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Turkish high court rules against lay Armenians' election request

10 February 2011 [11:47] - TODAY.AZ
Turkey’s Council of State rejected an appeal Tuesday from lay representatives of the country’s Armenian community to allow the minority to conduct an election to replace its incapacitated patriarch.

In its ruling, the high court said the issue fell outside of its jurisdiction.

An initiating committee consisting of lay representatives of the Armenian community is at odds with the patriarchate over who should succeed the gravely ill Patriarch Mesrop II as spiritual leader of the community. The lay members have been seeking to annul the Istanbul Governor’s Office’s decision to name Archbishop Aram Ateşyan as “deputy patriarch” and give him administrative authority over the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul. The move, which was also supported by the Interior Ministry, has effectively split into two on the issue.

Sabouh Aslangil, an attorney for the lay members, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review that the process was “open-ended and uncertain.”

Observing the rules

Speaking to the Daily News in an interview, Ateşyan said there would be no election for a new patriarch as long as Mesrop II was alive. “This is the rule of the Armenian Apostolic Church,” he said. “I am occupying this post for a temporary period. [Those who oppose] this are stretching the limits without respect and are weakening the patriarchate. One has to be patient.”

Patriarch Mesrop II reportedly suffers from frontal dementia. Ateşyan said doctors were “not hopeful” about his health but “we will continue to believe in a miracle.”

Ateşyan criticized the lay members’ initiating committee for creating turmoil by petitioning the Istanbul Governor’s Office to allow for a patriarchal election separate from the church’s spiritual committee’s application to elect a “co-patriarch.”

Last month Ateşyan attempted to appoint Tatul Anusyan as an archbishop, but his request was not accepted by the Armenian Church’s Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin in Armenia.

“Our request was not denied but postponed until after the patriarchate elections,” Ateşyan told the Daily News. “There is no friction there.”

Etchmiadzin is regarded as the mother church for Armenians, but the patriarchate in Turkey, which founded with the permission of Mehmed the Conqueror, is “first among equals” among the four apostolic central seats worldwide. Thus, it has a degree of autonomy from the Etchmiadzin, which cannot intervene in the patriarchate’s internal affairs nor in its election of a patriarch.


/Hurriyet Daily News/
URL: http://www.today.az/news/regions/80670.html

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