Emphasising the strong symbolic, historical and universal value of Hagia Sophia, Josep Borrell, EU External Action High Representative, stated that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to place the monument under the management of the Religious Affairs Presidency, “is regrettable”, and invited the country - a founding member of the Alliance of Civilisations - “to promote inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue and to foster of tolerance and co-existence".
In a letter to Turkey’s President, also the World Council of Churches, which counts 350 churches as members, has called Ankara to reverse his decision. And Pope Francis on Sunday said: “I think of Hagia Sophia and I am very saddened”.
The General Secretary of COMECE, Fr. Manuel Barrios Prieto, stated that the decision “is a blow to interreligious dialogue”, a field where, according to a 2019 European Commission report, Turkey has “a serious problem”, in particular in relation to hate speech and threats directed against national, ethnic and religions minorities.
The EU Commission report states that hate speech and anti-Semitic rhetoric in the media and by public officials continues and that, despite “discussions between the Government and representatives of minorities have continued, attacks or acts of vandalism on minority worship places continued and need to be investigated”. The document also highlights that “full respect for and protection of language, religion, culture and fundamental rights in accordance with European standards have yet to be fully achieved”. This includes also the issue of property rights of non-Muslim minorities and “the need for a revision of legislation covering all issues regarding property rights is pending”.
“As the Venice Commission underlined in 2010 – reads the report - Turkey should continue the reform process and introduce legislation which makes it possible for all non-Muslim religious communities as such to acquire legal personality”.
In the context of the recent decision on the status of the 1,500-year-old byzantine building, the issue of legal personality was denounced also by the Turkish Bishops’ Conference, which, in a statement sent to the Catholic News Service, stated that “although we would wish Hagia Sophia to retain its character as a museum, we are a church deprived of juridical status, so we cannot give any advice on this country’s internal questions”.
The UNESCO-listed Hagia Sophia was completed in 537AD by the Byzantine emperor Justinian, and for centuries served as one of the world’s most important centres of Christianity. The cathedral was converted into an imperial mosque about 550 years ago after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, and in 1934 became a museum on the orders of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic.

​I spent one edifying year as a student at the Theological School of Halki in 1960-1961 and had the opportunity to experience the importance of our Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople for World Orthodoxy. In 1971 Turkish government arbitrarily closed this historic School of 130 students, thus depriving our Patriarchate of educating future theologians to serve our Orthodox Church the word over.

My classmate and friend, John Chronopoulos, now Metropolitan Isaiah of Denver, and I would visit Agia Sophia every Wednesday during our year at Halki. Afterwards, we would also visit the Chora Monastery and have an audience with Patriarch Athenagoras. We relived the awesome beauty of the Byzantine Christian period at these and other magnificent churches and then visit the Center of Orthodoxy at the Phanar.
Our Ecumenical Patriarchate was relocated by the Turkish government from Saint Sophia to various sites until it was assigned to a humble monastery with little glory compared to the Byzantine era, because the Turks deprived us of our former sacred religious sites.
When Saint Sophia was converted into a museum, Harvard University painstakingly restored the mosaics to their original beauty by removing the plaster with which Turks covered them. Will Turkey, now, plaster over the mosaics once again, since they do not allow images in their mosques?
What’s next for the Turks, Hora Monastery? This Church is believed to have the most beautiful Byzantine mosaics in the world? Will this amazing Church’s mosaics be plastered over again as well?
Muslim fanaticism is a danger to the world and freedom.
Father Alexander G. Leondis

By Gwynne Dyer,

“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” says an old friend to Jack Nicholson as the mother is killed, the little girl is handed over to the bad guy and the police wash their hands of it at the end of the 1974 classic film ‘Chinatown’.
The movie was about the triumph of power and the futility of hoping for justice. ‘Chinatown’ was just a metaphor, and any other place where justice is denied would do as well. Which is probably why today I feel like saying
“Forget it, Mehmetçik. It’s the Balkans.”

