Turkey’s leading imam wades into Istanbul grove row

The head of Turkey’s top religious body has become involved in the heated debate on efforts to build a mosque on a grove in Istanbul Mehmet Görmez, head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), has become involved in the heated debate on efforts to build a mosque on a grove on Istanbul’s Anatolian side, saying "love for prayer and love for nature should not be compared."

“A mosque will be built on an 800 square meter plot. You can see people who want to build a masjid [a small mosque] on one side, and others protesting the cutting down of trees there on the other side,” Görmez said, while attending a ceremony to mark the opening of a new forest area in the capital Ankara.

“The love for prayer and the love for nature should not be compared,” Görmez said, adding that people should not “express their anger by using such love.”

The construction of a mosque in Istanbul’s Validebağ grove proceeded on Oct. 23 despite a court’s stay of execution order, amid growing outcry among local activists denouncing attempts to open one of Istanbul’s green areas to construction.

An Istanbul administrative court suspended the construction project of the mosque after the contracted company launched excavation works in a dawn operation under a large police escort.

The Validebağ grove, located in the middle of a large residential area on the hills of Üsküdar, has long been a protected area due to its historic assets.

But the local municipality recently moved to remove the protected status in order to pave the way for a leisure complex including wedding halls, open-air theaters and artificial ponds. 

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