I will be posting links or articles as they develop on Hagia Sophia on this post. Originally published July 8, 2020.
Updated on May 25, 2022
Complete articles from Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times appear below links
https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1185150/fresh-allegations-of-hagia-sophia-vandalism/
https://www.romfea.gr/diafora/48454-panigyriki-i-proti-parousiasi-tou-tomou-gia-naoys-agias-sofias
https://orthodoxtimes.com/hagia-sophia-hidden-parchments-were-found-inside-a-wall/
https://www.meforum.org/62608/erdogans-second-conquest-of-the-christians
https://greekcitytimes.com/2021/09/16/dendias-turkey-change-neo-otto/
https://greekcitytimes.com/2021/09/07/hagia-sophia-mosque-in-nicaea-iznik/
https://www.meforum.org/62608/erdogans-second-conquest-of-the-christians
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ataturk-is-our-nations-red-line-mhp-leader-165181
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/hagia-sophia-imam-resigns-163793
https://orthodoxtimes.com/the-first-imam-of-the-hagia-sophia-resigned/
https://greekcitytimes.com/2021/01/07/patriarch-of-moscow-hagia-sophia/
https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/over-1-5-mln-visit-istanbuls-hagia-sophia-grand-mosque-158798
https://www.rt.com/news/502084-orthodox-church-un-hagia-sophia/
https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/james-baldwin-blindness-and-hagia-sophia
https://www.ekathimerini.com/256808/opinion/ekathimerini/comment/requiem-for-a-cosmopolitan-dream
https://blog.oup.com/2020/09/the-reconversion-of-hagia-sophia-in-perspective/
https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/09/08/a-new-hagia-sophia-in-syria-the-first-images/
http://blogs.dunyanews.tv/27319/
https://ahvalnews.com/hagia-sophia/hagia-sophia-beacon-coexistence-pretext-extremism
https://ahvalnews.com/hagia-sophia/headscarves-coverings-now-required-enter-hagia-sophia
https://en.armradio.am/2020/08/27/turkey-introduces-new-dress-code-to-visit-hagia-sophia/
https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/hagia-sophia-mosque-erdogan/
https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/08/24/hagia-sophia-then-now-always/
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/08/17/deconstructing-russias-response-to-the-hagia-sophia/
https://fsspx.news/en/news-events/news/hagia-sophia-mosque-transformation-could-spread-59725
https://www.manilatimes.net/2020/08/15/opinion/columnists/the-sad-tale-of-the-hagia-sophia/755560/
https://orthodoxtimes.com/the-frescoes-in-hagia-sophia-remain-covered-during-non-prayer-hours/
https://cherwell.org/2020/08/13/from-museum-to-mosque-the-deconsecration-of-the-hagia-sophia/
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1718246/middle-east
https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/08/09/3000-turks-infected-from-coronavirus/
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/05/turkey-christians-hagia-sophia-392125
https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/08/06/mosque-servant-dies-in-hagia-sophia-from-heart-attack/
https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/08/04/jihadist-terrorist-flag-displayed-in-hagia-sophia/
https://www.polygraph.info/a/hagia-sophia-mosque-fact-check/30739971.html
https://www.ncronline.org/news/world/christians-cautious-turkeys-hagia-sophia-becomes-mosque-again
https://www.dailysabah.com/life/religion/thousands-attend-1st-bayram-prayers-in-hagia-sophia
https://news.yahoo.com/hagia-sofia-must-remain-part-103148707.html
https://ahvalnews.com/hagia-sophia/turkeys-test-civilization
https://www.voanews.com/europe/greek-businesses-move-boycott-trade-turkey-over-hagia-sophia
https://news.yahoo.com/why-hagia-sophia-remains-potent-122855287.html
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/24/europe/hagia-sophia-mosque-friday-prayers-turkey-intl/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53506445
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1708936
https://www.voanews.com/europe/turkey-battles-criticism-over-decision-turn-hagia-sophia-mosque
ttps://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/muslim-leaders-laud-turkeys-hagia-sophia-move/1914726
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/283501
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/only-going-get-worse-after-hagia-sophia-ruling-many-fear-n1234012
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1705101
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1705101
https://www.foxnews.com/world/hagia-sofia-mosque-christian-turkey-site
https://apnews.com/3017394f54b5ecc13fc13384a7cfb110
https://www.arabnews.com/node/1704126/middle-east
https://orthodoxtimes.com/imam-of-milan-against-the-conversion-of-hagia-sophia-into-a-mosque/
https://ahvalnews.com/hagia-sophia/turkeys-test-civilization
https://news.yahoo.com/turkey-inform-unesco-hagia-sophia-100119578.html
https://www.jns.org/erdogan-hagia-sophia-resurrection-a-harbinger-for-al-aqsa-liberation/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53375739
https://time.com/5865524/hagia-sophia-formal-mosque/
https://news.yahoo.com/erdogan-says-hagia-sophia-reopened-muslim-worship-143446037.html
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53366307
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/10/europe/hagia-sophia-mosque-turkey-intl/index.html
https://www.voanews.com/europe/erdogan-faces-backlash-over-plans-convert-hagia-sophia-mosque
https://ahvalnews.com/hagia-sophia/turkey-court-approves-turning-hagia-sophia-mosque-columnist
https://nypost.com/2020/07/07/turkish-islamist-tyrants-obscene-bid-to-turn-hagia-sophia-into-mosque/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/will-erdogan-turn-hagia-sophia-back-into-a-mosque
/www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200617-will-european-protests-prevent-the-hagia-sophia-museum-becoming-a-mosque/
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The Wall Street JournalOpinion
English Edition
Turkey Retreats From Modernity
Hagia Sophia is a mosque again, and Atatürk’s secular experiment is over.
By Charlotte AllenJuly 23, 2020 7:07 pm ET
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This Friday marks the end of Turkey’s experiment with secular modernity. That’s when regular Islamic religious services begin at Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia. The 1,500-year-old structure had served as a museum and symbol of Turkish tolerance until President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decreed the change earlier this month.
The Hagia Sophia has a dizzying history. It originally was built in 537 as the central cathedral of what would become Greek Orthodox Christianity. Ottoman Turkish Muslims conquered the Greek-speaking Christian Byzantine Empire and converted it into a mosque in 1453. But in 1934 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of modern Turkey, decreed Hagia Sophia would become a secular museum.
The symbolic meaning of the recent reconversion cannot be overestimated. Atatürk sought to substitute a secular, West-facing identity for Turkey’s traditional Islamic religious roots, which he saw as backward. A big part of that program was turning Hagia Sophia—for centuries a visual metaphor of Muslim triumphalism—into a museum. This had encouraged tourism and facilitated research by Western and Westernized scholars.
But Atatürk’s ambitious nationalism also created a Muslim monoculture. Millions of Greek Orthodox Christians and Armenian Christians had lived in Ottoman Turkey at the start of the 20th century. Genocide before and during World War I, forced “population transfers†during Atatürk’s early presidency, and overt discrimination since then has reduced Turkey’s Armenian population to about 60,000. Only some 2,000 Greeks remain.
Atatürk’s secular culture flourished in cosmopolitan Istanbul and among Turkey’s educated elite. But it has barely penetrated the rural population, which today forms the base of Mr. Erdogan’s religiously conservative AKP party. A May survey from one Turkish newspaper showed 73% support across the country for reconversion, which has been under way for some time.