Saturday was the 25th anniversary of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims (‘Bosniaks’) in Srebrenica towards the end of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. The Bosnian Serbs wanted to break up Bosnia and unite with next-door Serbia, and since a lot of Bosniaks lived amongst them there was much ethnic cleansing. But this was special.
Srebrenica was then a Muslim-majority town, and when Bosnian Serb forces captured it 20,000 Muslims took refuge with the Dutch troops who were there to protect a UN-declared ‘safe area’. But the Dutch soldiers handed them over to the Bosnian Serbs.
Most of the Muslim men and boys fled into the woods, but 2,000 who had taken refuge with the Dutch UN troops were handed over to the Serbs. The Serbs separated those men and boys from the women and girls, chased down most of the men who had fled into the woods, and murdered them all – 8,000 of them. It took ten days, even with bulldozers to scrape out the mass graves.
Twenty years later a special UN war crimes tribunal sentenced the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, to life in prison for genocide. But few of the Bosniaks have been able to go home again – and denial reigns both in the Bosnian ‘Serb Republic’ and in Serbia proper.
For the Serbs it’s all a “fabricated myth” in the words of Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of Bosnia’s three-person presidency. The president of Serbia, Alexander Vucic, admits some people were killed, but denies that there was a genocide. It’s all very ‘Balkan’.
From great tragedy and vile lies to mere churlishness: next week, in Istanbul, there will be Muslim prayer services in Hagia Sofia for the first time since 1934. The massive cathedral overlooking the Bosphorus, built nearly 1,500 years ago, was the world’s largest building for almost a thousand years.
When the Ottoman emperor Mehmet II conquered Istanbul in 1453, he had it converted into a mosque. Four minarets were built at the four corners, and for the next half-millennium only Muslims prayed there.
The Ottoman empire went on to conquer almost all of the Balkans, so nobody in the Christian world seriously dreamed of getting Hagia Sophia back. But the centuries passed, and eventually the empire collapsed.
The Turkish republic that Ataturk rescued from the wreckage was a secular state, and in 1934 he declared that this ancient Christian church should no longer be used as a mosque. It became a museum, open to all – until Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, decided to turn it into a mosque again.
There’s no shortage of mosques in Istanbul. Erdogan is only doing this because his popularity is waning: his proxy wars aren’t going well, his party has split, and the economy is on the rocks. So do something spiteful to the neighbours. That should play well at home.
It’s 500 km from Bosnia to Istanbul, but we’re still in the Balkans.

In a move that sparked sparked international criticism and concern, President Tayyip Erdogan declared Hagia Sophia open to Muslim worship earlier this month following a court ruling that said the building’s conversion to a museum in 1934 was unlawful.
Hagia Sophia dates back to the sixth century and has a history as both a church and a mosque before it was turned into a museum.
In an interview with broadcaster NTV, Kalin said some mosaics of Mary and Gabriel that are positioned in the direction of Qiblah, where Muslims face during prayer, would be covered with curtains.
He said other mosaics of Jesus and other Christian figures did not pose an obstacle for Muslim prayers because they are not located in the direction of Qiblah. But he did not say whether they would remain uncovered at all times.
Outside prayers, Hagia Sophia will be open to all visitors and tourists and all mosaics will be uncovered, authorities have said.
Erdogan visited the mosque earlier on Sunday to inspect the progress in preparing the building. ​

