Istanbul (Dispatches) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated a new mosque in Istanbul on Friday, fulfilling a decades-old goal of his and stamping a religious identity on the landmark Taksim Square in the heart of the city.
The Taksim mosque and its 30-meter-high dome loom symbolically over a monument to the foundation of the Turkish republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Erdogan waved to the crowd which gathered in the square before entering the mosque for Friday prayers.
Construction of the mosque began in February 2017 in a project championed by Erdogan, a devout Muslim, and his AK Party.
Officials on Friday shared on Twitter a video showing Erdogan in 1994, the year he became Istanbul mayor, pointing from the top of a building toward the area where he said he would build the mosque, the exact spot where it now stands.
It is one of many construction projects with which Erdogan has left his mark on Turkey, including a huge hilltop mosque overlooking the Asian side of Istanbul. Last year he reconverted into a mosque the city’s Haghia Sophia, for centuries the world’s largest church before being turned into a mosque and museum in turn.
Supporters of the Taksim project argued there were not enough Muslim places of worship close to one of the city’s busiest hubs.
The mosque complex, with two towering minarets, will be able to host as many as 4,000 worshippers and includes an exhibition hall, a library, car park and soup kitchen, state-owned Anadolu news agency said.
Newspapers hailed the new mosque. Aksam’s headline mocked critics who fear religiosity: “It looks great. A mosque was built in Taksim and neither has sharia law come, nor has the republic collapsed,” it said.