The pope said he feels ‘deeply saddened’ by the decision of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to convert Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia from a museum back into a mosque. The Unesco-listed building was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453
Pope Francis ‘very distressed’ over Hagia Sophia mosque move
In This Story: Turkey
Istanbul, which straddles Europe and Asia, is the country’s largest city, while Ankara is the capital. The majority of the population identifies as Turkish, around 20% identify as Kurdish.
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