{"id":62408,"date":"2019-02-06T13:37:15","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T13:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=62408"},"modified":"2019-03-30T19:59:43","modified_gmt":"2019-03-30T19:59:43","slug":"greek-premier-visits-former-istanbul-seminary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/greek-premier-visits-former-istanbul-seminary\/","title":{"rendered":"Greek premier visits former Istanbul seminary"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Accompanied by Turkish officials, Greece\u2019s premier on Wednesday paid a historic visit to a former Greek seminary on Istanbul\u2019s Princes\u2019 Islands.<\/h2>\n<p>On day two of his official visit to Turkey, Alexis Tsipras visited the site of the Halki Seminary on Heybeliada island &#8212; the first visit by a Greek leader in many decades &#8212; along with Ibrahim Kalin, Turkey\u2019s presidential spokesman.<\/p>\n<p>At the seminary site, Tsipras took part in a religious ceremony headed by Fener Greek Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew.<\/p>\n<p>Established in 1844, the seminary was closed in 1971 under a law that placed religious and military training under state control.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday Turkish President Erdogan suggested the seminary could be reopened if Athens improved conditions for the Muslim community in Western Thrace, an area of Greece with a large Turkish Muslim population.<\/p>\n<p>Before visiting Heybeliada, Tsipras visited the Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia) museum.<\/p>\n<p>Built by the Byzantines, Hagia Sophia served as a Christian church until it was converted into a mosque in 1453, when the Ottomans conquered Istanbul.<\/p>\n<p>In 1935 it was turned into a museum upon the orders of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first president of the Republic of Turkey.<\/p>\n<!-- Error, Advert is not available at this time due to schedule\/geolocation restrictions! -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Accompanied by Turkish officials, Greece\u2019s premier on Wednesday paid a historic visit to a former Greek seminary on Istanbul\u2019s Princes\u2019 Islands. On day two of his official visit to Turkey, Alexis Tsipras visited the site of the Halki Seminary on Heybeliada island &#8212; the first visit by a Greek leader in many decades &#8212; along &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":62409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,1,118,101,14],"tags":[76113,3678,77182],"class_list":["post-62408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-general","category-hot","category-politics","category-world","tag-alexis-tsipras","tag-greek","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}