The article that was proposed and accepted during the European Parliament’s voting of the 2018 report reads: “Calls on the Turkish government to respect and fully implement the legal obligations which it has entered into concerning the protection of cultural heritage, and, in particular, to draw up in good faith an integrated inventory of Greek, Armenian, Assyrian and other cultural heritage that was destroyed or ruined in the course of the last century; opposes, in this context, any extreme view that promotes alterations to the physiognomy of the Hagia Sophia historical-religious monument and its conversion into a mosque; calls on Turkey to ratify the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions; calls on Turkey to cooperate with the relevant international organisations, especially the Council of Europe, in preventing and combating illicit trafficking in and the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage…”
The European Parliament indirectly defines Hagia Sophia as a historical-religious monument and cultural heritage belonging to the Greeks and claims that it is Turkey’s legal responsibility to sustain it as it is.
