Hotel in the territory of church (video)
The Turkish authorities have given permission for building a hotel in the territory of Kharberd’s St. Mary the Virgin church. This Armenian Evangelic Church, which has 200 years’ history, is the only one among Armenian religious institutions, which has been preserved in the city of Kharberd of Western Armenia. “It’s true, the roof has been destroyed over time, but, I think, it wasn’t done intentionally; the building hasn’t been repaired for decades and has been damaged; it’s because of negligence, but there wasn’t any state project to destroy it,” says specialist in monuments Samvel Karapetyan. This church has been registered in Diyarbekir’s list of maintenance of cultural and natural heritage as Assyrian church. The monuments specialist is sure that the church is still standing as Turks are sure that it isn’t Armenian. “Assyrians aren’t afraid as it isn’t their homeland. When you aren’t in your home, you aren’t a problem or a danger. One Armenian in Van is a problem, but one million Armenians in Istanbul aren’t a problem.” It is the reason that for example in Istanbul today there are about 37 Armenian churches, but the churches in the territory of Western Armenia were mercilessly destroyed. Now no one can say how many churches there were in Western Armenia and how many of them were destroyed. The matter is that until 1915, when their destruction started, the churches hadn’t been registered. At the instruction of Young Turks government, in 1910s’ Constantinople Patriarchate formed the list of only operating Armenian churches according to the provinces. But as only operating churches were registered and not in all the provinces, we can say that the list is not complete. “Under unknown circumstances the copy of this manuscript, which was kept in Matenadaran and was equal to the original one, was lost,” said Samvel Karapetyan. Before the disappearance of the list, in 1964 they were translated and published, but names of some places were translated in a wrong way and were unrecognizable. Now there isn’t even a chance to check them. Watch details in the video!
