Jakarta – The Turkish government plans to convert another iconic Byzantine site on its territory as a mosque. This site will be opened to Muslims for Friday prayers, February 23 2024.
Launch Turkish Minute, Monday (12/2/2024), the Byzantine site that will be converted into a mosque is the Chora Church. This church is located in the Fatih neighborhood of Istanbul.
Plans to convert the church, which has been operating for nearly 80 years, began when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a decree that also included converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 2020, the newspaper reported. new dawn.
Erdogan issued a presidential decree in which it was mandatory to transfer the Chora Church to the Directorate of Religious Affairs to open it as a mosque. The church was previously operated by the Ministry of Education as a museum.
The church is also known as St. Saviour in Chora and Kariye in Turkish was once a mosque during the Ottoman era after the conquest of Istanbul in 1453. This church was then converted into a museum based on a Cabinet decision in 1945.
Chora Church is famous for its intricate mosaics and wall paintings. The building was built in the fourth century as part of a monastery complex, reports the English edition of the Greek newspaper, Kathimerini. The church was rebuilt in the 11th and 12th centuries because it collapsed due to earthquakes.
Previously, Turkey converted the Hagia Sophia, an iconic cathedral with a history of more than 1,500 years, from a museum to a mosque in 2020. The Chora Church was also supposed to be converted at the same time, but this had to be delayed due to ongoing restoration.
The conversion of this iconic Byzantine site is part of Erdogan’s nationalist and Islamic policies. Islamic authorities then ordered the installation of white curtains to cover images of Jesus and other frescoes and icons in Hagia Sophia that are related to Christianity, following the transformation decision.
Greece Strongly Condemns Türkiye’s Plans
The Greek Foreign Ministry strongly condemned Turkey’s plans to convert the Chora Church into a mosque. It said Turkish authorities had “brutally insulted the character” of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
“This is a provocation against all believers. We urge Turkey to return to the 21st century and mutual respect, dialogue and understanding between civilizations,” the ministry said in a statement as quoted Turkish Minute.
It is known that Byzantium was the eastern part of the Roman Empire with its capital in Constantinople (now Istanbul). The empire retained cultural aspects from the Roman era and developed an identity influenced by Greek, Eastern Christian and other regional cultures.
Arab Muslim attacks in the 630s marked the country’s cultural and institutional transformation from the Eastern Roman Empire to the Byzantine Empire, as mentioned in Encyclopedia Britannica. The empire fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
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2024-02-12 01:45:55
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