Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque on July 15, during a commemoration of the anniversary of the failed coup in 2016 in Turkey, according to local news reports quoted by AnsaMed. The plan was reportedly presented to the Turkish president at a meeting on Monday of the central committee of his AKP party during which he was told about the positive outcome of surveys on the initiative which would reportedly be popular also among nationalist voters backing the opposition.

Hagia Sophia was originally a Byzantine Christian for nearly a millennium before it became a mosque with the Ottoman conquest in 1453 and then transformed into a museum by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1935.