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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan reconverted the historic Chora church, one in every of Istanbul’s most celebrated Byzantine buildings, proper right into a mosque on Friday, a month after opening the famed Hagia Sophia to Muslim worship.
The medieval Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora, constructed shut to the standard metropolis partitions of Constantinople, contains 14th century Byzantine mosaics and frescoes displaying scenes from biblical tales.
They have been plastered over after city was conquered by the Muslim Ottomans in 1453, nonetheless launched to light as soon as extra when – like Hagia Sophia – the establishing was reworked to a museum by Turkey’s secular republic better than 70 years prior to now.
Erdogan, whose AK Party is rooted in political Islam, has positioned himself as a champion of Turkey’s pious Muslims and remaining month joined tens of tons of of worshippers throughout the first prayers at Hagia Sophia in 86 years.
The switch was sharply criticised by church leaders and some Western worldwide areas, who acknowledged that reconverting Hagia Sophia solely for Muslim worship risked deepening spiritual rifts.
Last 12 months a Turkish court docket docket annulled a 1945 authorities decision altering Chora – usually generally known as Kariye in Turkish – proper right into a museum run by the Education Ministry.
On Friday, an edict signed by Erdogan and printed in Turkey’s official gazette declared “the management of the Kariye Mosque be transferred to the Religious Affairs Directorate, and (the mosque) opened to worship.”
A church was first constructed on the web site throughout the 4th century, nonetheless plenty of the present establishing dates to an 11th century church that was partly rebuilt 200 years later following an earthquake.
Erdogan’s edict on Friday did not say when the first Muslim prayers could possibly be held at Chora, or what preparations could possibly be made for the Christian artworks there.
At Hagia Sophia, curtains have been drawn in entrance of an image coping with worshippers of Mary and the toddler Jesus.
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Dominic Evans/Mark Heinrich)
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