On July 10th, the BBC bannered “Hagia Sophia: Turkey turns iconic Istanbul museum into mosque” and reported that the biggest, oldest, and the most important, cathedral in all of Orthodox Christendom — and the world’s most important Byzantine building, which was constructed as the Saint Sophia Cathedral by the Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian I in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the year 537, and which stands on the site that had been consecrated in the year 325 by the Roman Emperor Constantine (and which cathedral was relabelled the Hagia Sophia “museum” in 1935 by Turkey’s Constitutionally secularist Government) — has now become, officially, at last, designated, by the restored Islamic Government of Turkey, a Muslim house of worship, a mosque, a Muslim house of worship. 
This signals the end of Turkey’s being ruled by a secular Government, which it had been, ever since 1923. It is the end of Turkey’s secular Government and the restoration of the Islamic Mehmed the Conqueror’s 1453 order that it be a mosque. That ended the Byzantine Roman Catholic Empire, and started Islamic-ruled Turkey. It ended Constantinople and started Istanbul. Mehmet, however, allowed Christianity to continue, in the Islamic Ottoman Empire, but only as an accepted part of the Greek East (“Orthodox”), not as part of the Roman West (imperialistic), Christianity (which he had just then conquered with the fall of Constantinople on that same date, 29 May 1453). And now, even the Orthodox Christians are being marginalized in Turkey, because the Hagia Sophia had been “for almost 1,000 years the most important Orthodox cathedral.” 
This is an act with huge international implications. It is an important event in human history.
Turkey’s dictator, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, whose entire actual education was only in Islamic schools though he lies about it and claims to have received a degree from a non-Islamic university, is in the process of transforming Turkey back again into a specifically Islamic type of dictatorship, a Sharia-law-ruled state. The secularist Turkish Republic that was instituted in 1923 by the Enlightenment-inspired Kemal Attaturk has now decisively ended. The widespread speculations that Erdogan has been aiming to restore Turkey to being the imperial nation and ruler of a restored Islamic Ottoman Empire are now decisively confirmed by this brazen act of insult to Orthodox Christians, and even to Roman Christians, because — as Wikipedia notes — “Justinian has sometimes been known as the ‘Last Roman’ in mid-20th century historiography.” The Orthodox Church in America titles him as “Saint Justinian The Emperor”. However, Wikipedia also notes that Constantine XI Palaiologos, who was killed by Mehmet’s forces on that date, 29 May 1453, was actually the last Roman Emperor. That ended the Roman Empire.
In other words: the Turkish Government’s official change of Saint Sophia Cathedral, which Justinian had created in 537, into now and henceforth a mosque, is a taking ownership of, and a Turkish-Muslim declaration of supremacy over, a different religion’s main house of worship. It’s a historical dagger into the heart of Orthodox Christianity, as well as being an insult to Roman Christianity.
This is not merely an isolated act, either; it is, instead, something to which Erdogan has long been building. Erdogan’s grab of land from secularist-ruled (committedly anti-sectarian) Syria, and his recent sending of troops to help conquer the formerly secularist Libya, which land had been turned into a hellish civil war by a U.S.-and-allied invasion in 2011 and which chaos there continues to this day, all are consistent with an understanding of Erdogan in which his foremost objective is a restoration of the Ottoman Empire. And the U.S. Government has supported this objective of his (but only as Turkey being a branch of the U.S. empire), and tried to get the EU to accept it.
The question now — since the United States Government has been pushing against European resistance to accepting a military alliance with an Islamic dictatorship — is whether continuation of the NATO alliance will be ended because of the path that Erdogan and the United States Government have jointly been taking to re-impose a decidedly Sunni Islamic dictatorship upon Turkey (by means of which, Turkey will serve as a wedge against both Shiite controlled Iran, and an increasingly Orthodox-dominated Russia). However, there has been a split between Erdogan and the U.S. regime, because he does not intend his restored Ottoman empire to be a part of the U.S. or any other empire. Erdogan’s independent streak is what now threatens to break-up the Western Alliance — the U.S. empire (which is actually the Rhodesist UK-U.S. empire).
The United States Government has been preferring Erdogan’s former political partner but now enemy, Erdogan’s fellow Sunni Islamist Fethullah Gulen, who cooperates with the U.S. and is a CIA protégé (including rabidly against Shiite Iran and against Iran’s main ally Russia). Gulen is passionately endorsed by America’s aristocracy. The U.S. regime has been preferring Gulen to impose this transformation of Turkey into an Islamic U.S. satellite, because Gulen models his operation (and he has even described it in remarkable detail) upon U.S. and UK ‘intelligence’ practices (CIA & MI6), whereas Erdogan has insisted upon an independent Turkey with its own nationalistic ‘intelligence’ organization — a nationalistically transformed version of Turkey’s existing MIT or National Intelligence Organization — an ‘intelligence’ organization that’s cleansed of what the CIA praises as “Gulen is interested in slow and deep social change, including secular higher education; Erdogan as