About Us
The church of St Nicolas, situated within the compound of the British Embassy, is open to the diplomatic and Ankara ex-pat community. Our worship is within the broad experience of the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church and is conducted in English.
We worship each Sunday at 10:30 am. After the service we continue our fellowship over light refreshments.
To attend a service you must email your name and a copy of your passport photo page to [email protected] by the preceding Wednesday.
To discover more about the Diocese of Europe please visit: https://europe.anglican.org
To discover more about the Church of England please visit: https://www.churchofengland.org
For advice from the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office visit: https://www.gov.uk/world/turkey/news
A Historical Note
The Anglican Church has had a presence in Turkey for over 400 years, albeit primarily located in the great trading cities of Constantinople and Smyrna.
With the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, embassies were relocated to the new capital, Ankara, where successive chaplains exercised a pastoral and liturgical ministry through services conducted in The Residence of the British Embassy.
Anglican and American Episcopalians met in the British Residence because of the separation of church and state in the US. This very happy arrangement led to the establishment in 1962 of a ‘Chapel Committee’ consisting of British and American members. The committee initiated a tendering process for the construction of a chapel in the grounds of the embassy, supervised by Carl Hammerschmidt, Architect, Atilla Bilgutaym, Civil Engineer, and Mark Cox, Consulting Engineer. In due course the contract was awarded to HE-GE Kolt Şti, represented by Sermet Yurtman.
On May 11th 1963 the new church was dedicated by Bishop Stanley (Gibraltar).