More on Akhtamar Church Service

Drawing by Tatul Sonentz, The Armenian Weekly.

news.am, Armenia
Sept 19 2010
Taraf: The whole country of Turkey can not lift a 100 pound cross


Today, the Turkish press is actively discussing the liturgy in the
Surb Khach Church on Akhtamar Peninsula in Van. It is noteworthy that
articles abound in criticism of Turkish authorities about the fuss
over «not placing the Cross for technical reasons». In particular, the
analytical journalist, Ayse Gyur, in his article in the newspaper
Taraf, shows some sarcasm while drawing parallels with the «inability»
to lift 100kg weight on the 10-15 meter high dome.

«In a country where construction firms are able to build 270 meter
tall skyscrapers, how is the Governor of Van not embarrassed by
claiming that he can not lift and place a 100 kg iron cross at some
10-15 meters? The crisis was overcome by the innovative entrepeneurs
of Van, and the cross was erected. Unfortunately, not atop the dome,
where it would have been acceptable to the Armenian community»,-
writes Gyur.

It is worthy of note that the September 19 liturgy in the Surb Khach
Church is the first in 100 years and only the Armenian Patriarchate of
Constantinople is participating in the liturgy in Surb Khach. The Holy
See of Echmiadzin, the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Holy
See of Cilicia refused to take part in the liturgy in Surb Khach (Holy
Cross) due to the Turkish authorities' decision to install the cross
on the church after the liturgy.

California Courier

Who Won Akhtamar Propaganda War: Armenians or Turks?
Harut Sassounian
September 23 2010

The Turkish government failed to attract the expected crowd of thousands of
worshippers from around the world to the first Mass in almost a century, held

at the Holy Cross Church in Akhtamar Island, on Sept. 19. Only a few hundred

Armenians showed up, mostly from Istanbul.

Turkey failed miserably in trying to deceive world opinion into believing that it

is tolerant towards Armenians. Eventually, it became obvious that Turkish

leaders were more interested in putting on a political show than allowing a

religious ceremony in a thousand-year old Armenian house of worship.

I wrote a column three years ago criticizing the Turkish government for

converting the Holy Cross Church into a state museum. At the time, I urged

Turkish officials to 1) place a cross on the church’s dome; 2) designate it as

a church rather than a museum, and allow regular celebration of Divine Liturgy;

and 3) revert ownership of the church to the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul

instead of placing it under the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Earlier this year, the Turkish government promised to place a cross on the

dome of the church and allow services to be performed there on Sept. 19.

I urged Armenians not to participate, knowing that Turkish officials’ true

intent was to stage a political show under the guise of religious ceremonies.

An intense debate ensued among Armenians on whether to boycott or attend

the church services. Articles exposing the Turkey’s sinister plans did little to

settle the controversy. Making matters worse, the Holy See of Etchmiadzin

and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem announced plans to send

representatives to the Akhtamar church, although the Catholicosate of Cilicia

declined to participate.

Finally, a lucky break! The Turkish government came to the rescue. A few

weeks before the scheduled

ceremony, a Turkish official announced that it would not be possible to place

the promised cross atop the church, making the ridiculous excuse of

“technical difficulties.”

Prime Minister Erdogan was caught in a dilemma. Had he allowed the cross

to be placed on the dome, he would have scored points with world public

opinion, but would have lost crucial votes in the hotly-contested Sept. 12

referendum on constitutional reforms.

The cross finally saved the day! The Holy See of Etchmiadzin canceled its

plans to send representatives to Akhtamar. The Armenian Patriarchate of

Jerusalem did likewise. Tour operators called off their arrangements to take

large numbers of Armenian worshippers to Lake Van. As a result, Turkey lost

the propaganda campaign and considerable income.

In a last ditch effort to increase attendance, a few days before Sept. 19, Prime

Minister Erdogan’s office sent invitations to the Armenia media, offering all

expense paid visits to Akhtamar, including free round-trip airfare, hotel

accommodations and meals. Another fifty Armenian commentators and

analysts received similar invitations, all of whom refused to go because of

Turkey’s refusal to install the cross.

Inadvertently, the Turks forced most Armenians to do the right thing and

cancel their visits to the Holy Cross Church. Interestingly, the Turkish

government behaved similarly when it declined to ratify the Armenia-Turkey

Protocols,

thereby safeguarding Armenia’s interests.

