HAGIA SOPHIA

About:

• The centuries-old structure, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, was originally a cathedral in the Byzantine empire before it was turned into a mosque in 1453, when Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmet II’s Ottoman forces.
  
  
• In the 1930s, however, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, shut down the mosque and turned it into a museum in an attempt to make the country more secular.
  
  
• Turkey’s Council of State had declared in its ruling that the conversion of the Hagia Sophia from a mosque into the museum by the country’s founder was illegal.
  
  
• The decision was in line with the Turkish president's calls to turn the hugely symbolic world heritage site into a mosque despite widespread international criticism, including from UNESCO, the United States and Orthodox Christian leaders.