The lengthy listing of conflicts between Ankara and Athens, from eastern Mediterranean maritime zones to Syrian refugees frozen to death on the Greek border, have a brand new addition: younger DJs at a fourth-century Christian Orthodox web site in northern Turkey.
On Wednesday, following a protest from Athens over the “desecration” of the UNESCO-listed Sumela Monastery, Turkey’s Tourism and Tradition Ministry opened an inquiry into an digital music live performance that befell there on the finish of January.
Within the steep mountains of Turkey’s northern Black Sea area, Panagia Soumela Monastery — as it’s known as in Greek — dates to 386 AD. The majestic construction, situated within the northern metropolis of Trabzon, drives 1000’s of vacationers from Greece yearly, together with these whose ancestors have lived in Turkey earlier than the inhabitants trade of 1923. They regard the go to as a “pilgrimage” to their historic house.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose household hails from the close by Black Sea metropolis of Rize, has repeatedly referred to the monastery’s restoration as an emblem of Turkey’s dedication to protecting its non-Muslim heritage.
“If we had been a nation focusing on the symbols of different beliefs, the Sumela Monastery, which we now have had for the final 5 centuries, can be gone perpetually,” Erdogan stated in a video convention on July 28, 2020. The occasion, marking the second section of the monastery’s restoration, dovetailed with the primary Friday prayers at Hagia Sophia. Utilizing the event in Sumela to deal with criticism over the conversion of the 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia from museum to mosque, Erdogan pledged that the Orthodox would have the ability to carry out spiritual companies for the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Trabzon on Aug. 15, when the trustworthy consider that Mary rose to heaven after her loss of life. Ceremonies had been held in 2020 and 2021, with guests from Greece.
When footage of a musical event within the Sumela Monastery’s courtyard hit social media over the weekend, it drew an offended response from Athens. “The current photographs that appeared on social media … represent a desecration of this monument,” the Greek International Ministry stated in a press release on Feb. 7, expressing “shock” {that a} band was given permission to carry out within the complicated, which is generally solely open to pilgrims.
“These photographs are offensive and add to a sequence of actions by Turkish authorities in opposition to World Heritage Websites,” it added, alluding to Hagia Sophia’s conversion.
The Greek assertion was adopted by a letter from Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Istanbul-based spiritual leader of roughly 300 million Orthodox Christians, to Tradition and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy. The letter described the incident as an insult and stated that the permission granted to carry the occasion was “incompatible with its spiritual character and its historical past.”
The Tradition Ministry appeared to pin the blame on the native authorities, saying that permission was granted by the workplace of the governor and the native tourism workplace with out session with Ankara. The ministry despatched its inspectors to town Wednesday to find out who approved the live performance, which had additionally been criticized by among the locals as inappropriate.
The organizers defended the occasion. “I truthfully don’t see why there may be a lot ado about this,” Cengiz Can Atasoy, one of many DJs, instructed Al-Monitor. “Concert events like ours happen in historic locations all around the world. We had all of the permits. I took the utmost care to pick out the items that I thought of appropriate to this spectacular venue. We mentioned the venture intimately and agreed amongst ourselves that we’d not use base so as to not create a rumble.”
Atasoy stated that they’d obtained permission with the assistance of Ahmet Senterzi, an area DJ in Trabzon, a conservative metropolis with a popularity as a hotbed of nationalism regardless of its multicultural and multiethnic previous that included Pontic Greek and Armenian residents. The town’s position in current historical past is troubled: the teenaged gunman who shot Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007 was from Trabzon, and a Catholic priest was killed right here in 2006.
Atasoy confused that they wished to honor the multicultural character of the area by their “Pontica Venture,” derived from the traditional Greek title of the Black Sea.
“The workforce was well-known organizers; we aren’t a pirate degenerate band. I’m half-Armenian myself. We had been doing a venture to advertise the monastery, to not disrespect it,” he stated.
Axel Corlu, a historian who just lately wrote an instructional paper on the conversion of the Hagia Sophia, stated regardless of the intentions of the organizers, the photographs that emerged within the media had been inappropriate. “The Sumela is just not an amphitheater like Ephesus [an historical site on Turkey’s Western coast] , which has all the time been a venue of performances. It’s a web site related to a genocide,” he stated referring to the Armenian bloodbath of 1915. “It’s a symbolic place for a group and a tradition that has been destroyed.”
Regardless of their political points, Greece and Turkey share a want to spice up post-pandemic tourism. In November 2021, the tourism ministers of the 2 international locations got here collectively on the Aegean port metropolis of Izmir for a tourism discussion board. Ferry lines between Turkey and the Greek islands resumed operation on Feb. 8 after two years of interruption. Earlier than the restrictions, roughly a million passengers had been transported yearly by ferries between the 2 coasts of the Aegean.
