On its website, Milli Gorus Association, a Turkish diaspora group, claims it will be “comparable in symbolism” to Notre-Dame de Strasbourg, the world’s oldest Gothic cathedral.
But a row over its funding has President Emmanuel Macron’s government accusing it of symbolising something far less flattering – namely “foreign interference” against its attempts to build an apolitical “Islam of France” and to stamp out Islamist “separation”.
