ISTANBUL, March 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Turkey will not go back on the purchase of S-400 missile systems from Russia no matter what the United States says, President Tayyip Erdogan said.
He made the comment in an interview with broadcaster TGRT Haber.
The United States could soon freeze preparations for delivering F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, officials said, in what would be the strongest signal yet by Washington that Ankara cannot have both the advanced aircraft and Russia’s S-400 air defence system.
Separately, Erdogan mooted the possibility of renaming Istanbul’s Hagia Sofia museum as a mosque.
Erdogan, who is a former mayor of Istanbul, is campaigning for votes for his Justice and Development Party (AKP) ahead of municipal elections on March 31.
The former church and mosque, now a museum, often sparks tensions between Christians and Muslims over Islamic activities held there including the reading of verses from the Koran or collective prayers.
Its secular status allows believers of all faiths to meditate, reflect or simply enjoy its astonishing architecture.
But calls for it to serve again as a mosque have caused anger among Christians and raised tensions between historic foes Turkey and Greece, both NATO members.
Greece has repeatedly expressed concern over efforts to change the museum’s status.
The Hagia Sophia was first built as a church in the sixth century under the Christian Byzantine Empire as the centrepiece of its capital Constantinople, today’s Istanbul.
Almost immediately after the conquest of Constantinople by the Muslim Ottomans in 1453, it was converted into a mosque before becoming a secular museum in a key reform of the new post-Ottoman Turkish authorities under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the 1930s.
Ataturk was the founder of the Turkish republic.
The museum, a UNESCO World Heritage site, receives millions of visitors every year. — NNN-AGENCIES