a party leader is first and foremost interested in preserving his party’s power, operating in a populist manner, trying to raise the general welfare.” (The CIA actually knows that this has nothing whatsoever to do with “trying to raise the general welfare” — the U.S. regime’s goal is to extend everywhere the U.S. empire, and Erdogan’s Turkish regime has that same goal for the Turkish empire, which doesn’t yet even exist, though it once did as the Ottoman Empire, and he wants to restore it.) Erdogan insists upon Turkey’s not being merely a vassal-state or colony within a foreign-led empire, but instead the leading nation of its own empire, starting perhaps with gobbling up Syria and Libya, but extending ultimately more globally. There is a soundly documented article titled “Why Are Gulenists Hostile Toward Iran?” and it provides much of the reason why the CIA supports Gulen (they do largely because Erdogan isn’t so obsessive against Iran — which country America’s aristocracy crave to conquer again, as they had done in 1953, and Erdogan doesn’t support that as passionately as they require).
The question now for Europe is whether it wants to be again a participant in various aristocracies’, and clergies’, imperialistic designs, or instead to declare itself finally non-aligned and to lead thereby a new global non-aligned movement, not militaristically, but instead by providing, to the entire world, an anti-imperialistic and truly democratic model, a re-start and replacement of today’s United Nations, and one that will reflect what had been Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s anti-imperialist intention, and not Harry S. Truman’s American-imperialist intention — a start from scratch that has FDR’s statements to guide it, and not Truman’s actions to guide it (such as has been the case). Perhaps even the U.S., NYC-based, U.N. would ultimately sign onto that new international global federation; but the only basis upon which nations in the old U.N. should be accepted into its successor would be if the old U.N. were gradually to dissolve itself as its individual nations would, each on its own, sign onto the new one. Ultimately, this option must be made available to all Governments, to choose to either continue in Truman’s U.N., or else join instead a new, and authentically FDR-based, authentically anti-imperialistic, replacement of it.
That is what this dictatorial Islamization of Turkey is really all about, and only Europe can make the decision — no other land can. However, such a decision will only fail if any such organization as a new U.N. is to be at all involved in the particular national issues that now are so clearly coming to the fore in the transformation of Turkey into a Sunni Islamist dictatorship. 
The “international community” should have no say in Turkey’s intranational (or “domestic”) affairs — regardless of whether Turkey is in or out of Europe. Sectarian and nationalistic concerns cannot rule in the formation of any authentically democratic new international order — an authentically non-imperialistic international order. All such concerns, domestic concerns, must be strictly the domain of the authority and power of each one of the individual constituent units, each individual national Government itself controlling its own internal affairs. FDR was adamant about that. He was insistent that the U.N. not get involved in individual nations’ internal affairs. The profoundly anti-FDR, “Responsibility to Protect” idea (which now has even acquired the status of being represented by an acronym “R2P” catch-phrase), has increasingly arisen recently to become a guiding principle of international relations, and must be soundly and uncompromisingly rejected in the formulation and formation of any replacement-organization — any authentically democratic international federation of nations. Otherwise, everything would be futile, and there will be a WW III. We are heading in exactly the opposite direction from that which FDR had intended — which was to prevent any Third World War.
This decision will be made by the individual nations of Europe. Only they collectively hold this power. They will be able to exercise it only if they will terminate their alliances outside of Europe, and proceed forward no longer bound by external alliances, but instead become a free and independent European federation of European states. Only they, collectively, will be able to make this decision, as Europeans, for the entire world, regarding what the world’s future will be. And only they will hold the ultimate responsibility — and it’s NOT the “responsibility to protect”. It is instead the responsibility to protect the future of the entire world. It’s the responsibility to protect a future for the world. And if Europe fails it, then the world will inevitably move forward to WW III, as it is doing. A new international order is needed, and only Europe can lead it, if  Europe will.
In order for Europe to do that, Europe must first define itself. Is Turkey part of Europe? Is Russia? What is Europe? If Europeans won’t be able to agree on that, then the world will continue to move forward towards WW III, because the world will then have no center, it will continue to have only contending empires — exactly what FDR had aimed to prevent.
Europe is the key. But will Europe’s leaders place the key in the lock, and open, finally, the door to a non-imperialistic world? The present, U.S.-empire-aligned, Europe, won’t do that. Turkey’s action on the Hagia Sophia, which is an insult to all Christians, and especially to Orthodox ones, might finally force the issue — and its solution.
Other than that, however, the official designation of the Hagia Sophia as being a mosque is entirely a domestic, Turkish, matter.

