Turkey’s top religious body publishes Armenian translation of Quran

ISTANBUL

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Turkey’s top religious body, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), has published a translation of the Quran in Armenian.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency on May 6, Diyanet Director-General for Religious Publications Dr. Yüksel Salman said 4,000 copies of the Quran, translated into the western and eastern Armenian dialects, would be distributed to libraries and NGOs in Turkey for free. Its sale will begin later.

Salman said the Diyanet’s publication of the Quran in Armenian on the 100th anniversary of the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians was a “total coincidence.”

“This project began four years ago. Its translation was completed in two-and-a-half years and editing took up the rest of the time,” he said, adding that the Quran delivers the message that “killing one person is equal to killing all of humanity.”

The Diyanet has published 1,150 works since it was founded in 1924, but the variety of its publications increased after the 1990s. 

The body has recently published Kurdish and Spanish translations of the Quran. It also plans to publish Quran translations in 15 more languages, including English, French, Russian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Danish and Albanian, to be sent abroad.