In Turkey, the opening of the first new building for a Christian church since the founding of the republic in 1923 is about to open. The Syrian Orthodox Church of St. Ephrem in Istanbul’s Bakirkoy district is due to be completed in the next two months. In recent decades, Turkey’s Christian minority had been allowed to renovate their churches, but a new building had not been approved by the state for a long time.
As the newspaper “Hürriyet” reported on Monday, the church should be able to accommodate about 700 people in the future. In addition to the actual church hall, there are two upper floors with meeting rooms that can be used after masses, baptisms or weddings, and an underground car park with parking spaces.
Erdogan himself laid the foundation stone for the new building
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself laid the foundation stone for the new building in 2019. At the time, Erdogan said that one of the state’s duties was to make sure Christians had enough churches for their services. Information on the number of Syriac Orthodox Christians in Istanbul varies between 12,000 and 17,000.
Been searching since 2009
In Istanbul, in the Tarlabasi district of Beyoglu, the Syrian Orthodox Church has a church built in the 19th century with an adjoining community center, where Metropolitan Mor Filuksinos Yusuf Cetin also lives. But this church is way too small. In 2009, on the orders of then Prime Minister Erdogan, the Istanbul city council started looking for a piece of land for a Syrian Orthodox church. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced the plan for the new building in 2015, but it was delayed for several years.
The site on which the new church has been built since 2019 was donated to the Catholic Church by a parishioner in 1868 and partly used as a cemetery. There is also a small Catholic cemetery chapel on the site. In 1950, the area was confiscated by the Turkish state and transferred to municipal property, and the cemetery was closed.
“One Church for all Christians”
Last October, the Archbishop of Salzburg, Franz Lackner, visited the construction site of the new church in Istanbul together with Viennese Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Arsenios (Kardamakis). At that time, Metropolitan Cetin announced to the delegation from Austria that after the completion of the church, the renovation of the cemetery and the Catholic chapel would also be tackled. “The new church is not just a church for the Syriac Orthodox, but for all Christians,” the Metropolitan said.
Recently, Syriac Orthodox believers in Istanbul have also turned to churches of other Christian communities to celebrate their services. However, these are not really suited to the rituals and needs of the Syrian believers, said Sait Susin, president of the Istanbul Assyrian Ancient Foundation, according to “Hürriyet”.
soil investigations
The church was architecturally designed according to the historical models of the churches in the province of Mardin, but adapted to the current circumstances. Speaking to the newspaper “Daily Sabah”, Susin once again emphasized that the new church was not built on the graves of the former Catholic cemetery, but on a free spot on the site. This was confirmed by soil investigations before the start of construction.
discrimination
The Turkish constitution has been officially secular since the establishment of the state by Kemal Atatürk. However, religious minorities outside Sunni Islam are repeatedly discriminated against. The Turkish state officially recognizes only the Greek Orthodox Church, the Armenians and Judaism as religious minorities, to which it grants – albeit only limited – rights, such as a private school. The Syriac Orthodox Church, like the Catholic and other churches, is not recognized as a minority due to a controversial interpretation of the 1923 Lausanne Peace Treaty.
Source: Krone
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