In Armenia, a bitter dispute escalates between PM Pashinyan and the Church

A confrontation between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Armenia’s top Christian clerics seems to be deepening, polarising the deeply religious South Caucasus nation of 3 million.

St Echmiadzin, the Armenian Apostolic Church’s headquarters, has been “taken over by the anti-Christian, immoral, antinational and antistate group and has to be liberated”, Pashinyan wrote on Facebook on Tuesday, adding: “I will lead this liberation.”

The dispute escalated late last month, with bells ringing tocsin over St Echmiadzin on June 27.

Usually, the loud and alarming sound signals an event of significance, such as a foreign invasion.

But on that parching-hot June day, the noise rang out to signal the detention of a top cleric who, according to Pashinyan, was part of a “criminal-oligarchic clergy” that was involved in “terrorism” and plotted a “coup”.

He said the “coup organisers” include the Church’s head, Karekin II, who has disputed with Pashinyan in a months-long personal feud.

But the conflict should not be seen as a confrontation between secular authorities and the entire Church, observers said.

“It’s a personal clash,” Richard Giragosian of the Regional Studies Center think tank based in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, told media.

But some Armenians still described the furore in almost apocalyptic terms.