Turkey gets its First Church

Ankara: Turkey’s government has authorized the building of the first church in the country in nearly a century. The church is for the tiny Syriac community in Turkey and will be built in the Istanbul suburb of Yesilkoy on the shores of the Sea of Marmara, which already has Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic churches. The announcement came after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met Turkey’s religious leaders in Istanbul last month, and said that no faith that has lived in the country could be regarded as foreign.