The Turks did the same thing all over Greece during the Turkokratia and are doing it to this day in Cyprus. Their basic and heretical iconoclasm compels them to do this. In my family's village in Greece they whitewashed over all the icons painted on the walls of the various churches in the village. The irony of it all is that the whitewash preserved them for the 400+ years the Turks were around in southern Greece so we have them now. In some instances in the past, and quite commonly now in Cyprus, the icons were actually disfigured or completely destroyed. The communists committed similar desecrations during the civil war in Greece in the late 1940s.
Bishop Artemije, by the way, is an articulate and formidible hierarch who is very well respected in the Orthodox world. That he has filed this suit lends great credibility to the cause of the Serbian Church in this matter.
I hope that someday the Divine Liturgy will again be chanted in Hagia Sophia.