The policy against the Armenian Church is beneficial to Turkey and Azerbaijan: Ruben Melkonyan

According to Turkologist Ruben Melkonyan, the political stance of the authorities against the church and the ongoing developments cannot be viewed in isolation, only in the context of Armenia's internal processes.

According to Melkonyan, there is a reasonable suspicion that the targeting of the church is in line with the long-standing strategic agendas of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

"This suspicion has objective grounds, while the authorities insist that it is not right to link all this with Turkey and Azerbaijan," Ruben Melkonyan said during a discussion organized on the topic "Relations between the State and the Church: Current Issues."

The Turkologist reminded that in various strategic concepts in Turkey, the Armenian Apostolic Church has been repeatedly mentioned as a state-level target. According to Melkonyan, the reasons are:

1. The Church's mission to preserve the nation,

2. The key role it played in the formation of Armenian identity,

3. The church's network-based organization,

4. Active participation in the process of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

Turkey views all of these factors as a threat to its national interests.

"They are trying to fight against the church through discrediting it, creating various groups, opposing chairs, scandals, etc.," Melkonyan said, adding that this is a direct targeted policy.

He also drew a parallel between historical realities, recalling that during the Ottoman Empire, Turkish sultans, although there were no social networks or modern forms of distributing statements at that time, carried out the changes of patriarchs with the same logic, with a clear political directive.

"There was no Facebook at that time, sultans didn't write 'status', but patriarchs were changed very quickly at the will of the sultan."

In this context, Melkonyan considers the actions of state authorities in Armenia, which are directed against the church and which are clearly in line with the programs that have been developed for years in Turkey and Azerbaijan, to be dangerous.

"The four points mentioned above could only be beneficial to Turkey and Azerbaijan. And what is happening today is clearly desirable for those states," he noted.

The Turkologist also emphasized that hidden behind these processes is not only a policy directed against state identity and historical memory, but also a specific interest in silencing those social strata and individuals who have high authority and criticize the current line of government.

"We can have a reasonable suspicion that the goal of all this is simply to silence those who have authority in society and do not accept their anti-national policies."