgia. And, like, nobody was even surprised. I don't know, but you can maybe kind of assume that if it was here, probably Russia was trying to infiltrate other these, like, big trust identities in the region. Trying is one thing. Yeah, right. I have no doubt that Russia has tried to infiltrate everything in this region.

14:22But, yeah, like, the... I guess my question is, like, is passion yarn justified? And I think that's also what a lot of people, especially from outside the week... We can't say he's a populist, and I mean, I don't know, he's doing stuff that... Poppilis is one thing, but, you know, if the church is really controlled by Moscow, and they're using the church, and, you know, along with Karapetian and his network of opposition parties to try and overthrow democracy in Armenia, you know, and steer Armenia back into their orbit, then, you know, like, the authorities are maybe justified in throwing their head of the church in prison. But, this is what's unclear to me is how true that is. To be honest, I don't have the answer, how true it is. But there is a hint that was coming from Russian troops or, like, Russian authorities in general, they may be, like, not that often, however, a few times they made statements

15:22supporting the Armenian church, and, like, throughout this period, also Karakens' brother received some award from... If I'm not mistaken, from Putin, Russia's president Putin, and this was used in Armenian political discussion, saying that, look at this. This is, like, a clear sign that there are some ties, and it's your right, Robin, like, there we should not ignore the political component of it. Because there were, like, pretty clear, like, patterns of coordinated behavior that was coming from Russia if we look at the information field, and also Karapet and just entered politics. And he was this tycoon who was well-known as a philanthropist, as an investor in Armenia. However, he didn't have any public appearance that often. We never heard him speaking, you know, we just saw his face, and now he's that actively involved into politics, and Putin made it clear that he wanted pro-Russian forces, at least to freely participate into the elections,

16:23but he also wanted them to come to power, I believe. Yeah, I think Putin is not a fan of freely participating in elections. Still. He's principle. He wanted them to get to power, and then maybe not hold free elections again. Yeah, that would have been their dream, but forks notate that didn't happen. What I was previously trying to say, I don't know, if it was clear, but my point was, and maybe it was like this, that he was intimidated by this protest over whoever. He started something to protect his ass, and then he came up onto something bigger, and now it's both his, what I was trying to say, but I don't know. Yeah, I mean, the absolutely could be. I wonder if we'll ever know the truth of this, honestly. So let's take a moment. You may have missed Mario and I speaking about membership every week to you, because that is... I mean, I was, except it lasted, okay. But they missed you.

17:25I mean, I think the two of us together, yeah, that's true. We make amazing plans. We have a thing going on, though. So tell us about what our listeners can do to support this work we do. First of all, I think probably it was mentioned on the previous broadcast episode, but let me repeat, that we had a very successful summer. We got 15 new members, and now we want to... We increased our goal to 200. By the end of November, our marketing had a terrified of this goal, so let's help her to get more confidence in this campaign goal to reach 200 new members by the end of November. You can do that by going to oc-media.org forward slash membership. We'll have links in the show notes, and it's everywhere on the website. I mean, this is our membership program. You pay a monthly fee, and you get access

18:28to some exclusive content, some exclusive newsletters. And I mean, the main thing is you help us to continue to do what we do. So this court case, right, it all started with the church refusing to reinstate this pro-Pasinian clergy. And I mean, he came out in favor of the government in terms of Pasinian's plans to reform the church, right? And I mean, where are those reforms now with all this court drama going on? To be honest, I think the reform program is just to support Pasinian's agenda to topple, got again from his position. He just found the way to frame it and make it more structural and institutional. However, it appears structural and it's just... Yes, true. So currently, it is involved in the government's program that has recently been adopted, which should be implemented in the next five years. So the reform agenda envisioned some changes in the government of the church.

19:29However, I don't want to go into details of it, but the most clear plan is just to change the head of the church. But is there any clear end inside to this conflict? Like, could it be resolved in any way other than complete victory of one side or the other? To be honest, I'm so confused at this moment. I don't have any clear vision what will happen, because in the past years, I saw a pattern in Pasinian's behavior when it is either top priority issuing his agenda or it is not in the priorities at all. So I think it will be in his agenda in the next five years, depending on the behavior of the church. But meanwhile, recently, he made a statement that he's ready to sit and talk with the head of the church. But I believe this is going to be a conversation where they will discuss him leaving his office. It's not going to be a solution to the issue. OK, so reforming the church, as the government doing this,

20:29it's kind of a big deal, I guess, and there's supposed to be this separation of church and state in the Armenian Constitution. So actually, we were talking before the show, and our producer, you said, had a little theory, which honestly, that gets a bit outlandish, maybe. But I think it's interesting, and I think we should put it on the record in case it comes true. Or give ideas to the government. So we have, I mean, the government is trying to make constitutional changes. And this is about the peace process. As a by Jan, they want to remove kind of this mentions of the documents that Azerbaijan objects to, to the constitution. But what if, while they're doing this constitutional changes, they could include something with the church, right? This was his point. I mean, there's many countries where there is a state religion. And I mean, what do you think, Ashlouh?