Turkey’s decision to change the former cathedral into a mosque flies against the pluralist instincts of Islam’s founders.
By Mustafa Akyol
Mr. Akyol is a contributing Op-Ed writer.

The recent decision by the Turkish government to reconvert the majestic Hagia Sophia, which was once the world’s greatest cathedral, from a museum back to a mosque has been bad news for Christians around the world. They include Pope Francis, who said he was “pained” by the move, and the spiritual leader of Eastern Christianity, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who said he was “saddened and shaken.” When contrasted with the joy of Turkey’s conservative Muslims, all this may seem like a new episode in an old story: Islam vs. Christianity.
​
But some Muslims, including myself, are not fully comfortable with this historic step, and for a good reason: forced conversion of shrines, which has occurred too many times in human history in all directions, can be questioned even from a purely Islamic point of view.
To see why, look closely into early Islam, which was born in seventh century Arabia as a monotheist campaign against polytheism. The Prophet Muhammad and his small group of believers saw the earlier monotheists — Jews and Christians — as allies. So when those first Muslims were persecuted in pagan Mecca, some found asylum in the Christian kingdom in Ethiopia. Years later, when the Prophet ruled Medina, he welcomed a group of Christians from the city of Najran to worship in his own mosque. He also signed a treaty with them, which read:
“There shall be no interference with the practice of their faith. … No bishop will be removed from his bishopric, no monk from his monastery, no priest from his parish.”

This religious pluralism was also reflected in the Quran, when it said God protects “monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of God is much mentioned.” (22:40) It is the only verse in the Quran that mentions churches — and only in a reverential tone.

Continue reading the main story To be sure, these theological affinities did not prevent political conflicts. Nor did they prevent Muslims, right after the Prophet’s passing, from conquering Christian lands, from Syria to Spain. Yet still, the early Muslim conquerors did something uncommon at the time: They did not touch the shrines of the subjugated peoples.
The Prophet’s spirit was best exemplified by his second successor, or caliph, Umar ibn Al-Khattab, soon after his conquest of Jerusalem in the year 637. The city, which had been ruled by Roman Christians for centuries, had been taken by Muslims after a long and bloody siege. Christians feared a massacre, but instead found aman, or safety. Caliph Umar, “the servant of God” and “the commander of the faithful,” gave them security “for their possessions, their churches and crosses.” He further assured:
“Their churches shall not be taken for residence and shall not be demolished … nor shall their crosses be removed.”

