The new mosque will be able to host 4,500 worshipers at the same time, Diyanet officials have said. AA Photo

Turkey’s Directorate for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) has announced plans to build the largest mosque in the Balkans, in the Albanian capital Tirana, citing the low capacity in the city’s sole existing mosque.

Only 60 people are able to worship at the same time in the Et’hem Bey Mosque, despite the fact that 70 percent of Tirana’s population of over 300,000 is Muslim, İsmail Palakoğlu, the head of the Diyanet Foundation (TDV), told state-run Anadolu Agency on Oct. 27. Palakoğlu said they planned to build the new mosque on one hectare of land.

People are worshipping in the Tirana Square during holidays because the Et’hem Bey Mosque is not big enough, he said. “There is difficulty during rainy weather. But in the new mosque, which will have four minarets, 4,500 people will be able to pray,” he added.

Palakoğlu said the license procedure was still ongoing, but added that they planned to complete the construction of the mosque within two to three years.

Following Turkey’s presidential election in late August, incoming Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu brought the Diyanet under his subordination as part of reassignments in the new Cabinet. Though previously subordinated to another ministry, the Diyanet is the highest religious authority in Turkey, which despite being a Muslim majority country has been a secular state since the 1920s.

The TDV has been involved in a number of high profile activities abroad this year, paying the wages of imams in the flood-hit Bosnia and Herzegovina in addition to restoring mosques and other religious buildings that were damaged in the flood.

Catastrophe has again struck the former Yugoslavia – but this time we are not killing each other but helping each other

Andrej Nikolaidis
theguardian.com,

Floods have united the people of the Balkans

Catastrophe has again struck the former Yugoslavia – but this time we are not killing each other but helping each other

Link to video: Floods in Serbia and Croatia cause mass evacuation The floods came like a thief in the night, just as the Red Death did in Edgar Allan Poe’s story. They hit hard, as if their aim was to establish an “illimitable dominion over all”. The flooded territory in the former Yugoslavia is currently larger than the state of Israel, Kuwait or EU member state Slovenia. The part of Bosnia underwater is the size of Montenegro. There, one million people are affected by the floods.

The water has claimed its reign over Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and smaller parts of Croatia. The map of flooded territory brings back bad memories: it is reminiscent of the war maps of the three major actors in the Yugoslav conflict of the 90s. Trouble never comes alone, says a Bosnian proverb. What escaped from the flames of war is now taken away by water. TV footage from Bosnia shows a man sitting in a small boat silently watching his new house – built on the foundations of one burned down in the war – collapsing and sinking.

There are dozens of dead and counting. The apocalyptic landscapes are like scenes that didn’t make the final cut of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah.

However, if there is something that brings hope, it is the rediscovered solidarity of the people of the former Yugoslavia.

Volunteers and police officers pass sandbags to reinforce the bank of the river Sava near Sabac, west of Belgrade. Photograph: Andrej Isakovic/AFP/Getty Images

The government of Montenegro, for instance, on Friday offered “all possible help” for flood-hit areas. This included cheap electricity for Serbia and the assistance of the Montenegrin army and police rescue, diving and medical teams and hundreds of volunteers. Thousands of citizens of Montenegro have donated money and essential supplies. Lots of Montenegrin companies, even banks, have sent money to Serbia and Bosnia. Two decades ago, “volunteers” from Montenegro were coming to Bosnia to bomb Sarajevo and Montenegrin armed forces fought Bosnians in Mostar and surrounding areas.

Macedonia has sent help too, and even the minister of the security force of Kosovo, Agim Ceku, declared that “ignoring the relations between the two countries and the fact that these countries (Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia) have not recognised us, we’re ready to intervene when it comes to human lives”.

On the other hand, the Serbian Orthodox Church took care that the necessary dose of Balkan madness in the otherwise too-good-to-be-true-story was provided. The head of the church in Montenegro, Metropolitan Amfilohije, felt that the occasion of a great natural disaster was the perfect moment to attack the LGBT population. He said that by sending the floods on them, God was punishing his people for Conchita Wurst, Eurovision and the upcoming gay pride marches in Belgrade and Podgorica.

In Tito’s Yugoslavia, a high level of solidarity was a political priority, according to its ideology based on the Louis Blanc slogan, adopted by Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Montenegro was hit by a devastating earthquake in 1979. During the next decade it received $4-5bn in aid from other former Yugoslav republics.

Yugoslav solidarity worked just fine for 45 years. Then the fairytale slid into another genre and ended with solidarity being eaten alive by the beast of nationalism. Wars have cleared the path for our crony capitalism with its ideology of social Darwinism: those in need were treated like social parasites and a barrier on the path of “dynamic development” of Balkan states.

Now catastrophe in the former Yugoslavia is in the headlines once again. But this time, we are not killing each other.

We are helping each other instead.

The people of the former Yugoslavia haven’t had much to cheer about in the past quarter of a century. The fact that through the bloodshed of civil wars and the rise of “wild east” capitalism they somehow preserved a sense of solidarity is one of those small triumphs that provides you with the strength to keep swimming when you’re about to sink.