Mosques in Athens an Issue Before the Olympic Games

These words belong to Cahid Mumin, originally from Western Thrace, a Turk living in the Gazi District of Athens, Greece. Mumin expresses the feelings of 11,000 Turkish people living in Athens as Greece’s ‘Muslim minority’. He complains that there is no mosque in Athens. Although, the Turkish public has been mostly unaware of the issue, there is a lively debate going on in Greece. Turkish people have just heard about the mosque debate in Athens because of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent meeting with the Fener Greek Patriarch. In Greece however, the issue has been on the agenda for a long time and concerned parties regularly use the media to present their side of the story. The issue, which could easily be solved in another country or in a European Union country, has become a matter of regime here. Since there is no big mosque in Athens, Muslim people opened unofficial mesjids (a small mosque) in business centres and apartment buildings despite the fact that it was not allowed. The government is reflecting the spirit of the coming Olympic Games and has allotted a space outside the city for a mosque to be built. However, the Church and some people objected and the issue has become a source of conflict. Fanatics erected a cross measuring about four meters in length on the proposed grounds for the mosque, which is located in the Pinea neighbourhood about one and a half hours away from Athens. Journalist Yorgo Kirbaki defined the mosque debate in Athens as a ‘shame’. According to Kirbaki, the Greek government should end the debate by building the mosque. Kirbaki summarize the issue as follows: "The only capital that does not have a mosque in the whole of Europe is here because the most powerful institution in the country, the Orthodox Church, is against a mosque here. "There is an idea in the subconscious like, ‘Someday the Turks will come and invade.’ That’s why a very simple issue has turned into a crisis." Greece’s foreign minister, George Papandreou, also wants to solve this problem and eliminate it from the agenda by using the opportunity of the Olympic Games. In fact, there are many Ottoman monuments in Athens. The number of Turkish monuments in the country was 3370 when Greece declared its independence from the Ottoman administration in 1821. According to statistics, 2336 of these were mosques and mesjids. Today there are only four mosques left in Athens and these remain closed.