Hagia Sophia: A matter of sovereignty or a narrow-minded act?

One of many world’s most well-known landmarks, the Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul, has been turned again right into a mosque.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the positioning might be open to Muslim worship on July 24, after a prime courtroom dominated the constructing’s conversion to a museum in 1934 was unlawful.

Constructed 1,500 years in the past as an Orthodox Christian cathedral, Hagia Sophia was transformed right into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453.

Whereas Greek, Russian and different church leaders and the United Nations Academic, Scientific and Cultural Group have denounced the choice, Turkey’s international ministry insists it’s a “home problem of nationwide sovereignty”.

However is that this an act of non secular significance or political narrow-mindedness?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Visitors

Ibrahim Kalin – spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Mehmet Celik – managing editor of Turkish newspaper the Day by day Sabah

Mustafa Akyol – senior fellow on the Cato Institute and writer of Islam With out Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

Supply: Al Jazeera Information