Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday formally reconverted Istanbul’s sixth-century iconic Hagia Sophia into a mosque and declared it open to Muslim worship, hours after a high court annulled a 1934 decision that had turned it into a museum. The decision to reconvert Hagia Sophia — a former cathedral that was turned into a mosque after Istanbul's conquest by the Ottoman Empire and had served as a museum for 86 years — sparked deep dismay among Orthodox Christians. But there was jubilation outside Hagia Sophia. Turkey's high administrative court threw its weight behind a petition brought by a religious group and annulled the 1934 Cabinet decision that turned the site into a museum. Within hours, Erdogan signed a decree handing over Hagia Sophia to Turkey's Religious Affairs Presidency.

Source: International New York Times July 10, 2020 14:21 UTC