ISTANBUL: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday rejected criticism over his willingness to convert Istanbul’s famed Hagia Sophia landmark into a mosque despite international and domestic concern.
“Charges against our country over Hagia Sophia are a direct attack on our right to sovereignty,” Erdogan said.
Turkey’s highest administrative court is considering whether the emblematic site and former cathedral can be redesignated as a mosque, prompting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday to urge Turkey to keep the site in its current status as a museum.
The Council of State convened on Thursday to evaluate the case brought by an association to change the museum’s status.
The court, known as Danistay in Turkish, must announce its decision within 15 days.
Hagia Sophia was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine Empire in the sixth century but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
Transforming it into a museum was a key reform of the post-Ottoman authorities under the modern republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
But calls for it to serve again as a mosque have led to anger among Christians and tensions between historic foes and uneasy NATO allies Ankara and Athens, which closely monitors Byzantine heritage in Turkey.
Erdogan said last year it had been a “very big mistake” to convert the Hagia Sophia into a museum.
Turkey’s Erdogan rejects criticism over Hagia Sophia landmark
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Turkey’s Erdogan rejects criticism over Hagia Sophia landmark
- Turkey’s highest administrative court is considering whether the emblematic site and former cathedral can be redesignated as a mosque
- Erdogan said last year it had been a “very big mistake” to convert the Hagia Sophia into a museum
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South Sudan says its troops are guarding strategic Heglig oil field in Sudan
- Sudanese government forces and workers at the Heglig oil field withdrew from the area on Sunday to avoid fighting that could have damaged facilities there
NAIROBI: South Sudan has sent its troops to neighboring Sudan to guard the strategic Heglig oil field near the border, its military head said on Thursday, days after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took control of it.
Heglig houses the main processing facility for South Sudanese oil, which makes up the bulk of South Sudan’s public revenues. Some oil has continued to flow through Heglig, though at much reduced volumes.
Sudanese government forces and workers at the Heglig oil field withdrew from the area on Sunday to avoid fighting that could have damaged facilities there, government sources told Reuters on Monday.
General Paul Nang, South Sudan chief of defense forces, said the troop deployment was agreed between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, Sudan Army Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
“The three agreed that the area of Heglig should be protected because (it) is a very important strategic area for the two countries,” Nang said in comments on state-owned South Sudan Broadcasting Radio.
“Now it is the forces of South Sudan that are in Heglig.”
Oil is transported through the Greater Nile pipeline system to Port Sudan on the Red Sea for export, making the Heglig site critical both for Sudan’s foreign exchange earnings and for South Sudan, which is landlocked and relies almost entirely on pipelines through Sudan.
Another pipeline, Petrodar, runs from South Sudan’s Upper Nile State to Port Sudan.
The war that started in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the RSF has repeatedly disrupted South Sudan’s oil flows, which before the conflict averaged between 100,000 and 150,000 barrels per day for export via Sudan.
