...Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi but they voted him back in so they deserve him. It's a sin, a shame, and a felony to insult the president of Turkey. In Anatolia did Recep Bey a stately Presidential Palace decree, that has 1100 rooms. That's 968 more than in the White House, 400 more than in Versailles, and 325 more than Buckingham Palace, so you know who's really more important...continues to make life more difficult for Christians and Moslems alike, both inside his country and in the world outside.On Friday, a top administrative court in
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire...
paved the way for the most visited monument standing in the heart of Istanbul, the Hagia Sophia, to be converted, despite international warnings, back into a mosque after it had annulled a 1934 government decree turning the building — originally a sixth century Byzantine cathedral — into a museum.
As soon as the decision was announced, crowds holding flags of Turkey gathered outside the Hagia Sophia chanting "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) while President Erdogan went on social media to celebrate.
Erdogan tweeted a copy of the decree, which shows transfer of authority over the building from the Ministry of Culture to the Ministry of Religious Affaris, the "Diyanet", with a "congratulations" note added from the president.
Many praised the decision, and Erdogan. "I will pray for you until I die. You are the new and invincible leader of the Islamic world and Turkey, I offer you my gratitude," was one tweet in reply to the president’s tweet.
"In the dome that will echo again, believers will meet again. Thank goodness to my Lord who shows us these days," stated another response.
On the other hand, as a response to the president’s post, a Greek woman, Helen, tweeted a photo from the interior of the building, a mosaic of Virgin Mary holding child Jesus and a note: "Theotokos is watching you Tayyip." Theotokos is Mother of God or Mother of Jesus, the term is used in the Eastern Orthodox Church to describe Virgin Mary.
The 27 EU foreign ministers met Monday, the first face-to-face meeting in months, and "condemned the
Greek government front man Stelios Petsas said Greece will impose sanctions on Turkey. "Anyone who violates international law must understand that for this delinquent behaviour there are sanctions that hurt," he said.
Greek genocide scholar Vassilios Meichanetsidis is not so optimistic. "I am afraid it is hard to have effective sanctions against Turkey. The West appears rather indifferent or mild towards the matter," he told al-Ahram Weekly, explaining that there was indifference from the West in the past too, when the Ittihadists and the Kemalists slaughtered nearly three million Ottoman Christians (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks) and burnt to the ground the city of Smyrna and other Christian-inhabited cities across Anatolia.
"The EU is in obvious moral and political decline. For example, EU member Germany sells weapons to Turkey to carry out its wars in northern Iraq, Syria and Libya. There is no consideration for the loss of human lives, but only economic interests," said Meichanetsidis, calling on neutral countries and those suffering from Turkey’s violations to boycott Erdogan regime.
| Related: Wikipedia: Treaty of Lausanne 1923 |