MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 10th July, 2020) Moscow is unlikely to persist in stressing to Ankara the inadmissibility of changing the status of Hagia Sophia as all statements have already been made at this point, Sergei Kislyak, Former Russian Ambassador to the US and member of the upper house's Foreign Affairs Committee told Sputnik.
"I think, on our part, all statements about the importance of this architectural monument, this temple for the entire Orthodox world, that Hagia Sophia is a universal heritage site, have already been made," Kislyak said, adding he was hugely disappointed by the decision.
Kislyak's colleague in the Federation Council, first deputy chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Vladimir Dzhabarov, said that Russia is bereft of any mechanisms to influence Turkey's decision.
"We have said that this decision was erroneous more than once, the Russian Orthodox Church, the State Duma, and leading politicians addressed the Turkish leadership. But Russia, for its part, can not do anything to change this decision," Dzhabarov told Sputnik.
The parliamentarian recalled that Constantinople, where the temple was built, is the cradle of Orthodoxy, and Hagia Sophia itself is an important symbol of the Orthodox world.
"So turning it into a mosque will not give anything for the Muslim world. It does not bring nations together, but, on the contrary, brings them apart. This is a mistake," he said.
Earlier on Friday, Turkey's highest administrative court annulled the 1934 decree converting Hagia Sophia into a museum, meaning it can now be used as a mosque. A presidential decree was also signed, opening the mosque for Muslim prayers.
The temple was built in the 6th Century AD served as a central monument of the Byzantine Empire and Orthodox Christianity. The temple inspired Russian emissaries in the 11th Century to accept the faith and covert the Russian world to it. It was turned into a mosque when the Ottoman's conquered the city in the 15th Century then converted into a museum during Mustafa Kemal's secularization of Turkey in the early 20th Century.
