RELIGIONS NEWS AGENCY (REDNA) – President Recep Tayyip Erdogan planned Sunday to inaugurate the first church built with government backing in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey’s 100-year history as a post-Ottoman state.
“Daily Mail” reported the Mor Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church’s opening marks an important cultural and political moment for both Turkey and its powerful leader.
Erdogan laid the first stone for the church’s construction for Istanbul’s 17,000-strong Assyrian Christians in 2019.
“This is the first newly built church to open its doors since the founding of the Turkish Republic,” Istanbul Syriac Kadim Foundation president Sait Susin told AFP.
Assyrian Christianity traces its history to communities that lived in the first century AD in a region stretching from southeastern Turkey to Syria and Iraq.
Its main church moved from the Turkish city of Mardin to Damascus in 1932.
Susin separately told the Anadolu state news agency that some small churches had quietly opened in Turkey in the past 100 years.
But they did so “without official permission. It is the first time that a church has been officially built. This gives us great pride,” Susin said.
The new Istanbul church can accommodate 750 worshippers and offer Erdogan a chance to prove his critics wrong.