Opposition parties and figures in Turkey criticized the head of religious affairs, Sheikh Ali Arbash, after he delivered the first Friday sermon in Hagia Sophia after closing 86 years ago, which critics saw as an insult to the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
During his sermon, Arbash referred to the covenant of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II that conquered Constantinople in 1453 and transformed the Hagia Sophia from a church to a mosque.
The head of religious affairs said, "Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror stopped this place of worship for the believers, provided that he remains a mosque until the Day of Judgment."
He added that any "suspended property is inviolable in our beliefs, and everyone who touches it is burned, and the charter of the endower is indispensable and whoever curses him is cursed."
Opponents saw this as an insult to Ataturk, whose government in 1934 issued a decision to turn the mosque into a museum.
On Monday, the right-wing opposition "Good Party" filed a complaint against Arbash, accusing him of "violating articles that could not be violated in the Turkish constitution."
Ozgur Ozil of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, Arbash, has vowed to “pay a price for Ataturk”.
On the other hand, the Turkish government defended Arbash, as Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim said in an interview with "CNN TURK" on Tuesday that "it is out of the question to distort (Arbash) Ataturk".
"We never accept any attack on Ataturk," he said, adding that opening such a discussion lacked goodwill and was part of an attempt to create an "artificial agenda."