Day: May 28, 2024

YEREVAN (Azatutyun.am)—Police tried to stop the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II II, from visiting a war memorial on Tuesday as Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan led there an official ceremony to mark the 106th anniversary of an independent Armenian republic.

The short-lived republic was officially set up on March 28, 1918 as Armenian army and militia units defeated Ottoman Turkish forces trying to occupy Yerevan and the rest of modern-day Armenia. The decisive battle was fought from May 22-29, 1918 around Sardarabad, a village about 50 kilometers west of Yerevan.

The anniversary has been a public holiday in Armenia, called Republic Day, since the Soviet collapse. The country’s current and former leaders have marked it at a memorial built near Sardarabad in the late 1960s. The official ceremonies there have traditionally been held in the morning.

Pashinyan and other top state officials visited the memorial in the afternoon this time around apparently because it was occupied on Monday night by hundreds of antigovernment protesters demanding his resignation. The protesters led by Archbishop Bagrat Galstanyan spent the night there in what looked like an attempt to disrupt the anticipated ceremony. They returned to Yerevan at around noon on Tuesday after celebrating the holiday with patriotic songs and a speech delivered by Galstanyan.

Karekin II and other senior clergymen arrived at Sardarabad a couple of hours later. Amateur videos shot at the scene showed them running into lines of riot police that kept them a hundred meters from a monument where Pashinyan addressed officials, soldiers and border guards on the occasion.

They managed to get through the police cordon after a brief altercation with the policemen. Karekin II then laid a wreath and prayed at the memorial.

In a statement released later in the day, the Etchmiadzin-based Mother See of the Armenian Church deplored the “condemnable behavior” and “violent actions” of the security forces. It described the incident as “yet another manifestation of shameful and anti-national activities of the authorities.”

The ancient church, to which the vast majority of Armenians belong, officially voiced support for Galstanyan and his supporters on May 7 as they marched from the Tavush province to Yerevan to protest against Pashinyan’s territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. The outspoken archbishop demanded Pashinyan’s resignation when he rallied tens of thousands of people in the capital two days later. His continuing campaign for regime change has been joined or endorsed by virtually all Armenian opposition groups.

Pashinyan rejected the demands, defending the land transfer to Baku. He and his political allies have attacked Galstanyan and the church as a whole over the past month, threatening to impose new taxes on it.

Galstanyan acknowledged on May 21 that he regularly discusses the protest movement with Karekin II. During another mass rally held on Sunday, the 53-year-old archbishop, who has until now headed the church’s Tavush Diocese, announced that he has asked the Catholicos to suspend his “spiritual service” in view of his political activities. Karekin II’s office announced on Monday that Galstanyan has been relieved of his “ecclesiastical and administrative” duties while retaining his episcopal rank.

The protest leader on Tuesday pledged to continue the antigovernment protests. He urged supporters to gather outside a Yerevan church for that purpose on Wednesday morning.

Pashinyan’s relationship with the church has increasingly deteriorated since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh. Karekin II and other senior clergymen joined the Armenian opposition in calling for Pashinyan’s resignation following Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war. They have also blamed Pashinyan for Azerbaijan’s September 2023 recapture of Karabakh and the resulting mass exodus of the region’s ethnic Armenian population.

Pashinyan and his entourage have boycotted Christmas and Easter liturgies led by Karekin II for the past three years. They accuse the clergy of meddling in politics. Karekin II and his bishops say they cannot stay silent in the face of what they call existential threats to Armenia resulting from Pashinyan’s misrule.

BY REV. DR. VAHAN H. TOOTIKIAN

May 28, 1918 is a glorious day in the history of the Armenian Nation, and an unforgettable landmark for the Armenian people.                                      

Almost nine centuries after the fall of Bakradouni Kingdom in Armenia, and almost six centuries after the collapse of the Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia, the birth of the Republic of Armenia was nothing but a miracle. The dimmest moment in our history became the brightest, when the Armenian nation, rose like the mythological phoenix, renewed, from its ashes, established a state on the plains of Mount Ararat.

With Western Armenia obliterated, because of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, Eastern Armenia forged its own destiny, ready to participate as a sovereign member in the family of nations, leading the Armenian people to new horizons.

How was the new Republic of Armenian created?  What were the circumstances under which it was created?

During World War I, while hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were forcibly deported to the Syrian and the Mesopotamian deserts and systematically massacred, there were thousands of other Armenians in the Russian Empire, serving in the Russian army, who were promised that, if the Russians would win the war against the Turks, they would create an independent Armenia on the historic Armenian territories. Based on that promise, under the auspices of Catholicos Kevork IV, an Armenian National Bureau and a Military Council were formed, which, among other thingssponsored the creation of seven voluntary brigadesfighting against the Turks. By the beginning of 1917, the Russian army, with the help of Armenian forces succeeded in driving the Turks out of Western Armenian provinces and occupied them.

