Controversy over Erdogan's plan for new, ‘giant’ mosque in Istanbul.

“Minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks, and the believers our army.” 

Controversy over Erdogan's plan for new, ‘giant’ mosque in Istanbul.(AA).Tayyip Erdogan has described his third term as Turkish prime minister as that of a “master”, borrowing from the celebrated Ottoman architect Sinan and the last stage of his storied career after apprenticeship and graduation.
It’s a lofty allusion.
Sinan’s 16th-century creations came to define the Ottoman Empire at its apogee, the Suleymaniye Mosque, built for Sultan Suleiman, part of Istanbul’s unmistakable skyline.
Now, entering a second decade at the helm of a country reveling in its regional might, Erdogan wants to leave his own mark on the cityscape with what will be Turkey’s biggest mosque, a “giant mosque,” he says, “that will be visible from all across Istanbul.”
To be built on the highest hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, planners boast the structure will hold up to 30,000 worshippers and bear six minarets taller than those of the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi, or the Prophet’s Mosque, in Medina.
It is symbolic of Turkey’s tilt to the east under Erdogan, who has chipped away at the founding secularism of the modern republic and presided over its emergence as a power in the Middle East.
But the Istanbul elite are up in arms.
Some have branded the proposed mosque unsightly and ostentatious, a thinly-disguised declaration of victory by Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted government over the secularists and their guardians in the military.
“On the European side, Sultan Suleiman put his mark on the city with the Suleymaniye Mosque, which could be seen everywhere from old Istanbul,” said Emre Kizilkaya, a blogger and foreign editor at the Hurriyet daily. “Now many think Erdogan wants to put his own mark on the Asian side.”
One religiously conservative intellectual called it a “cheap replica” and wrote to Erdogan imploring him not to embarrass coming generations with such “unsightly work.”
“There’s a saying in Turkish – ‘You don't discover America again,’” said Oguz Oztuzcu, chairman of the Istanbul Independent Architects’ Association. “You don’t try to make another Sydney Opera House, do you? They’re competing with existing icons.” The government, meanwhile, is embracing Istanbul’s imperial past, when the Ottoman Empire sprawled across three continents.
“We must go everywhere our ancestors have been,” Erdogan said on Sunday, and took aim at the makers of a hit Turkish television series, one of the country’s most famous exports, for its gaudy portrayal of Sultan Suleiman.
“Those who toy with these values should be taught a lesson within the bounds of the law,” he said.
Such talk has drawn fire from critics who accuse Erdogan of behaving like a modern-day sultan, at home and abroad. Hundreds of military officers have been jailed on charges of plotting a coup against Erdogan; others including academics, journalists and politicians are facing trial on similar accusations.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, smarting from Turkey’s support for the rebels trying to oust him, told a television interviewer this month that Erdogan "thinks he's the new sultan. In his heart he thinks he’s a Caliph.”Read the full story here.