Roughly 250 members of the international Aya Sofia coalition are due to arrive in Istanbul on Friday to make Christian religious rites in one of the main attractions in the city, the Hagia Sophia mosque.
After Constantinople was conquered in the mid-15th century, Sultan Mehmet II renamed it the largest temple in the city from the church of Hagia Sophia to Ayia Sofia. The first Friday prayers were performed there. Hagia Sophia mosque was deprived of its religious status and turned into a museum in 1934.