Minaret made shorter on PM's instructions

RİZE - Doğan News Agency

DHA Photo

A minaret next to a small mosque in the Black Sea province of Rize has been removed and replaced with a shorter one after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan found the original one "too tall," Doğan news agency reported.
 
The mosque, built in the 1960s, was going through a renovation process when the prime minister showed up to spend his holidays there with his family. The prime minister registered his disapproval of the tall minaret and asked that it be made more suitable to the small mosque.
 
A businessman from the region agreed to invest in the project and a new minaret was built in accordance with the mosque's height after the first one was taken down.
 
The villagers said they initially installed the tall minaret so as not to "fall behind" a nearby village that had recently built a tall minaret to accompany their mosque.
 
"We did what out prime minister asked us to do," a villager told Doğan news agency. "He hasn't seen it yet, but we wonder what he will say when he does.”