This archive report was first published on 19 July 2020.
On July 19, 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a lightning visit to Hagia Sophia, a historic site in Istanbul, to inspect the conversion work. The president's office released pictures showing scaffolding inside the building.
According to Diyanet, Turkey's religious authority, Christian icons within the building would be curtained off and unlit during prayer times. The authority stated that the building would continue to be open to all visitors outside the hours given over to prayer.
Earlier this year, Erdogan had expressed his desire to convert Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, stating that it had been a 'very big mistake' to convert it into a museum. The reconversion sparked anger among Christians and tensions between historic foes and uneasy NATO allies Turkey and Greece.
Hagia Sophia, a sixth-century building, was originally built as a cathedral during the Byzantine empire and later converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. It was designated a museum in 1935 by the post-Ottoman authorities under the modern republic's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
