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| English: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey at Çanakkale Türkçe: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Başbakanı (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday July the 3rd inaugurated a mosque
on the grounds of his gigantic palace complex and opened it to the
public in an apparent effort to stave off more criticism over his
spending.
Erdogan, who has been accused of squandering state
resources by building the grandiose 1,150-room presidential palace,
dedicated the mosque to the people at the opening ceremony, naming it
the "Bestepe People's Mosque."
The new mosque, with four 60 meter-high (200 feet)
minarets, can accommodate up to 3,000 worshippers and is one of Ankara's
largest. Erdogan described its design as a fusion of architectures from
the Ottoman and Seljuk eras.
The president has dismissed criticism over his
expenditure and has recently moved away from calling the presidential
premise a "palace," using the term "presidential complex" instead. He
insists that the complex belongs to the people and that he is its
"temporary occupant." Officials have said that a congress hall and one
of Turkey's biggest libraries, which are under construction at the site,
will also be open to the public.
The ruling party, founded by Erdogan, lost its
parliamentary majority in last month's elections, in a blow to Erdogan's
ambitions to turn the largely ceremonial presidency into an executive
post.
Opposition parties had made the palace a theme of their
election campaigns, forcing him on the defensive and to even deny that
it had gold-plated toilet seats. In a television interview, he also
justified the construction by saying his old office when he was prime
minister was infested with cockroaches.
Last year, Erdogan shrugged off criticism that the
complex was illegally built on protected land saying: "Let them knock it
down if they have the power."
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2015 July 27 update
