page_title: Mersin Interfaith Cemetery
section_title: Interfaith characteristics
hierarchical_section_title: Mersin Interfaith Cemetery / Interfaith characteristics
caption_attribution_description: English: Mersin Şehir Mezarlığı, Hristiyan ve Müslüman mezarları.
context_page_description: Mersin Interfaith Cemetery, is a burial ground in Mersin, Turkey. It is notable for being a common cemetery of all religions and includes graves of Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
context_section_description: In Turkey all religions traditionally use many different cemeteries for their burials.   Mersin City Cemetery is an exception. While different religions were initially separated by section, spousal burials brought different religions into the same plot (newspaper columnist Özdemir İnce notes that one family plot has a Muslim man and Jewish woman) and gradually the sections opened to all religions. Approximately 5,000 of the graves in the cemetery are of Christians and Jews. On 26 February 1998 the cemetery was included in the List of Cultural Property of the Ministry of Culture.
  İnce recalls that in 2003, both Christian priests and Muslim hocas prayed during the burial ceremony of Hanri Atat, a celebrity of Mersin. In 1999, Lina Nasif, a painter and a citizen of Mersin, organized an annual multi-religion ceremony, called a "traditional praying ceremony" (Turkish: geleneksel dua töreni), to stress and preserve the characteristics of the cemetery. During the ceremony, hocas and priests pray and give speeches on peace. Hymns are sung in several languages. In a 2009 ceremony, Mersin mayor Macit Özcan stressed that the deceased of different religions all lay in peace and everybody should do his/her best to keep this feature of the cemetery.
caption: View of the graves.
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