Church bells across Greece tolled in mourning on Friday as the first Islamic prayers in nine decades were held at Hagia Sophia in Turkey, marking the monument's conversion into a mosque.
FILE PHOTO: Volcanic islets are seen behind a Greek Orthodox church built on the edge of the caldera at the volcanic island of Santorini March 15, 2012. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis/File Photo
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan joined huge crowds in Istanbul for prayers at Hagia Sophia, sealing his ambition to restore Muslim worship at the ancient site which most Greeks consider as central to their Orthodox Christian religion. In a message marking Greece’s 46th anniversary of the restoration of democracy on Friday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called Turkey a ‘troublemaker’, and the Hagia Sophia conversion an ‘affront to civilisation of the 21st century’.
Greece and Turkey disagree on a range of issues from airspace to maritime zones and ethnically split Cyprus. Tensions upped a notch this week with verbal jousting over the delimitation of their continental shelves in the eastern Mediterranean, an area thought to be rich in natural resources.
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