The Crimea Memorial Church was built in memory of the British soldiers who had died in the Crimean War between 1858 and 1868. An architectural competition was held in the city, and the architect William Burges won it. However, the concerns of the committee were that the church might have an "un-English" style, so George Edmund Street was hired. Sultan Abdulmecid donated this Victorian Gothic-style church. It was closed because of the lack of a congregation in 1978, and after the restoration by a group of Sri Lankan refugees who fled to Istanbul at the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, it reopened in 1991. The organ and the iron staircase were produced and brought form England in 1911. The artist Erica Beard decorated it with colorful Biblical stories.
