Former Pashinyan adviser: Attempts to weaken Armenian church will backfire

Political analyst Arsen Gasparyan, a former chief adviser to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, states that efforts to sideline the Armenian Apostolic Church will only increase its influence in society.

Speaking at a conference on Wednesday, Gasparyan said pressure on the church had been ongoing since 2018, drawing comparisons to Cold War-era tactics used by leftist regimes in Eastern Europe and Cuba.

“These revolutionary governments all sought to radically secularize public life and suppress religious institutions,” he noted, adding that Armenia’s current authorities are following a similar path.

The analyst stressed that the church remains independent of the state and warned that efforts to push it out of public life would not succeed.

“No matter how much the authorities try to suppress the Armenian Apostolic Church or sideline it from public life, it will inevitably play a bigger and more prominent role in both society and domestic politics,” Gasparyan claimed.

In response to a question from Panorama.am about whether other leaders used similarly offensive language during their anti-church campaigns, Gasparyan clarified: “No, absolutely not. There may have been harsh or critical statements, but the foul language we hear today was never used, not in Eastern European socialist states, Africa or Cuba.”