On Jan. 2, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met with the leaders of religious minorities in Turkey, including heads of various Christian denominations and the Jewish community. One bit of breaking news from the meeting was the government having granted permission to build a new church in Istanbul. This was, as the media noted, “a first in republican history.” No new Christian place of worship has been allowed to be built in Turkey since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, during World War I.
The new church in question will be built in Istanbul's Yesilkoy district, not too far from the Ataturk Airport, and will serve the community of Syriac Christians. This ancient community, which is not much known in the West, is the source of the oldest Christian traditions. Its liturgy is in Aramaic, the language of Jesus. There are some 17,000 Syriac Christians in Turkey, the majority of whom live in Istanbul. They need a spacious church.
