An Islamic call to prayer was again heard on Monday in what was once the center of Orthodoxy, the Hagia Sophia Cathedral,. The prayer was initially broadcast on a Turkish television station.
This development marked the third year in a row that similar provocations, challenging the supposed status of Hagia Sophia as a secular museum in Turkey, have taken place every March.
The provocation comes as Turkish authorities continue to encourage and assist thousands of illegal migrants in their attack against Greek security forces at a frontier post on the Greek-Turkey border. The orchestrated migrant attacks began on earlier in the month.
Hagia Sophia was built in 537 and served for nearly millennium as the greatest of all cathedrals in Christendom. It was converted to a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in May 1453, until reconverted into a museum in 1931.
