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Turkey’s biggest mosque in Istanbul’s Çamlıca to cost $100 million
Turkey’s biggest mosque in Istanbul’s Çamlıca to cost $100 million
Turkey’s biggest mosque, the construction of which in Istanbul’s Çamlıca Hill is approaching an end, will cost $100 million, which amounts to just a third of the initial estimate, its architects told daily Hürriyet on June 15. Click through for the photo story...
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had announced in 2012, when he was the prime minister, that “a giant mosque that will be visible from all across Istanbul would be built.”
The mosque’s construction was launched on the 268-meter-high Çamlıca Hill on Istanbul’s Asian side in 2013.
After five years, the mosque is about to be completed, Hürriyet's editor-in-chief Vahap Munyar reported from the ground on June 15.
With a capacity of 63,000, it would be largest mosque in Turkey, more than twice as big as the Sabancı Mosque in the southern city of Adana.
The Çamlıca Mosque will also have a conference room for 1,100 people, a 3,500-square meter library, and an 11,000-square meter Islamic Art Museum.
Its minbar, which the imam uses as a podium to address the congregation, will be the highest in Turkey with 48 stairs and even an elevator.
The architect of the Çamlıca Mosque is Mehmet Güner, who was brought in for the project after President Erdoğan saw his work on the Abdulhamid Han Mosque in the southern province of Kahramanmaraş.
The golden inscriptions on the gigantic dome of the new mosque are actually made steel treated with nano technology, according to Güner.
The mosque was financed by donations to an association founded for the construction. “Some donated millions and some, such as children, donated 10 Turkish Liras from their pocket money,” the association’s head Ergin Külünk said.
“Citizens talk about the mosque as ‘the mosque built by Erdoğan.’ We would be happy to name the mosque after our president but that would be his decision,” Külünk added.
The contractor of the mosque construction, the Gürsoy Group, plans to finish the Çamlıca Mosque by August, in line with its five-year estimate when work started in August 2013.
(Photos: Sebati Karakurt / Hürriyet)
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