Although the Russians were able to crush the Turkish forces in the South, they suffered several humiliating defeats in the West by the Germans, who were the powerful allies of the Turkish government.

In the meantime, the Bolshevik Revolution was born and gradually infiltrated into the Russian government. Eventually, it toppled Czar Nicholas II, on March 14, 1917 and brought the Romanov Dynasty to an end, after ruling the Russian Empire for 300 years.

There followed a great turmoil in the country. There was civil unrest in Russia. The Russian army’s frontlines began to crumble. The government of Young Turks took advantage of this unstable situation and exerted great pressure on the socialist government of Russia. In an effort to disengage Russians from the war, the Russians and the Turks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. As a consequence, Lenin, the leader of the Russian Socialist government, ordered the Russian troops to abandon the Western Armenian territories and return home. The defense of the expansive Turkish front was left to the Armenians.

While Russia was preoccupied with civil unrest, the three regions of its empire in the Caucasus—Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan—were obliged to be Transcaucasian Federative Republic (later called the “seim”). This federation, which was created in February of 1918, came apart within a few months, because the three nations, with their mutually contradictory interests and sensitivities, began to secretly plot against one another. The Azeris, or the Tatars, being of Islamic religion, tried to ease the Turkish army’s invasion into Azerbaijan, in order to realize their plan for pan-Turanism. Pan-Turanism was the plan of the Young Turks to unite all the Turkish speaking people throughout Turkey, the Russian Caucasus and Central Asia. The Georgians, though like the Armenians, desired to occupy territory to the detriment of the Armenians. Seeing this situation, the Turkish army advanced, taking Kars and Alexandropol (Gyumri). Meanwhile the Georgians declared independence on May 26, 1918. One day later, on May 27 Azerbaijan also announced its independence.

The Turks were delighted at these declarations of national independence, because this way, the Caucasus was severing its ties with the Russians, and thus, Turkey would be able to have its own way. The Turkish government could even obliterate the Armenians of the Caucasus, just as it had endeavored to obliterate the Western Armenians.

Turkish forces mobilized an army of 35,000 men and advanced on Armenia. They captured Hamamlu (modern Spitak) and Alexandropol (Gyumri). In an attempt to seize the rest of Armenia, they began a three-pronged attack. They directed one toward Kara Kilise (modern Kirovakan), the other towards Bash Abaran (modern Abaran), and the third towards Sardarabad.

The Armenian troops were under the command of General Tovmas Nazarbekian, a former Russian Armenian general, who had resigned his commission when Czarist policy turned against the Armenians, but returned to the army when Russia abandoned its anti-Armenian stance. He defended the Kara Kilise front and assigned general Dro (Dramastad Ganayan) to defend Bash Abaran and General Movses Silikian to defend the city of Sardarabad. The strategy was to prevent the Turkish march towards Erevan.

It was a critical time of life and death. General Silikian made an emotional appeal to the people, saying, “Arise all Armenians! Fight for your honor and the integrity of your country. Fight the way your ancestors fought to defend their lives and property.”

Although outnumbered and outgunned, the Armenian people realized that their very survival was  at stake, thus multitudes of people —farmers, workers, intellectuals, clergy, young and old, even women — fought along with the Armenian soldiers and drove out the invading Turkish army.

Following the decisive Battle of Sardarabad, on May 28, 1918, the Armenian National Council declared the independence of Armenia. The new state was in chaos. There was no organized administrative machinery, no means of transportation, no trained experts for the three branches of government. The food supply was exhausted. Famine and sickness were widely spread. In the words of the prime minister of the Republic, Hovhannes Kachaznouni, “The government has to start from scratch. It must create everything from a heap of ruins and absolute chaos… a condition which can be described by one word — catastrophic.”

Despite all internal and external problems, the creation of a state out of chaos and calamity was nothing but a miracle. May 28 was that miracle. It laid the foundation of the modern state of Armenia.

May 28 became, and still is, the symbol of Armenia’s national hope and aspirations. It is a testimony of struggle for liberty and independence, of the sacrifices of brave men and women to whom the ideals and honor of their nation was dearer than life.

Moreover, May 28 is also a lesson, teaching us that cherishing the valor and sacrifices of our ancestors is not enough; that each generation has its role and responsibilities; each generation has its patriotic duties; that the future of the Republic of Armenia depends on our commitment to give our time, talent and treasure for the growth and development of our beloved Homeland.

Finally, May 28 is also a reminder that the Republic that we love today has been bought at the cost of our martyr’s blood. The Republic of Armenia rests upon the foundations cemented in place by the sacrifice of numerous Armenian soldiers and citizens. Its reservation and perpetuation as a democratic and progressive state is our challenge and responsibility.

Rev. Dr. Vahan H. Tootikian is the Minister Emeritus of the Armenian Congregational Church of Greater Detroit and the Executive Director of the Armenian Evangelical World Council.