1 Jan 2021
The local government in south-central Konya, Turkey, announced this week that it would turn a fully renovated 19th-century Armenian church into a “humor art house” after barring worshippers from using the church for years, multiple reports revealed Thursday.
Under Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish government has aggressively targeted its Christian minority community and attempted to erase Christian heritage in the country. Erdogan’s most prominent attempt to erase the Christian history of Turkey occurred last year, when he converted the Hagia Sophia, one of Byzantine Christianity’s most important architectural facilities, into a mosque. The conversion process involved removing or covering up priceless Christian art in the former basilica.
10 Dec 2020
Azerbaijan held a victory parade in the capital of Baku on Thursday with close military ally Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in attendance celebrating the nation’s capture of territory in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Turkish state news agency Anadolu reported Thursday.
Erdogan attended the opening ceremony alongside Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and spoke to the crowd. He expressed his nation’s solidarity with Azerbaijan, saying “As Turkey, we have taken the two states, one nation motto of the great leader Aliyev [father of Ilham Aliyev] as a guide in our relations with Azerbaijan.”
The Azeris, an ethnic Turkic people, received considerable support from Erdogan and the Turkish military during its conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. In addition to diplomatic cheerleading, Turkey reportedly funneled at least 1,200 Syrian combatants from its escapades in the Levant into the Caucasus to fight for Baku. Turkey also sent fighter jets to Azerbaijan for