While the Armenian public, civic groups, and some political parties opposed

the Turkish plans at Akhtamar, the Armenian government remained remarkably

silent. For unknown reasons, Turkey did not invite Armenian officials to the

Holy Cross ceremonies. In view of the embarrassing games Ankara played

with the Armenia-Turkey Protocols and the subsequent collapse of soccer

diplomacy, it appears that Armenia’s leaders were not too eager to join Turks

in yet another ploy.

Regrettably, Armenians wasted far too much time and energy arguing with

each other about going to Akhtamar. This distraction prevented them from

organizing protests in major capitals to inform the world about the long history

of Turkish atrocities, destruction of thousands of churches, and occupation of

historic Armenian lands.
However, the boycott of the ceremonies because of the missing cross caught

the attention of the international media. Ironically, Turkish officials helped further

undermine their own cause, by placing the cross on the ground next to the Holy

Cross Church, in full view of the public and TV cameras.

The Turkish government has now promised to place the cross atop the church

in six weeks. Regardless of what Turkey decides to do with the cross, Armenians

should pursue their own course of action, rather than simply react to the petty

games of Turkish officials.

At this point, the only announcement Armenians are interested in hearing from

Ankara is the return of the Holy Cross Church to the Armenian Patriarchate of

Turkey.

[as viewed by Azerbaijan]

LITURGY SURB KHACH CHURCH OVER
news.az
Sept 20 2010
Azerbaijan

Historic mass on Akdamar goes smoothly amid cross controversy.

Hymns and prayers resonated on Akdamar Island on Sunday, 95 years after
religious services ended in the Armenian Orthodox Cathedral of the
Holy Cross, which occupies a special place in medieval Armenian art
and architecture and is a jewel for Turkey, as indicated by Turkish
and foreign observers.

"I am happy to be here, at the home of our ancestors. Turks and Kurds
here would like to shake our hands. We want to resolve our problems.

We are neighbors," said 58-year-old Ruben Narsisyan, a former police
officer from Armenia. Asked if the Turkish government's decision to
erect a cross on top of the church not before but after the ceremony
affected his decision to come, he said "not at all" because he does not
want to help nationalists in both countries. Narsisyan was in a group
of 10 Armenians who were visiting the island, 55 kilometers from the
eastern province of Van, for the historic religious ceremony. Most
people in the group said they know people in Armenia who cancelled
their reservations after the cross controversy erupted. Tour operators
also say they received cancellation requests for reservations from
the Armenian diaspora.

Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II agreed to send two senior
clerics to the church for the service, but decided otherwise after the
cross controversy surfaced. Although the restoration of the church was
completed in 2007, a cross has not been placed on top of the church
because Turkish officials said they need to do more research to find
out whether a cross originally existed there. Research showed a cross
existed but had never been put in its proper place.

Following an announcement made by the government that an annual
one-day religious service is going to be allowed at the church,
which has been declared a state museum operated by the Ministry of
Culture and Tourism, Turkish officials said there were practical and
technical difficulties over the erection of a 100-kilogram cross in
time for the service.

Clergymen from the Armenian Patriarchate of Ä°stanbul then decided to
temporarily display the cross outside the church, until it is erected
on the church after the service, when preparations are complete.

Archbishop Aram Ateshyan, deputy patriarch of the Armenian Patriarchate
based in Istanbul, who headed the service yesterday, told the press
on Saturday evening that the Turkish government made a promise to
permanently erect the cross in one-and-a-half months.

Father Tatoul Anushian, from the patriarchate in Ä°stanbul, told
Today's Zaman that the Armenian diaspora had "failed the test."

"There is no prerequisite for praying. If the cross is present, that
is enough. If Armenians outside Turkey are making this a big issue,
they would find another issue to criticize even if the cross issue
was not present," he said, adding that he believes in the government's
good will.

Today's Zaman interviewed many people from Van, who expressed a sincere
desire to have more Armenian visitors to the city not only to improve
the economy of the area but to lead to reconciliation. They indicated
no displeasure about the cross being placed on top of the church. To
the contrary, they said churches normally have crosses.

The church, which was recently saved from the ravages of time, was
built between 915 and 921 on the order of Vaspurakan King Gagik I. The
church is in the form of a four-leaved clover. It has an inner dome
topped by a pyramidal cone.