As early as 2010 the government began changing the building’s lighting to focus on its Islamic postconquest adornments. And in 2016 a muezzin chanted the Islamic call to prayer inside Hagia Sophia for the first time since 1934. “The secularists are beginning to understand what it’s like to be a religious minority,†says Elizabeth Prodromou, a Tufts University professor who researches the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and political Islam. Ms. Prodromou says Mr. Erdogan envisions Turkey displacing Saudi Arabia as leader of the Sunni Muslim religious world. “He is telling the Kemalists: Your interlude was a parenthesis.â€
Hagia Sophia is still a sacred space for Christians, and their marginalization will be devastating for them. Completed under the direction of the Emperor Justinian, the building is an architectural marvel and Unesco World Heritage site. Its 150-foot-diameter dome seems to float above the building, thanks to a row of windows beneath it that flood the interior with natural light. Mehmet II’s invading troops looted and destroyed the church’s richly decorated icons and furnishings in 1453, and the sultans of the 17th century painted over its glittering mosaics depicting Christ, the Virgin, angels and saints, irreparably damaging many of them.
But until recently visitors still could experience the religious feelings of the Byzantine Greeks as they observed the light playing along the church’s marble floor and multicolored columns and facings. Bissera Pentcheva, an art historian at Stanford and author of “Hagia Sophia: Sound, Space and Spirit in Byzantium†(2017), has called the shimmering marble a kind of icon of the Holy Spirit “hovering over the primordial ocean.†Ms. Bissera spearheaded a project in which Stanford computer engineers virtually recaptured the building’s unique, highly reverberant acoustics. This enables the accurate recreation of exquisite Byzantine chants written specifically for Hagia Sophia.
When prayer rugs cover the marble floor, “the first thing that will suffer are the acoustics,†Ms. Bissera says. Obscuring the mosaics—whether by curtains, whitewashing or lasers—will further degrade any experience of the structure as the Christian edifice it was built to be. But Hagia Sophia isn’t the first to fall. Christian images have been obscured in other secularized Turkish churches turned mosques during the Erdogan era.
Turkey’s Muslim majority may be indifferent. The country is dotted with the ruins of its classical Greek past and nearly 1,000 years of Byzantine civilization—most of which have been deliberately destroyed or allowed to collapse. Atatürk’s experiment with secular and Western values seems to have come a cropper in a Turkey that takes religion more seriously than the secular West does. But for a structure like Hagia Sophia, it seems no change lasts forever.
Ms. Allen is the author of “The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus†(Free Press, 1998).
The Hagia Sophia Was a Cathedral, a Mosque and a Museum. It’s Converting Again.
Changing the secular space back into a religious one is a risk for the World Heritage Site.
In 2019, the Hagia-Sophia was the most-visited museum in Turkey.Credit…Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times
By The Editorial Board July 22, 2020
On Friday, after 86 years as a museum, the great Hagia Sophia in Istanbul will once again echo with Muslim prayers. To Turkish Islamists, the conversion marks the fulfillment of a long-held dream of restoring a symbol of Ottoman grandeur. For many others around the world, the change is a dismaying setback for one of the world’s greatest architectural and cultural landmarks.
Grandly arrayed on a hilltop over the Bosporus where it divides Europe and Asia, the Hagia Sophia’s 15-century history is suffused with events, myths and symbols important to both East and West. Built in the sixth century by a Byzantine emperor, Justinian I, as the premier cathedral of the Roman Empire and dedicated to “Holy Wisdom,†it was for almost 1,000 years the largest church in the world, a temple so majestic that upon its dedication the emperor is said to have proclaimed, “Solomon, I have surpassed thee!†Its influence on history and architecture and religion, Christian and Islamic, is profound.
When Constantinople fell to Ottoman forces in 1453, Mehmed II the Conqueror converted it to a mosque, the Great Mosque of Ayasofya, and with time the Byzantine mosaics were covered over or destroyed and four great minarets were raised around the structure. It remained a mosque until 1934, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular, modern republic of Turkey, transformed the Hagia Sophia into a museum, exposing long-concealed mosaics and marble floor decorations, in what was seen as a bid to free the monument, and the nation, from myths of sacred conquest.
It became the most-visited museum in Turkey, attracting about 3.7 million visitors in 2019. It was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, identified as a landmark of exceptional cultural significance to all humanity, worthy of conservation.
Why President Recep Tayyip Erdogan chose to reverse Ataturk’s decision is a matter of some conjecture. A product of an Islamist political tradition, he said he was unable to sleep on the night he issued the presidential decree making the change. Only a year earlier he had argued against the conversion. What is clear is that despite the great powers Mr. Erdogan has seized over 17 years in power as prime minister and president, his current political standing is shaky, and he needs to feed his nationalist base.
In his address to the nation on July 10 announcing the conversion, Mr. Erdogan made no mention of Ataturk. There was no need — his speech was preceded by a ruling of the Council of State, the highest administrative court of the country, nullifying Ataturk’s decree. And in his speech, Mr. Erdogan extensively quoted Sultan Mehmed’s will, calling down frightful curses on anyone who would change the Hagia Sophia’s status.
Reversing Ataturk’s secular legacy plays well among Turkish nationalists, for whom the museum inside the Hagia Sophia long represented a humiliating foreign imposition and a blot on the Ottoman past they glorify. And evidently not only nationalists. The conversion of the museum has drawn little criticism within Turkey and among Muslims outside, and all political parties save one applauded the change.
The reaction from Christian leaders has been relatively muted, perhaps for fear of fomenting sectarian strife. Pope Francis said only that he was “pained,†while the Eastern Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, who as a resident of Turkey needs to be cautious in his pronouncements, expressed regret that the Hagia Sophia would cease being “a place and symbol of encounter, dialogue and peaceful coexistence of peoples and cultures.â€
UNESCO was more direct. A statement from the organization said it “deeply regrets†that the decision was made without any prior discussion, adding: “Hagia Sophia is an architectural masterpiece and a unique testimony to interactions between Europe and Asia over the centuries. Its status as a museum reflects the universal nature of its heritage, and makes it a powerful symbol for dialogue.†The statement also warned that alterations to physical structures or changes to accessibility of the site could violate the1972 World Heritage Convention, to which Turkey was a signatory.
Mr. Erdogan, for his part, has sought to reassure the world that when not being used for prayer, the Hagia Sophia would remain open to the public, and that Christian frescoes would remain on display, though covered with curtains during Muslim prayers.
It is critical that at least on these matters, he be held to his word. It is a sad reflection on the state of Turkey’s democracy that a monument of such global importance and value should become an authoritarian leader’s political tool. But what’s done is done; there is no chance that Mr. Erdogan would reverse his decree, even if he could, without firing the fury of his base.
But the Hagia Sophia remains a World Heritage Site in the most profound sense of the designation, a structure of surpassing beauty with a deep overlay of the histories of East and West, Christianity and Islam. That need not preclude prayer; nor should it preclude Turks from feeling a powerful connection to a monument that has been the pride of their nation for centuries. But like the damaged Notre-Dame in Paris, or the Acropolis in Athens, that must not undermine its calling as a place of exceptional significance to all humanity.
In converting the Hagia Sophia to a mosque, Mr. Erdogan has assumed the weighty responsibility of a custodian of one of the world’s cultural landmarks. He ought not be allowed to forget that.RelatedMore on the Hagia Sophia.Opinion | Selim KoruTurkey’s Islamist Dream Finally Becomes a RealityJuly 14, 2020Opinion | Mustafa AkyolWould the Prophet Muhammad Convert Hagia Sophia?July 20, 2020
New York Times
OPINION
Would the Prophet Muhammad Convert Hagia Sophia?
