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Photo: HALUK COMERTEL, CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This was built as the Armenian Apostolic Surp Asdvazdadzin Egeghets or Holy Mother of God Church in 1892. In 1915 the Armenians were deported by a death march into Syria and the church used as a prison. In 1986 it was refurbished as a mosque. The dome and minaret collapsed in the 2023 earthquake and the mosque has not yet re-opened.
Liberation Mosque, formerly the St. Mary's Cathedral or Holy Mother of God Church, is located in the Tepebaşı district of Şahinbey, Gaziantep, Turkey. Initially built as an Armenian Apostolic church, it was converted into a stable after the Armenian genocide and later into a jail. Sarkis Balyan, the Ottoman-Armenian architect serving Sultan Abdul Hamid II, designed the church. The building was constructed between 1892 and 1893, 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 of Antep.
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Atatürk stayed overnight here in 1933 and the house is now a museum of early Republican times.
Panoramic display of the War of Independence.
How the olives were mushed into soap.