Two Russian citizens detained in Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia after reading the Bible flew to Moscow on the evening of July 17. TASS reported this, citing the Russian Consulate General.
“We have received confirmation that the Filonov citizens departed for Moscow on a scheduled flight at 19:50 local time,” the diplomatic mission said.
According to the detainees themselves, they are a married couple from Moscow — 35-year-old Viktoria and 32-year-old Igor — who had traveled to Turkey for vacation. On July 14, they visited the Hagia Sophia mosque, where Igor took out a Bible he had brought with him and began reading it.
The couple said they were then surrounded and escorted out of the building before being taken to a police station in the Fatih district. They were later sent to a foreigners detention center pending deportation.
A report was filed against them under an article covering incitement of hatred. As noted in the report, the offense carries a penalty of six months to one year in prison, as well as deportation.
TASS sources had earlier said the detention followed a police warning that the Russians were loudly reading the Bible in the visitor area. In Turkey, conducting Christian religious rites or demonstratively reading non-Muslim religious literature inside an active mosque is treated as a public order violation.
Hagia Sophia was consecrated in 537, converted into a mosque after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and turned into a museum in the 1930s. In July 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a decree returning Hagia Sophia to mosque status.