Kevork Hagopjian - Armenia’s Church-State Showdown | Ep 504, Jan 13, 2026 [EP504]

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Guest:

• Kevork Hagopjian

Topics:

• The Legal Architecture: Autonomy, Exclusive Mission, and State Neutrality
• Engineering Parallel, Schismatic Structures
• Criminal Law as Leverage
• Bern in Action and Reaction
• The Deeper Stakes: National Identity

Episode 504 | Recorded: January 12, 2026

#Armenia #ArmenianChurch #Etchmiadzin #HumanRights #ReligiousFreedom

Show Notes

Kevork Hagopjian joins us to explain his thesis that Armenia’s current church-state standoff is a rule-of-law test. We discuss what the Constitution and international human-rights law require, why executive pressure on Etchmiadzin crosses a legal bright line, and how prosecutions, detentions, and scandal narratives can become tools of institutional control. We also examine the Bern conference on Artsakh, foreign pressure and narrative management, and the longer-term risk that a playbook used against the Church can later be applied to other independent institutions in Armenia.

Main Topics Addressed

• Armenia’s constitutional framework on religion
• State neutrality and church autonomy
• Executive pressure to unseat the Catholicos
• Efforts to cultivate “alternative” clergy structures
• Selective prosecution and pretrial detention practices
• The “intimate video” scandal as a due-process test
• Bern conference on Artsakh and regional blowback
• ECHR and other international legal remedies
• Risks of broader institutional subordination

Key Questions Discussed

Autonomy, Exclusive Mission, and State Neutrality

• What does “state neutrality” require the government to do, and to not do?
• How do “separation” and “exclusive mission” fit together legally, what do they authorize and not authorize?
• If the government says it is only exercising free speech, when does speech become state interference?

Engineering Parallel, Schismatic Structures

• What is the legal line between meeting clergy and promoting an internal church split?
• Are we already past the point of “alternative authority” creation, and what does that imply?
• Is this conflict used to distract from broader failures, and can society afford to ignore it?

Criminal Law as Leverage

• What evidence would show these cases are ordinary law enforcement rather than selective criminalization?
• How should courts apply pretrial detention standards in politically sensitive clerical cases?
• At what point does the accumulation of “plausible” cases become evidence of abuse?

The Intimate Video

• What minimum forensic steps should be required before officials label material “confirmed”?
• How do you separate lawful privacy enforcement from political exploitation of scandal?
• If church discipline is slow or opaque, what can the state lawfully do, and what can it never do?

Bern in Action and Reaction

• What makes timing and causality legally relevant, and what alternative explanations should be tested?
• Where is the boundary between protected advocacy on Artsakh and impermissible incitement?
• If foreign actors amplify anti-church narratives, what lawful state response preserves neutrality?
• What recourse exists through international courts (including ECHR), and what can they realistically deliver?

The Deeper Stakes: National Identity

• What is the larger institutional risk, what is being “re-architected”?
• Which global comparisons help (Poland, Bulgaria, Israel, Latin America), and which mislead?
• What guardrails prevent a slide toward a state-aligned “patriotic church” model?
• What does a clean off-ramp look like that restores trust without granting blanket impunity?

Thoughts from the Participants

• Kevork Hagopjian: The conflict is a bright-line rule-of-law test, because the state cannot engineer church leadership or punish protected speech under constitutional and treaty standards.
• Hosts: The goal is to map legal first principles onto concrete events (prosecutions, detentions, and scandal narratives) and ask what de-escalation looks like in practice.

Referenced Articles & Sources

• When the State Hunts a Church: Armenia’s Steady Break with the Rule of Law
• Pashinyan’s “vision of reforming” the church (Armenpress)
• Refutation of a False Premise (Mirror-Spectator)
• Vehapar dismisses Bishop Gevork Saroyan (tert.am)
• Pashinyan says he does not recognize Saroyan’s dismissal (armtimes.com)
• Abp. Ajapahyan to appeal to the ECHR (Azatutyun)

Wrap-up

That’s our show! We hope you found it useful. Please find us on Social Media and follow us everywhere you get your Armenian news.

Thanks to Laura Osborn for the music on our podcasts.

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