Hagia Sophia Has Reverted to a Mosque, Erdogan Says

ISTANBUL—President Recep Tayyip Erdogan explained Friday that the city’s sixth-century Hagia Sophia, which grew to become a image of secularism in fashionable Turkey when it was transformed into a museum in the nineteen thirties, would reopen to Muslim prayer as a comprehensive-fledged mosque later on this thirty day period, a change opposed by the U.S. and other individuals.

The structure, with its massive dome and towering minarets, has extensive performed a pivotal part in the lifestyle of the city and in Turkey at large. It was designed as Christian temple by the Byzantine empire, then grew to become a mosque…