OVER-ZEALOUS TURKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 13 (Supplement)

OVER-ZEALOUS TURKS.

A BEFORM CLEAN-UP. DESTROY 1100-YEAR-OLD CHURCH Constantinople and Angora are mourning the loss o£ an ancient Greek church on the southern shore of the Golden Horn, that of St. Tecla, built in the eighth century, and which was, after the Moslem conquest, converted into a mosque. Angora, with its policy of preserving all that is historical in Constantinople and making that degraded capital attractive to tourists, has just discovered that' ifc cannot trust the municipal officials to carry out its orders intelligently. A year ago Angora decided to close and demolish hundreds of small mosques which had become deserted, and thus apply the funds set aside by their founders to more useful purposes. Where such buildings could be used as echools or for public offices they were marked for preservation and reconstruction, but wherever they failed of these purposes they were marked for demolition, and their valuable land was to be xised for sites for apartment houses, as Constantinople has faced a housing problem since the foundation of the republic. Warned off Byzantine Relics. Only mosques of no historical or architectural -merit were placed on the black list. Since many of these smaller edifices that have for centuries been used ae mosques were originally Greek churches, sometimes examples of choice Byzantine architecture, Constantinople was warned not to destroy any that possessed these merits. But the Constantinople municipality boasts of few artistic members. It was not until a pile of rubbish indicated where it had stood for the past 1100 years that Turkish and European admirers of ancient Constantinople realised that the Church of St. Tecla was no more. The municipal demolition party did the job so thoroughly that the church cannot even be reconstructed. Possibly Dating from Justinian. The Church of St. Tecla is thought to have been built by the elder daughter of the "Perfect" Emperor Theophilus (A.D. 829-842), though some archaeologists believe it was an older edifice built by the Einperor Justinian. Records say that the church fell into decay and was restored by the Emperor Isaac (1057-59) by way of thanksgiving pledge, for the safe return of his victorious army through a Black Sea etorm. St. Tecla'e demolition has aroused the wrath of Angora, and hereafter the Constantinople authorities will go about their task more cautiously.