PM: Channels with Turkey must stay open

Responding to calls that his scheduled visit to Ankara on Monday should be postponed due to the conversion of the Chora monastery in Istanbul into a mosque, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stressed on Wednesday that this would not be the correct course of action as "open channels must be maintained."

He did, however, say that he would express his "strong dissatisfaction" to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the conversion of the historic Byzantine monastery, which dates back to the 6th century AD, into a mosque.

"There is no shortage of mosques in the city. This is no way to treat cultural heritage. Polis [Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul] was the capital of Byzantium and Orthodoxy for over a thousand years. We protect the monuments, we would never do such a thing," he said in a wide-ranging interview with Proto Thema. 

"It is much better to go...