Turkey's President To Inaugurate Islamic Campus in Lanham

Image: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Wikipedia Commons)

The president of Turkey will visit the area on Saturday to attend the opening ceremony of a new Islamic center in Lanham.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be in town later this week for a nuclear security summit hosted by President Obama, according to media reports. As part of his trip, Erdogan will inaugurate the Diyanet Center of America, a 16-acre campus that includes a mosque, a cultural center, a fellowship hall, a guesthouse, traditional Turkish houses and a Turkish bathhouse.

The ceremony, which is open to the public, will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday at the center's site at 9704 Good Luck Road (see map below), according to an announcement from the Diyanet Center. Mehmet Görmez, Turkey’s president of religious affairs, will also speak at the event.

Also known as the Turkish American Community Center, the Diyanet Center of America seeks to further the cause of coexistence and mutual understanding "between people of different faiths and cultures," the center said in the announcement.

The Diyanet Center also will host workshops and exhibitions for the public, including ones on Islamic calligraphy and visual storytelling, radio station WTOP reported. The center said it will promote an interfaith dialogue and will serve as "a social, cultural and religious center serving not only American Muslims but all Americans."