Prayers at Istanbul's Hagia Sophia for NZ victims

Описание: (16 Mar 2019) A few hundred demonstrators on Saturday protested the New Zealand mosque shootings outside Istanbul's Hagia Sophia - a Byzantine-era cathedral that was turned into a mosque and now serves as a museum.
The demonstrators,  mostly members of Islamic-leaning civil society groups, called for the symbolic edifice to be reconverted into a mosque.
The demand was in response to a taunt made by the assailant in a 74-page manifesto in which he reportedly said "Hagia Sophia will free of minarets."
The demonstrators also held funeral prayers for the attack's victims.
The former Byzantine cathedral was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul in 1453.
Turkey's secular founder turned the structure into a museum in 1935 that attracts millions of tourists each year.   
There have been increasing calls for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government to convert the structure back into a mosque.
Erdogan himself recited prayers inside the Hagia Sophia last year.

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