Ultra-nationalists are planning to conquer Asia Minor, all over again. Tomorrow, on October 1st, MHP, their major political organization is planning a Friday prayer session in Holy Virgin Cathedral at Ani, a sacred and antique settlement in what used to be Western Armenia. They claim 5000 people will join.
In the last couple months, Turkish state, dormant about the Christian heritage in Turkey, allowed two Eastern Orthodox masses to take place in Sumela Monastry near Trabizond and Holy Cross Church at Akhtamar Island in the Lake of Van. It looks like these two events have flamed a nationalist uproar in the country.
Today, two head figures of MHP, namely the leader Bahçeli and Kars Office Chief O. Akbas declared that “Anatolia (Asia Minor) will experience a new conquest by Muslim Turks against renewed desires for a Pontian Greek State and a western Armenia” in the lands that is Turkey now.
Tomorrow, upon obtaining the permits from local authorities, the followers of MHP are planned to pray together at Holy Virgin Cathedral at Ani near Kars. A wave of protests are expected from countries like Armenia and Greece. It’s a muslim custom to convert churches into mosques. There are a lot of examples of churches-turned-mosques all over Istanbul and elsewhere in Asia Minor.
2 comments:
Hello,
I found your blog site through Google. I run a website called The Middle East Alliance. Basically, the goal of the site is to help people in America and Europe better understand what is going on in different Middle East countries - so much goes unreported, and we look for blogs like yours to find out what is really happening. Currently, people within the State Department, Georgetown Center for Arab Studies and various think tanks are using our site for research. Here is a link to the site: http://www.mideastalliance.org/ Basically, I'm wondering if you want to be a part of this - we would repost your blog entries on our site, of course linking to your actual site as well, which should also boost traffic to your blog. Anyways let me know if this is okay with you. Thanks so much!
Sean Stephens
No problem. Go ahead and repost the articles. There are no copyright issues.
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