Bishop Arshak Khachatryan, Secretary of the Holy See at Etchmiadzin, said today that the Armenian Church wouldn’t have opposed nationalist Turks portraying at the ruins of Ani, if there was no other alternative. Bishop Khachatryan sarcastically added that, "I assume that they tried to pray in mosques and, evidently, they realized that the best location to communicate with God was from an Armenian church." He argued that the fact that Armenian clergy from Etchmiadzin didn’t participate in the September 19 religious ceremony at Akhtamar had nothing to do with the Muslim prayer service at Ani, organized by the Turkish Nationalist Party (MHP). "I don’t believe it was merely a prayer service at Ani. It was meant to show the Armenian people that all Christian and Muslim religious and cultural sites belong to the Turkish state. It was yet another attempt to erase the traces of the real owners," Bishop Khachatryan said. The Etchmiadzin clergyman asked why the Christian world community didn’t respond to the Ani event with the same vigor as the Muslim community whenever someone threatens to burn the Quran. Bishop Khachatryan added that there were extremes in both religions but that they had nothing to do with true religious faith that preached tolerance of others. Thus, whether it’s the burning of the Quran or the Ani fiasco, both must be criticized equally. He said that in Turkey today only Islam enjoyed official sponsorship and that the sporadic goodwill gestures of Ankara towards religious minorities are mere showpieces to improve the image of Turkey before the international community.