Museum to mosque: On Hagia Sophia

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decision to turn Hagia Sophia back into a working mosque is a significant problem to the nation’s secular worths that are currently under attack from Islamists. The sixth century Byzantine monument had actually been at the centre of the dispute between Ottoman Muslims and eastern Orthodox Christians for centuries. Developed as a cathedral by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, it was transformed into a mosque by the Ottomans after Mehmed the Conqueror recorded the city in1453 For 5 centuries, it was a gem in the Ottoman Sultan’s crown. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding dad of modern Turkey, closed down the mosque in 1930 as part of his secularisation drive and resumed it as a museum 5 years later. Ever since, it has actually been among Turkey’s a lot of visited monuments in addition to a sign of Christian-Muslim co-existence. Over the last few years, the demand for converting the museum into a mosque acquired traction with assistance from Mr. Erdoğan and his