The church was turned into a monastery in 1131. It is distinct in
that it has human and animal figures, hunting scenes and palace life
depicted on the stone reliefs of its facade in addition to religious
scenes taken from the Bible and the Torah.

All hotels in Van were fully booked, with officials estimating that
close to 4,000 people came to the island on Sunday morning, including
63 domestic and 148 foreign accredited members of the press.

CHURCH UPROAR A SETBACK FOR TURKEY-ARMENIA TIES
By Gul Tuysuz
Washington Post
Sept 20 2010
VAN, TURKEY

An event that many had hoped would be a watershed on the road to
the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia became
instead a source of controversy Sunday when Turkish authorities did
not place a cross atop a newly renovated church in time for a highly
anticipated service.

Hundreds of Armenians gathered at the 10th-century Holy Cross Church
near Van, a city close to Turkey's border with Iran, for the first
religious service there since the mass killings of Armenians in 1915.

The event, at a site considered sacred by many Armenians, was seen as a
symbolic gesture by Turkey to mend relations with Armenia. Last week,
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the reopening of
the church "an expression of Turks' tolerance."

But the absence of the cross, and the bitter reaction it prompted,
reflect just how tenuous relations between the two nations remain. The
church is considered a historical building, and any additions require
government approval. Turkish officials said that the cross was too
heavy and that the church's dome would not support it.

The green light for the service was given earlier this year during
a period of rapprochement between Turkey, which is mostly Muslim,
and predominantly Christian Armenia. Turkish-Armenian relations had
picked up after a round of what was called "football diplomacy," with
the two countries' presidents attending exhibition matches between the
Turkish and Armenian national soccer teams. Those efforts culminated
in the announcement of the Turkey-Armenia Protocols last year, but the
agreement never took effect. Each side blamed the other for adding new
conditions to the deal, resulting in the failure of either nation's
parliament to ratify it.

Services at the church, which has been turned into a museum, are
generally not allowed. But when Turkey agreed to open the church for
services once a year, many saw the gesture as a small but important
step in addressing a historic wrong. Armenians say that 1.5 million
people were killed in an act of genocide between 1915 and 1917. The
Turkish government acknowledges that thousands of Armenians were
killed, but denies that the events constituted a genocide.

"It might mean more recognition of the historical past," said Howard
Atesian of Detroit, who was among a group of Armenian Americans who
came to Turkey to see their ancestral land.

But not all Armenians saw the ceremony as an honest effort by Turkey.

Even before the cross controversy led some tour groups to cancel their
visit to the church, Armenian commentators labeled the occasion a
publicity stunt. The Turkish invitation to prayer at the church was
seen as a way for Turkey to score points with the European Union,
which has been pressuring the country to grant more freedom to its
minorities.

Concerns that Turkey was using the event to gain international favor
and the outrage over the missing cross sparked protests in Yerevan,
the Armenian capital.

"It was sad but still beautiful," said Mari Esgici, an Armenian
restaurant owner, of Sunday's service. "At least the young ones got
to see this happen."

Tuysuz is a special correspondent.

AKHTAMAR MASS: LITURGY, BUT NO PEACE WITHOUT A 

CROSS AT LANDMARK RELIGIOUS SERVICE IN TURKEY
By Gayane Mkrtchyan
ArmeniaNow
20.09.10 | 19:14

For the first time in nearly a century Armenian Christians have had
a religious service in a 10th-century church on the Lake Van island
of Akhtamar, in what now is eastern Turkey.

The September 19 Liturgy at the Surb Khach (Holy Cross) Church was
conducted by Archbishop Aram Ateshian, the Armenian Patriarchal Vicar
of Constantinople. Service went on, despite the absence of a cross
on the dome of the church - a holy indicator for all Armenian churches.

Turkish officials say they intend to install one, but haven't managed
yet. Besides, the church is now (since a 2007 renovation) officially
a museum where on Friday, according to a CNN report, one Catholic
priest was politely stopped from chanting, saying that praying was
not allowed in museums.

The Etchmiadzin See of the Armenian Apostolic Church refused to send
its delegates to the event after learning that Turkish authorities
had failed to honor their pledge to install the Christian symbol
atop the building by the time of the liturgy. This also prompted
many Armenian Christians in Armenia and abroad to cancel their booked
trips to Turkey en masse.

Still, the Sunday event stood out by its significance to many who
were present.

