One of the four minarets surrounding Hagia Sophia is being dismantled as cracks were found in it.
Last July, the Minister of Tourism and Culture of Turkey, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, announced the implementation of projects to strengthen the stability of Hagia Sophia. In this context, he had announced the dismantling of the first minaret, the so-called Bayezid II minaret, and its re-installation after the repairs were completed.
A post by the General Directorate of Institutions on social media states that “during the checks carried out on the Bayezid minaret of the Hagia Sophia mosque, a deep crack was detected. With the decision to dismantle it taken by the Scientific Council of the mosque and by the Maintenance Committee, a steel platform was constructed to ensure the safety of the visitors and a full safety scaffolding was installed on the steel platform.”
What experts say about the repair process
According to Turkish press reports, the member of the Scientific Committee for the Restoration of Hagia Sophia, Professor Hasan Firat Diker, said, “since the Bayezid II minaret has the most structural weaknesses among the four minarets, the repair started first from the particular minaret in order to carry out a partial disassembly to understand if the problem that has been identified is due to an earthquake or to corrosion of the building material.
It will then be restored and work will follow on the other minarets. Since the materials and architectural features of each minaret differ from each other, each one has its own methods of intervention.”
Regarding the steel scaffolding in Hagia Sophia, as well as the construction of an entrance gate for visitors, the Turkish professor said that these constructions are temporary and are intended to protect visitors from any falling material during the works.
As he said, “this intervention constitutes only a very small stage of the restoration as the minarets, as is known, are later Ottoman additions. Our priority is to restore the structural weaknesses in order to prevent any problem both in them and in the construction itself, as the restoration will extend to the structure of the building itself, its exterior and domes.”
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