Turkey’s decision to change the former cathedral into a mosque flies against the pluralist instincts of Islam’s founders.
Mr. Akyol is a contributing Op-Ed writer.
The recent decision by the Turkish government to reconvert the majestic Hagia Sophia, which was once the world’s greatest cathedral, from a museum back to a mosque has been bad news for Christians around the world. They include Pope Francis, who said he was “pained†by the move, and the spiritual leader of Eastern Christianity, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who said he was “saddened and shaken.†When contrasted with the joy of Turkey’s conservative Muslims, all this may seem like a new episode in an old story: Islam vs. Christianity.
But some Muslims, including myself, are not fully comfortable with this historic step, and for a good reason: forced conversion of shrines, which has occurred too many times in human history in all directions, can be questioned even from a purely Islamic point of view.
To see why, look closely into early Islam, which was born in seventh century Arabia as a monotheist campaign against polytheism. The Prophet Muhammad and his small group of believers saw the earlier monotheists — Jews and Christians — as allies. So when those first Muslims were persecuted in pagan Mecca, some found asylum in the Christian kingdom in Ethiopia. Years later, when the Prophet ruled Medina, he welcomed a group of Christians from the city of Najran to worship in his own mosque. He also signed a treaty with them, which read:
“There shall be no interference with the practice of their faith. … No bishop will be removed from his bishopric, no monk from his monastery, no priest from his parish.â€
This religious pluralism was also reflected in the Quran, when it said God protects “monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of God is much mentioned.†(22:40) It is the only verse in the Quran that mentions churches — and only in a reverential tone.
To be sure, these theological affinities did not prevent political conflicts. Nor did they prevent Muslims, right after the Prophet’s passing, from conquering Christian lands, from Syria to Spain. Yet still, the early Muslim conquerors did something uncommon at the time: They did not touch the shrines of the subjugated peoples.
The Prophet’s spirit was best exemplified by his second successor, or caliph, Umar ibn Al-Khattab, soon after his conquest of Jerusalem in the year 637. The city, which had been ruled by Roman Christians for centuries, had been taken by Muslims after a long and bloody siege. Christians feared a massacre, but instead found aman, or safety. Caliph Umar, “the servant of God†and “the commander of the faithful,†gave them security “for their possessions, their churches and crosses.†He further assured:
“Their churches shall not be taken for residence and shall not be demolished … nor shall their crosses be removed.â€
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The Christian historian Eutychius even tells us that when Caliph Umar entered the city, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, invited him to pray at the holiest of all Christian shrines: the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Umar politely declined, saying that Muslims might later take this as a reason to convert the church into a mosque. He instead prayed at an empty area that Christians ignored but Jews honored, then as now, as their holiest site, the Temple Mount, where today the Western Wall, the last remnant of that ancient Jewish temple, rises to the top of the Mount, on which the Mosque of Umar and the Dome of the Rock were built.
In other words, Islam entered Jerusalem without really converting it. Even “four centuries after the Muslim conquest,†as the Israeli historian Oded Peri observes, “the urban landscape of Jerusalem was still dominated by Christian public and religious buildings.â€
Yet Islam was becoming the religion of an empire, which, like all empires, had to justify its appetite for hegemony. Soon, some jurists found an excuse to overcome the Jerusalem model: There, Christians were given full security, because they had ultimately agreed on a peaceful surrender. The cities that resisted Muslim conquerors, however, were fair game for plunder, enslavement, and conversion of their churches.
In the words of the Turkish scholar Necmeddin Guney, this legitimatization of conversion of churches came from not the Quran nor the Prophetic example, but rather “administrative regulation.†The jurists who made this case, he adds, “were probably trying to create a society that makes manifest the supremacy of Islam in an age of religion wars.â€
Another scholar, Fred Donner, an expert on early Islam, arguesthat this political drive even distorted records of the earlier state of affairs. For example, later versions of the aman given to the Christians of Damascus allotted Muslims “half of their homes and churches.†In the earlier version of the document, there was no such clause.
When the Ottomans reached the gates of Constantinople in 1453, Islamic attitudes had long been imperialized, and also toughened in the face of endless conflicts with the Crusaders. Using a disputed license of the Hanafi school of jurisprudence they followed, they converted Hagia Sophia and a few other major churches. But they also did other things that represent the better values of Islam: They gave full protection to not only Greek but also Armenian Christians, rebuilt Istanbul as a cosmopolitan city, and soon also welcomed the Spanish Jews who were fleeing the Catholic Inquisition.
Today, centuries later, the question for Turkey is what aspect of this complex Ottoman heritage is really more valuable.
For the religious conservatives who have rallied behind President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the past two decades, the main answer seems to be imperial glory embodied in an absolute ruler.
For other Turks, however, the greatness of the Ottomans lies in their pluralism, rooted at the very heart of Islam, and it would inspire different moves today — perhaps opening Hagia Sophia to both Muslim and Christian worship, as I have advised for years. Another would be reopening the Halki Seminary, a Christian school of theology that opened in 1844 under Ottoman auspices, went victim to secular nationalism in 1971, but is still closed despite all the calls from advocates for religious freedom.
For the broader Muslim world, Hagia Sophia is a reminder that our tradition includes both our everlasting faith and values, as well as a legacy of imperialism. The latter is a bitter fact of history, like Christian imperialism or nationalism, which have targeted our mosques and even lives as well — from Cordoba to Srebrenica. But today, we should try to heal such wounds of the past, not open new ones.
So, if we Muslims really want to revive something from the past, let’s focus on the model initiated by the Prophet and implemented by Caliph Umar. That means no shrines should be converted — or reconverted. All religious traditions should be respected. And the magnanimity of tolerance should overcome the pettiness of supremacism.
Mustafa Akyol, a contributing Opinion writer, is a senior fellow on Islam and modernity at the Cato Institute and the author of the forthcoming book “Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance.â€
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The Washington Post
Converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque is an act of cultural cleansing
Opinion by Judith HerrinJuly 15, 2020 at 8:00 a.m. EDTAdd to list
Judith Herrin is emeritus professor at King’s College London and the author of “Ravenna, Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe,†to be published in August.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is famous for saying, “If we lose Istanbul, we lose Turkey.†Last year, he lost the city’s municipal elections. Today, he is trying to reverse his sliding popularity by backing a religious fundamentalism that threatens Turkey’s minorities, the country’s secular character and Istanbul’s historic role as a tolerant metropolis where Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths coexisted for centuries.
On Friday, Erdogan’s shortsighted, cynical campaign struck at the very heart of world culture and Istanbul’s essential character. At his instigation, Turkey’shighest administrative court issued a scandalously dangerous and bigoted decision: Hagia Sophia, a UNESCO world heritage site in Istanbul and a global symbol of world history and multicultural representation, should convert from a museum back to a mosque.
By serving as a museum, Hagia Sophia, a vast, 1,500-year-old structure that previously served as a church and then a mosque, represented the essence of Istanbul, a place where world-changing empires and religions conflicted and intersected but whose monuments and artifacts can be enjoyed by all. Friday’s ruling marks a symbolic end to this legacy of tolerance.
Hagia Sophia’s history contains the city’s history. It is a Byzantine church that has dominated the skyline of Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, for the city’s entire history. When the Ottomans conquered the city in 1453, it became a mosque. In 1935, Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern, secular Turkey, made it a museum, and Hagia Sophia was opened to all as a cultural and scientific site. It became a tremendous tourist attraction. Visitors marvel at not only its structure but also the layers of history it embodies.
