Unity, Disunity, Power and Destiny
By Edmond A. Azadian
Armenians have talked and worried about unity throughout their history
because they have suffered much as a consequence of disunity. It is
ironic that the more they talk about the need for unity, the less
unified and more fragmented they become.
However, we are united in pain and suffering but divided when we
face leadership and the pursuit of future goals. Today we are united
in helping our brothers and sisters caught in the crossfire in the
Syrian civil strife. Yet, we are divided in most spheres of Armenian
life. We finally were blessed in having a free and independent Armenia,
and we are at a loss as to what to do about it. People who aspired to
independence are now abandoning independent Armenia. The leadership
at home and abroad is divided. We are witnessing a leadership crisis.
Our church is still divided for no reason. It seems as though a people
who had emancipated themselves from centuries of foreign domination
would seize the historic opportunity and rebuild Armenia and unify
the church. But there is general apathy throughout the diaspora
and Armenia and people are no longer alarmed when confronted with
existential dangers.
There is too much talk about the depopulation of Armenia, but almost
no movement to reverse it. Turkey and Azerbaijan have deliberately
blockaded Armenia to strangulate the last historic portion of Armenian
existence.
Armenians are individualists, born out of centuries of oppression which
have shaped our individual will for survival. Yet we are individualists
at the expense of our collective goals and a common future. As we try
to broaden individualism, the most we can achieve is partisan pride,
countering our universal goals.
Many “deeds of valor” have been recorded in our church, in the words
of our historian Moses of Khoren. But it seems that those achievements
are intended to outdo other levels of hierarchy in the church. For
example, under His Holiness Catholicos Aram I, crucial projects are
being developed at the Catholicosate of Antelias, like the publication
of scholarly books, symposia to preserve the Western Armenian language
and prizes to encourage writers, etc. But all these endeavors seem to
be intended to bring credit to Antelias, rather than to the overall
church, since the leadership in Antelias is in competition with the
Mother See of Echmiadzin, determined to challenge its authority.
In Istanbul, the Turkish government has been holding the Armenian
Patriarchate hostage to use it for its own political ends.
The authorities used and abused whatever authority Patriarch Mutafian
had by sending him to European capitals to lobby for Turkey’s admission
into the European Union.While they were using his credibility,
they cynically terrorized him as well, driving him into near
catatonia. Indeed, bombs falling in the Patriarchate’s neighborhood
and Hrant Dink’s assassination proved to be the straws that broke the
camel’s back. And today, by forbidding the election of a new patriarch,
their goal is to keep the status of the patriarchate in limbo.
A different scenario has been playing out in Jerusalem, one of the
political nerve centers of the world. After the loss of Archbishop
Torkom Manoogian, the Brotherhood of St. James convened and elected
Archbishop Aris Shirvanian as Locum Tenens. The aging and frail cleric
knows as well as the other members of the brotherhood that the burdens
of the Patriarchate are too heavy a responsibility.
Yet the Brotherhood could not manage its responsibilities properly with
a wisdom commensurate to the awesome challenge that the Patriarchate
is facing. Hopefully, come January 2013, a more circumspect outlook
will enlighten the brotherhood in order to bring the most capable
spiritual leader to the throne.
Here again, the Supreme Patriarch of the Armenian Church as well as the
government of Armenia were kept in an observer position, in deference
to the independence and the legal authority of the brotherhood, while
all the powers in the region have been exerting their influence to
bring an outcome in line with their political interests.
The Israeli and Jordanian governments as well as the Palestinian
Authority have more to say than the heads of the Armenian Church and
the Armenian government. To demonstrate how deeply the above parties
are involved in defining the fate of the Armenian Patriarchate in
Jerusalem it suffices to say that one of the sticking
points in the failure of the Camp David accord was the status of the
Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem. Israel demanded to have the Armenian
Quarter under its jurisdiction and Yasser Arafat refused.
This outside meddling, barring Armenian authorities from intervening,
is encouraged by the very by-laws and disposition of the Jerusalem
brotherhood.
Thanks to their creative talents, Armenians deserved to become a great
nation, yet we have ended up with a miniscule homeland. At one time,
during the reign of Tigranes the Great, the Armenians built an empire.
Unfortunately that empire fell victim to Tigranes’ arrogance; indeed,
it is recorded that when the Armenian king saw the Roman army advance
under Lucullus, he said: “If these are the delegates, they are too
many; if they are the troops, they are too few.” Yet the Romans
arrived and defeated his empire, with the help of his own son, a
story of betrayal that has been a familiar refrain in Armenian history.
The Armenian kingdom in Cilicia, which lasted from the 11th to the
14th centuries, was the setting of rivalries and betrayals among the
Armenian princes, until the Mamluks overran the kingdom in 1375.
As we study Ottoman history, we find that the Turks were able to
preserve a united state by upholding the absolute power of the ruler.
However, the sultans themselves have been able to maintain that
absolute power not only through ruthless elimination of any dissent
by subject nations, but also by eradicating any political challenge
to authority within their own circles.
Recently a Turkish historian published the history of the Ottoman
rulers, revealing that each and every Ottoman sultan, from Fatih
Sultan Muhammad to Abdul Hamid, had murdered his own children upon
ascending the throne, to forestall any challenge to their rule.
The first sultan who murdered both his son and his brother was Sultan
Murat. The historian has mentioned only one sultan who had spared
his progenies, Orhan Ghazi (1288-1359.) It is said that Suleiman the
Magnificent had his children killed before his own eyes by throwing
them into boiling water.
Incidentally Suleiman the Magnificent is much admired in the West
for his conquests and his patronage of the arts.
In The Prince, Machiavelli defined the prerequisites and parameters
of power in the most cynical terms. We Armenians have always lacked
that cynicism, to our own detriment.
That has been our destiny.