World Council of Churches appeals to reverse decision to convert Hagia Sophia into a Mosque
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- Published: July 12, 2020 21:33
New Delhi: The World Council of Churches has called on Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to reverse his decision to turn the celebrated Hagia Sophia museum back into a mosque. The World Council of Churches, which represents 350 Christian churches, wrote to Turkey’s president expressing “grief and dismay” over his decision.
The Unesco World Heritage site in Istanbul has been a museum since 1934
The president announced his decision on Friday following a court ruling which annulled its museum status. The Hagia Sophia was built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453.
It was converted to a museum on the orders of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of modern, secular Turkey. Since then religious services have been banned at the site, but devout Muslims have long campaigned for worship to be allowed.
Pope Francis said he was “very distressed” over Turkey’s decision to convert the Byzantine-era monument, Hagia Sophia, back into a mosque.
“My thoughts go to Istanbul. I’m thinking about Hagia Sophia. I am very distressed,” the pope said in the Vatican’s first reaction to a decision that has drawn international criticism.
On Friday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that the museum, one of the world’s architectural wonders, would be reopened for Muslim worship as a mosque, sparking fury in the Christian community and neighboring Greece.
Erdogan’s declaration came after a top Turkish court revoked a 1934 Turkish decision that turned the sixth-century Byzantine monument into a museum.
On Saturday, the council’s statement underscored that “by deciding to convert the Hagia Sophia back to a mosque you have reversed that positive sign of Turkey’s openness and changed it to a sign of exclusion and division.”
The move would “inevitably create uncertainties, suspicions and mistrust, undermining all our efforts to bring people of different faiths together at the table of dialogue and cooperation,” the statement said.