Constantinople was founded in 330 A.D. by the Roman Emperor Constantine I. He selected an amazing site overlooking the Bosporus with strategic control of the Black Sea. In his “New†Rome, he built an imperial capital that outstripped “Old†Rome.
His son constructed the first church dedicated to “Hagia Sophia,†Holy Wisdom. It served as the cathedral, where the patriarch conducted services attended by the emperor and empress as well as the local population.
As the city expanded, so did the church. In 537, Emperor Justinian, whose rule stretched from Italy to Sinai, dedicated the present structure as an expression of might and piety. It has an enormous dome, 102 feet in diameter, at a height of 184 feet. For nearly 1,000 years, it was the highest and largest in the world.
Decorated in contrasting colored marbles brought from all parts of the Mediterranean, the entire interior surface of Hagia Sophia glowed with golden and silver mosaics that reflected the light flooding in through its many windows.
Justinian’s original church had one internal decoration: a monumental, glittering cross in the dome, now removed. In the late ninth century, figural mosaics were added: the Virgin and Child in the main apse, with the archangels Michael and Gabriel on either side. Later rulers, including the Empress Zoe, commemorated themselves with beautiful gold mosaic portraits and Christian icons.
The great church established the standard. When the Arabs broke out of the deserts to proclaim the faith of Islam, they modeled their first mosques on the Christian domes pioneered by the Byzantines. So when the Turkish Sultan Mehmet II breached the triple walls and rode into Constantinople in May 1453, he could order the symbol of the city, Hagia Sophia, to be transformed into a mosque rather than destroying it.
Under Islamic law, the figural mosaics were either removed or plastered over, a huge loss and a warning of what might happen again. Indeed, while Turkish officials on Friday promised the mosaics won’t be removed, on Monday they announced that they will be covered by curtains or lasers during Muslim prayers.
To turn the unrivaled building back into a place of worship threatens open access to a magnificent structure and the building’s invaluable mosaic decorations. By restricting access to Istanbul’s greatest historical legacy, Erdogan assaults the cosmopolitan traditions that make the city and Turkey itself a crossroads for the world. It is an act of cultural cleansing.
This is a decision of a beleaguered autocrat — the most dangerous — motivated by a desire to punish Istanbul’s inhabitants, who voted decisively against him, and by a desire to consolidate his position by stirring sectarian animosity between his pious followers and those attached to secular traditions.
Hagia Sophia belongs to the world. Its fate is not just a matter, as Erdogan defensively insists, of Turkish sovereignty.
Read more:
The New York Times
Turkey’s Islamist Dream Finally Becomes a Reality
The Hagia Sophia has been designated as a mosque again, its status as a museum viewed for decades as a seal on the country’s spirit.
By Selim Koru
Mr. Koru is a political analyst and a writer.
IZMIR, Turkey — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Friday issued a decree ordering the Hagia Sophia, a majestic 65,000-square-foot stone structure from the sixth century in Istanbul, to be opened for Muslim prayers. The same day, a top Turkish court had revoked the 1934 decree by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic, which had turned it into a museum.
The Hagia Sophia was built as a cathedral and converted into a mosque, and then a museum. It has for centuries been the object of fierce civilizational rivalry between the Ottoman and Orthodox worlds.
The reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque was an old dream of Turkey’s Islamists. In the Islamist political tradition of President Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, Ataturk’s experiment in secular republican government was a foreign imposition on Turkey, and the Hagia Sophia’s status as a museum a seal on the country’s spirit.
After making the announcement, according to one report, Mr. Erdogan was so shaken with emotion that he did not sleep until first light the next morning. What he thought of as an era of humiliation had ended.
After 1950, when the Kemalist regime held the country’s first free elections, its political enemies began to organize. Ataturk had died more than a decade before, and the power of his memory was gradually waning.
Sections of Islamist and pan-Turkic romanticists began campaigning for the reopening of the Hagia Sophia. They believed that the secular republic, far from having saved Turkey’s sovereignty, wounded it in the deepest sense possible: It had sold its soul to Western modernity. The conversion of the Hagia Sophia was the symbol of this humiliation.
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The most articulate expression of this view was delivered by Necip Fazil Kisakurek, Turkey’s most prominent Islamist poet and polemicist of the time, on Dec. 29, 1965, at a conference on the Hagia Sophia. Mr. Kisakurek said the decision to convert the structure into a museum was to “put the Turks’ essential spirit inside a museum.â€
Referring to Ataturk’s cabinet as a “clique,†Mr. Kisakurek accused them of committing an act of unspeakable self-harm. “What the Western world has made us do inside, through its agents among us, neither Crusaders, nor the Moskof [the Soviets] nor the Hagia Sophia’s salacious coveters, the Greeks, have been able to do,†he said.
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The poet said in that 1965 speech that the opening of the Hagia Sophia was a question of time. “It shall be opened in such a way that all lost meaning, like the bloodied and chained innocent, shall emerge from it weeping, in tatters,†he said. “It shall be opened in such a way that in its cellars shall be found the files of the evil ones who were thought to have done the nation good, and the good ones who were thought to have done it evil.â€
The dome of the Hagia Sophia was erected by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century as the central cathedral of Byzantium, or the Eastern Roman Empire. In 1453, the Ottomans launched a spectacular siege on the capital city of Constantinople and consummated their victory by converting the Hagia Sophia, its main cathedral, into a mosque, as was customary at the time.
It was this moment of reversal — from Christian to Muslim — that fired imaginations across Europe and the Middle East. Many dreamed of a day of reckoning as the Ottoman Empire unraveled in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the World War I, Istanbul was occupied by British, French, Italian and Greek forces, but even then, Muslims did not give up the Hagia Sophia. When a group of Greeks wanted to enter the building and install a cathedral bell, Ottoman soldiers drove them away by threatening to blow up the entire structure.
Turkish forces fought off the allied invaders under the leadership of a rebellious Ottoman field marshal, Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk), who went on to rebuild modern Turkey. During his single-party rule, Ataturk abolished the sultanate and set up a secular republic, enacting reforms to westernize the country by decree.
There are various myths about the reasons behind Ataturk’s decision to convert the Hagia Sophia into a museum in 1934. What is certain is that he decided after convening with Thomas Whittemore, a visiting American scholar of Byzantium, and was interested in restoring the structure’s mosaics. Ataturk seemed to have wanted to move the country past the medieval concepts of myth and holy conquest.
When Mr. Kisakurek, the powerful Islamist poet, raised the rallying cry for the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 1965, it is likely that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an 11-year-old boy in the working-class, religious neighborhood of Kasimpasa near the Golden Horn in Istanbul, would have heard the poet’s call.
He would also have heard how even Nihal Atsiz, a writer who advocated a pan-Turkic identity over that of the Islamists, revered the Hagia Sophia and thought its status a humiliation. And the young Erdogan might even have heard how Nazim Hikmet, the great poet of the socialists, devoted stanzas to the Hagia Sophia’s spirit in his youth.
As Turkey’s prime minister between 2003 to 2014 and as the country’s president, Mr. Erdogan has gradually dismantled all checks on his power and shifted the country’s political center of gravity in his favor. The idea was always that opening the Hagia Sophia for prayers would mark the maturation of Islamist power and cement its gains. Do it too soon, however, and it could backfire, just as Ataturk’s conversion had.
