we are Talking about the decision of the Turkish Council of Ministers, adopted at the initiative of the founder of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1934, about the transformation of Hagia Sophia into a Museum. Previously, from 1453, when Constantinople fell, and before 1934, the main Cathedral of the Byzantine Empire served as a mosque.
a Petition to return to the Museum the status of the mosque in recent years were submitted to the state Council many times, however, in considering every time he refused for various reasons. Activists are often held at the square of Agia Sophia Meidani rallies with a demand to open the mosque. However, these demonstrations usually not crowded and quickly come to an end.
last week the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that “tourists can visit the Hagia Sophia, even if she becomes a mosque, as today they go to the Blue mosque (the Sultanahmet mosque, one of the symbols of Istanbul, the first most important mosque of the metropolis, is located across the square from Hagia Sophia – approx. “RG”)”.
But Erdogan has called to be in the return status of mosque to the Museum “a very sensitive and not rush”. About it, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, he said at a meeting of the Central Executive Council of the ruling justice and development June 3.
earlier, Erdogan in response to the question of the status of mosque to the Hagia Sophia answered that first you need to fill in the praying of the Blue mosque.
At the moment, the victory Surah al-Fath recited from the Koran in Hagia Sophia once a year, on may 29, the day of the capture of Constantinople.
Earlier the status of the mosque was returned to the Istanbul Church-Museum of the Savior in Chora, where there are unique paintings and mosaics of the Byzantine Renaissance of the Palaeologus.