21:31What if the government said, we're going to make the Armenian Apostolic Church the state religion of Armenia? I mean, it would be popular now. And this could also be a way to actually cement the takeover of the church. Ashlouh means shaking your head. I'm not sure about that, to be honest, because all these reforms, the change of the constitution itself, it's a big trouble for the government, because the opposition has strong talking points that it is done not because Armenia wants it, but because Azerbaijan demands it in order to finalize the peace process and sign the peace treaty, which is not signed yet, but it is initialed. And in this case, it will just at the second strongest point for the opposition saying that, oh, look at this. He just wants to make the church loyal to him. That's why he is making this constitutional reforms. I mean, they will say that, but he will say, we're making Armenian traditional values,

22:34we're bringing it in. This is why we're doing a new constitution. I don't know, for me, it seems like a great argument for Pashinyan to make that this is not just Azerbaijan. This is about the vision of the new Armenia, which includes. I feel like, no, you're really giving me this. I'm so scared to imagine Armenia being a religious state. I can't believe it. I also struggle. Listen to the meaning of this. George is sure. It doesn't mean becoming, having religious laws, Britain has a state religion. The Church of England is the official religion. The head of state, the king, is also the head of the Church of England. So you can have a democratic country. You can have religious freedom. And you can have not that I'm advocating this approach. Yeah, I hope not. Because like in fragile democracies, I know I know everything to do. OK, anyway, I just wanted to give Yusuf's theory a little credit, put it on the record.

23:35We'll see. I'm scared. We want. What? I was actually thinking that maybe Yusuf is now backtracking on this. He's clarifying, he says. I think my theory's better. He says that they would just put mechanisms in the Constitution in order to take over the Church. I don't know. I think if they do it, they should go full on. First, they need to make the referendum possible. Then we can discuss all these details. Because it's not realistic at the moment. They do not have constitutional majority in the parliament, which is a must in order to confirm this referendum. Hi, Yusuf here. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, you're right. I think you may have taken what I said a bit out of context, but I really do like your theory. I ran with it. Well, what can I say? Yeah.

24:35I think that could be interesting, especially given the Armenian of Aestolic Church. It's its own thing. They're not Catholics, they're not Orthodox. They have their own very, very old traditions and their own systems. The oldest Christian country in the world. That is the first country that adopted Christianity as a state religion. Exactly. It's a part of your heritage, right? Yes. One of the biggest points that Armenians mention everywhere. Yeah. And what if he manages to find a way to fit that in with his real Armenia ideology, how he is basically trying to redefine what he's associated with the state and what it means to be Armenian nowadays? OK, we're giving him too many ideas. Yes. Let's move on. OK, now that I have my mic back, little update from Georgia here, I wanted to inform that

25:36this Georgian president, Mikhail Kavaleshrili, yesterday went to attend yet another funeral. This time it was the funeral of the Norwegian king, Harold V. And this is not the first funeral he's going to attend. This is his job now, right? That's where all the jokes have started to emerge, especially yesterday, that this is basically the only thing he's doing now. And we've seen him on the other funeral. He has a very sad, serious funeral face is doing this part really well. He was perfected. He's perfected his face. But it's not just that there are only few things the president can do. And one of the responsibilities he had was speaking at the UN sessions, which he did last year. It did not go well. He did not look good. And I feel like Georgian dream is starting to get embarrassed by him. And last week we learned that this year,

26:39it will be Prime Minister Irakli Koba-Hitz speaking at the 81st session of the UN instead of Kavaleshrili. So he's demoted to just few more old speakers. This is the... Yeah, this is where what he achieved as a president. I think Armenian situation is very close to the situation in Georgia. Because in our case, he is just signing some documents. Like the parliament passes law and he just signs it. He signs the documents to grant citizenship to a person. And he also attends some meetings. However, some people see him as a more of a traveler. Because he is traveling here and there, some random places with which Armenia do not have that deep ties. And people are like, why is this happening on the cost of Armenian state budgets? This is what the previous president was doing, Salomez, or Opshuli. She was against Georgian dream politics at the end of her term. And I think she was using...

27:41Oh, because similarly, she could do it as a president. She had this right to represent the country and she was using it to kind of fix Georgia's image internationally. But I guess the direction of her views in the foreign policy was different than Armenia's president, I guess, I don't know. But current president is just attending generals. Yeah, definitely Armenian president is very aligned with Paschiniyas government policy and before becoming president, he holds ministerial posts in Armenia and the Paschiniyas government. Sounds like a good gig to me. Nice easy job. Easy job. Okay, thank you, Maria and Archie Louise. Thank you. I will see you in three weeks. Two episodes will be without me again. But Robin will be here. Absolutely. Thank you for listening. See you next time.

28:42Bye. Bye. This was an OC media podcast. We were your host, Robin Fabro. And Maria Mikorazzov. If you have any questions, thoughts or tips, we would love to hear from you. You can email us at podcasts at OC-media.org. If you enjoyed this podcast, remember, you can help keep it going by becoming an OC media member. You can subscribe to the show wherever you find your podcasts by searching for the Caucasus Digest. And please leave a review already. It really helps us get the word out. The show was produced by Yusuf Bardokha and Timonach Karewili. Marketing and social media was by Tamash Feliz and Mariam Shania. The theme music was by Ben Wheeler. Thanks for listening.