Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade accused the church of inciting Armenians to “fight to the death” in a letter to the World Council of Churches which hosted two weeks ago an international conference in Switzerland on the preservation of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian religious and cultural heritage.
“I call on the World Council of Churches not to support the provocative, revanchist propaganda of the Armenian Church that violates the fragile peace environment,” he wrote.
In a speech delivered during the three-day conference, Garegin accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Karabakh and illegally occupying Armenian border areas. He also denounced the ongoing “sham trials” of eight former Karabakh leaders captured during Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive. He described them as hostages.
Garegin attended and addressed the forum in Bern as Pashinian began attacking the church’s top clergy in daily social media posts that sparked an uproar from opposition leaders, prominent public figures and many ordinary citizens. Pashinian accused Garegin and other senior clergymen of having had secret sex affairs in breach of their vows of celibacy. He has been focused on the Catholicos in recent days, demanding the latter’s resignation and pledging to set up a body tasked with installing a new church head.
Armenian opposition leaders condemned the move as illegal and warned Pashinian against ordering his loyalists to seize the church headquarters in Echmiadzin. They claim that the Armenian premier, who avoids publicly denouncing Azerbaijan, launched his smear campaign against the church in a bid to please Baku and/or neutralize a key source of opposition to his unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe.
Pashazade already lambasted the Armenian Church earlier in May when he announced his decision to open a new division of his Muslim office covering the territory of Armenia. Echoing regular statements by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, he claimed that “historical Azerbaijani lands” constitute much of modern-day Armenia. He also said that the ancient church to which the vast majority of Armenians belong poses a threat to the region.
The church’s Echmiadzin-based Mother See shrugged off the “absurd” and “ridiculous” claims in a statement issued on May 23.
“Such reprehensible expressions of enmity and falsification, consistently present in the public rhetoric of Azerbaijan’s religious leadership, are themselves testimony to the very reality that -- to borrow Pashazade’s phrasing -- Azerbaijan poses a threat to the neighboring countries of the region,” it said.
Pashinian began his campaign against the top clergy a few days later. His daily attacks continued on Wednesday morning hours after Garegin received a hero’s welcome from hundreds of supporters on his return from a short trip abroad.
Addressing the crowd at Yerevan’s Zvartnots airport, the Catholicos expressed confidence that the church and its followers will manage to “overcome this difficulty prudently and without excessive emotion or agitation.”