Russia: Turkey’s Hagia Sophia decision ‘an internal affair’

The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Vershinin, has defended Turkey’s decision to convert the status of the Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul into a mosque saying the decision is a Turkish internal affair.

“We proceed from the fact that this is a Turkish internal affair in which neither us nor others should interfere,” Vershinin told reporters yesterday, however he stressed the importance of Hagia Sophia for “world culture and civilisation”.

Earlier on Friday, a top Turkish court annulled a 1934 cabinet decree, which had turned Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia from a mosque into a museum.

The Russian Orthodox Church said it “regretted” the Turkish court’s decision.

Islamic body: Turkey overruled ‘radical decision’ that made Hagia Sophia a museum