​The Christian historian Eutychius even tells us that when Caliph Umar entered the city, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, invited him to pray at the holiest of all Christian shrines: the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Umar politely declined, saying that Muslims might later take this as a reason to convert the church into a mosque. He instead prayed at an empty area that Christians ignored but Jews honored, then as now, as their holiest site, the Temple Mount, where today the Western Wall, the last remnant of that ancient Jewish temple, rises to the top of the Mount, on which the Mosque of Umar and the Dome of the Rock were built.
In other words, Islam entered Jerusalem without really converting it. Even “four centuries after the Muslim conquest,” as the Israeli historian Oded Peri observes, “the urban landscape of Jerusalem was still dominated by Christian public and religious buildings.”
Yet Islam was becoming the religion of an empire, which, like all empires, had to justify its appetite for hegemony. Soon, some jurists found an excuse to overcome the Jerusalem model: There, Christians were given full security, because they had ultimately agreed on a peaceful surrender. The cities that resisted Muslim conquerors, however, were fair game for plunder, enslavement, and conversion of their churches.
In the words of the Turkish scholar Necmeddin Guney, this legitimatization of conversion of churches came from not the Quran nor the Prophetic example, but rather “administrative regulation.” The jurists who made this case, he adds, “were probably trying to create a society that makes manifest the supremacy of Islam in an age of religion wars.”
Another scholar, Fred Donner, an expert on early Islam, argues that this political drive even distorted records of the earlier state of affairs. For example, later versions of the aman given to the Christians of Damascus allotted Muslims “half of their homes and churches.” In the earlier version of the document, there was no such clause.
When the Ottomans reached the gates of Constantinople in 1453, Islamic attitudes had long been imperialized, and also toughened in the face of endless conflicts with the Crusaders. Using a disputed license of the Hanafi school of jurisprudence they followed, they converted Hagia Sophia and a few other major churches. But they also did other things that represent the better values of Islam: They gave full protection to not only Greek but also Armenian Christians, rebuilt Istanbul as a cosmopolitan city, and soon also welcomed the Spanish Jews who were fleeing the Catholic Inquisition.
Today, centuries later, the question for Turkey is what aspect of this complex Ottoman heritage is really more valuable.
For the religious conservatives who have rallied behind President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the past two decades, the main answer seems to be imperial glory embodied in an absolute ruler.
For other Turks, however, the greatness of the Ottomans lies in their pluralism, rooted at the very heart of Islam, and it would inspire different moves today — perhaps opening Hagia Sophia to both Muslim and Christian worship, as I have advised for years. Another would be reopening the Halki Seminary, a Christian school of theology that opened in 1844 under Ottoman auspices, went victim to secular nationalism in 1971, but is still closed despite all the calls from advocates for religious freedom.
For the broader Muslim world, Hagia Sophia is a reminder that our tradition includes both our everlasting faith and values, as well as a legacy of imperialism. The latter is a bitter fact of history, like Christian imperialism or nationalism, which have targeted our mosques and even lives as well — from Cordoba to Srebrenica. But today, we should try to heal such wounds of the past, not open new ones.
So, if we Muslims really want to revive something from the past, let’s focus on the model initiated by the Prophet and implemented by Caliph Umar. That means no shrines should be converted — or reconverted. All religious traditions should be respected. And the magnanimity of tolerance should overcome the pettiness of supremacism.
Mustafa Akyol, a contributing Opinion writer, is a senior fellow on Islam and modernity at the Cato Institute and the author of the forthcoming book “Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance.”

Mosaics depicting Christian figures in Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia will be covered with curtains during Muslim prayers, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Sunday, as work to convert the building for use as a mosque continues.
Authorities said last week that the mosaics would be concealed with either curtains or lasers when the first prayers are held next Friday.
In a move that sparked international criticism and concern, President Tayyip Erdogan declared Hagia Sophia open to Muslim worship earlier this month following a court ruling that said the building’s conversion to a museum in 1934 was unlawful.
Hagia Sophia dates back to the 6th century and has a history as both a church and a mosque before it was turned into a museum.
Kalin said some mosaics of Mary and Gabriel that are positioned in the direction of Qiblah, which Muslims face during prayer, would be covered with curtains.
He said other mosaics of Jesus and other Christian figures did not pose an obstacle for Muslim prayers because they are not located in the direction of Qiblah. But he did not say whether they would remain uncovered at all times.
Apart from prayers, Hagia Sophia will be open to all visitors and tourists and Mosaics of Christianity will be uncovered.
Erdogan visited the mosque earlier on Sunday to inspect the progress in preparing the building.

