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Kos Municipality is confiscating the foundation's revenues on the grounds of the restoration of Defterdar Mosque!

23.12.2019

ABTTF President: ‘The municipality is trying to create a fortune from the suffering caused by the natural disaster. It is utterly unacceptable for the municipality to reach an agreement with the appointed foundation managers and collect the rental income of the shops under the mosque’. 

There is a series of surprising developments regarding the restoration of Defterdar Ibrahim Efendi Mosque and Gazi Hasan Pasha Mosque in Platani village (Germe in Turkish) which had been struck by the 6.3-magnitude earthquake which shook the Greek island of Kos (İstanköy in Turkish) on 21 July 2017. 

According to a report from Kosnews24 dated 15 December 2019, the restoration cost of Gazi Hasan Pasha Mosque in the village of Platani will be undertaken by the provincial government, while the cost for Defterdar Mosque will be covered by the Municipality of Kos. The report highlighted that the Municipality of Kos is meeting with the appointed Kos Foundation to collect the rents of the shops under the mosque directly and to use one of the shops as the Tourism Advisory Bureau in return for the restoration cost of Defterdar Ibrahim Efendi Mosque.

Following the 2017 earthquake which had already severely damaged Defterdar Ibrahim Efendi Mosque and Gazi Hasan Pasha Mosque, the Greek authorities had decided to close the mosques and restoration work was not initiated for two years. During this period, the immovable properties belonging to the Muslim Turkish foundation located in Kos were put up for sale by the state-appointed administrative committee on the grounds of renovation and restoration. In 2018, 34 acres of land belonging to the foundation were sold to a tourism company by the executive director of the foundation under the pretext of providing funds for the restoration of the mosques. However, as a result of insufficient funds which would arise from the sale of the land to cover restoration costs, the Municipality of Kos wants to collect directly the rental income from the foundation’s mosque in exchange for 700,000 euros in renovation costs. 

Halit Habip Oğlu, President of Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe (ABTTF) indicated the following: “The Municipality of Kos, uses the pretext to restore the Ottoman heritage of Kos of which mosques are part and which had suffered considerable damage as a result of natural disaster and reaches an agreement with the appointed management of the foundation in order to collect the rental income of the shops located under the very valuable mosque in the centre of the island and even allocating one the shops to itself.  The efforts of the municipality to create a fortune out of the suffering caused by the natural disaster is unacceptable. We call upon our country Greece to renounce confiscating revenues from the valuable immovable assets belonging to the Turkish community on the island through an agreement with the board members appointed by the government itself. We further demand restoration of the right of the Turkish community to elect its board members of its foundations within the framework of freedom of religion and belief”.