The Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey will do best to steer clear of politics, according to a possible future patriarch who has vowed to keep politics at an arm’s length from the church if elected to the post.

“Even though I am personally concerned about politics, I would not advise the Patriarchate to get involved in such matters,” Archbishop Karekin Bekjian, a candidate for the patriarchate and a primate of the German diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Asked whether he would become a Turkish citizen if elected as patriarch, Bekjian said he currently has both Turkish and German citizenship.

He also said that titular Patriarch Mesrop II, who is incapable of discharging his duties due to dementia, suggested opening a theology department within a university several years ago to raise new clerics for Istanbul’s Armenian community.

“The idea of sending young clerics to theology departments in Europe had also come up, [but] I am not warm to that idea. Clerics must be chosen from among the Armenians of Istanbul so that they can understand the mentality, the cast of that mind that exists here,” Bekjian said.