Statement on the Suppression of the Armenian Apostolic Church: Historical Continuities of Identity Erasure within Victim Groups

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention expresses deep concern over the ongoing state repression against the Armenian Apostolic Church in Armenia, including the arrests and intimidation of clergy, the targeting of ecclesiastical institutions, and the state’s increasing use of the legal system to silence religious leadership. These developments represent a dangerous challenge to Armenia’s democratic institutions as well as an encroachment on the core institutions of Armenian identity. They are an unfortunate example of how genocidal processes can become internalized during periods of threat.

Tensions between the Armenian government and the Armenian Apostolic Church were exacerbated by education reforms in 2023, which eliminated the History of the Armenian Church as a standalone mandatory subject and incorporated it into broader, generalized curricula. More recently, the state’s recent attacks on the Armenian Apostolic Church coincided with an international conference organized by the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin together with the World Council of Churches and the Protestant Church of Switzerland. The conference was held in Bern, Switzerland from May 26 to 28, 2025, with the goal of addressing the preservation of Armenian cultural heritage in the historically Armenian region of Artsakh, which was invaded and fully depopulated by Azerbaijan in September 2023.

This conference was criticized by Azerbaijan's spiritual leader Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade, who is close to the Azerbaijani government, for allegedly inciting Armenians “to fight to the death” by advocating for the integrity of Armenian cultural heritage.

A couple of weeks later, in late June, the Armenian authorities detained two archbishops of the Armenian Apostolic church, Bagrat Galstanyan and Michael Ajapahyan, and charged them with attempting to overthrow the government and destabilize the state. These arrests were followed by detentions of several priests as part of a widening investigation into clergy accused of political interference and corruption.

In October 2025, Armenian authorities arrested Bishop Mkrtich Proshyan, head of the Aragatsotn Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church. On December 4 2025, Armenian authorities detained the third Armenian Archbishop, Arshak Khachatryan. Two weeks later, on December 18, a protest was initiated by a small number of archbishops and bishops in the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, the Armenian Apostolic Church’s administrative headquarters, calling for the removal of the Catholicos of All Armenians, Karekin II. Although Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan did not appear at the protest, he expressed his approval through a morning briefing where he claimed that the Catholicos has links to unnamed foreign intelligence services. Combined with the Prime Minister’s published plans to remove Catholicos Karekin II, this protest appears to have been a tactic employed by the Pashinyan Administration to undermine the independence of the Armenian clergy and usurp its power.

While the government claims its actions are based on evidence of criminal wrongdoing, Church leaders have denounced the arrests as politically motivated, calling them an attack on religious freedom and a deliberate effort to weaken the Church.

Taken together, these developments, especially the detentions of individual members of the senior clergy, raise serious concerns about the weakening of rule-of-law safeguards. The state has produced no evidence to substantiate the charges against clergy members. At the same time, documented conduct by state authorities, including efforts to influence religious services, exert pressure on clerical leadership, and intervene in the Church’s internal governance, has drawn strong criticism from civic groups and human rights organizations as exceeding lawful state authority and undermining constitutional principles of church–state separation.

The combination of selective prosecutions, limited transparency, and direct state intervention in religious affairs raises serious concerns that legal mechanisms are being used not to uphold the law but to undermine the autonomy of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Moreover, the Armenian government’s recent decision to remove Shoghakat television channel (a media outlet established by and historically co-financed by the Armenian Apostolic Church) from the national digital package represents a further step in the ongoing efforts to marginalize the Church. Shoghakat now no longer has public broadcaster status. While the government frames this decision as a mere technical adjustment grounded in a new law, its effect is the selective removal of the Church’s key platform for cultural and spiritual expression—no other channel has been impacted by the law.

Due to the selective nature of the legislative change, the decision raises serious concerns under Article 18.1 of the Constitution, which recognizes the Armenian Apostolic Church as the national church with an exclusive historical mission in spiritual life, development of national culture, and national identity. By depriving the Church of its primary public platform, the decision also undermines Article 42.2, which guarantees freedom of the press and requires the state to ensure that public broadcasters provide diverse informational, educational, and cultural programming. More broadly, the removal of this distinct religious and cultural voice risks undermining the principle of political and ideological pluralism protected by Article 8 of the Constitution, thereby calling into question the state’s commitment to a democratic and pluralistic society. The crackdown comes amid heightened tensions over Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s handling of relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, which Church leaders have criticized.

