Hagia Sophia

Monuments that have endured through time and hardship are free of the bonds of their age, of the vision and fate of their creators. They become part of our global heritage, "judging" those responsible for their preservation.

The way that people and governments behave toward great works reveals their principles, their qualities, the future of their society.

An official with the US State Department has reiterated Washington's belief in the protection of the "complex multi-religious history" of Hagia Sophia, the UNESCO World Heritage site in Istanbul and former Greek Orthodox patriarchal cathedral.

Turkey, Russia, and Iran plan to hold an online trilateral summit with the participation of their leaders aiming to discuss Idlib in northwestern Syria and the efforts for a new Syrian constitution, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on June 11.

Turkish foreign minister on June 11 said Istanbul's Hagia Sophia is "not a matter of international affairs, but a matter of national sovereignty."

Speaking in a televised interview, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu responded to the recent discussions over the possible reopening of Hagia Sophia as a mosque and said the popular site was initially a mosque after conquering of Istanbul.

As of July, Turkey will resume all those tourism facilities planned to be reopened as part of the normalization process, said the country's culture and tourism minister on June 10.

Speaking to CNN Turk, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy commented on the revival of tourism in the country.

In its annual International Religious Freedom Report, the US State Department notes that senior US government officials have continued to publicly and privately express to Turkish officials their view that Hagia Sophia, a former Orthodox Christian cathedral in Istanbul, is a monument of exceptional significance that must be preserved in a way that respects its religious history.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Wednesday he was certain that Greeks would not want an armed conflict with Turkey over maritime dumpsites in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.

"I want to underline in a mathematical certainty that Greeks would not want to stage a war with Turkey," Akar told the private broadcaster A Haber in an interview on June 10.

İYİ (Good) Party chair Meral Akşener has criticized President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for sparking "artificial crises" in order to divert people's attention from economic and other pressing issues and suggested that the government's recent demand to turn the Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque was one of them.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has asked his aides to conduct a comprehensive study on how to convert Istanbul's famous Hagia Sophia landmark, currently a museum, into a mosque, a Turkish newspaper reported on Friday.

The Turkish government may start works to change the current status of Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya), a landmark mosque-turned-museum in Istanbul, daily Hürriyet reported on June 5.