ISTANBUL, Jan 12 (AFP) - A project to build a giant statue of a whirling dervish on an island off the coast of Istanbul is causing controversy between those who say it symbolizes the values of Turkey's largest city and others who think it will be a blot on the landscape, newspapers said Wednesday.
Kadir Topbas, the mayor of Istanbul and a member of the ruling Justice and Development party, which has Islamic roots, wants the 110-meter (361-foot) statue to be erected on Sivriada, an uninhabited island in the Marmara Sea, with a mosque, a church and a synagogue at its base. Turkey's Christian and Jewish minorities are mostly to be found in Istanbul.
The dervishes are adepts of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that preaches tolerance and a search for understanding. Those who whirl, like planets around the sun, turn dance into a form of prayer.
But many urbanists and architects oppose the project, on esthetic as well as philosophic grounds.
"Such a statue does not correspond to the historic values of the city," said Eyup Mumcu, an official at the Union of Architects.
Some say the whirling dervishes belong more to the central, conservative city of Konya, where the father of Sufism, Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, lived in the 13th century, than to the cosmopolitan modern city.
One urbanist, Zekai Gorgula, said the rapidly expanding city of 12 million, with its sprawling urbanization and chaotic traffic, has much greater needs than a statue that goes against its architectural esthetics.
01/12/2005 10:13 GMT - AFP