Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he signed a decree to turn the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul into a mosque and start Muslim services there.
Earlier on Friday, it became known that the State Council of Turkey canceled the decision of 1934 to turn Hagia Sophia into a museum.
Erdogan posted a photo of the decree he signed on Twitter. "It was decided to hand over the administration of Hagia Sophia to Diyanet (Turkey's Department of Religious Affairs-ed.) and open it for worship," the decree reads.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier said that his country had the right to change the status of the cathedral, turning it into a mosque, without taking into account the opinions of other states.
Hagia Sophia was founded by the Christian Emperor Justinian and was opened on December 27, 537. The cathedral was the largest church in the Christian world for more than a thousand years. After the capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans and the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the Cathedral was converted into a mosque, but since 1934, the building became a Museum by decree of the founder of the modern Turkish state Kemal Ataturk and was included in the UNESCO world heritage list.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: official website of the President of the Russian Federation
Based on materials from RIA Novosti