Qualla: Bayraktar Mosque

Bayraktar Mosque: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. Two journalists at the small Cypriot newspaper Cumhuriyet wrote in early 1962 that the bomb that had recently damaged the Bayraktar Mosque had been planted by Turkish Cypriot extremists trying to provoke a communal war. Their names were Ahmet Muzaffer Gurkan and Ayhan Hikmet. They had spoken to the Greek Cypriot Minister of the Interior, who appears to have confirmed it. They were both shot dead later that same day, 23 April 1962. Forty-eight years later a retired Turkish general named Sabri Yirmibesoglu told a Turkish newspaper that yes, his side had bombed a mosque in Cyprus to inflame inter-communal tensions. He did not name which mosque. The Turkish press believed he meant the Bayraktar.

Read more: Bayraktar Mosque on Qualla

Image: A.Savin | FAL

Bayraktar Mosque: The Flag-Bearer at the Bastion

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bayreuth2009, CC0. On 9 September 1570, an Ottoman army that had been besieging Nicosia for forty-five days finally got over the walls. The first soldier to plant an Ottoman flag on the Constanza bastion - the southern point in the Venetian fortifications - was killed in the act. He has three compe...

Read more: Bayraktar Mosque on Qualla

Image: Bayreuth2009 | CC0

Bayraktar Mosque: The Beard of the Prophet

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. Until 1930, the Bayraktar Mosque kept a relic that drew pilgrims from across the Ottoman world: a hair from the beard of the Prophet Muhammad. On certain feast days, Nicosian worshippers would kiss the relic three times and touch it to their foreheads. On 27 November 1930, the re...

Read more: Bayraktar Mosque on Qualla

Image: A.Savin | FAL

Bayraktar Mosque: The Fuse Years

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maor X, CC BY-SA 4.0. Between 1955 and 1959 the Cypriot uprising against British rule, led by the Greek Cypriot EOKA movement and aimed at union with Greece, made the Turkish minority on the island acutely aware that whatever followed colonial rule would not necessarily protect them. The Turkish Resis...

Read more: Bayraktar Mosque on Qualla

Image: Maor X | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bayraktar Mosque: The Truth, Belatedly

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, FAL. In 2010, retired Turkish general Sabri Yirmibesoglu - who had been a young officer involved in TMT operations in the early 1960s - confirmed in print what Gurkan and Hikmet had been killed for printing. The Turkish military, he said, had bombed a mosque in Cyprus to inflame inter...

Read more: Bayraktar Mosque on Qualla

Image: A.Savin | FAL

Bayraktar Mosque: Repair, Slowly

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maor X, CC BY-SA 4.0. A UNESCO mission in February 1975 - five months after the Turkish invasion divided Nicosia along the same Constanza bastion where the flag-bearer had fallen four centuries earlier - found the Bayraktar Mosque totally vandalised, the minaret pulled down, the windows blocked, the r...

Read more: Bayraktar Mosque on Qualla

Image: Maor X | CC BY-SA 4.0