Turkey: St. Sophia transformed into a mosque for ramadan
Basilica of St. Sophia.
From June 6 to July 5, 2016, in other words, during all of Ramadan, the Koran is read every day in the former basilica of St. Sophia in Istanbul. The State’s religious TV channel broadcasts this morning prayer live before the day’s fast.
For the website Boulevard Voltaire on June 15, 2016, “this initiative is considered in Turkey as an answer to the recognition of the Armenian genocide by Germany.” A deputy of the ruling party (AKP – Justice and Development Party) clearly justified it on Twitter: “The United States are helping the Kurd Workers’ Party and Germany is clinging to their lies on the genocide, there is no more friendship. In return, St. Sophia must remain open for prayers.” This same deputy requests that the museum be transformed into a mosque definitively, “for the western Christians are no longer friends of the Turks, and we must no longer take them into consideration!” Ever since the AKP came to power in 2002, a possible reconversion of St. Sophia has been regularly mentioned.
A jewel of Byzantine Christian architecture, a major work built in the 6th century and included on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, St. Sophia was converted into a mosque after the taking of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, then transformed in 1943 into a museum at the initiative of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, then at the head of the young Republic of Turkey that claimed to be secular.
(sources: apic/boulevard Voltaire – DICI no. 338 July 1, 2016)
Read also:
Turkey: Will the Basilica-Museum St. Sophie Become a Mosque?
Turkey: Parliament considers a proposal to reconvert the Hagia Sophia to a mosque
