Tears in Akhtamar Surp Cross Church..

The ceremony made on 19th September for the first time after 95 years in Surp Cross Church in Akhtamar Island was made without a Cross.

Turkish goverment which gave permit for making a ceremony for once in the historical cathedral does not deem the cathedral as a worship place. It wants to show itself to the West as a country which has religious tolerance, to accelerate the acceptance process for European Union and to attract more tourists to the location, by using the cathedral as a tool for its political and economical objectives.
On one side, Turkish government smiles at the outer world and on the other side it makes inquiries for the purpose of determining whether there are families in Van who offer Armenian pilgrims to host them at their home and continues to launch formal investigations about those families it has detected.
And beyond everything, Ankara likes to see Armenians in conflict with eachother.
I don’t want to enter into details of that matter, but I want to share an approach bearing the Armenian spirit.
Watching in TV the prayers and hearty tears of our people coming from İstanbul, before the ceremony hasn’t begun yet in Akhtamar Surp Cross Church, and their image watering the walls of Surp Cross Church has certainly saddened many of us a lot.

We lost two thousand vanks and yegeghetzis in Anatolia…
Moreover in a way that pulls on the heartstrings of us. Our temples were dispossessed, plundered, converted to barns, shown as target in Nato excercises, their stones dating back to medieval age were removed and shanty houses were constructed… Their wreckage were demolished with pickaxes in order to search for treasure, and some of them were converted to mosques…
Akhtamar Surp Cross Church were to be demolished in the beginning of 1950s, but miraculously it was abondoned as a ruin at the last minute.
But let us don’t forget the fact that our churches are living in our hearts.
We never forget any of them.
Neither Surp Garabed in Muş, Mayr Dacar in Ani; nor our Surp Mesrobs, Surp Yerrortutyuns, Surp Crosses, Surp Nigoghayoses that are spread along Anatolia, all of which are monuments of superior architectural tastes.

The important thing is to hold our heads high in such very tragical times, and not to be captives, and subjects of ransom and mockery, in the hands of newspapers and various media, which have humiliated us at least for the last 60 years, and which try to supposedly glorify their identity by continuously otherizing us…
When losing their thousands of temples like Haylar Akhtamar Surp Cross Church in an heartrending way, our ancestors and hayrabeds wanted us to maintain our faith deep inside, and never forgo being dignified and standing upright, they didn’t want us to be a subject for journalists who continuously mock at us.