K. Manoyan. "Liturgy should be served 365 days in a year”

The head of the Armenian Cause Office Giro Manoyan who was present on the rally held in the Genocide Victims Memorial recorded that the Turkish authorities restoring the church, turned it into a museum, allowing the liturgy to be served once in a year.

"Our protest is for serving a liturgy on every single day of the year in the Armenian Church," he said to journalists.

The participants of the rally, the majority of which are young people announce words of shame and criticism addressed to the Turkish authorities.

As Giro Manoyan noted, the Turks turned the Aghtamar’s Holy Cross Church issue into a " problem of installing and not installing the cross” for the people to lose the main problem of the issue, which is the international obligation of returning the Armenian Church to the Armenian community.

Speaking about the publications in foreign press about the ceremony to be held in the Holy Cross (Surb Khach) Church Manoyan noted that although Turkey wished to present it as an expression of a goodwill towards the Armenian people the press is making a rather objective assessment to the Turkish government's policy.

"If at first it was presented by the international press as an expression of a goodwill of Turkish government, later the press realized that the problem is in avoiding from international responsibility," Manoyan stated.

The ARF member said that Lausanne Treaty of in 1923 clearly indicates that not only should the cultural heritage of the Christian communities be protected, but it should be handed to the Christians, which, in fact, has not been kept by Turkey.