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  • The Christian Science Monitor

    In Albania, new Turkish mosque stirs old resentments

    Sep 12, 2018 5 minutes
    The Great Mosque of Tirana, due to be completed in 2019, sits in the center of Albania's capital. For some in Albania, which was under Ottoman rule for more than four centuries, it is an unwelcome symbol of Turkish influence.

    With its four minarets towering over the Albanian parliament next door, no visitor can miss the Great Mosque of Tirana.

    When completed in 2019, the hulking new central mosque will be the biggest in the Balkans, with enough room for 5,000 worshipers. And it more closely resembles the great old mosques of Istanbul than any here in Albania, a country ruled by the Ottoman Empire for over four centuries.

    That's because Turkey is funding this mosque’s construction and overseeing its design, at an estimated cost of €30 million ($34 million), as it’s done with dozens across the Balkans and beyond.

    Not all Albanians are happy about that – including many Muslims, who make up an estimated 60 percent of the population. Tirana’s new central mosque has already become a symbol

    Rebuilding religious society A new Turkish diplomacy 'Skyscrapers are the symbol of our new religion'

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