Saint Bartholomew Monastery (Albayrak)

 place with historical importance, archeological site, monastery, interesting place, Armenian Apostolic church, historic ruins

The Saint Bartholomew Monastery is a 13th-18th century Armenian monastery built in what was then the Vaspurakan Province of Greater Armenia, now near the town of Başkale (Albayrak) in the Van Province of southeastern Turkey. It was formerly considered one of the most important pilgrimage sites of the Armenian people. The monastery was built on the traditional site of the martyrdom of the Apostle Bartholomew who is reputed to have brought Christianity to Armenia in the 1st century. Along with Saint Thaddeus, Saint Bartholomew is considered the patron saint of the Armenian Apostolic church. At an unknown date after the Armenian genocide, the monastery came under control of Turkish military and for many years its entire site lied within an army base. Then the monastery was destroyed by the Turkish army using explosives in the 1960s under Turkish state-sponsored cultural genocide of Armenian monuments in Turkey. After the genocide Turkey starts hunting on Armenian cultural heritage too. Since 1920 Turkish authorities trying to get rid of any mentions about Armenian past and targets Armenian monasteries for military exercises, converts them to mosques, scratching out Armenian letters from the stones and add some Arabic text to show allegedly this is a Seljuk monument. Numerous crying examples of this vandalism had flooded all Western Armenia and Armenian Cilicia. But UNESCO keeps persistent silence in almost all cases of destruction of Armenian heritage in post-genocide Turkey. It seems like it copies a cliché of Western politicans using double standards to Armenia, because of contradictions between West and Russia.