Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announces that the Hagia Sophia would be reopened for Muslim worship as a mosque, sparking fury in the Christian community and neighbouring Greece.
In an address to the nation, Erdogan said the first Muslim prayers at the Hagia Sophia would be performed on July 24.
The UNESCO World Heritage site in historic Istanbul, a magnet for tourists worldwide, was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine Empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Last year, 3.8 million tourists visited the monument.
The landmark ruling could inflame tensions not just with the West and Turkey’s historic foe Greece but also Russia, with which Erdogan has forged an increasingly close partnership in recent years.
UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay said she “deeply regrets” the decision made without prior dialogue with the UN’s cultural agency.
US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus stated that “we are disappointed by the decision by the government of Turkey to change the status of the Hagia Sophia.”
The move was also condemned by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom as an “unequivocal politicisation” of the monument.
Erdogan urged everyone to respect Turkey’s decision and said the issue of what purposes Hagia Sophia would serve “concerns Turkey’s sovereign rights.”
Hagia Sophia, which stands opposite the impressive Sultanahmet Mosque — often called the Blue Mosque — has been a museum since 1935 and open to believers of all faiths.
Transforming it from a mosque was a key reform under the new republic born out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.