The Armenian Apostolic Church has for centuries served as the spiritual, cultural, and historical foundation of the Armenian people. From the fourth century, when Armenia became the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion, the Church has been the principal guardian of Armenian continuity, preserving language, culture, and memory during centuries of foreign domination. Its survival through periods of colonization, genocide, and exile has long symbolized the endurance of the Armenian nation itself.
The current wave of repression echoes a familiar and tragic historical pattern deeply embedded in the collective memory of the Armenian people. During the Armenian Genocide (1915–1923), the Ottoman authorities did not merely seek to murder or remove a population; they aimed to obliterate an entire civilization by severing its identity from its moral and spiritual core. The first phase of the genocide began with the systematic targeting of Armenian intellectuals, clergy, and community leaders, a deliberate strategy to decapitate the nation’s leadership and erase the voices that could organize resistance or preserve cultural cohesion.
The Ottoman leadership understood that Armenian Christianity was not merely a religion but the vessel of Armenian national identity, a center of education, and a vehicle for collective memory. Ottoman assaults on the Church were not collateral damage; they were the deliberate destruction of a people’s spiritual infrastructure. By destroying the Church, Ottoman leaders sought to dismantle the very mechanism that had enabled the Armenian identity to survive centuries of imperial domination and cultural suppression.
This calculated campaign against Armenian Christianity reveals that genocide operates not only through physical annihilation but also through cultural and spiritual identity erasure. The eradication of the Church as the moral compass and unifying institution of the nation was central to the genocidal logic. It sought to produce a population stripped of its historical consciousness, its sacred geography, and its communal bonds. The scars of this destruction persist today as thousands of Armenian religious monuments remain in ruins or under threat in Turkey and Azerbaijan.
The ideological continuity is clear. Both then and now, the Apostolic Church, as a moral and social institution capable of unifying people beyond political lines, is perceived by those in power as a potential threat to state control.

Historically, the Turkish state viewed Christianity as the heart of Armenian distinctiveness and thus as an obstacle to national homogenization. Today, the Armenian Apostolic Church is being framed by some political actors in Armenia as a competing power center, a vestige of the old order, or a destabilizing force. Such rhetoric, combined with the use of legal instruments to dismantle or intimidate the clergy, reflects a deeply troubling attempt to weaken the Church’s role as a moral authority and protector of national identity.

These developments reflect multiple early warning indicators of identity-based repression: the criminalization of moral authorities, the framing of religious leadership as a national security threat, the delegitimization of institutions that embody collective memory, and the use of the law to weaken institutions outside state control. History shows that such patterns often manifest before broader campaigns to divide society and erase cultural identity.

Compounding this crisis is Armenia’s current geopolitical trajectory. In light of recent peace talks and normalization efforts with Turkey, as well as the growing diplomatic influence of Azerbaijan, Armenia’s internal strategy toward its main religious institution appears increasingly aligned, intentionally or otherwise, with the long-term goals of these neighboring states. The marginalization of the Apostolic Church, the very institution that has historically embodied national resilience, mirrors the strategies historically used by Ankara and now Baku to undermine Armenian identity and cohesion. If unchecked, this alignment risks eroding the moral and cultural foundations that have safeguarded Armenian survival for centuries, effectively advancing the objectives of powers that have sought to weaken Armenia’s independence and unity.

While the current situation cannot be equated with the genocidal violence of 1915, the parallels in logic and method must be recognized. Early warning signs of identity-based repression often begin with efforts to delegitimize and criminalize institutions that embody collective memory and moral resistance. The systematic discrediting of the Church, the arrests of priests, and the state’s growing hostility toward religious expression create a hostile environment that endangers not only freedom of religion but also the cultural and existential security of the Armenian people.

The Lemkin Institute calls on the Armenian government to immediately cease all politically motivated actions against the clergy and to reaffirm its commitment to the constitutional principles of religious freedom and pluralism. The Institute further urges international observers and human rights organizations to monitor developments in Armenia closely, recognizing that the erosion of religious institutions has historically preceded broader campaigns of societal fragmentation and identity erasure.

The strength of Armenia’s democracy and sovereignty rests not in the suppression of its moral institutions, but in their protection. A nation that has survived genocide cannot afford to repeat, in any form, the mechanisms of its historical destruction.