Mirrorspectator/YEREVAN — Every morning I watched from my window as Ter Minas walked down to the St. Hakob Church, which was built in 2005 in Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital city of Stepanakert. During the Soviet years, as is known, nearly all churches were destroyed or converted into warehouses and theaters. The Stepanakert Theater building used to be a church and was converted into a theater during the same Soviet years. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, church services were held in the theater building itself, until this small church was built and the locals had a real church in which to light candles, get baptized, and married.
The New Artsakh Facebook site has published evidence that Azerbaijan leveled to the ground that little church. Maybe it needs fact checking, but the video presented leaves no doubt that it was really destroyed, and former Minister of Culture and Tourism of Artsakh Sergey Shahverdyan posted that he believed it was true.
So after the exodus of 2023, I accidentally met Ter Minas in Yerevan’s Opera Square. He had bought new shoes and sat down next to me on a bench to rest a bit.
— Good afternoon, Ter Minas, — I said.
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— Oh, good afternoon, — the priest of the St. Hakob Church answers. I don’t remember your name, he adds.
How strange it was to see Ter Minas at the Opera Square. It seemed that he should always be in that small church in Stepanakert.
If demolishing the parliament building is “okay,” then why demolish the church, especially when Azerbaijan claims that the country is a country of all religions?
Considering that one of the two churches in the Karabakh’s capital has been demolished, the fate of the main one, the Holy Mother of God Cathedral, can also be considered endangered.
Recently, evidence has also been published that the Three Taps monument or theater fountain, known to locals in Stepanakert, has been demolished next to the theater. The monument includes stone masks of three men: sad, serious, and laughing. This monument is very symbolic, as if reflecting what has happened and is happening to Nagorno-Karabakh. It is both sad, serious, and “laughable.”
After 2023, the Karabakh Armenians face serious psychological issues. The whole life they lived there seems to have never existed. It was just a dream. Imagine, one morning you wake up and you are not at home – a completely different picture is visible from your window. Your street, church, and beloved park are gone. Yet they have all this in Armenia today. It is the same as they had there – even better ones, more beautiful maybe – and it is the same…but it’s not.
Photo by Marut Vanyan: St. Hakob Church in Stepanakert, 2023
Marut VANYAN
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