seen to the south of the church. Between 1116 and 1895 the island was the location of the Catholicosate of Aghtamar of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Khachatur III, who died in 1895, was the last Catholicos of Aght'amar. In April 1915, during the Armenian genocide, the monks on Aght'amar were massacred, the cathedral looted, and the monastic buildings destroyed. On August 28, 2010, a small solar energy power plant was opened on the island, to provide local installations with electricity. Holy Cross Cathedral The architecture of the church is based on a form that had been developed in Armenia several centuries earlier; the best-known example being that of the seventh century St. Hripsime church in Echmiadzin, incorporating a dome with a conical roof. The unique importance of the Cathedral Church of the Holy Cross comes from the extensive array of bas-relief carving of mostly biblical scenes that adorn its external walls. The meanings of these reliefs have been the subject of much and varied interpretation. Not all of this speculation has been produced in good faith - for example, Turkish sources illustrate Islamic and Turkic influences behind the content of some of the reliefs, such as the prominent depiction of a prince sitting cross-legged on a Turkic-style, low throne. Some scholars assert that the friezes parallel contemporary motifs found in Umayyad art - such as a turbaned prince, Arab styles of dress, wine imagery; allusions to royal Sassanian imagery are also present (griffins, for example). Vandalism After 1915, the church has been exposed to extensive vandalism. Before the restoration of the church, the reliefs on the church wall used as a shooting range. Zakarya Mildanoğlu, an architect who was involved in the restoration process of the church, explains the situation during an interview with Hrant Dink as "The facade of the church is full of bullet holes. Some of them are so big that they can not be covered during the renovation process." During many conferences related to the restoration of the Akhtamar church, the process of covering the bullet holes are identified as the hardest part of the restoration by academicians and architects. Some claim that the Armenian churches and gravestones have been exposed to vandalism as a part of the Turkish government policy which aims to destroy the Armenian heritage in Anatolia. In 1951 an order was issued to demolish the church, but the writer Yasar Kemal managed