{"id":14953,"date":"2018-09-13T15:26:02","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T15:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14953"},"modified":"2018-09-13T15:26:02","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T15:26:02","slug":"syria-and-jordan-begin-talks-on-opening-vital-border-crossing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14953","title":{"rendered":"Syria and Jordan begin talks on opening vital border crossing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1371481\/middle-east\" readability=\"44\">\n<p>\nISTANBUL: Turkey\u2019s top court on Thursday turned down a plea to open the Hagia Sofia, an Istanbul landmark that is now a museum after serving as both a church and a mosque over its long history, for Muslim worshipping.<br \/>The Constitutional Court rejected an association\u2019s demand that the Hagia Sophia be opened for Muslim prayers on \u201cnon-competence\u201d grounds, indicating it was not the proper instance to allow any change, the official Anadolu news agency reported.<br \/>In its plea, the association had claimed that barring prayers at Hagia Sophia was breaching the right to freedom of expression and conscience.<br \/>The Haberturk website said that the demand had come from an independent Turkish heritage association.<br \/>The Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum accessible to all by the secular founders of modern Turkey in the 1930s. Secular Turks are wary of any moves to re-Islamise the building or have it reconsecrated as a mosque.<br \/>There has in recent years under the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan been an increase in Muslim activity inside the museum, with Qur&#8217;an readings taking place on occasion.<br \/>The Hagia Sophia was constructed in the sixth century as a church in the Christian Byzantine Empire and was the seat of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Istanbul\u2019s former name.<br \/>When Ottoman forces under Sultan Mehmet II conquered the city in 1453 he ordered the immediate conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Islamic minarets were built around its Byzantine dome.<br \/>It served as a mosque until after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire when in the mid-1930s the authorities of the new Turkish state under its secular founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ordered it to become a museum for all.<br \/>Neighbouring Greece, which keeps a close eye on the state of Byzantine heritage in Istanbul, has occasionally expressed concern that the Hagia Sophia\u2019s status as a secular museum could be under threat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISTANBUL: Turkey\u2019s top court on Thursday turned down a plea to open the Hagia Sofia, an Istanbul landmark that is now a museum after serving as both a church and a mosque over its long history, for Muslim worshipping.The Constitutional Court rejected an association\u2019s demand that the Hagia Sophia be opened for Muslim prayers on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":14954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}