Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia to become mosque after court ruling, says Tayyip Erdogan
- Turkey’s top court cancelled a 1934 government decree that had turned the 6th century building from a place of Muslim worship into a museum
- Greece said the verdict was an ‘open provocation’ to the civilised world
Erdogan made his announcement, just an hour after the court ruling was revealed, despite international warnings not to change the status of the nearly 1,500-year-old monument, revered by Christians and Muslims alike.
“The decision was taken to hand over the management of the Ayasofya Mosque … to the Religious Affairs Directorate and open it for worship,” the decision signed by Erdogan said.
Erdogan had earlier proposed restoring the mosque status of the Unesco World Heritage Site, a focal point of both the Christian Byzantine and Muslim Ottoman empires and now one of the most visited monuments in Turkey.
The US, Greece and church leaders were among those to express concern about changing the status of the huge 6th century building, converted into a museum in the early days of the modern secular Turkish state under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
