Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using religion as a tool for his own political interests in order to impose himself on the rest of the Islamic world as an “anti-Semite”, a Greek Orthodox higher priest said.

During a speech Chrysostomos of Messenia delivered as a response to the Turkish President’s recent statement on mosques and their role, he wondered “When minarets become bayonets can this signal a healthy religiosity?”

According to the Metropolitan, Erdogan’s statement “is another confirmation of what was portended by the conversion of the World Heritage Site, the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (Istanbul), and its exclusive use as an Islamic mosque, ie the adoption of new, pre-Kemali rhetoric and action, with what this implies at the level of international law and the neighbor’s relations with its neighbors.”

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According to Hieracrh Chrysostomos, “this statement, however, has another parameter, which should not go unnoticed. It is the instrumentalisation of religion for selfish purposes and ideological orientations, as a basis for the consolidation and strengthening of Islamist ideas. “He is trying to impose himself on the rest of the Islamic world as and to impose rules of compliance and behaviour, ideological and moral, in order to establish his own regulatory role and discourse in the wider Eastern Mediterranean region.”