A planned pilgrimage to the 11th-century Sourp Magar Armenian monastery in the Kyrenia district was cancelled at the last minute by the unrecognized Turkish occupation authorities of Northern Cyprus, despite paperwork having been filed through the United Nations three months in advance.
Vartkes Mahdessian, the Armenian Cypriot representative in the Cypriot Parliament, told the Cyprus Mail that the community had been informed last Saturday that the pilgrimage could go ahead this Sunday, only to be told two days later that permission had been revoked due to a “clerical error.”
The reversal interrupted a tradition that had been steadily rebuilt over the past two decades. “Before the Covid-19 pandemic, this was something which used to happen every year. It stopped before the pandemic and different things have happened since then, but now, it is very important for it to happen, because they are beginning to give us money to be able to renovate the monastery,” Mahdessian said. He added that the community had “made really good progress” toward restoration, but that with the revocation, “we have taken one step forward and two steps back.”
Once permission was extended on Saturday, the community moved quickly. “On Saturday, they told us that it could happen, and while it was very late in the day, we organized the buses, we put out an announcement for people to register, and around 60 or 70 people registered,” Mahdessian said, adding that the pilgrimage typically draws Armenians from abroad as well.
Tahsin Ertugruloglu, “foreign minister” of the Turkish occupation regime, told the Cyprus Mail that permission had not been granted due to the “physical state” of the monastery, which is currently derelict. He added that “a different church will be suggested” to the Armenian Cypriot community to allow for a pilgrimage to take place in the future.
The cancellation comes against the backdrop of more than five decades of Turkish military occupation. Turkey invaded Cyprus in July 1974 and continues to occupy roughly a third of the island, including the Kyrenia district where Sourp Magar stands. The self-declared “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,” proclaimed in 1983, is recognized as a state only by the Republic of Turkey. United Nations Security Council Resolution 541 declared the declaration of independence legally invalid and called for its withdrawal, a position reaffirmed by Resolution 550 the following year. The Republic of Cyprus, a member state of the European Union, remains the only government internationally recognized as sovereign over the entire island.
The pilgrimage to Sourp Magar historically takes place on the first Sunday of May, in line with the Armenian Christian feast of Sourp Magar, held in celebration of Saint Macarius of Alexandria. Founded in the early eleventh century at an altitude of 530 meters on the Pentadaktylos mountain range, the monastery is the only Armenian monastery in Cyprus and the most important Armenian ecclesiastical building on the island. It was originally dedicated to the saint by the Coptic Orthodox Church, which scholars believe owned the site before it was transferred to the Armenian Cypriot community sometime before 1425.
Cyprus’s Armenian population grew substantially after the fall of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia in 1375, when its last king, Leo V, fled the Mamluks and the crown of the Kingdom of Armenia passed to the Lusignan rulers of Cyprus. Armenians continued to migrate to the island in the ensuing decades as Turkic peoples entered Anatolia from the east, and the transfer of Sourp Magar was likely tied to the rising importance of the Armenian Cypriot community within the Kingdom of Cyprus.
Sourp Magar remained in Armenian hands through the periods of Venetian and Ottoman rule. During the Ottoman era, it was often known as the Blue Monastery, after the color of its doors and windows. The Ottoman Empire exempted the monastery from taxation in 1642, an exemption renewed in 1660 and again in 1701. Major restoration work was carried out between 1734 and 1735, and again between 1811 and 1818, when a larger chapel was constructed and inaugurated in 1814. Over its long history, the monastery served as a school, a rest-house for pilgrims, an orphanage, and a summer retreat for the Armenians of Nicosia.
As of 1935, seventeen people lived permanently at the monastery, which also housed a collection of manuscripts and other sacred items. Those holdings were relocated in the early twentieth century to Nicosia and, in 1947, to the Holy See of Cilicia, now seated in the Lebanese town of Antelias. The monastery became inaccessible to Armenian Cypriots after the invasion and fell into ruins. Thanks to the efforts of Vartkes Mahdessian, the annual pilgrimage was revived on May 6, 2007, and continued through 2016 before its more recent disruptions.
