“The statement of Archbishop Aram Atesyan, the General Vicar of the Armenian Patriarch of Istanbul, is unacceptable from several perspectives,” expert of Turkish studies Ruben Melkonyan said in an interview with Public Radio of Armenia.
First, he said, the fact of Atesyan’s being a clergyman does not give him the right to interfere with political processes. Besides, the Archbishop’s statement actually contradicts the interests of the Armenian nation and does not reflect the historic events. “At last it is was an additional effort to please the Turkish authorities,” Melkonyan said.
According to the expert, “with the statement Atesyan was also trying to create a basis for Turkey to end messages to Germany. The Turkish press has already branded the statement as “Armenians’ shocking response to Germany.” That is to say that the statement has serve the target.
Could the letter to Erdogan be a result of political pressure? “All Armenian Patriarchs have been under the pressure of Turkish authorities starting from 1923, but no Patriarch has ever served the Turkish authorities with such vigor and has never made such statements,” Ruben Melkonyan said.
“Atesyan has passes beyond all written an unwritten norms and has tried to be more Catholic than the Pope,” Melkonyan concluded.
