The Turkish Council of State has decided. The former Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, transformed into a museum by the government decree issued in 1934 under Mustafa Kemal, could once again become a mosque. The decision of the Council of State, the highest administrative court in Turkey, cancels this decree and will allow the authorities to restore the building to its status.

Several associations asked for its conversion into a mosque. They are supported by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a nostalgic of the Ottoman Empire who is today seeking to rally the conservative electorate and who has made this conversion an electoral promise. But the project raises the concern of several countries such as the United States, Greece or Russia.

Built in the 6th century by the Byzantines who crowned their emperors there, Hagia Sophia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the main tourist attractions in Istanbul.

>> Read: Erdogan wants the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to become a mosque again

It was the Byzantine emperor Justinian who launched its construction in 532 in the city which was then called Constantinople. He entrusted the architects Isidore de Milet and Anthémius de Tralles with a mission: to build the largest Christian building in the world. Nothing is too beautiful for that: a hundred Hellenistic columns from the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, green marble from Thessaly, white marble from Marmara, pink marble from Synada, yellow marble from Africa, black marble from the Pyrenees, stones black from the Bosphorus region…

Today, Sainte-Sophie is still a museum visited by millions of tourists each year. Last year, it was even the most visited tourist attraction in Turkey, with 3.8 million people.

Nevertheless, Hagia Sophia has been the scene of several activities linked to Islam in recent years. Since the arrival of Recep Tayyip Erdogan to power in 2003, these have multiplied inside Hagia Sophia, with notably sessions of reading the Koran or collective prayers on the square in front of the monument. In 2018, President Erdogan himself read a verse from the Koran there.

Since 2005, associations have repeatedly approached the courts to demand a return to mosque status.

With Reuters

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