In a written statement, Ter-Petrosian compared Pashinian’s ongoing campaign to Tsarist Russia’s infamous crackdown on the Armenian Apostolic Church.
“At the beginning of the 20th century, namely in 1903, Russian Emperor Nicholas II passed a law confiscating the property of the Armenian Church and closing Armenian schools,” he said. “This caused such a wave of protest and rebellion among all classes of the Armenian people, involuntarily stimulating the development of Armenian nationalism, that the Emperor was forced to repeal the law in 1905.”
“If the Armenian people overcame the mighty Russian Emperor, why will they not overcome a national traitor and blasphemer like Nikol?” added Ter-Petrosian.
One of Pashinian’s political allies, deputy parliament speaker Ruben Rubinian, scoffed at the statement: “So expecting the Catholicos to keep his vow before God is the same as confiscating church property and closing Armenian schools. What a wise analysis!”
The 80-year-old ex-president already made a point of visiting Garegin at his Echmiadzin residence on June 7. He was reported to voice “full support” for the supreme head of the church and strongly condemn Pashinian’s “unconstitutional encroachments.”
Pashinian reacted furiously to the visit, branding Ter-Petrosian “the founder of the practice of election fraud” in Armenia.
The accusation was extraordinary given the fact that Pashinian played a key role in a protest movement led by Ter-Petrosian in 2007-2008. He famously declared at the time that the ex-president, who had led Armenia to independence in 1991, “always turns out to be right.”
Pashinian has been attacking the top clergy and Garegin in particular for the last two weeks, accusing them breaking their vows of celibacy. Earlier this week, he demanded the resignation of the Catholicos and pledged to set up a body tasked with installing a new church head.
Armenian opposition leaders, among them Ter-Petrosian’s political allies, condemned the move as illegal. They claim that the Armenian premier launched his crusade against the church in a bid to please Azerbaijan and/or neutralize a key source of opposition to his unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe.
Like other opposition groups, Ter-Petrosian’s Armenian National Congress party has blamed Pashinian for Armenia’s defeat in the 2020 war with Azerbaijan.