When Mr. Erdogan addressed Turkey on July 10 after the court’s judgment, he cited Mr. Kisakurek’s 1965 Hagia Sophia Conference and cited the other poets as well. The Turkish president wanted the entire nation, not just the Islamists, to make the spiritual journey with him.
In this address to the nation, Mr. Erdogan did not mention Ataturk by name. He did not have to. He quoted at length Mehmet the Conqueror’s will, which states that whoever changes the status of the Hagia Sophia “has committed the most grave sin of all†and that “the curse of God, the Prophet, the angels and all rulers and all Muslims shall forever be upon him. May their suffering not lighten, may none look at their face on the day of Hajj.â€
Various authorities of the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches voiced their indignation, and the pope expressed “profound sadness.†The governments of the European Union and the United States muttered their regrets. There are also Christian extremists who care deeply about the Hagia Sophia and its symbolism. These sentiments make the decision all the more exciting to many Turks.
The first prayer at the Hagia Sophia mosque will take place on July 24, the anniversary of the Treaty of Laussane, signed between the Allied powers and Turkey, which drew the boundaries of modern Turkey. Mr. Erdogan will want the Western world especially to watch closely, because the ceremony will represent what he considers the reclamation of Turkish sovereignty from its clutches.
What comes out of the Hagia Sophia’s gates today is a spirit that sees itself as inherently good and its chosen enemies as inherently evil. It is the spirit of revenge, and it has catching up to do.
Selim Koru is an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara and a writing fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
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The Financial Times
The Hagia Sophia decree is about more than religious chauvinism
A move to turn the crown jewel of Istanbul into a mosque is intended to rally far-right nationalists
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David Gardner JULY 14, 2020Print this page
As the choreography of culture wars goes, it cannot be faulted. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, last week decreed that the 1,500-year-old Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine cathedral-turned-mosque-turned-museum, will once again become a mosque. This crown jewel of Istanbul’s majestic skyline is being weaponised for the purpose of mass distraction.
Mr Erdogan, the towering figure of Turkey this century, has won more than a dozen electoral victories to sweep aside a parliamentary system with an authoritarian presidency that allows him to rule like a neo-Sultan. He is nevertheless under political stress.
Last year his winning streak was checked by opposition triumphs in Istanbul — the city essential to his mystique, where he had his political start as mayor — the capital Ankara, and a string of other important urban centres. These proved he is politically mortal.
This year, the coronavirus pandemic has piled strain on to a faltering economy. Mr Erdogan’s success has more to do with his record of delivering strong economic growth than his Islamist revivalism. The ability to provide trumps identity politics. That is doubly so now that the city governments run by his enemies have outperformed national government in the Covid-19 emergency.
The Hagia Sophia decree is about more than religious chauvinism. It is calibrated to rally far-right nationalists on whom Mr Erdogan increasingly depends. Anticipating the outcry from abroad, from Pope Francis to Patriarch Kirill of Russia, from Unesco to the EU, from the White House to the Kremlin, Mr Erdogan had his answer ready: “Are you ruling Turkey or are we?â€
Yet this preaching to the converted probably has limited value at home. Nor will it endear Mr Erdogan to his strongman friends: President Vladimir Putin in Russia, who has assumed the role of champion of the Orthodox Church worldwide, or President Donald Trump in the US, who will rely on evangelical Christian voters for his re-election in November. In Europe, if Turkey’s EU accession bid was already moribund, the Hagia Sophia decree is probably its death certificate.
Hagia Sophia was completed in 537 by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, before the advent of Islam. It became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (later Istanbul) in 1453. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish republic, then turned it into a museum in 1934. Reclaiming it as a universal legacy for Turkey was a plural gesture, pointing to a secular future, in part to shift attention away from how the collapsing Ottoman Empire emptied Turkey of Christians in mass killings of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks.
It is a reminder that identity politics gets especially lethal when laced with religion. Yet there are different comparative examples. Jerusalem is historically the most contested and combustible space in the world, a thrice holy city to Jews, Christians and Muslims, all of whose traditions are in the grain of its stone. It has also seen horrendous carnage. When Christian crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099, they slaughtered an estimated 70,000 Muslims and Jews. But Jerusalem has also been an arena of courtesy and tolerance.
When Muslim armies defeated the Byzantines in Syria and conquered Jerusalem in 637, Umar, the second caliph after the death of the Prophet Mohammed, refused an invitation from the patriarch to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Christian tradition holds housed the tomb of Jesus before resurrection (and is itself built on the ruins of a Roman temple to Aphrodite).
Umar feared it might be seen as a signal to turn the church into a mosque. He also cleared the refuse from Temple Mount, called by Umar the sanctuary of David, but used by the Byzantines as a stable.
This showed an understanding that emotive sacred tradition is not to be trifled with. Even today, after Israel has annexed and colonised Arab East Jerusalem, and won Mr Trump’s recognition of all of the Holy City as Israel’s capital, the Israelis enforce a ban on non-Muslims praying within the Holy Sanctuary or in Haram al-Sharif housing the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.
A contrasting example is the Babri Masjid case at Ayodhya in northern India. There, a 16th-century mosque was demolished in 1992 by followers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a Hindu supremacist parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata party. Narendra Modi, India’s current prime minister, is a life-long member of the RSS. In November last year, India’s supreme court gave the go-ahead to build a temple on the mosque’s ruins to Lord Ram, the Hindu deity whose birthplace they claim it was.
But will this triumphalist moment be held tantalisingly out of reach, to keep the Hindu revivalist base mobilised? Or will it be acted on to intimidate India’s 200m Muslim minority, painted as fifth columnists who bow to Mecca?
These two cases provide stark alternatives for Mr Erdogan to choose between. He seems to prefer the Modi model of painting Turkey’s big Sunni Muslim majority as victims. Not for him the humane formula of the Caliph Umar in Jerusalem, let alone Ataturk’s universal solution for Hagia Sophia, offering it to those of all religions, or none.
The Washington Post
The trouble with making Hagia Sophia a mosque again
By Ishaan TharoorJuly 13, 2020 at 9:09 a.m. EDTAdd to list
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Like a vaulted dome, the status of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia — the Byzantine cathedral turned Ottoman mosque turned preeminent global tourist destination — has long hung over the rule of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For a leader who has championed the steady reassertion of his nation’s Islamic heritage, restoring Turkey’s most famous site of worship to the Muslim faithful would be a powerful legacy.
There were clear reasons to avoid the temptation. Hagia Sophia, built by the Emperor Justinian I in 537, was once the largest and grandest church in all of Christendom and remains at the spiritual heart of Orthodox Christianity. “It was converted into a mosque in 1453, when the Ottomans conquered Istanbul, with minarets placed around its perimeter, its Byzantine mosaics covered in whitewash,†wrote my colleague Kareem Fahim. But in its shadow, there existed large and prominent Greek and Christian communities throughout what is now Turkey.
