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Appeal to intâ€™l organizations: Save Heritage of Albaniaâ€™s Autocephalous Church and Turkic Christians

14 March 2017 11:00 (UTC +04:00)

Regional ethnographer, researcher Edward Vartanov (Russia), researcher Arthur Aghajanov (Ukraine), who is originally from Nagorno-Karabakh, and a group of activists of the “Movement for the Restoration of Autocephalous Church of Albania and the Heritage of the Turkic Christians” posted on Avaaz.org (Avaaz is a global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere) an appeal to international organizations (Appeal to international organizations: Save the Heritage of Autocephalous Church of Albania and the Turkic Christians).

The appeal was read out at an international conference, entitled “The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, origins, peacemaking and the role of civil society”, held in Baku March 14, APA reported.

The appeal addressed to the world community and international organizations reads as follows:

“Numerous communities of Kipchak Christians (Armenian Kipchaks) have for centuries lived on the Don, in the Crimea, Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Their important role in the trade and cultural-historical role of their settlements is well known, but their centuries-long spiritual connection to the Church of Caucasian Albania since the moment of baptism is completely forgotten at the present time, because during the movement of the 19th century, the Armenian Church of Etchmiadzin, by deceiving the Armenian public figures close to the Russian imperial court, did everything to re-subordinate them to Etchmiadzin and thus severed their spiritual connection with the Church of Caucasian Albania. In the first years of Soviet power on the Don, the Stalinist regime, in the person of Anastas Mikoyan, carried out mass extermination of the Don intellectual elite – the Turkic-Kipchak ancestors who saved their “Albanian baptism”. However, the resistance of the Don Armenians is not broken. We continue to restrain the interventions in the language field and are therefore interested in conducting scientific researches on our Turkic roots, as well as the spiritual connection to Autocephalous Church of Albania. On behalf of a group of Turkic Christians of Karabakh-Albanian origin, we call on the international community to prevent the remnants of Albanian moral, cultural, historical and architectural heritage from being "armenianized". Over the past two centuries, we’ve been made to follow the Armenian Church of Echmiadzin and deprived of ethnic consciousness and our churches, so we were registered as ethnic ‘Armenians.’ However, the Christians of Karabakh had for centuries been followers of the Albanian Autocephalous church, which was abolished in the early nineteenth century and whose entire heritage was given to the Armenian church in Echmiadzin. We call on Russia’s scientific community as well as the UN, UNESCO, and other international organizations to protect the cultural and moral heritage of Ani-Crimea-Don Armenians as well as the Armenians of Karabakh who have remained loyal to the Albanian church to this day.”