CAPX. In a move that is expected to widen the gap between the Armenian people and his disastrous leadership, Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has recently launched a series of attacks at the Armenian church, an institution that most Armenians around the world associate themselves with and care deeply about.
On Friday 30 May 2025, Pashinyan posted a series of abusive Facebook statements against the leader of the Armenian church, Garegin II, calling for his removal. The online duelling continued for a few days; at one point Pashinyan offered to have his genitalia examined for proof that he has not been circumcised, after the spokesman for the Patriarch, implying Pashinyan was not a Christian, attacked ‘false “believers”’ who had ‘replaced the seal of the Holy Cross with the sign of circumcision’.
Perhaps the most bizarre part of the story may be that Pashinyan went on this campaign against the Armenian church after a statement made by Azerbaijan’s top Shia Muslim Cleric, Sheikh-ul-Islam Allahshukur Pashazade, who said in a statement that the Armenian church poses ‘great threat to all neighbouring region countries’.
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Yet others believe that the trigger behind the barrage of insults was a speech that Garegin II delivered during a conference in Berne, Switzerland. He accused Azerbaijan of committing ethnic cleansing in Karabakh and occupying Armenian border areas – a position that Pashinyan himself refuses to publicly hold under pressure from Azerbaijan’s dictator Aliyev.
Shortly after returning from a meeting with Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan, during which he allegedly made further concessions to Turkey and its protégé Azerbaijan, Pashinyan moved to arrest Archbishop Bagrat Galstanian, the Primate of the Tavush Diocese, and 13 of his supporters on charges of organising a coup d’etat. All detainees deny the charges and consider them politically motivated.
Ironically, it was Pashinyan’s security forces that used illegal ordnance against peaceful protesters led by Galstanian in June 2024 that led to large-scale casualties among civilians and drew strongly-worded criticism from human rights and freedom of speech organisations, including Amnesty International, International Press Institute, Reporters Without Borders, Transparency International, among others.
That nation-wide protest movement has denounced Pashinyan’s border demarcation along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border as illegal and unconstitutional, and has demanded his resignation.
However, the confrontation did not stop with the arrest of Galstanian and his supporters. Masked police and officers from Armenia’s National Security Service arrived at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin – the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic church – on 27 June to detain Archbishop Mikayel Ajapahian, the Primate of the Shirak Diocese.
Pashinyan-controlled law enforcement and judiciary accused him of making public statements more than a year ago that, they say, constituted a call to seize power and forcibly overthrow Armenia’s constitutional order. Their efforts met fierce resistance from clergy and laymen, who blocked the gates as they attempted to detain Archbishop Ajapahian.
‘I am not a threat to this country, the threat is sitting in the government,’ Ajapahian said in reference to Pashinyan during the attempt to arrest him. He subsequently surrendered to the police after a stand-off.
It is widely believed that Pashinyan’s actions and inaction led to the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 and the forced exodus of 120,000 Armenians from the region in 2023 – events that benefited autocratic oil-rich Azerbaijan, at least until recently Russia’s main proxy in the region.
Pashinyan has built a massive and well-funded police apparatus, by luring thousands of young uneducated men from Armenia’s villages, offering them highly attractive salaries and lifestyles in Armenia’s capital and ratcheting up repressions against political opponents.
In a statement issued in connection with Pashinyan’s actions against the church and its leaders, the National Democratic Alliance – Armenia’s largest pro-Western opposition party – stated ‘[t]his situation is not a random or spontaneous occurrence; it is a politically orchestrated process aimed at undermining and eradicating the essential foundations of Armenian identity. The goal is to psychologically disarm the Armenian people in the face of ongoing aggression and to strip them of any spiritual values, which are crucial for fostering voluntary resistance and action’.
In turn, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the largest grassroots Armenian Diaspora organisation in the US, stated that this ‘marks a dangerous new chapter in Armenia’s descent into authoritarian rule’.
However, like in Georgia, some of Armenia’s western partners have been fooled by Pashinyan’s empty promises and his masterfully played ‘smoke and mirrors’ game.
He has drawn support from President Macron of France, who recently issued a supportive social media post following a phone conversation with Pashinyan, and the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief, Kaia Kallas, who visited Yerevan amid the ongoing crisis to offer funding.
Pashinyan remains highly unpopular in Washington, where he has been unable to secure any high-level meetings or endorsements since his failed visit to the US capital in January 2025. Religious freedom advocates in the US – some of whom maintain close contact with the office of Vice President J.D. Vance – are well aware of the longstanding tensions and undertone of oppressiveness between Pashinyan and the church.
However, the recent attacks have grown into a full-blown religious freedom crisis. What began as verbal attacks degrading and demoralising the church’s leaders and their reputation as well as the faithful people of Armenia, whose spiritual, moral and national identity are deeply rooted in their church, has turned into what some of us have been dreaded for a while: an effort by Erdogan and Aliyev to not only degrade and insult the Armenian church but to usurp its independence, take control and decide who should lead the world’s oldest Christian church.
Such outrageous developments should make every supporter of human rights and religious freedom – whether Christian or not – very uneasy.
Armenia is on the verge of being annexed by Azerbaijan, and its church is the only remaining pillar of resistance. It deserves our support in its fight against domestic tyranny and foreign aggression.