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Turkey and Greece exchange harsh words over Hagia Sophia prayers

11 Comments
By Daren Butler

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A secular Turkish govt is good for the world, including the Turkish people.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Way to gut whatever was left of western tourism to the country you've turned into a cesspit, Erdogan. I feel very sorry for the Turkish people.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Erdogan is an islamist, and this is what you get when an islamist takes power. Not different from Morsi in Egypt and the Ayatollhas in Iran. Erdogan has been working from day one to dismantle the secular Kemalist system in Turkey, and the Hagia Sophia decision is just the latest step in turning Turkey into an islamist state.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

President Tayyip Erdogan, who attended Friday's ceremony that sealed his ambition to restore Muslim worship at Hagia Sophia, did not name Greece but said critics of the move were simply against Muslims and Turkey

Poor tiny little victim dictator. Only Don Putin next-door is tinier and more victimized.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

@Zaphod

People who support Ataturk and his ideas don't like being called Kemalist since the term Kemalist is associated with British colonialism that the Turks had to fight during WWI and after. But they don't min the term pro-Ataturk / Ataturk-chu

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@John

You omitted to point out that the mosques in those countries were built by the invaders and not by the locals who actually lived in those countries. This mosque was built by the original people there before Islam invaded.

I always find it interesting that some will go on about the west and the crusades but seem to forget that from the 600s to the late 1600s it was nothing but invasion after invasion into western and eastern Europe 711 was when Spain was taken,ruled over for over 700 years despite not being Muslim, Greece, etc... So when the invaders build what is their symbol of conquest one has no obligation to respect it.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Erdogan couldn't be happier that Greece and some other countries reacted to his decision. 20-30% of Erdogan's supporters are wahhabi scumbags who were demanding from him that he reverted Hagia Sophia into a mosque again. The timing of his decision is very clever because Turkey is suffering from an ongoing economic turmoil and the current pandemic is not helping the economy and Erdogan at all. Rumours have it the next general election will be held in the country sooner than expected so Erdogan needed to come up with a strategy that would help him win the elections- when I say win not really a win in the sense that if the elections were fair and transparent in Turkey Erdogan couldn't have won a single election...

0 ( +0 / -0 )

John

Mosques have been and are being used as churches in many other countries such as Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Spain too.

The Hagia Sophia is not just any old church, and Turkey is not any old country. Context matters! The Hagia Sophia was the center of orthodox Christendom, and modern Turkey was based on Atatuerks reforms, which established Turkey as one of those rare islamic countries with a secular constitution. Declaring the Hagia Sophia was an important part of that.

Islamist Erdogan is reversing all that.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Mosques have been and are being used as churches in many other countries such as Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Spain too.

Then there is plenty of suck to go around. It doesn't make this any better though.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

It is truly a shame for Turkish Muslims to have to steal a cathedral designed by Greek Christians and call it a Turkish mosque. Its like an open statement "We can't make anything this good so we gotta steal it." Absolutely pathetic. At this point the Turks should just convert to Christianity and beg Greece to rule them. Losers.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

@Vanessa Carlisle

It is truly a shame for Turkish Muslims to have to steal a cathedral designed by Greek Christians and call it a Turkish mosque.

It is estimated that there are over 10,000 artifacts and monuments from Turkish-Islamic architecture in Greece.

Built in 1468 in Thessaloniki, Hamza Bey Mosque was used as a place of worship for a while after Greece gained its independence. In the following years, the minaret of the mosque, made of cut stone, was destroyed, the pencil works on the dome and the writing plates were removed, and the interlocking wooden pulpit inside was destroyed.

The mosque, owned by the National Bank of Greece in 1927, was later sold privately, divided into a shop and a cinema and used for showing adult movies until the 1980s.

The Faik Pasha Mosque in the city of Narda (Arta) in the Ioannina region was turned into a church after the population exchange between Turkey and Greece in 1923. It is known that the mosque, which was later abandoned, was used as a bar-pavilion in the 1970s. The mosque, which seems to have been built as the center of a complex in the 15th century, is now in ruins.

On the other hand, mosques and historical buildings in many important cities, including the capital Athens, Ioannina, Giannitsa, Crete, Larisa and Kavala, continue to share the same fate.

Mosques have been and are being used as churches in many other countries such as Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Spain too.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

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