Fight to the Hagia Sophia a mosque?

The battle of the Hagia Sophia is in full swing. Because the chorus of those who want to make the most important Museum of Istanbul, a mosque, and in the course of this summer, is getting louder. After your will the Hagia Sophia become again what they had conquered between 1453, when Mehmed II in Constantinople, until 1934, when Atatürk ordered the conversion into a Museum was a mosque.

Rainer Hermann

editor in the policy.

As the Museum is, as yet, for decades, a visible Symbol of the new, secular Republic of Turkey. For many Turks, it remained, however, first and foremost, always a Church, the glorious ancestors had conquered, and then fell as a Museum to the secularism of the victims. However, in the year 537 inaugurated Hagia Sophia for most of the tourists, a world heritage site, one of the most outstanding Church buildings and a testimony of the great civilization of the Christian Byzantium; and for the Christians it is also the historic seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the head of the Orthodox Christendom. Was resolved this contradiction in the contradictory perception of this magnificent structure from the inside and from the outside, never.

receivables, Hagia Sophia re-open the Muslim prayer, have been collected for decades, in the rule of the Islamist fringe groups. They stayed mostly below the threshold of perception and not caused a sensation. This has changed in the past few weeks. Since the beginning of June, President Tayyip Erdogan, according to Turkish media reports, the Directive issued to the Hagia Sophia, a legal formula that will allow it to use the building again as an Islamic prayer site.

for the Islamic prayer open?

A opportunity, if the Supreme administrative court, the Danistay, expected at 2. July is the complaint of a retired teacher, for many years, atatürk's decree of 24. November 1934 to the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a Museum is contesting. Once again, the justice is to do what you want on the policy, so you don't want to burn the Finger. Erdogan said TRT, the state broadcaster, the case lay well "in the independent judiciary".

The track. Has launched the last round of the project, to change the Status of Hagia Sophia, Fahrettin Altun, who sits as the Director of communications Erdogan's usually directly to the Left of the President. On 9. In may, he put a Tweet in which it said: "We miss you, just a little patience, we can do it together." It quickly became clear that Altun language of the Hagia Sophia and the desire to open the magnificent structure with the bold design that combines the dome of the secular Pantheon of the gods with the ship of a Church building, for the Islamic prayer. The discussion was in progress.

A Look at was the conquest of Constantinople to

The Turkish leadership-fired on may 29. In may, the day on which the Turks of the year celebrations for the year of the conquest of Constantinople, the debate with a great Look. In the morning, countless ships and boats of the North, passed through the Bosphorus on greetings Erdogan down to the seraglio top of the Hagia Sophia is located. As that 29. Of may, in 1453, had broken through the Ottoman troops, after a long siege, the Byzantine ring of defense to finally step Mehmed, was allowed to decorate later with the epithet "the conqueror", is the first in the Hagia Sophia. He performed there in prayer, thanks, and explained the sacred building to the main mosque of his new capital.