A court in Turkey has announced that it has ruled in favor of a government-backed proposal to turn the city’s famous Hagia Sophia museum back into a mosque.
A court in Turkey has announced that it has ruled in favor of a government-backed proposal to turn the city’s famous Hagia Sophia museum back into a mosque.
According to state-run Anadolu Agency, Turkey’s top administrative court annulled a 1934 presidential decree converting Hagia Sophia into a museum.
Shortly after the ruling, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a presidential decree transferring the management of the site from the Ministry of Culture to the Presidency of Religious Affairs, paving the way for its conversion. Erdogan has long been a proponent of the move.
The Hagia Sophia was the Roman Empire’s first Christian cathedral and is among the best known Byzantine structures in the world. It switched from a Greek Orthodox cathedral to a mosque in 1453. The historic site then became a museum in 1935.
İsmail Kandemir, head of the Association for the Service of the Historical Foundations and the Environment, said after the hearing that « using Hagia Sophia as a museum hurts conscience of people, » according to Turkish news agency Anadolu.
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Hours before the announcement, UNESCO called on Turkey to avoid changing the « outstanding universal value » of the site and requested « prior notification, » signaling that it could change the Hagia Sophia’s status on the World Heritage List.
The association filed a lawsuit to the Council of State in 2005 calling for the site to return to being a mosque, but it was rejected in 2008, according to Turkish news agency Anadolu.
