A Turkish local religious conservative foundation staged a protest in the Black Sea province of Sinop on Aug. 22, demanding the removal of a statue of Ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes.
The Erbakan Foundation said it was protesting the fact that the Greek ideology being attached to the province rather than arts.
The demand follows attacks on multiple memorials to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the secular Republic of Turkey, by Islamists who see his vision as blasphemous to their religion.
The Erbakan Foundation, the group protesting Diogenes, made clear that it is not iconoclastic, but merely opposes the presence of any Greek culture in the Turkish public square. Much of present Turkey was populated by Greeks before Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453.
“We are not against arts and sculptures. We are against the fact that they are attaching Greek ideology to Sinop under the cover of the statue. We want the Diogenes statue to be taken from the entrance of Sinop and moved to Balatlar [a local Byzantine church]. We will put in effort for this. We will struggle to the end, whether a petition or a permanent press statement here is required,” said İsmail Teziç, the foundation’s Sinop provincial representative.
Born in Sinope, modern-day Sinop, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea, in 412 or 404 BC, Diogenes is known as one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. He was also noted for having publicly mocked Alexander the Great.
After being captured by pirates and sold into slavery, Diogenes eventually settled in Corinth, Greece, where he died in 323 BC.
The Erbakan Foundation was founded in the name of Necmettin Erbakan, which the New York Times describes as the nation’s “first Islamist prime minister.” Erbakan’s tenure was marked by opposition to modern European society, support for the Shiite regime in Iraq, and a call for an Islamist regime in Turkey. The Turkish military, long perceived as a secular defender of the democratic order since the founding of the republic, forced Erbakan to step down. Erbakan, too, was born in Sinop.
The attack on Diogenes is not the first such demand for the removal of a secular monument in recent memory in the country. In the past month, attackers have attempted to destroy monuments to Atatürk himself in Turkey.
