ANKARA (Reuters) – A Turkish court said on Friday it annulled a 1934 government decree turning Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia into a museum, ruling it was unlawful, paving the way for the building’s conversion back into mosque despite international warnings against such a move.
President Tayyip Erdogan had proposed restoring the mosque status of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, a focal point of both the Christian Byzantine and Muslim Ottoman empires and now one of the most visited monuments in Turkey.
The ruling was made by the Council of State, Turkey’s top administrative court.
(Reporting by Daren Butler and Ece Toksabay; Editing by Dominic Evans)
