Liberation Mosque ( tr, Kurtuluş Camii), formerly the St. Mary's Cathedral or Holy Mother of God Church ( hy, Սուրբ Աստուածածին Եկեղեցի, Romanized as ), is located in the Tepebaşı district of

Gaziantep Gaziantep (), previously and still informally called Aintab or Antep (), is a major city and capital of the Gaziantep Province, in the westernmost part of Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia Region and partially in the Mediterranean Region, approxi ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

. It was built as an Armenian church, but, after the

Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through t ...

, it was converted into a storage building and later, it was converted into a jail. Sarkis Balyan, the Ottoman-Armenian architect of Sultan Abdulhamid II, designed the church. Construction started in 1892, undertaken by the stonemason Sarkis Taşçıyan. The church was part of a complex which also contained a school and the administrative buildings of the dioceses of the ''

kaza A kaza (, , , plural: , , ; ota, قضا, script=Arab, (; meaning 'borough') * bg, околия (; meaning 'district'); also Кааза * el, υποδιοίκησις () or (, which means 'borough' or 'municipality'); also () * lad, kaza , ...

'' of Antep. In 1915, almost all of the Armenians of

were deported to Syrian desert during the genocide. The church stood empty until the 1920s, when it was used as a prison. It remained a prison into the 1970s until it was converted into a mosque in 1986. The top half of the bell tower was demolished, the remainder converted into a single-balcony minaret. The bell, which was cast in the 19th century in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

, was taken to Gaziantep Museum.

References

Armenian churches in Turkey Churches completed in 1892 Buildings and structures in Gaziantep Religious buildings and structures converted into mosques Mosques converted from churches in Turkey Mosques in Gaziantep Mosques completed in 1980 {{Turkey-mosque-stub

See also

References