In the bloody chaos that followed the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, many of those communities disappeared. At the same time, the new Turkish republic sought to move beyond its Ottoman cultural moorings. A 1934 decree by Turkey’s secularist founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, made Hagia Sophia into a museum that commemorated the depth of its history, which predates the advent of Islam. It became a monument to a universal legacy that transcends religion and underscored Istanbul’s place at the heart of different cultures and faiths. In the past decade, less famous former churches in other parts of Turkey — some also named Hagia Sophia — have resumed services as mosques, but Erdogan and his allies still shied away from claiming their greatest prize.Default Mono Sans Mono Serif Sans Serif Comic Fancy Small CapsDefault X-Small Small Medium Large X-Large XX-LargeDefault Outline Dark Outline Light Outline Dark Bold Outline Light Bold Shadow Dark Shadow Light Shadow Dark Bold Shadow Light BoldDefault Black Silver Gray White Maroon Red Purple Fuchsia Green Lime Olive Yellow Navy Blue Teal Aqua OrangeDefault 100% 75% 50% 25% 0%Default Black Silver Gray White Maroon Red Purple Fuchsia Green Lime Olive Yellow Navy Blue Teal Aqua OrangeDefault 100% 75% 50% 25% 0%Court paves way to turn Hagia Sophia into mosqueA Turkish court ruled July 10 that Istanbul’s famous Hagia Sophia can be converted from a museum back into a mosque once again, overruling the 1934 decree. (Reuters)
Until Friday, when the Turkish president announced that Hagia Sophia would be a mosque again, with Muslim prayers resuming in the compound in two weeks. Turkish officials said the site would remain open to all and that its Christian icons and mosaics would not be damaged.
Hagia Sophia: UNESCO deeply regrets the decision of the Turkish authorities, made without prior discussion, and calls for the universal value of #WorldHeritage to be preserved.
Full statement: https://t.co/WiZpjyagqF pic.twitter.com/klcMR9pmxC— UNESCO (@UNESCO) July 10, 2020
A global backlash nevertheless came. Russia’s Patriarch Kirill branded the move a “threat to the whole of Christian civilization.†On Sunday, Pope Francis declared that he was “thinking of St. Sophia†and was “deeply pained.†UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, released a statement warning Turkish authorities against “taking any decision that might impact the universal value of the site.†Governments from neighboring Greece to the Trump administration to the Kremlin issued notes of concern and protest.Pope Francis says he’s ‘pained’ by Turkey’s Hagia Sophia decisionPope Francis said on July 12 he was hurt by Turkey’s decision to make Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia museum a mosque, the latest religious leader to condemn the move. (Reuters)
Some critics lamented what they saw as a blow to Turkish secularism. “To convert it back to a mosque is to say to the rest of the world unfortunately we are not secular anymore,†Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk told the BBC on Friday. “There are millions of secular Turks like me who are crying against this but their voices are not heard.â€
Political rivals harped on the timing of the act, as Erdogan reckons with a tanking economy that has been further ravaged during the coronavirus pandemic. “This is a world legacy, a magnificent work,†Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and a member of Turkey’s largest opposition party, said in an interview last month before Friday’s announcement. “What is the need to open this debate now, when 97 percent of tourism has frozen, while hotels are closed, while tourism has plummeted and hundreds of thousands of people have become unemployed?â€
Erdogan has shrugged off complaints, framing the decision as an exercise of Turkish sovereignty. The country’s opposition parties haven’t made too much of a fuss. “Turkey is a country where religion and nationalism intersect, so that many of the staunchly anti-Erdogan camp would back the principle of Turkish sovereignty over the monument,†observed Louis Fishman, a professor at Brooklyn College. “Upholding that prerogative absolutely would trump the debate of whether Hagia Sophia should be a museum or a mosque.â€
Hagia Sophia is hardly the first historic religious site to fall afoul of modern politics. India still bears the scars of the 1992 religious riots that followed a mob’s demolition of a 16th century mosque that some Hindus believed was built atop the birthplace of a major deity. The conflict over the site has long been weaponized by the country’s current Hindu nationalist rulers.
Turkish commentators invoke what happened to numerous medieval mosques in Spain and Greece as a kind of precedent; many of these structures, such as the Great Mosque of Cordoba, were converted into churches or turned into secular spaces or lie in disrepair. But for Erdogan, the decision is about Turkish voters, not comparative histories. Changing Hagia Sophia’s status appears to be a move to appeal to his base and assert his political brand — a strident nationalism inflected by his religiosity that anchors itself in a decades-old ideological struggle with more secular Turks.
“As a museum, the Hagia Sophia symbolized the idea of there being common artistic and cultural values that transcended religion to unite humanity,†Turkey scholar Nicholas Danforth told Al-Monitor. “Its conversion into a mosque is an all too appropriate symbol for the rise of right-wing nationalism and religious chauvinism around the world today.â€
Turkey’s Christian population, meanwhile, is a bystander to a debate that ultimately ignores the challenges facing a shrunken community. “It is not about us, neither the agendas to convert it to a mosque nor loud reactions against it in Turkey or abroad,†Ziya Meral, director of the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research in Britain and a Turkish Christian, told Today’s WorldView. “If it was, the focus would have been on how we can protect the future of some 100,000 or so Christians left in the country, and the tragedy we mourn would have been why so many of our churches are empty and why in a few decades Anatolia’s rich Christian heritage will not have much by way of living cultures and communities.â€
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The New York Times
Turkey’s President Formally Makes Hagia Sophia a Mosque
By The Associated Press
ANKARA, Turkey — The president of Turkey on Friday formally converted Istanbul’s sixth-century Hagia Sophia back into a mosque and declared it open for Muslim worship, hours after a high court annulled a 1934 decision that had made the religious landmark a museum.
The decision sparked deep dismay among Orthodox Christians. Originally a cathedral, Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque after Istanbul’s conquest by the Ottoman Empire but had been a museum for the last 86 years, drawing millions of tourists annually.
There was jubilation outside the terracotta-hued structure with its cascading domes and four minarets. Dozens of people awaiting the court’s ruling chanted “Allah is great!†when the news broke. A large crowd later prayed outside it.
In the capital of Ankara, legislators stood and applauded as the decision was read in Parliament.
Turkey’s high administrative court threw its weight behind a petition brought by a religious group and annulled the 1934 Cabinet decision that turned the site into a museum. Within hours, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a decree handing over Hagia Sophia to Turkey’s Religious Affairs Presidency.
In a televised address to the nation, Erdogan said the first prayers inside Hagia Sofia would be held on July 24, and he urged respect for the decision.
“I underline that we will open Hagia Sophia to worship as a mosque by preserving its character of humanity’s common cultural heritage,” he said, adding: “It is Turkey’s sovereign right to decide for which purpose Hagia Sofia will be used.â€
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He rejected the idea that the decision ends Hagia Sophia’s status as a structure that brings faiths together.
“Like all of our other mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be open to all, locals or foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims,†Erdogan said.
Erdogan had spoken in favor of turning the hugely symbolic UNESCO World Heritage site back into a mosque despite widespread international criticism, including from U.S. and Orthodox Christian leaders, who had urged Turkey to keep its status as a museum symbolizing solidarity among faiths and cultures.
The move threatens to deepen tensions with neighboring Greece, whose prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, condemned the decision as an affront to Hagia Sophia’s ecumenical character.
“It is a decision that offends all those who recognize Hagia Sophia as an indispensable part of world cultural heritage†Mitsotakis said. “This decision clearly affects not only Turkey’s relations with Greece but also its relations with the European Union, UNESCO and the world community as a whole.â€
In Greece’s second-largest city, Thessaloniki, protesters gathered outside a church that is modeled on Hagia Sophia and bears the same name. They chanted, “We’ll light candles in Hagia Sophia!†and held Greek flags and Byzantine banners.
Cyprus “strongly condemns Turkey’s actions on Hagia Sophia in its effort to distract domestic opinion and calls on Turkey to respect its international obligations,†tweeted Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides.
Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian upper house of parliament, called the action “a mistake.â€
“Turning it into a mosque will not do anything for the Muslim world. It does not bring nations together, but on the contrary brings them into collision,” he said.
