Aktamar, Lake Van contd: the pilgrim's perspective

As we stepped ashore on the Island of Aktamar after our short boat trip across Lake Van from Edremit it soon became clear that for the first time on our pilgrimage we were to share the site with tourists.
Sadly the groups already ashore made it difficult for us to find any chance for peace, prayer and contemplation within the church. In any event the guard on duty told us that we could not say the Lord’s Prayer there as a group, so we had to find our own moments for private prayer.
Whilst I knelt silently and I hoped unobtrusively in a dark corner within the church the building was besieged by noisy groups who seemed to care little for the sacred space, whilst they listened to poor and inaccurate information from guides who seemed to have little accurate knowledge of the place. Indeed one group were more interested in getting back earlier to their hotel to allow shopping and swimming time before supper! 

This tenth century Church of the Holy Cross is truly beautiful and as so often on this pilgrimage we were blessed with fine weather to be able to view it in detail from outside as well as within. For it is justifiably famous for the very fine carved bas-reliefs on all four sides illustrating biblical stories from both Old and New Testaments. As I walked around the church, starting with the south side and dodging tourists and tombstones, I looked with awe at depictions of David and Goliath, the Madonna with Jesus, the Isaac sacrifice, the Jonah story, a rather playful vineyard scene: then on the East side St John the Evangelist, John the Baptist and Gregory the Illuminator, (whom we met at Ani): to the North, Shadrak, Meshak and Abednego and the fiery furnace, and Adam and Eve: and so round to the Western side with a rather wonderful relief of a church and Jesus Christ. Sadly the frescoes inside the church, Christian images of the gospel stories, have been badly damaged and it needed some patience and a very cricked neck to work out the meaning of much of the imagery. I was sorry I didn’t get a good image of Gregory the Illuminator, in bas relief alongside St John the Evangelist and John the Baptist on the East façade, but there is a very good website which provides extensive detail and drawings of all the various images at  and very much more besides. This is all very comprehensive, for those who wish to delve much deeper into the detail of these various sites. Reading that website and from our own observations it is apparent that much of historical and architectural importance is being allowed to collapse and decay, through vandalism, some officially sanctioned it would seem, even politically motivated. This is sad and disturbing…

a view of the graveyard at Aktamar

And be warned – there are also some YouTube videos where ill informed guides seem to have little idea of the difference between Old and New Testament stories, mixing them up in sad ways. I listened to one such guide who is heard to say about Shadrak, Meshak and Abednego that they were told to walk through hot ashes to show they believe in Jesus!! A strange interpretation indeed of the Old Testament story of the fiery furnace from the book of Daniel! A big Turkish flag flies on the island, which had been clearly visible from our boat as we approached. It seems that the Turks only want to preserve the island on their terms, as an interesting archaeological site, not as a sacred Christian building. There is apparently no guide book available for the inside of the church, but I found it hard to believe that someone somewhere isn’t even as I write this putting one together somewhere. There is certainly a demand for one, in both Turkish and English. Or is there? Given that there is plenty of information online, and that tourists nowadays take their tablets out with them to call up all the detail they seek, and to take all the photos they want, then perhaps the paper guidebook has nearly had its day?

Restoration? Rebuilding? of monks' accommodation

Outside the church some workmen are busily building replicas of the monks’ cells that would have been there… but they are only making them one story high and there is good evidence that these would have had two stories. Again the restoration work may be ill conceived and inappropriately destructive?
Are the Turks deliberately trying to hide the Armenian Christian heritage in Anatolia? The new name for the island given to it by the Turkish authorities of Akdamar, meaning White Vein, is claimed by some to be part of a deliberate cultural cleansing. What I experienced within the church made me uneasy for the future of such a beautiful sacred artefact.

looking back as we leave the island

Our time on this lovely island was all too short and after enjoying a hot cay in the weak and not too warm sunshine outside the island’s café it was with some sadness that we strolled down to catch our boat back to the mainland. On the way to the jetty I dipped my hands in the water of the lake. The concentration of minerals left the skin feeling silky smooth; as good as any hand cream! On the boat the wind dropped and the snowy mountain tops in the distance glistened in the setting sun of early evening. It wasn’t too far to go to our next hotel. I hoped our driver was feeling better. It had been a very long drive for him today. So we made our way further round the lake, through the new road tunnel towards Tatvan, past smart new villas with lake views, and were waved through an army checkpoint, before offloading at our last hotel stay of this trip.

