“I am impressed by what Erdogan said about Hagia Sophia, because every country wants its monuments to be included in the list of UNESCO,” told to ANT1 TV station Maria Ekaterini Papachristopoulou-Tzitzikosta, the President of Hellenic National Commission for UNESCO.
As Tzitzikosta said, Erdogan’s statements will be discussed next week at the Meeting of National Commissions for UNESCO, in which the Hellenic Commission will also participate.
The president of the Hellenic Commission stated that one country can make movements that might be conducive to quitting UNESCO or declassifying a monument and removing it out of the UNESCO World Heritage List.
In this case, as Tzitzikosta pointed out, the possibility for UNESCO to intervene will be restricted.
It is noted that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on a daily basis, in the context of the ongoing election campaign in Turkey, stresses that the time is right to convert the symbol of Christiendom to a mosque, saying that “in our minds we never considered Hagia Sophia to be a monument, the time has come for Hagia Sophia mosque.”