Source: Reuters   Editor: Tang Shihui

​One of the architectural wonders of the world, the Hagia Sophia cathedral was conquered once before. It was converted into a mosque by its Ottoman conquerors; minarets were added, and its ancient Byzantine mosaics were whitewashed. More recently, it has functioned as a museum for decades. Now, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has decreed that the historic Hagia Sophia church should be reverted into a mosque once again.

This aggressive move is about much more than a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It reveals Erdogan’s agenda to assert his vision for an expansionist Islamist Turkey, endangering Christians and other religious minorities in Turkey and throughout the Middle East.
Built as a cathedral by the Emperor Justinian I in 537, Hagia Sophia is still central to Orthodox Christianity. Upon the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans, it was converted to a mosque in 1453 as a sign of the Ottoman’s triumph and domination of the Christian population.  
Centuries later in 1934, the secular founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, turned Hagia Sophia into a museum open to all. It had remained a museum until now. The recent change back into a mosque has upset Christian leaders around the globe who remember the Ottoman Empire’s brutal treatment of Christians. Some from the Orthodox tradition find the move traumatic. 
When courts affirmed the validity of Erdogan’s plan for the cathedral, he declared, “Hagia Sophia became a mosque again, after eighty-six years, in the way Fatih the conqueror of Istanbul had wanted it to be.” Erdogan has long fantasized about resurrecting a neo-Ottoman state. This swing back toward the time of Ottoman sultan Fatih Sultan Mehmet (known as Mehmed the Conqueror) rightly alarms Christian communities throughout the Middle East because they stand in the way of Erdogan’s vision of a new empire.

Authorities had said last week that the mosaics would be concealed with either curtains or lasers when the first prayers are held next Friday.
In a move that sparked sparked international criticism and concern, President Tayyip Erdogan declared Hagia Sophia open to Muslim worship earlier this month following a court ruling that said the building’s conversion to a museum in 1934 was unlawful.
Hagia Sophia dates back to the sixth century and has a history as both a church and a mosque before it was turned into a museum.
In an interview with broadcaster NTV, Kalin said some mosaics of Mary and Gabriel that are positioned in the direction of Qiblah, where Muslims face during prayer, would be covered with curtains.
He said other mosaics of Jesus and other Christian figures did not pose an obstacle for Muslim prayers because they are not located in the direction of Qiblah. But he did not say whether they would remain uncovered at all times.
Outside prayers, Hagia Sophia will be open to all visitors and tourists and all mosaics will be uncovered, authorities have said.
Erdogan visited the mosque earlier on Sunday to inspect the progress in preparing the building.
Reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen; Editing by Frances Kerry

​Hagia Sophia, once Christendom’s greatest church, which was converted into a mosque under the Ottomans before becoming a museum in the 20th Century, has now been reinstated as a mosque.

