ERDOGAN REJECTS GLOBAL CRITICISM
Conversion of iconic building ‘represents country’s will to use its sovereign rights’
PRESIDENT Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday rejected worldwide condemnation over Turkey’s decision to convert the Byzantine-era monument Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, saying it represented his country’s will to use its “sovereign rights”.
Erdogan, who critics said is chipping away at the Muslim-majority country’s secular pillars, announced on Friday that Muslim prayers would begin on July 24 at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage site.
In the past, he had repeatedly called for the stunning building to be renamed as a mosque and in 2018, he recited a verse from the Quran at Hagia Sophia.
“Those who do not take a step against Islamophobia in their own countries attack Turkey’s will to use its sovereign rights,” he said.
A magnet for tourists worldwide, the Hagia Sophia 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.
Erdogan’s announcement came after a top court cancelled a 1934 cabinet decision under modern Turkey’s secularising founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to preserve the church-turned-mosque as a museum.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis yesterday said he was “very distressed” over Turkey's decision to convert the Byzantine-era monument Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.
“My thoughts go to Istanbul. I am thinking about Hagia Sophia. I am very distressed,” the pope said in the Vatican's first reaction to the decision.