When does a mosque stop being a church – or museum?
[ by Charles Cameron — Hagia Sophia and the Mezquita, Cordoba, with a glance at Guadalupe / Tepeyac ]
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Interiors of the Mezquita, Cordoba [left], and Hagia Sophia, Istanbul [right]
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Opening paras of my latest from LapidoMedia:
HERITAGE watchers are waiting to see whether Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister, Yalcin Topcu, who has called for the reopening of basilica-turned-mosque-turned-museum Hagia Sophia as a mosque, has retained his job.
Topcu, an independent, was given the interim post in the negotiations that followed the AKP’s failure to achieve an absolute majority in an earlier round of elections in June.
Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP or Justice and Development Party won a landslide victory in last Sunday’s elections, but as we went to press, posts still remained to be re-allocated.
You can — should, eh? — read the rest here.
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Exteriors of the Mezquita-Cathedral, Cordoba [left] and of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul [right]