My family and I have visited Hagia Sophia and were impressed by its grandeur and grace. We have very fond memories of it and had wished we could offer our prayers there. We have remembered the Almighty in our visits to Saint Peters Basilica at the Vatican and other renowned churches around the world.
Officially known as the Great Mosque of Ayasofya, the House of God has been a place of worship for both Christians and Muslims. It was completed in 537 AD at Constantinople for the state church of the Roman Empire by Emperor Justinian I. It was then the world’s largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome and is considered as the epitome of Byzantine style of construction and is said to have “changed the history of architecture”.
The church was dedicated to the Wisdom of God, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity while Sophia is the Latin transliteration of the Greek word for wisdom. After Sultan Muhammad Fateh conquered Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire converted Hagia Sophia to a mosque. One of the first acts of the conqueror Mehmed II was to pray in Hagia Sophia, effectively establishing it as a mosque. Many Muslims interpret this as a fulfilment of one of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)’s hadith, widely accepted traditionally as a prophecy, concerning the fall of Constantinople to Muslim hands.
Most people are not aware of a historical fact that Sultan Muhammad Al-Fateh, after conquering Constantinople, approached the pastors managing Hagia Sophia and offered to purchase it from his personal funds.
A deal was struck and the deed was signed, with money being paid from his own purse and not the national treasury. This deed came to light a few weeks ago, when Turkey was in the process of manually reviewing 27,000 documents and coincidentally found an original title (Tabou) that clearly shows private property ownership. Thus, the current landlords, descendants of the Ottomans, applied for absolute free use of the property as their own, and their request was to return the building to a mosque as they used it since the day they bought it.
After its conversion to a mosque, in 1453, Islamic architectural features were added, such as a mimbar (pulpit), four minarets, and a mihrab – a niche indicating the direction of prayer (qibla). The Byzantine architecture of the Hagia Sophia served as inspiration for many other Ottoman mosques, including the Blue Mosque, the Shehzade Mosque, the Suleymaniye Mosque, the Rustem Pasha Mosque and the Kiliç Ali Pasha Complex.
The complex remained a mosque until 1931, when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum by the secular Republic of Turkey under Ghazi Mustafa Kamal Ataturk. According to data released by Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Hagia Sophia was Turkey’s most visited tourist attraction in 2015 and 2019, attracting almost 3.3 million visitors annually.
Hagia Sophia has suffered a fair share of ruin due to natural calamities and man-made disasters. Earthquakes in August 553 and on 14 December 557 caused cracks in the main dome and eastern semi-dome. According to the Chronicle of John Malalas, during a subsequent earthquake on 7 May 558, the eastern semi-dome fell down, destroying the ambon, altar, and ciborium. The collapse was due mainly to the unfeasibly high bearing load and to the enormous shear load of the dome, which was too flat. These caused the deformation of the piers which sustained the dome. Emperor Justinian ordered an immediate restoration.
He entrusted it to Isidorus the Younger, nephew of Isidore of Miletus, who used lighter materials. The whole vault had to be taken down and rebuilt 20 Byzantine feet (6.25 meters or 20.5 feet) higher than before, giving the building its current interior height of 55.6 meters (182 ft). Moreover, Isidorus changed the dome type, erecting a ribbed dome with pendentives whose diameter was between 32.7 and 33.5 m. Under Justinian’s orders, eight Corinthian columns were disassembled from Baalbek, Lebanon, and shipped to Constantinople around 560. This reconstruction, giving the church its present 6th-century form, was completed in 562. The mosaics were completed in the reign of Emperor Justin II (565–578), Justinian I’s successor.
The basilica suffered damage, first in a great fire in 859, and again in an earthquake on 8 January 869, that made one of the half-domes collapse. Emperor Basil I ordered the church repaired.
After the great earthquake of 25 October 989, which collapsed the western dome arch, Emperor Basil II asked for the Armenian architect Trdat, creator of the Cathedral of Ani, to direct the repairs.
He erected again and reinforced the fallen dome arch and rebuilt the west side of the dome with 15 dome ribs. The extent of the damage required six years of repair and reconstruction; the church was re-opened on 13 May 994. At the end of the reconstruction, the church’s decorations were renovated, including the addition of four immense paintings of cherubs; a new depiction of Christ on the dome; a burial cloth of Christ shown on Fridays, and on the apse a new depiction of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, between the apostles Peter and Paul. On the great side arches were painted the prophets and the teachers of the church.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a press conference that Muslim prayer will begin on July 24, the 567th anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul. Erdogan announced: “Like all our mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be wide open to locals and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims.”
Conversion of houses of worship from one faith to another is nothing new. After the downfall of the Muslim Empire, mosques in Spain were turned into churches. As long as the Almighty is prayed to in the House of Worship, its sanctity remains.