VACTICAN CITY: Pope Francis said Sunday he was “very distressed” over Turkey’s decision to convert the Byzantine-era monument Hagia Sophia back into a mosque.
“My thoughts go to Istanbul. I’m thinking about Hagia Sophia. I am very distressed,” the pope said in the Vatican’s first reaction to a decision that has drawn international criticism.
The Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano had on Saturday carried reaction from different countries about Friday’s decision to turn the monument from a museum back into a mosque but without any comment.
A magnet for tourists worldwide, the Hagia Sophia was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine Empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who critics say is chipping away at the Muslim-majority country’s secular pillars, announced Friday that Muslim prayers would begin on July 24 at the UNESCO World Heritage site.
In the past, he has repeatedly called for the stunning building to be renamed as a mosque and in 2018, he recited a verse from the Qur'an at Hagia Sophia.
Erdogan’s announcement came after a top court canceled a 1934 cabinet decision under modern Turkey’s secularizing founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to preserve the church-turned-mosque as a museum.
Pope Francis ‘very distressed’ over Turkey’s Hagia Sophia conversion to mosque
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Pope Francis ‘very distressed’ over Turkey’s Hagia Sophia conversion to mosque
- ‘My thoughts go to Istanbul. I’m thinking about Hagia Sophia. I am very distressed’
Kurdish official says Kurds committed to deals with Damascus despite Aleppo violence
- Ahmad said that “we are committed to peace and to resolving problems through dialogue”
- She accused Syria’s authorities of “choosing the path of war” by attacking Kurdish districts in Aleppo
BEIRUT: Syria’s Kurds are committed to agreements reached with the government, a senior official from their administration told AFP on Friday, despite days of violence in the northern city of Aleppo.
The government and Kurdish forces have traded blame over who started the fighting on Tuesday, which came as they have struggled to implement a deal reached last March to merge the Kurds’ administration and military into the country’s new government.
Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration in Syria’s northeast, said that “we are committed to peace and to resolving problems through dialogue. But until now, the government... does not want a solution.”
She accused Syria’s authorities of “choosing the path of war” by attacking Kurdish districts in Aleppo.
“With these attacks, the government side is seeking to put an end to the agreements that have been reached. We are committed to them and we are seeking to implement them,” she said.
The government announced a truce early Friday after days of deadly violence that has forced thousands to flee, and granted Kurdish fighters a deadline to leave two districts they control.
But the fighters were refusing to leave the Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsud areas and intended to “resist” the Syrian army encircling them, a statement by the local councils of the two neighborhoods said.
Ahmad said that “the United States is playing a mediating role... we hope they will apply pressure to reach an agreement.”
A diplomatic source told AFP on Friday that US envoy Tom Barrack was headed to Damascus.
