Istanbul
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday ordered that another ancient Orthodox church, that had been turned into a mosque and then a popular Istanbul museum, to be turned back into a mosque.
The decision to transform the Kariye Museum into a mosque came just a month after a similarly controversial conversion for the Unesco World Heritage-recognised Hagia Sophia.
Both changes reflect Erdogan’s apparent efforts to galvanise his more conservative and nationalist supporters at a time when Turkey is suffering a new spell of inflation and economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus. The 1,000-year-old building’s history closely mirrors that of the Hagia Sophia — its bigger neighbour on the historic western bank of the Golden Horn estuary on the European side of Istanbul. The Holy Saviour in Chora was a medieval Byzantine church decorated with 14th century frescoes of the Last Judgement that remain treasured in the Christian world.—AFP
