!âJĞ="justify">It was a good step to reopen the Ahtamar Church, but it is only a half step. The Armenian community should be allowed to worship and organize services in the church, as Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan has demanded.

ês from Jesus Christ is his words that put an equal share between the divine and temporal authorities. “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,” he said according to the New Testament, “and unto God the things that are God's.”

Some political theorists think that this particular phrase in the gospels opened the way for the separation of church and state in the West. The state, which we finance by our taxes and serve us in return with earthly goods and services, can have our material loyalty. But it has neither the power nor the right to interfere in our spiritual beliefs and practices. It should, in other words, simply respect the church, the synagogue or the mosque.

This seems to be quite a fair division. However it is not always observed. Sometimes people who act in the name of this or that religion tries to dominate the state and that's what we call “theocracy.” It is bad, because it leads to tyranny in the name of God, about whom we have very different sets of beliefs.

The trouble with Libido dominandi:

But sometimes tyranny comes from the other side. Sometimes states try to dominate the religious sphere simply because they love to dominate everything. One of the early church fathers, St. Augustine, in his classic, “City of God,” termed this desire as “libido dominandi,” or the “lust for power.”

Unfortunately, unlike the tolerant and grown-up Ottoman Empire, the young Turkish Republic has inhibited a very dense libido dominandi since its beginning. It tried to dominate virtually every sphere in society, which included, of course, religion of all kinds. Islam was completely taken under control and independent Islamic institutions like the Sufi orders were closed down. Some major Christian Churches like that of the Greek Orthodox and the Armenian have been given some limited space with the Treaty of Lausanne, but even that has been shrunk gradually over time. 

The ‘Akdamar' story:

Some of the weird things that took place around the re-opening of the Ahtamar Church will be better understood within this context. It is of course a kind and nice move to restore and open the 1000-year old sanctuary, but the steps taken in order to Turkify — and de-churchify — it are absurd. First, it was renamed in Turkish as “Akdamar.” Second, it was opened not as a church but as a “museum.” It was also denied the right to have a cross at the top. In the opening ceremony, giant posters of Atatürk and huge Turkish flags were more visible then any thing else. No wonder some Armenians have felt unhappy about all that.

Why do we feel the need to show our dominance on a little building? How do we have the right to define it as a “museum,” whereas it was built in order to worship God? And what do we gain by all that?

These are questions the Turkish authorities should ask themselves. It was a good step to reopen the Ahtamar Church, but it is only a half step. The Armenian community should be allowed to worship and organize services in the church, as Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan has demanded. Again, as he demanded, the Turkish Foreign Ministry should return the cross of the temple to its original place.

We should understand that Ahtamar is not a government building; it is a sanctuary built to worship God and by people who were living in this land many centuries before the Turkish Republic ever existed. It should be treated as such.