President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed a decree on July 10 opening Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia as a mosque just minutes after Turkey’s Council of State — the highest administrative court in the country — annulled a 1934 government decree that had turned it into a museum.
Erdoğan shared on his Twitter feed a copy of the decree he had signed which said the decision had been taken to hand control of the Ayasofya Mosque, as it is known in Turkish, to the country’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) and reopen it for worship.
Turkey plans crackdown on social media, 50 million-euro fines | Ahval
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