The debate hits at the heart of Turkey’s religious-secular divide. Nationalist and conservative groups in Turkey have long yearned to hold prayers at Hagia Sophia, which they regard as part of the Muslim Ottoman legacy. Others believe it should remain a museum, as a symbol of Christian and Muslim solidarity.
“It was a structure that brought together both Byzantine and Ottoman histories,” said Zeynep Kizildag, a 27-year-old social worker, who did not support the conversion. “The decision to turn it into a mosque is like erasing 1,000 years of history, in my opinion.â€
Garo Paylan, an ethnic Armenian member of Turkey’s Parliament tweeted that it was “a sad day for Christians (and) for all who believe in a pluralist Turkey.â€
“The decision to convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque will make life more difficult for Christians here and for Muslims in Europe,†he wrote. “Hagia Sophia was a symbol of our rich history. Its dome was big enough for all.â€
The group that brought the case to court had contested the legality of the 1934 decision by the modern Turkish republic’s secular government ministers, arguing the building was the personal property of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, who conquered Istanbul in 1453.
“I was not surprised at all that the court weighed to sanction Erdogan’s moves because these days Erdogan gets from Turkish courts what Erdogan wants,†said Soner Cagaptay, of the Washington Institute.
“Erdogan wants to use Hagia Sophia’s conversion into a mosque to rally his right-wing base,†said Cagaptay, the author of “Erdogan’s Empire.†“But I don’t think this strategy will work. I think that short of economic growth, nothing will restore Erdogan’s popularity.â€
In Paris, the United Nations cultural body, UNESCO, said Hagia Sophia is part of the Historic Areas of Istanbul, a property inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List as a museum.
“States have an obligation to ensure that modifications do not affect the `outstanding universal value’ of inscribed sites on their territories,†Director-General Audrey Azoulay said.
The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, considered the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, warned last month that the building’s conversion into a mosque “will turn millions of Christians across the world against Islam.â€
On Friday, Archbishop Elpidophoros of America said the decision runs counter to the vision of secular Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk “who understood that Hagia Sophia should serve all Turkey’s people and indeed the whole world.â€
“The days of conquest should remain a closed chapter of our collective histories,†he told The Associated Press, adding that Turkey’s government “can still choose wisely†but letting Hagia Sophia remain a “monument to all civilizations and universal values.â€
Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, called for “prudence†and the preservation of the “current neutral status†for the Hagia Sophia, which he said was one of Christianity’s “devoutly venerated symbols.â€
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last month that the landmark should remain a museum to serve as bridge between faiths and cultures. His comments drew a rebuke from Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, which said Hagia Sophia was a domestic issue of Turkish national sovereignty.
Erdogan, a devout Muslim, has frequently used the Hagia Sophia issue to drum up support for his Islamic-rooted party.
Some Islamic prayers have been held in the museum in recent years. In a major symbolic move, Erdogan recited the opening verse of the Quran there in 2018.
Built under Byzantine Emperor Justinian, Hagia Sophia was the main seat of the Eastern Orthodox church for centuries, where emperors were crowned amid ornate marble and mosaic decorations.
The minarets were added later, and the building was turned into an imperial mosque following the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople — the city that is now called Istanbul.
The building opened its doors as a museum in 1935, a year after the Council of Ministers’ decision.
Mosaics depicting Jesus, Mary and Christian saints that were plastered over in line with Islamic rules were uncovered through arduous restoration work for the museum. Hagia Sophia was the most popular museum in Turkey last year, drawing more than 3.7 million visitors.
___
Associated Press writers Zeynep Bilginsoy and Ayse Wieting in Istanbul, Derek Gatopoulos in Athens, Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed.
The Financial Times complete article
Erdogan’s plan to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque sparks anger in Russia
Spat adds religious dimension to an already fragile geopolitical relationship
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Henry Foy in Moscow and Laura Pitel in Ankara JULY 9, 2020Print this page
The first time the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque, following the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire, the rulers of Moscow believed the Orthodox cathedral’s demise cleared the way for the Russian capital to become the pre-eminent centre of the Christian world.
More than five centuries later, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s backing for a campaign to turn the building from a museum back into a mosque has sparked anger in Moscow, raising a new grievance in a geopolitical relationship that has grown in recent years but remains riven by myriad disagreements.
Russian officials have described the mosque proposal as “an unacceptable violation of religious freedomâ€, while a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin called on Mr Erdogan to take into account Hagia Sophia’s “very deep sacred spiritual value†for Russians.
The war of words over the building’s future comes at a sensitive time forTurkish-Russian relations. While Mr Erdogan and Mr Putin have forged a close personal and political relationship in recent years, there are tensions over Syria and Libya, where they back opposing sides in the countries’ civil wars.
Mr Erdogan this year delayed the activation of an S-400 air defence system that he bought from Russia — a purchase that had triggered deep alarm in Nato — and has been seeking to strike liquefied natural gas deals with American producers that would reduce Turkey’s reliance on Russian gas.
The Turkish president’s move to return the Hagia Sophia to Islam has now added a religious dimension to Ankara’s already strained relationship with Moscow and provoked warnings from Russian religious leaders about a “return to the Middle Agesâ€.
“A threat against Hagia Sophia is a threat to . . . our spirituality and history,†said Patriarch Kirill, the leader of Russia’s Orthodox Church, the world’s largest by followers. “What could happen to Hagia Sophia will cause deep pain among the Russian people.â€
Completed in 537 as the world’s largest orthodox cathedral, Hagia Sophia was briefly a Roman Catholic church in the 13th century before being converted into a mosque by the city’s Ottoman conqueror Mehmed II. In 1934, it was turned into a museum, a move symbolic of the radical secularising project launched by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic.
As Turkey has grappled with the fallout from the coronavirus crisis, Mr Erdogan has revived his support for the long-running campaign by nationalist and conservative groups to turn the building — part of a Unesco World Heritage site — back into a mosque. “God willing . . . we will pray in the Hagia Sophia,†he told a meeting of ruling party officials last month. Many analysts see the move as a tactic to divert attention from the economic hardship caused by the pandemic.
The country’s highest administrative court convened last week to rule on a legal petition that calls for the annulment of its museum status. A decision is expected soon.
Mr Erdogan has angrily rejected calls from Greece for the building’s status to remain unchanged and after a similar plea from the US, a senior official from Turkey’s ruling party said it was a matter for Turkey alone, adding: “We have no need for advice or appeals from outsiders.â€
However, Russia’s disquiet has proved more challenging for Ankara. There has yet to be any direct response to the multiple warnings from Moscow about the change in Hagia Sophia’s status.
Relations between Turkey and Russia are “fragileâ€, said Kerim Has, a Moscow-based international relations analyst. “There is quite a complicated equilibrium in the region.â€
Mr Has said Russia was unlikely to let the Hagia Sophia dispute turn into a serious crisis between the two countries. “It’s a domestic issue for Turkey and because of that, Russia wouldn’t risk the relations with Turkey in Libya, Syria, energy and trade over it.â€
But he said the pressure from Moscow reflected entwined Turkish and Russian interests. “In comparison to a decade ago, the Turkish political elite is more dependent on Russia in every sense,†he said. “So Russia finds itself more freely able to have a say on the Hagia Sophia right now.â€
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TurkeyMuseum or mosque: Erdogan stokes debate over Hagia Sophia’s future
Russia accounts for about a third of the world’s Orthodox Christian believers and Moscow has long sought to portray itself as the church’s most powerful voice — from theologians in pre-Tsarist Russia who called Moscow the “Third Rome†after the fall of Constantinople to Mr Putin’s focus on rebuilding the influence of the church in 21st century Russia.