The Church of the Holy Cross on Aghtamar on Lake Van: our Pilgrimage continues

“Van in this world, paradise in the next.” 

Church of the Holy Cross

I found this Armenian proverb as I was browsing through Armenia Travels and Studies Volume 2, by H F B Lynch. We were approaching Lake Van, which Lynch describes as “here the luxuriance of the Bay of Naples, there the austere features of a Norwegian Fjord.” Writing in more troubled times than now, he muses that this Armenian proverb might be justified in happier situations, but the perversity of man was converting this heaven into a little hell. This country, he writes further, is “one of the fairest and most favored of the old world”, and “like a book which may borrow much from the work of other writers and yet produce an effect on the reader which is wholly new, so one opens the landscape of Lake Van with that particular emotion which only very beautiful and original objects can produce.”

lunch of fish - presumed pearl mullet from the lake?

There is a pleasant looking lakeside resort called Edremit just the other side of Van towards where we are to pick up the boat to take us to the island of Aghtamar (Aktamar). It has a promenade, in need of a little smartening up, a small marina is being built, there are many small cafes along the road, which is lined on the lake side with what look like many miniature bandstands, but are actually little picnic huts with conical roofs and open sides containing the standard wooden picnic benches and tables that are so common everywhere. And they all have splendid views. This is clearly an up and coming lakeside resort. I was surprised not to see more boating activity but I guess the place was now shut for the winter with cold and snow on its way. The snow poles still present along the roadside out of town reminded us that winters here can be very harsh.

Edremit existed as a settlement before Christianity came here. Its name comes from the Armenian name Artamet, meaning "Near the Fields" in Armenian. This is appropriate situated as it is on the shores of the lake with fields of grapes and apples beyond. The population here suffered two genocides, the first Armenian genocide of 1894–1896, and then again in 1915-1923 when Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and other Christian numbers were decimated and Turkish families took over.  Before 1915 Artamet had 10 Armenian churches and 1 Greek church. Thousands of their historical monuments were annihilated as well. We have to appreciate this.

There is a lovely Armenian legend surrounding the original name for the island of Aktamar. It involves the love story of an Armenian princess called Tamar, living on the island, for her lover, a commoner boy on the mainland. Each night he would swim over the 3 km separating the island from the mainland, guided by a light she held for him. One night her father, disapproving of course of such a liaison, extinguished the light. The boy became lost and drowned, and when they found his body the words Akh Tamar or Oh Tamar were frozen on his lips. After another excellent traditional Turkish lunch we were taken by boat to the island. It was a half hour journey – there is a shorter boat route from further around the coast near Gevas but the longer trip allowed us to savour the lake views and then watch to see who would be first to spot the little church, dedicated to the Holy Cross, snuggled into the side of the island as we approached the landing stage.

It is something of a miracle that this beautiful church, built of pink volcanic tuff on this grey limestone island has been preserved as well as it is, given its turbulent and violent history. The island itself was once a palatial residence of a king, one King Gagik 1 Artsruni of the Armenian Kingdom of Vaspurakan, who reigned from 908-943. He built a large palace for himself and founded a large settlement with gardens and orchards and places of recreation. During the period from 1116 to 1895 the church was the seat of an Armenian Catholicus, something akin to a church bishop. All that remains today from that period is the church, built during the years 915-921 by a monk Manuel. During the Armenian genocide of 1915 the monks were massacred and the monastic complex of which the church was central, fell into ruins.

The church and island was a military training ground for a period and many large bullet holes were made in the beautiful façade which were to challenge later attempts at restoration. In 1951 the church was going to be destroyed by the Turkish government but was mercifully saved by the writer and journalist Yaşar Kemal and became a tourist attraction. It underwent some controversial restoration in 2005/2006 and became a secular museum for a while before being restored to its status as an Armenian Christian church.

The cross that now sits atop the dome once again, as a symbol of the true religious purpose of the building, was itself the center of controversy. Apparently the Turkish government resisted such a cross and there was some concern over the weight which the church would be able to support, but in 2010 a cross was indeed erected, albeit half the weight of that originally proposed. In 2011 the earthquake in the region cracked the dome, possibly weakened by the newly erected cross.

Since 2010, once a year on the feast day of 19th September, the Turkish authorities allow a patronal festival service to be held but otherwise the church is very much just a tourist attraction.
Tomorrow there will be more about this wonderful but still threatened church...