Some 60,000 Armenians in Turkey are preparing to elect a new spiritual leader after the death of their beloved Patriarch Mesrob II Mutafyan, but the election process may become tangled due to interference by various actors.

On March 8, Armenians lost their brightest patriarch of recent times. In fact, this was a farewell that lasted 10 years because of the patriarch’s severe dementia. He was only 62.

The process to elect the new patriarch is to begin at the end of a 40-day mourning period, but because of inescapable interference from several quarters, Armenians are now heading into a difficult era. The Armenian patriarch position in Turkey is a tough one, under the heavy burden of tragic memories of mass destruction of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population in 1915 — a position stuck between the Turkish government and an Armenian diaspora angered by any move to reconcile.

According to Armenian publisher Rober Koptas, the Turkish state has always exerted tight control of the patriarchate to ensure the Armenians will remain a minority community and not be allowed to become an organized body,