Mehmet II

The 500-year-old shrine of Asude Hatun, the foster mother of Sultan Beyazid II, inside the Tahir Ağa Mosque in Istanbul's Fatih district has been left to its destiny as officials noted that they have no time to take care of the historical shrine.

Turkish foreign minister on June 11 said Istanbul's Hagia Sophia is "not a matter of international affairs, but a matter of national sovereignty."

Speaking in a televised interview, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu responded to the recent discussions over the possible reopening of Hagia Sophia as a mosque and said the popular site was initially a mosque after conquering of Istanbul.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has asked his aides to conduct a comprehensive study on how to convert Istanbul's famous Hagia Sophia landmark, currently a museum, into a mosque, a Turkish newspaper reported on Friday.

Turkey on May 29 marked the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul on its 567th anniversary with a series of events.

Sultan Mehmet II conquered the city from where the Byzantines ruled the Eastern Roman Empire for more than 1,000 years.

The conquest transformed the city, once the heart of the Byzantine realm, into the capital of the new Ottoman Empire.

"We will conquer mosques," proclaimed Ali Erbas, the head of Turkey's Religious Affairs Directorate, on May 27 as he announced the Turkish government's plan to reopen mosques for public worship after a Covid-19 hiatus. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan requested the reopening, originally planned for June 12, to be pulled back to May 29.

Among the billions of people who have walked the earth since the dawn of humanity, only a few are rightfully remembered for their
exceptional skills and impact on history, and among these is Mehmet II, the Ottoman emperor who had the honor of conquering Istanbul and thus earning the title "conqueror."

The period of the rise of the Ottoman Empire will be the center of the new Netflix series "Rise of Empires: Ottoman."

The series will focus on the period of the conquest of Istanbul and the rule of Ottoman Emperor Mehmet II, who conquered the city from the Byzantines in 1453.

Sergei Gavrilov, an MP from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) urged Turkey to return the Hagia Sophia Cathedral to the Orthodox Christian Church. He said that in this way Ankara would demonstrate that good will is above politics. “We expect the Turkish side to show a goodwill gesture and return Hagia Sophia Cathedral to the Christian Church,” he said.

Turkey?s former President Abdullah Gül said through an aide on May 26 that he has turned down an invitation from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Parti), of which he was a key founder, to join a rally in Istanbul on May 30, just a week before the critical June 7 general election.

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