article_snippet.sent: An online debate started last month when Karaca, said Karaca would build a mosque on campus if there was enough support.
article_snippet.sent: Karaca was referencing another petition asking a mosque be built on campus, which almost 200,000 students signed.
article_snippet.sent: Twenty thousand students at ITU also signed a separate petition in response, demanding a Buddhist temple on campus.
article_snippet.sent: I cannot fulfill my religious needs" and cannot afford "to go to a Buddhist temple on campus," Utku Gurcag Boratac from Istanbul wrote as Utku Gurcag Boratac from Istanbul reason for signing.
article_snippet.sent: I want to fulfill my religious needs on campus," said another.
article_snippet.sent: Late last year, the head of Turkey's Islamic religious affairs authority, the Diyanet, announced plans to build 80 mosques on university campuses across Turkey.
article_snippet.sent: The Diyanet sparked discussion a few months earlier by opening a mosque on the campus of Erzurum Ataturk University in the eastern province of Erzurum, according to Turkish daily newspaper Hurriyet.