Turkey’s Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia has opened to Muslim worship after a top court ruled that the building’s conversion to a museum by modern Turkey’s founding statesman was illegal.
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Key-Points
The centuries-old structure, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, was originally a cathedral in the Byzantine empire before it was turned into a mosque in 1453, when Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmet II’s Ottoman forces.
In the 1930s, however, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, shut down the mosque and turned it into a museum in an attempt to make the country more secular.
Turkey’s Council of State had declared in its ruling that the conversion of the Hagia Sophia from a mosque into the museum by the country’s founder was illegal.
The decision was in line with the Turkish president’s calls to turn the hugely symbolic world heritage site into a mosque despite widespread international criticism, including from UNESCO, the United States and Orthodox Christian leaders.