But that has often clashed with the historic role of Istanbul, as Constantinople is known today, as the belief’s geographical fulcrum, most recently two years ago when the Patriarch of Constantinople granted the Ukrainian branch of the church independence from Russia despite Moscow’s opposition.
“We’re asking our colleagues, deputies of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to . . . display wisdom,†members of Russia’s parliament said in a statement this week.
Describing the Hagia Sophia as “a great Christian shrine†and “a symbol of peaceâ€, the Russian lawmakers called for “every possible step to prevent any harm which may be done by hastily changing the status of a museum of global significanceâ€.
This article from the Wall Street Journal in its entirety
Turkey’s Erdogan Presses to Convert Hagia Sophia Back Into a Mosque
Move to change famed sixth-century building—first a cathedral, then a mosque and later a museum—comes as coronavirus lockdown hurts economy
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supports a bid to change Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, foreground, from a museum back into a mosque. BURAK KARA/GETTY IMAGES
By David Gauthier-Villars
June 26, 2020 7:00 am ET
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ISTANBUL—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long used religious and nationalist symbolism to shore up support. Now he is reviving plans to convert Hagia Sophia, once one of Christendom’s most revered cathedrals, back into a mosque as he attempts to parry growing political and economic pressures in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
In its current form, Hagia Sophia dates back to the sixth century, when the Byzantine emperor Justinian I had it rebuilt. It was later converted into a mosque after Fatih Sultan Mehmet conquered the city in 1453. It stayed that way until Turkey’s secularizing president, Atatürk, closed it in 1931 before turning it into a museum as part of his drive to modernize the country. Its vast dome and towering minarets continue to define Istanbul’s skyline.
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The next step in its evolution could come early next month, when Turkey’s highest administrative court is expected to rule on a petition to reopen the building to Muslim worshipers—a move that Mr. Erdogan, 66, enthusiastically endorses.
“After the decision on Hagia Sophia by the Council of State on July 2, inshallah, we will be praying there,†Mr. Erdogan recently told members of his pro-Islam ruling Justice and Development Party.
The proposal to reopen it as a mosque came after a one-off prayer service there to celebrate the 567th anniversary of the Ottomans’ conquest of Constantinople, as Istanbul was then known. The Greek government has protested his plans and urged Turkey to act as neutral custodian of what was once the seat of the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, saying it “belongs to all of humanity.â€
Mr. Erdogan, right, joined by video a prayer service at Hagia Sophia on May 29 to mark the 567th anniversary of the Ottomans’ conquest of Constantinople, as Istanbul was then known.
PHOTO: EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Turkey and Greece are historic rivals, and skirmishes with Athens have whipped up nationalist passions in the past. But turning Hagia Sophia back into a mosque might not have the rallying effect that Mr. Erdogan is looking for. Many of his supporters are more concerned about the economic aftershocks of the pandemic.
At his spice shop near Hagia Sophia, Ali Taskin said he has always admired Mr. Erdogan but couldn’t approve of his latest idea.
“I haven’t seen a client in months. The economic situation is catastrophic, the worst I’ve seen,†said the 44-year-old manager, sipping Turkish coffee with the similarly desolate owners of the neighboring stores. “There are many more urgent problems than Hagia Sophia.â€
After Turkey announced its first cases of the coronavirus in March, Mr. Erdogan’s approval rating initially shot up, climbing to 56% from 41% the month before, according to surveys conducted by polling agency Metropoll. Turkish people credited the president for his thorough response to the pandemic, said Metropoll’s chief executive, Ozer Sencar. A little over 5,000 people have died in Turkey from Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, far fewer than in many other large countries in the Middle East and Europe.
The country’s lockdown to fight the coronavirus was sharply felt by the tourist sector. Merchants at Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar reopened on June 1 after a weekslong shutdown.
PHOTO: UMIT BEKTAS/REUTERS
The lockdown has taken a toll on businesses, though, particularly in the tourism industry, and Mr. Erdogan’s approval rating slipped to 51% in May.
The pandemic also exposed how dependent Turkey’s financial system is on fickle foreign funding and pushed its currency to an all-time low in May. Economists say the $750 billion economy will tip into recession this year, fueling inflation and adding to unemployment after years of breakneck growth helped bolster support for Mr. Erdogan. Turkey’s national statistics agency says about four million Turks are out of work, putting the unemployment rate at over 13%. But the Istanbul-based DISK labor union says an additional six million lost their jobs because of the outbreak.
“When the economy is bad, Mr. Erdogan finds something to create a diversion, such as the debate over Hagia Sophia,†said Mr. Sencar. “But no matter how many he creates, none of them can cover up the dire situation of the economy.â€
Workers disinfected the Hagia Sophia on March 13.
PHOTO: YASIN AKGUL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Political pressures are also rising. Opposition parties have been reinvigorated by landmark victories in last year’s municipal elections, including in Istanbul, long Mr. Erdogan’s bailiwick. Two heavyweight members of Mr. Erdogan’s party, Ahmet Davutoglu, a former prime minister, and Ali Babacan, a former finance minister, quit to found new opposition movements.
In recent televised speeches, Mr. Erdogan has spent little time on economic issues, focusing instead on what he says is the threat posed by Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish cleric he blames for orchestrating a coup attempt in July 2016.
Security forces arrested more than 400 people in early June, primarily in the ranks in the military, for their alleged support for Mr. Gülen, who lives in the U.S. and has denied any part in the coup plot.
Meanwhile, a member of the opposition Republican People’s Party was arrested after she tweeted four videos in which “Bella Ciao, †an Italian protest song, blared out from the minarets of several mosques in the coastal town of Izmir.
Banu Ozdemir was detained for nine days and charged with inciting hatred. Prosecutors said that she could have condemned whoever arranged for the song to play, but by choosing to share videos she had demonstrated “an inclination to provoke animosity and hatred,†according to her indictment.
“I did nothing wrong,†said Ms. Ozdemir, who is due to go on trial in September. “While they haven’t found a perpetrator, I was unlawfully deprived of my freedom for nine days. It’s all to divert attention from the bad economy.â€
The Greek government has urged Turkey to act as neutral custodian of the Hagia Sophia, once the seat of the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople.
PHOTO: PPI/ZUMA PRESS
Mr. Erdogan wasn’t always in favor of transforming Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. In 2013, he told supporters that he would consider doing it only if he saw evidence that other mosques were filled to capacity.
Ahead of last year’s close-fought local elections, Mr. Erdogan switched tack and spoke up in support of turning it into a mosque but didn’t follow up with concrete action. There would be costs associated with a transformation, experts say. Hagia Sophia is one of Turkey’s most-visited cultural sites and an important source of state revenue. If it became a mosque, much of that would disappear as access to mosques is supposed to be free.
Eser Karakas, a Turkish political scientist, said that he expects the Council of State to reject the latest petition to convert Hagia Sophia into a mosque when the court meets on July 2, as it has done with previous ones—but that this would actually suit Mr. Erdogan.
He will be able to “continue to stir the issue,†Mr. Karakas said in a column on the news site Arti Gercek last week.
Indeed, when Greece complained about Muslim prayers being held at the site, Mr. Erdogan was quick to snap back.
“They tell us that Hagia Sophia mustn’t be converted into a mosque. Are you governing Turkey?†he retorted.