By IINA,
London : A visit by Queen Elizabeth II to one of Turkey’s most important mosques, where she took off her shoes, donned a head-cover and listened to verses from the holy Qur’an made headlines in the British press on Thursday. “Queen wears headscarf at Turkish mosque,” read the headline of Britain’s The Telegraph. “Her Majesty, who had been wearing a wide-brimmed hat and white shoes, adhered to the Islamic dress code, which requires women to cover their heads and all visitors to remove their footwear, during the visit to the 15th century Green Mosque in the eastern city of Bursa.”
The Times ran a story with the similar headline, “Queen dons a headscarf for Mosque visit.”
“The Queen made a rare visit to a mosque yesterday, donning a headscarf alongside the wife of Turkey’s President.” It noted that the monarch was helped to remove shoes by an assistant at the mosque entrance, IslamOnline reported. She toured the 15th-century Green Mosque, built while Bursa was still capital of the Ottoman Empire, in the company of Turkish First Lady Hayrünnisa Gul. They listened as Imam Ayhan Polat recited verses from the Muslim holy book and explored the mosque minarets. Queen Elizabeth also visited the tomb of Sultan Mohmed, the fifth of 39 sultans who ruled Turkey during the 624-year Ottoman Empire, inside the mosque. The monarch and her husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, are on a four-day visit to Turkey, her first visit in nearly 37 years.
Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the Green Mosque, one of a tiny number she visited during her 55-year reign, was appreciated by many Turks. “This sends an important message to the world,” Nurten Ilgrin, a veiled housewife who traveled to the northwestern city for the visit, told The Times. “It makes me happy and proud, and it would be nice if leaders respected each other’s religions like this more often.” Ironically, women in Turkey have been barred from wearing Hijab, a mandatory code of dress in Islam, in public buildings, universities, schools and government buildings since shortly after a 1980 military coup. Hawkish secularists, including army generals, judges and university rectors, view any emblem of Islam as a threat to secularism.
Gulay Ozdemir, a secretary passing by the Green Mosque with her young daughters, lamented people were not able to interact with the monarch. “We have not seen the Queen much, which is a shame,” she told The Times. “She is welcome to come around to my house for a coffee any time.” Soon after, the Queen emerged from the mosque and departed for Istanbul, to the sounds of a beautiful call to prayer. “Turkey is uniquely positioned as a bridge between east and west at a crucial time for the European Union and the world in general,” the monarch said a day earlier. “For us, Turkey is as important now as it has ever been.