For the first time since the genocide of these areas' original Armenian
population by Ottoman Turks coincidental to World War I, Van Turkish
authorities allowed a one-off liturgy and the red-stone Armenian church
was again shrouded in the sounds of a liturgy and the scent of incense.

Among an estimated 6,700 visitors to the island, about a thousand
were Armenians who had arrived from different corners of the world -
Europe, the United States, Armenia, but mostly from Istanbul, which
still has a relatively large community of ethnic Armenians.

The pilgrims lit candles in the church yard, kissed the Surb Khach
(Holy Cross) walls and whispered prayers.

Turkish authorities have tried to show a positive change in their
policy towards religious and ethnic minorities in a bid to improve
the country's international image and better its chances to join the
European Union.

The Akhtamar event has been widely viewed as one in a series of
similar public shows of a changing Turkey.

Another major impact that the church service in Akhtamar would have is
to build more cultural bridges between Turks and Armenians in Turkey
and Armenia, with which Ankara still has no diplomatic ties.

The internationally backed rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia
stalled in April after an apparent move by Turkey to set preconditions
before it ratified in parliament two signed protocols on normalization.

But the widely advertised event fell short of expectations as it
proceeded against the backdrop of a major row over the cross.

After completing a $1.5 million project on the restoration of the
Armenian church at Akhtamar the Turkish government gave it the status
of a museum, implying that religious services, prayers and lighting
candles would be inappropriate inside. Later, in what Ankara presented
as a gesture of goodwill, Turkey allowed an Armenian religious service
once a year - something that still left many Armenians dissatisfied.

Authorities in Turkey further said the original design of the church
did not allow for the installation of a heavy cross atop the building
and said installing it before the Sunday service would mean risking
damage to the dome. They said, though, the cross might be set up
afterwards.

"They shouldn't be thinking that they are doing a big favor. Let
them say what they have done to the rest of our sacred places -
they've turned them into stables and cattle-sheds. And today they are
allowing this liturgy conducted in a church without a cross. This
is just another bait of Turkish diplomacy," said Murad Keyan,
a German-Armenian with roots in Kharberd, now in Turkey, who had
arrived in Van days before the event at Akhtamar.

Similar views were expressed also by participants of an alternative
church mass organized by protesters at Tsitsernakaberd, a hilltop
complex in Yerevan perpetuating the memory of 1.5 million Armenians
killed in Genocide. Hundreds of Armenians attended the event in which
the Akhtamar service was called another publicity stunt attempted
by Turkey.

Meanwhile, scores of international media, as well as 25 Armenian and
about 150 Turkish reporters, were providing an extensive coverage
to the events at Akhtamar. But only a limited number of journalists
were actually allowed to go inside the church during the time of the
service proper.

Still, there was plenty to report about the goings-on outside the
church walls.

Among the Armenians who had arrived to attend the ceremonies were
also those living in Turkey who had converted to Islam. They said
they'd come to see their countrymen.

"During the massacres my grandfather was adopted and raised by Kurds.

My grandfather would say to us that we are Armenians by our roots.

Today, I've come here just to see Armenians," says Farsanda, a
70-year-old living in Baghesh. "I married a Kurd, and so did my
sister. And recently I found my cousins now living in Armenia."

Islamized Armenians from Mush -- Tekim (Hayk), Daniel, Mashala,
Hayrentin (Serob) were distributing grapes to the guests in one part
of the island.

"Hayk and Serob are our Armenian names. We have brought the grapes from
the village of Monkonk, which is two kilometers from Mush, which was
an old Armenian village where vineyards had originally been planted
by Armenians. Help yourselves," says Tekim.

The Moslem Armenian says that several years ago in the village of
Sasnashen in Armenia's Talin region he found his relatives and now
visits them once a year.

Candles were on sale in the church yard. Armenians who were visiting
the island were picking up rocks from around the place, taking a
handful of earth and filling it into their bags, taking some water
from Lake Van and filling it in bottles - to take to their distant
homes overseas as a reminder of their forefathers' land.

An information panel on the island says the Surb Khach Church was
built by King Gagik I. But it does not mention that he was an Armenian
king and that the church itself was built by a priest called Manuel
in 915-921 AD at the behest of Vaspurakan King Gagik I.

The booklets telling about Van also leave out such information,
presenting it as a city built by Kurds.

