Turkish Prosecutor Says Cabinet May Make Hagia Sophia Mosque
(Bloomberg) --
A Turkish prosecutor told the country's top administrative court on Thursday that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government may revoke a 1934 cabinet decision to convert Istanbul's iconic Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque.
The court said it will announce its verdict within 15 days on whether to reject hearing the case, according to Bloomberg HT television, a move that could indirectly allow Erdogan's cabinet to take up the controversial issue.
Erdogan has long pushed for the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque, rebuffing criticism from the U.S. and neighboring Greece. The site -- included on Unesco's World Heritage List -- carries a special significance for Greeks, who see it as one of the most important Christian monuments and a legacy of an Orthodox tradition dating back to the Byzantine Empire.
U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on Wednesday urged Turkey to maintain its status as a museum. Stelios Petsas, the Greek government's spokesman, said the disagreement around “Hagia Sophia is not a Greek-Turkish issue -- it's a universal issue” and added that Greece will wait for Turkey's decision.
Turkey Rebuffs U.S. Int
ervention on Making Hagia Sophia a Mosque
A move to convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque could help Erdogan consolidate popular support. His conservative base is being wooed by rivals who have played up the country's religious link to the Ottoman Empire.
“The Hagia Sophia is the property of Turkey, like all our cultural assets located on our land,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hami Aksoy said in a statement issued in response to Pompeo's comments. Any foreign intervention “regarding Hagia Sophia is also an issue concerning our internal affairs.”
Erdogan Plots an Overhaul of Political Realm as Challenges Mount
Erdogan in May joined prayers at the 6th-century building, which began life as a Byzantine cathedral, to mark the Ottoman army's 1453 conquest of Constantinople, now Istanbul. He has since fueled a decades-old debate over whether Turkey should revoke a cabinet decree signed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular republic, that turned the building from a mosque into a museum.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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