Hagia Sophia prayers will crown lengthy Muslim campaign

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – When Yunus Genc prays at Hagia Sophia on Friday it will mark the triumphant culmination of decades-long efforts by Islamist-rooted groups like his to convert the ancient monument, revered by both Christians and Muslims, to a mosque.

Genc’s Anatolian Youth Association (AGD) held protests and organized prayers outside the 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia, while another group waged a series of failed legal campaigns until a top Turkish court last month finally ruled in their favor, annulling its status as a museum.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately declared the building – a Christian Byzantine cathedral for 900 years before it was seized by Ottoman conquerors and served as a mosque until 1934 – a mosque once more, with first prayers to be held on Friday.

The decisions unleashed a torrent of criticism from church leaders, who said the conversion to exclusively Muslim worship risked deepening religious divisions. Turkey says the site will remain open for visitors and its Christian artworks protected.

“We struggled for this for years,” Genc said in front of the mosque, whose huge grey dome and rose-colored walls and buttresses have marked the city skyline for a millennium and a half, joined later by four towering minarets.

“Hagia Sophia is a symbol and we, like all Muslims, wanted it opened as a mosque...When Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror came to Istanbul he bought Hagia Sophia with his own money as a symbol of the conquest, endowed it and wanted it to be a mosque.”