"It's a tragedy. Who doesn't know that this is an Armenian church,
built by Armenians? Authorities [in Turkey] should remove the status
of a museum from the church and its use by Armenians must be allowed
all the time. If not, then this is just another Turkish political
gimmick," said Nuran Akayan from Istanbul, who has his ancestral
roots in Sebastia.

ARMENIA WATCHES TURKEY'S HOLY CROSS MASS WITH 

FRUSTRATION, RAGE
by Marianna Grigoryan
EurasiaNet
Sept 20 2010
NY

A mass was held for the first time in 95 years at the 10th-century
Armenian Church of the Holy Cross in eastern Turkey, but in neighboring
Armenia, the event elicited little excitement.

Many Armenians claimed that the lack of a cross atop Holy Cross's
dome diluted the significance of the mass. Members of the government
and representatives of the Holy See of Etchmiadzin, the seat of the
Armenian Apostolic Church, did not attend the ceremony after local
Turkish government authorities asserted that the proposed cross
was "too heavy" to place atop the church. Restored by the Turkish
government, the church had been functioning as a museum since 2007.

Amid the row over the cross, Armenian travel agencies dropped flight
offers for the service on Lake Van's Akhtamar Island (called Akdamar
Island in Turkey). Armenian media outlets also discouraged consumers
from making the pilgrimage to the church, known as Surb Khach in
Amenian. [For details, see the EurasiaNet.org archive].

The Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople, as the Armenian Apostolic
Church's representation in Istanbul is called, officiated at the mass.

Patriarchate representatives reported to News.am that only about
150-200 worshippers traveled from Armenia for the service. At the
same time, the head of the patriarchate's Religious Council, Tatul
Anushian, noted that the number of attendees from Armenia was "more
than we had expected."

The patriarchate estimated the overall number of ethnic Armenians on
hand for the mass at 1,000-1,500, including visitors from the United
States, Europe and elsewhere in Turkey. It put the total turnout
figure at 6,700 people, with half of that number supposedly coming
from the nearby town of Van.

Instead of broadcasting the Holy Cross service, Armenian television
aired scenes from a protest held at Yerevan's Tsitsernakaberd, the
memorial to Ottoman Turkey's 1915 slaughter of hundreds of thousands
of ethnic Armenians in eastern Turkey, an act most Armenians consider
as genocide. Prior to the September 19 service, Holy Cross had not
functioned as a church since the massacre.

Armenian television coverage depicted hundreds of poster-bearing
participants screaming "Shame, shame!" at Turkey. The leader of one
youth organization, Miasin (Together), Hakob Hakobian, claimed that
the protestors were continuing "the mass interrupted 95 years ago
... by the Turkish government."

Meanwhile, some Armenian political figures suggested the cross dispute
offered fresh evidence that Turkey is not genuinely interested in
pursuing a diplomatic rapprochement with Armenia. Earlier this year,
a reconciliation process launched in 2009 ground to a halt. [For
background see EurasiaNet's archive]. "The Turks with their sly
diplomacy want to demonstrate to the world that they are a democratic
country, but they failed to accomplish their show successfully,"
declared Eduard Sharmazanov, the chief spokesperson for the governing
Republican Party of Armenia. "What happened in Akhtamar [at the]
Holy Cross church was a failed show, and the whole world witnessed it."

Referring to recent constitutional changes in Turkey, Ruben Safrastian,
director of the Armenian National Academy of Sciences' Oriental Studies
Institute, claimed that a "rather tense" political situation in Turkey
dictated the decision by Turkish authorities to hold the mass without
a cross atop the church. [For background see EurasiaNet's archive].

"By refusing to place the cross on the church, Turkey demonstrated to
the world that it is not ready to adopt European values," Safrastian
said.

Opinion was mixed on the streets of Yerevan. Laura Harutiunian, a
61-year-old pharmacist, criticized the government's stance. "It would
have been better had they gone to Akhtamar, which is ours, and there
express their opinion, rather than boycotting the mass," Harutiunian
said. "'I don't even accept the event held in Tsitsernakaberd. I think
that ... there could have been a better response than all that we saw."

For 45-year-old Yerevan nurse Armine Navasardian, what matters is not
why Holy Cross was reconstructed, but that the church, a central part
of Armenia's heritage, has been preserved. "The Turkish authorities
have reconstructed Akhtamar Church and it is not even important what
the reason was," Navasardian said. "Akhtamar is our Armenian church
and people must go there."