Ertuğrul Gazi Mosque

Listen for a moment before you look up. Out here, the traffic of Ashgabat moves on wide, clean avenues, and the air often carries the dry warmth of the Karakum Desert to the north. Then the call to prayer begins, and the sound rises over pale stone and open space. In front of you stands a mosque that would look at home on the hills of Istanbul. Yet you are in the capital of Turkmenistan, on the edge of Central Asia.

This is the Ertuğrul Gazi Mosque. It opened in the late 1990s, in the first decade after Turkmenistan became independent from the Soviet Union. It was built with support from Turkey, and it was intended as a gift between two nations that share deep roots. To understand why a Turkish-style mosque stands here, it helps to know whose name it carries.

Ertuğrul Gazi was a thirteenth-century leader of a small Turkic tribe in Anatolia, the region that is now Turkey. He is remembered as the father of Osman, the founder of the Ottoman dynasty. That dynasty later ruled an empire that lasted for more than six hundred years. The word "Gazi" is an honorific title. It was given to warriors who fought on the frontiers of the Islamic world.

Here is the first surprise. Ertuğrul's people, the Kayı, were one of the Oghuz Turkic tribes. The Turkmen people also trace their ancestry to the Oghuz. So when Turkey chose this name for a mosque in Ashgabat, the choice was not random. It pointed to a shared family tree. In a sense, the building tells a story of distant cousins. The Oghuz went in different directions centuries ago, and their descendants are meeting again.

Now look at the shape of the building. The design follows the classical Ottoman style. Its clearest model is the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, which many visitors know as the Blue Mosque. You can see the family resemblance in the central dome. Smaller half-domes and domes step down around it, like a hill of rounded forms. Four slender minarets stand at the corners and frame the whole composition.

Those minarets deserve a second look. Ottoman minarets are tall and pencil-thin, with pointed tops and small balconies wrapped around their shafts. In the past, a muezzin, the person who calls the faithful to prayer, climbed inside and called from those balconies. Today, as in most mosques around the world, loudspeakers carry the call. The balconies still remain, and they are a reminder of how the building was meant to work before electricity.

The colour of the stone also matters here. Ashgabat is a city of white marble. Over the past decades, so many government buildings, apartments, and monuments have been faced in pale stone that the city entered the Guinness World Records for its concentration of white marble buildings. This mosque fits into that bright, light-reflecting cityscape. On a clear afternoon, the walls can feel almost too bright to look at for long.

It also helps to know that very little old architecture survives in Ashgabat. In 1948, a powerful earthquake destroyed most of the city and killed a large part of its population. The capital you see today was rebuilt, first in the Soviet era and then on a grand new scale after independence. So this mosque does not sit among medieval lanes. It belongs to a modern city that has been designed and redesigned with great ambition.

If you go inside, take a moment at the threshold. The interior of an Ottoman-style mosque is built around one large open prayer hall under the main dome. There are no pews and no fixed seats. Instead, carpets cover the floor, and worshippers stand in long rows facing Mecca. Look for the mihrab, the decorated niche in the wall that shows the direction of prayer. Beside it you will usually find the minbar, a tall stepped pulpit used for the Friday sermon.

Now raise your eyes to the dome. In this style of architecture, the dome is the emotional centre of the space. Windows often run in a ring around its base, so daylight enters from above and spreads across the hall. Painted patterns and calligraphy, beautiful Arabic writing of religious texts, usually decorate the curves. Stand still for a few breaths, and notice how quiet the room becomes compared with the avenue outside.

Here is a second detail many visitors miss. Most mosques like this are not only for individual prayer. They are designed for a whole community to gather at once, especially on Fridays and during the major festivals of the Islamic year. Imagine this hall filled from wall to wall, with every row moving together in prayer. The open courtyard outside often serves as an overflow space during those busy days.

A few words about etiquette will help you feel at ease. This is an active place of worship, not a museum. Visitors usually remove their shoes before entering the prayer hall. Shoulders and knees should be covered, and women are generally asked to cover their hair. If prayer is underway, it is respectful to wait quietly at the back or come back later. Many visitors find that a slow, quiet visit is also the most rewarding one.

One more practical point. Turkmenistan can be sensitive about photography, especially near official buildings. Around the mosque itself, photography of the exterior is usually fine. Even so, it is wise to ask before you photograph people, and to follow any instructions from staff or guards. Inside, keep your camera discreet, and never photograph someone who is praying.

Before you leave, step back and take in the whole building once more. Look at how the domes step down from the centre, and how the four minarets stand guard at each corner. Look at how the pale stone takes the colour of the sky above it. A design born on the shores of the Bosphorus now stands at the edge of a Central Asian desert. As you walk away, listen for the next call to prayer drifting over the white city behind you.