Turkey reconverts Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque

Recently Turkey’s highest court allowed for the conversion of the nearly 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque.

Overview of the History of Hagia Sophia

• Hagia Sophia also called Church of the Holy Wisdom or Church of the Divine Wisdom, a cathedral built at Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in the 6th century CE (532–537) under the direction of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I.
• It is the most important Byzantine structure and one of the world’s great monuments.
• After the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II had it repurposed as a mosque with the addition of a wooden minaret (on the exterior, a tower used for the summons to prayer), a great chandelier, a mihrab (niche indicating the direction of Mecca), and a minbar (pulpit).
• Then in 1934 Turkish President Kemal Atatürk secularized the building, and in 1935 it was made into a museum.
• It is also listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Violation of UNESCO World Heritage site status

• The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque from the museum will be a violation of UNESCO’s ‘Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage’ where a “designated a museum of world cultural heritage” was “being used to promote other purposes”.

UPSC