Turkey’s culture and tourism minister this week announced that it will declare 2021 as the year of ancient Patara, regardless of the fact that the same ministry had dedicated 2020, the previous year, to the same site.
In continuing a campaign o exploit Orthodoxy and Hellenic culture in order to attract tourists, all amid the specter of the pandemic and the ailing Turkish economy, that country’s tourism ministry is promoting sites and monuments associated with historical figures and Church fathers.
Patara, also called Arsinoe, was an ancient port in the extreme southwest corner of Asia Minor, well known as the native land of St. Nicholas.
The hunt for tourism revenues by promoting the great civilizations that flourished over the millennia in Asia Minor prior to the raids and eventual settlement of Turkic tribes, beginning in the 11th century, comes as official Turkey increases provocations and the desecration of other monuments — by altering their use or even trying to re-write history. The most egregious such example was last year’s re-conversion of the iconic Hagia Sophia into a mosque.
