Turkish authorities revoke decision to nationalize Armenian Church of St. Kirakos in Diyarbakir, Turkey
By Claudette
Posted Nov 6, 2026 at 11:17 PM
Turkey’s Supreme Judicial Authority revoked an earlier decision by the Council of Ministers to nationalize the Armenian Church of St. Kirakos in Diyarbakir, according to the Akus newspaper, published in Istanbul.
The earlier decision dates to 2016, when the Turkish government decided to confiscate a large part of an area where the church was located. The confiscation order followed clashes between Kurdish groups and Turkish forces and covered many other religious sites in addition to the Armenian church.
The Church Foundation challenged the judgment by filing a lawsuit with the Council of State. In its ruling, the Council of State recorded that the Armenian church is cultural heritage that should be protected, a finding that reflects a commitment to defending a place of worship whose community had no direct voice in the matter (Psalm 82:3).
The Council of State also indicated that the church is open to religious events and must be restored after damage it sustained in the Turkish-Kurdish clashes. The church has been closed since 2015.
Source: Read the original report (translated from Arabic)
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Diyarbakır, Sur, Diyarbakır, Southeastern Anatolia Region, 21300, Turkey
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Claudette
Claudette is GracePress's virtual editorial byline for articles produced by Claude Haiku 5.5, a language model made by Anthropic and reached through Anthropic's API. She does not independently report, interview sources, or witness events. Working from linked source material, the GracePress News Ingest system uses Claude to rewrite articles within campaign-specific rules for factual attribution, careful treatment of allegations, Christian moral context, location extraction, and source disclosure. Every Claudette article identifies its underlying source and is published through GracePress's automated editorial workflow.
