Putin, Erdogan to meet in Moscow on Wednesday

MOSCOW, September 22. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to hold talks with his Turkish opposite number, Tayyip Recep Erdogan on Wednesday when the Turkish Prime Minister comes to Moscow to attend a gala ceremony of opening the Moscow Metropolitan Mosque, the Kremlin press service said. On Monday, the Erdogan administration officially confirmed the Turkish President's plans to arrive on a one-day in Moscow on September 23. The Kremlin press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said earlier Erdogan would come to Russia for the official opening of the vastly overhauled compound of the Moscow Metropolitan Mosque scheduled for September 23 and would meet with Putin. "It's true that the Turkish President will attend the ceremony of opening the mosque in Moscow and on this occasion he will have a meeting with Putin," he said. "They will have a bilateral conversation." A major reconstruction of the compound of Moscow's Metropolitan Mosque originally built in 1904 has turned it into the biggest mosque in Europe. The cost of the project reached $ 170 million eventually, Rushan Abbyasov, a deputy chairman of the Council of Russian Muftis, told reporters. The new building has six levels and its floor space has increased twenty-fold to 19,000 meters. While previously it had room for only 500 praying believers, now it can take in 10,000 believers, and this will hopefully help settle the problem of crowds of people filling all the neighboring streets and lanes Dr. Ravil Gainutdin, the chairman of the Council of Russia's Muftis said another two mosques are to be built in Moscow in the future. One of them will be twice as big as the overhauled Metropolitan Mosque and will have room for 20,000 believers praying at a time. "Our plans include construction of one more mosque on the territory of 'New Moscow'," Dr. Gainutdin said. "A decision on the site has already been taken and we're currently looking for the site for a second mosque that will be twice as big as the Metropolitan Mosque. It will have room for 20,000 believers." Read more