Turkish president Recept Tayyip Erdogan has officially inaugurated the country’s largest ever mosque, an elaborate Ottoman-style house of worship atop a storied Istanbul hill overlooking the Bosphorus Strait.
The Great Camlica Mosque is the most prominent of numerous Ottoman-style houses of worship built across Turkey under the 17-year rule of President Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). Its enormous dome and four 107-metre high minarets are visible across much of the city of 16 million people.
During a speech attended by several international leaders and other luminaries, Mr Erdogan described the structure as a monument befitting contemporary Turkey.
“The mosque has many symbols that belong to our history, civilisation, and beliefs,” he said.
He also spoke out against a recent spate of attacks targeting religious institutions across the world, including attacks on mosques in New Zealand and churches in Sri Lanka.
“Those who attack mosques and those who target churches have the same dark mentality,” he said. “Massacring the innocent and bombing houses of worship is not jihad. It is terror, atrocity and murder.”
Camlica was built at an estimated cost of $100m (£76m) over the last six years. Resting atop a storied Istanbul hill, it accommodates up to 63,000 worshippers. It includes an educational complex, museum, gallery, and a conference centre.
It has been criticised for its remote location, at the top of winding road hillside away from any of the city’s neighbourhoods.
"Whose idea was it to build a 60,000-person mosque on the top of Camlica Hill?” Temel Karamollaoglu, leader of a small Islamist opposition party, quipped last month. “If they fill it even once, I'll kiss their hands.”
Turkey under Mr Erdogan has modestly expanded the number of mosques, building Ottoman-style houses of worship throughout the country and even abroad. His supporters say the country lacks sufficient numbers of mosques.
But critics point out that polls have shown Turks are becoming increasingly irreligious. The 3,400 or so mosques throughout Istanbul rarely fill up, except for Friday prayers.
The mosques, often using public funds, also are built by powerful and well-connected developers that are close to the AKP.
Turkey recently inaugurated a new airport, dubbed the world’s largest, and plans to build a new canal that cuts through far western Istanbul to connect the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Developers have also been trying to access publicly owned land to build luxury shopping malls and high rises in deals criticised as giveaways to political allies. But Camlica was reportedly funded by donations.
