Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday commemorated the first anniversary of the reopening of Istanbul's Hagia Sophia as a mosque, calling the iconic 16th-century structure a ‘’symbol of the revival’’ of Turkish civilisation.’
The Turkish president made the remarks on Twitter, where he shared a video of the first Friday prayer at the Hagia Sophia last year after a decades-long hiatus and said he hoped for the call for Muslims prayers and the Quran would never abandon the converted structure "until the end of time.’’
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Built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453. The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, later turned the building into a museum in 1934.
Last July, Erdoğan signed a presidential decree allowing the 6th-century UNESCO World Heritage site to function as a mosque again, in a move that was met with international condemnation. The order came after a Turkish high court revoked the site's decades-long status as a museum.
The anniversary of Hagia Sophia arrives as the World Heritage Committee of UNESCO has requested Turkey to submit a report by early next year on the structure, expressing “grave concerns” about the conservation of the historic building in light of Turkey’s plans to convert it into a mosque.
