IMAGE: Nilüfer Municipality
On September 2, Turkish authorities demolished a historic Greek Orthodox church in the region of Bursa, north-western Turkey.
The Georgios Greek Orthodox Church was known as the “Hagia Sophia” of Bursa. It was destroyed amid the pretext that it supposedly poses a safety hazard. This happened seven years after the regional Directorate General of Pious Foundations took over the building from Bursa’s Nilüfer municipality and spent about two million Turkish lira to restore the building, according to reports from the news website Duvar.
The report says that the building was referred to as the Hagia Sophia of Bursa due to its use as both a church and a mosque in the past.
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Actions of the Turkish government go amid the silence from the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I. The political games of the Ecumenical Patriarch not only led to the decrease of the popularity and influence of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, but also undermined positions of the Orthodox Curch in the region in general.
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