Turkish Armenian community facing uncertainty with resignations

Monday, November 29, 2010

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Karaköse quit his post after the patriarchate's financial board resigned.

The administration of the Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey has been thrown into uncertainty following a decision by the institution’s financial board to resign en masse due to differences of opinion with the acting patriarch.

“It has never been like this in the whole history of the patriarchate,” Melkon Karaköse, a key figure in the community and most important person on the financial board, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review last week. “We [Turkish Armenians] are at the risk of losing our integrity and unity as a society and we are passing through extremely dark times.”

The board chose to resign following problems with Archbishop Aram Ateşyan, who was made acting patriarch by the Interior Ministry after the Armenian community failed to select a new patriarch after current Patriarch Mesrop II was diagnosed with frontal dementia two years ago, leaving him unable to fulfill his duties. Under the Armenian Aposolic Church's cannon law, a new patriarch cannot be selected until the previous one has died.

Although the financial board was previously necessary to facilitate the community’s commercial matters, the power now solely rests in the acting patriarch’s hands.

“The financial board fell into bad terms with Archbishop Ateşyan and decided to resign. I told them that if they quit, I would quit as well because it was impossible for me to take such great responsibility on my shoulders,” Karaköse said.

“Ateşyan is an honest man, but he needs to take measures today in order to prevent being taken to account tomorrow, or else he will suffer greatly,” Karaköse said, adding that the community should have been allowed to elect a new patriarch, rather than trying to cope with the substitute system.

The resignation of the financial board, which has helped handle the Armenian community’s commercial matters for the past 550 years, has left the community in a difficult position as financial dealings have required the signature of one cleric and one layperson to become valid as part of a tradition dating back to Ottoman times.

“When I did not sign a document, all the financial conducts of the patriarchate used to come to a hiatus,” said Karaköse, who has been the layperson responsible for signing off on the documents for many years. “I sued to sign all the documents on behalf of the community, and the reason why a civil signature is required together with that of the clergy is to overcome possible acts of bribery.”

Karaköse has served in the patriarchate’s top positions for the past 30 years and has been considered the right-hand man of the last three patriarchs, including Mesrop II.