Turkey’s Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, has recently approved changing the historic Chora Greek Orthodox Church located in Istanbul, currently a museum, into a mosque, the Greek Reporter informs.
Commentators say that sets the legal precedent for transforming Hagia Sophia, the very symbol of Byzantine and Orthodox Christianity, which is also currently an official museum, back into a mosque.
Turkish President Tayyip Recep Erdogan has threatened to do so on a number of occasions. Speaking recently of the possibility, he said “This is not unlikely. We might even change its name to Ayasofya Mosque.”
Like Hagia Sophia, the Chora Church is also serving as a museum in Istanbul. The church was transformed into a mosque under the Ottoman Empire, and then in 1945 the building was again transformed, this time to the “Kariye Museum.”
However, a lawsuit filed in 2005 by the Association of Permanent Foundations and Service to Historical Artifacts and Environment challenged this decision. They claimed that as a mosque, it is a public immovable which belongs to the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Foundation.
The interior of the church, which was originally built as part of a monastery complex outside the walls of Constantinople, is covered with some of the oldest and finest surviving Byzantine mosaics and frescoes; they were uncovered and restored after the building was secularized and turned into a museum.
