Ter-Petrosian also condemned the Armenian authorities for arresting Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetian last week hours after his strong criticism of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s efforts to depose Garegin. He said Karapetian is prosecuted for making an “ordinary political statement” which the authorities claim amounted to a call for violent regime change.
Pashinian launched his campaign against Garegin and other senior clergymen late last month, accusing them of breaching their vows of celibacy. Like other opposition figures, Ter-Petrosian condemned the campaign. He made a point of visiting Garegin at his Echmiadzin residence and voicing “full support” for the Catholicos on June 7. Pashinian reacted furiously to the visit.
The latest meeting of the two men took place at Ter-Petrosian’s private residence in Yerevan. The ex-president’s office said they discussed Karapetian’s arrest and the broader situation in the country.
“According to the President [Ter-Petrosian,] Pashinian is the embodiment of defeat,” the office said in a statement. “He was disgracefully defeated in the Artsakh war, and he will certainly also lose the war he declared against the Armenian Church.”
Armenian opposition leaders claim that Pashinian launched his crusade against the church in a bid to please Azerbaijan and/or neutralize a key source of opposition to his unilateral concessions to Armenia’s arch-foe. The premier has denied that.
Azerbaijan’s top Shia Muslim cleric closely linked to the government renewed his attacks on the Armenian Church earlier this month. He accused the church of inciting Armenians to “fight to the death” in a letter to the World Council of Churches that hosted late last month an international conference in Switzerland on the preservation of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian religious and cultural heritage. Garegin attended and addressed that conference.