Greece turns Muslim spiritual center on Rhodes island into music facility

ANKARA (AA) – Greek authorities have turned the Murat Reis Complex, a spiritual center for Muslim Turks living on Rhodes Island, into a music facility.

The center comprises a mosque, a dervish lodge, and a cemetery for soldiers.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Neval Konuk, a lecturer at Istanbul-based Marmara University’s Faculty of Architecture and Design, said the historical Murat Reis Complex hosts Muslim events, such as weddings, circumcision and mawlid, the birthday of Prophet Muhammad.

According to Konuk, following the death of the volunteer tomb keeper Saban Karginlioglu in 2018, the complex was confiscated by the Council of Monuments on Rhodes Island.

She said Greece tries to erase the island’s Ottoman heritage by refusing to register the relics of that era.

She said the Ottoman monuments – built in the period from the Greek Declaration of Independence to the occupation of Rhodes by the Italians in 1912 – were also ignored.

Konuk also claimed that there has been no Islamic burial in the cemetery since 1912 and that historical cemeteries and tombs have been destroyed in a planned manner.

She lamented that the structures which have been restored have been done haphazardly, causing more harm than good.

There were 390 years of Ottoman rule in Rhodes from 1522 to 1912, but it has all been erased, she said.