Police, clergy scuffle in Armenia as standoff escalates

YEREVAN

Supporters of arrested Archbishop of the Armenian Apostolic Church Bagrat Galstanyan, accused of trying to mastermind the attempted coup, rally outside the Avansky court in Yerevan early on June 26, 2025.

A scuffle broke out in Armenia on June 27 between clergymen and police, part of an escalating standoff between the influential Church and the Caucasian nation's authorities.

Two sides have been at loggerheads since Catholicos Garegin II, the church's spiritual leader, began calling for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to resign over Armenia's military defeat to Azerbaijan in 2020.

The loss of then-disputed Karabakh region to Azerbaijan in 2023 has divided the country and escalated the dispute.

On June 25, the Armenian authorities said they had foiled a coup plot involving a senior cleric who had rallied opposition to Pashinyan and more than a dozen other suspects.

The latest confrontation erupted on June 27 after police arrived at the residence of the head of the Apostolic Church to arrest another senior figure, archbishop Mikael Adjapahyan.

He is accused of publicly calling for the government to be overthrown. Masked police attempted to enter the residence of Garegin II to arrest Adjapahyan.

Prosecutors had earlier charged him with "public calls aimed at seizing power... and violently overthrowing the constitutional order.”

Following the scuffle between priests and law enforcement officers, Adjapahyan said he would surrender to police but denied any wrongdoing.

"This is a blatant act of lawlessness against me," he said.

"I have never been a threat to our country. The real threat sits in government. I won't hide. I'll go with them."

But locals and priests closed the gates of the residence, preventing Adjapahyan from leaving the premises and surrendering to police.

Armenia's security service said it would deploy additional forces to detain Adjapahyan.

Earlier this month, Pashinyan escalated the feud with the church by accusing Garegin II of fathering an illegitimate child and urging believers to oust him.

That prompted calls for Pashinyan to be excommunicated.

Pashinyan’s claim sparked fresh anger among the church’s followers, including Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, who appeared in a video saying that the religious institution was under attack.

Karapetyan, 59, was detained June 18, days after the clip was posted online, and accused of calling for seizing power in the country. Pashinyan later said the billionaire’s energy company, Electricity Networks of Armenia, would be nationalized.

In a new war of words, Zareh Ashuryan, the spokesperson for the Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church Karekin II, implied that Pashinyan was circumcised, therefore not a Christian.

In response, Pashinyan told his 1.1 million followers on Facebook he was prepared to expose himself to the head of the Armenian Church and his spokesman, to prove they were wrong that he had been circumcised.