Construction works start in Istanbul for giant Çamlıca Mosque

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The debated plans for the mosque on Çamlıca Hill will incorporate the highest minarets in the world, its architect had previously said. DHA photo

Excavation works for a giant mosque on Istanbul’s Çamlıca Hill have started while the plan for another controversial mosque, to be built in Istanbul’s central Taksim, has changed.

Ahmet Vefik Alp, the head of a team running the project for the Taksim Mosque, said the team had been revising the previously revealed project, in line with the expectations of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, according to daily Habertürk.

Alp said the project’s “outfit” had changed and they had prepared two different versions, syntheses of modern and classical mosques, and that it was now time to wait for the instructions of the Prime Minister.

“Even though we didn’t have the chance to meet face to face with our esteemed Prime Minister, we were informed that he wanted the project we prepared in a modern way to bear more classical elements,” Alp said.

The project, which is being run by Taksim Mosque Culture and Art Foundation, will not be a copy of its former version, Alp added.

‘No judicial obstacles’

Alp also said there were no judicial obstacles ahead of the project, since all the complaints had been overruled.

On the other hand, another controversial mosque project has made a start, the daily reported. Some 50,000 trucks of earth excavated from a 15,000 square-meter area will be transported to Maltepe shore in the next 4 or 5 months.

An architecture competition was organized to help bring a new mosque project to life on Istanbul’s Çamlıca Hill after the prime minister’s announcement of a new mosque which would be visible from all parts of the city.

A commission set out to find a winning project, but had failed to determine a single grand prize winner by November 2012.

Two projects were named “second best.” Istanbul’s Association for Constructing and Maintaining Mosques and Educational-Cultural Service decided to build a six minarets mosque. 

The debated plans for the mosque on Çamlıca Hill will incorporate the highest minarets in the world, its architect had previously said.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had announced on May 29, 2012, that the mosque 
would be built on a tract of land in Istanbul’s Çamlıca district.