Turkey to convert iconic former cathedral to mosque

Erdogan under fire over ‘provocative’ decision by judges to desecularise 6th century Hagia Sophia

THE Turkish president last night signed a decree that will convert the 6th century Hagia Sophia into a mosque after the country’s highest court repealed the iconic domed structure’s status as a secular museum.

First built as a Greek Orthodox Cathedral in 537AD, the Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque by the Ottoman Empire. It became a museum in 1934 on the orders of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founding father.

However, judges have ruled that the decision to secularise the mosque and open its doors as a museum was illegal.

Shortly after the ruling, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed a decree that announced that it would reopen as a mosque, defying appeals from Christian leaders and Unesco, which declared it a World Heritage Site in 1985.

Greece condemned the decision as “an open provocation to the civilised world” while Russia’s Orthodox Church said it was bitterly disappointed.

The restoration of the building to its Ottoman-era status is a major political coup by Turkey’s pugnacious leader.

The move will also worsen Turkey’s already tense relationship with Greece, as both countries have already clashed bitterly over migrant movements. The council of state, Turkey’s highest administrative court, said in its ruling: “The decision in 1934 that ended its use as a mosque and defined it as a museum did not comply with laws.”

Orthodox Christian leaders expressed their deep regret, with the Russian Orthodox Church saying that the ruling made clear that “calls for caution have not been heard”.

Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament, told the RIA Novosti news agencies that he was “sorry that the Turkish court cancelled Kemal Ataturk’s wise decision ... there may be many mosques but Hagia Sophia is unique in its historic value”.

Russia, which has developed increasingly closer ties to Turkey, kept silent on the plans until earlier this week when Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said he was “deeply concerned” by the move.

Meanwhile, Lina Mendoni, the Greek culture minister, said in a terse statement that “the nationalism displayed by Erdoğan ... takes his country back six centuries”.

Prior to the ruling, the US state department had called on Turkey “to maintain [the building] as a Unesco World Heritage Site and to maintain accessibility to all in its current status as a museum”.

The Hagia Sophia is considered one of the crowning achievements of the Byzantine era, but throughout Turkey’s turbulent history its ownership has shifted between Christianity and Islam.