President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is ready to carry his closing marketing campaign rally for this Sunday’s polls with Maghrib (sundown) prayers on the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul on Saturday.
Erdoğan, trying to clinch one other victory in each presidential and parliamentary elections within the twenty first yr of his rule, may also maintain one closing meet and greet with supporters within the Bahçelievler district earlier than the campaigning interval ends.
On Saturday, he’ll proceed assembly residents in Ümraniye, Sancaktepe and Beyoğlu districts.
On Sunday, he can be casting his vote with 61 million others nationwide to elect Türkiye’s thirteenth president and 600 members of Parliament.
Hagia Sophia holds fairly a cultural and historic significance for Türkiye.
The long-lasting monument served as a church for 916 years till the conquest of Istanbul. It then served as a mosque from 1453 to 1934 – practically 500 years – and most lately as a museum for 86 years.
One of the vital visited historic buildings in Türkiye by home and worldwide vacationers, Hagia Sophia was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Listing in 1985.
On July 10, 2020, a Turkish court docket annulled a 1934 Cupboard decree that had turned Hagia Sophia right into a museum, paving the best way for its use once more as a mosque after the 86-year hiatus.
The transfer made a global splash and was one Erdoğan hailed as a “vital problem to world tutelage.”