Converting Date (d-m-Y_His) stored in mysql VARCHAR to mysql DATETIME

Hi,
I was trying to sort records in one of our MySQL databases by date but I notice that the date values are stored as VARCHAR data type rather than a DATETIME value.

i.e.  08-07-2016_164533     in the format d-m-Y_His  (day-month-Year_HourMinuteSecond)

I wonder if there is an easy way to convert these values to DATETIME datatype for easier manipulation?

Thanks