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Turkey court rejects plea to open Hagia Sophia for Islamic prayer
ISTANBUL, Sept 13, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Turkey’s top court on Thursday turned
down a plea to open the Hagia Sofia, an Istanbul landmark that is now a
museum after serving as both a church and a mosque over its long history, for
Muslim worshipping.
The Constitutional Court rejected an association’s demand that the Hagia
Sophia be opened for Muslim prayers on “non-competence” grounds, indicating
it was not the proper instance to allow any change, the official Anadolu news
agency reported.
In its plea, the association had claimed that barring prayers at Hagia
Sophia was breaching the right to freedom of expression and conscience.
The Haberturk website said that the demand had come from an independent
Turkish heritage association.
The Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum accessible to all by the secular
founders of modern Turkey in the 1930s. Secular Turks are wary of any moves
to re-Islamise the building or have it reconsecrated as a mosque.
There has in recent years under the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
been an increase in Muslim activity inside the museum, with Koran readings
taking place on occasion.
The Hagia Sophia was constructed in the sixth century as a church in the
Christian Byzantine Empire and was the seat of the Patriarchate of
Constantinople, Istanbul’s former name.
When Ottoman forces under Sultan Mehmet II conquered the city in 1453 he
ordered the immediate conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Islamic
minarets were built around its Byzantine dome.
It served as a mosque until after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire when
in the mid-1930s the authorities of the new Turkish state under its secular
founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ordered it to become a museum for all.
Neighbouring Greece, which keeps a close eye on the state of Byzantine
heritage in Istanbul, has occasionally expressed concern that the Hagia
Sophia’s status as a secular museum could be under threat.
BSS/AFP/MRI/1907 HRS