In the latest developments regarding Hagia Sophia. A Turkish professor has called for the removal of mosaics from Hagia Sophia. This is now the second time a Turk has called for the removal of mosaics from Hagia Sophia. The Professor is offended by the image of the Byzantine Empress Zoe who he called a “whore” which is offensive to the conquering Sultan Mehmet II (more on him below).
The first call for the destruction of the Christian mosaics of Hagia Sophia centered around the images of the Serapheim. According to Saint Dyonisios the Areopagite, the Serapheim are the highest ranking angels. The ranking of Angels are the Serapheim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, and Archangels. It is unclear why the Turks were offended by the Serapheim in particular and not by the other iconography. Of course, we are not dealing with rational people.
The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church took a position criticizing Turkey for the move to convert Hagia Sophia and emphasized the importance of the Church to Orthodoxy. The Bulgarian Church joins the Churches of Russia, Serbia, Rumania, Jerusalem, Georgia, Cyprus, Greece, and Albania in criticizing the Turkish government’s plans for Hagia Sophia. This is in addition to the Vatican and the World Council of Churches.
A commentator in the newspaper, “The Saudi Gazette” has condemned President Erdogan for the conversion of Hagia Sophia. In Egypt, the Grand Mufti has also condemned President Erdogan’s decision and said that Islam prohibits the conversion of Churches. These voices in the Muslim world that are protesting the conversion of Hagia Sophia are very much welcome. On the other hand, Iran has praised President Erdogan for converting Hagia Sophia.
Returning to the Turkish Professor and Sultan Mehmet II. The Professor objects to the depiction of the Empress Zoe for being in his words, “a whore”. Quite ironic considering that the conquering Sultan Mehmet II was not only a heavy drinker (in contrast to Islamic teaching) but a homosexual and a pedophile. According to the great Byzantine historian Steven Runciman, after the conquest of the City the Sultan asked the Grand Duke Lucas Notaras to help him rebuild the city.
Upon meeting the Grand Duke’s two sons the twenty one year old Sultan expressed an interest in the younger boy. The Grand Duke said no and for this refusal both the Duke and his sons were sentenced to death by decapitation. Apparently, the Turks need some reminding of Mehmet’s personnel life, especially as he is the Turkish President’s hero.
It appears that despite assurances that President Erdogan has given the Russians, the mosaics of Hagia Sophia will ultimately be destroyed. Turkish assurances are worthless in any circumstances. The fact that Turkish academics and others are openly demanding the destruction of a particular mosaic indicates they have a Taliban mentality.
Despite what this fake Professor says, Hagia Sophia is not a Mosque. Hagia Sophia is a Church and was established as such in the sixth century. Other than disregarding the theological origins of Hagia Sophia, this pseudo academic disregards the historical and cultural relevance of the iconography of Hagia Sophia.
President Erdogan had the chance to improve his image which has taken a beating because of his government’s collusion with ISIS. If he had been inclined to respond positively to the international appeals to leave Hagia Sophia alone, he could have demonstrated an inclination for moderation and restraint. Instead, he is affirming his image as an extremist.
It appears that only a small fraction of Muslims have reacted positively to Turkish President Erdogan’s plans to convert Hagia Sophia into a Mosque. Not even the statement that Erdogan plans to liberate the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem has been able to generate much enthusiasm. Sure, a few radicals in Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and a few others have praised Erdogan’s plans, but for most of the Muslim world there is complete indifference or outright criticism.
Most surprising is the news that Saudi Arabia has adopted a critical stance toward Erdogan’s intentions for Hagia Sophia. The refusal of the Muslim world to enthusiastically back Turkish plans is very welcome and bodes well for the future of Christian-Muslim relations. Today, in the New York Times there is an op-ed by a Turkish writer opposing the conversion of Hagia Sophia and also calling for the reopening of the Patriarchal School on the island of Halki.
The op-ed can be found on the post for this blog entitled “Hagia Sophia New Sources”. This can be found by looking up New York Times in the search engine and clicking on the first link. Under the various links, the first full article is today’s op-ed in the New York Times.
Today, President Erdogan of Turkey made a tour of Hagia Sophia. Last week, Hagia Sophia was transferred from the Ministry of Culture to the Ministry of Religion. Its doors were closed to the public and the process of transforming the Great Church began.
One thing that Greek Orthodox Christians can take pride in is our reaction. We responded with protests and by contacting governments, institutions, and elected officials. We did not riot, we did not kill anyone, or engage in any sort of violence despite the blasphemous actions undertaken by the Turkish Government. We behaved like Christians.
Assuming that nothing changes from now until Friday and Hagia Sophia serves as a Mosque. Turkey will have won the battle, but not the war. Turkey will have lost the last remnants of a reputation that was carefully built up by Mustafa Kemal and his successors throughout the twentieth century. Turkey can never again claim to be a secular state.
The modern Turkish State was built on genocide. Kemal built the Turkish Republic over the corpses of Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christians. The Turks have forgotten that their victories were achieved through the active support of Great Britain, Italy, and France who armed Kemal’s armies in Anatolia while an embargo was imposed on the Greek Army at the time.
Throughout the twentieth century the Turks were quite successful at public relations. They built a false image of a Muslim country that was secular and democratic. Few people other than some diehard Turkophiles in America and Europe took seriously the notion that Turkey was a democracy. Everyone (including Turkey’s critics) believed that Turkey was a secular country.
Was Turkey ever really a secular country? Outwardly, Turkey was a secular country because religion was separate from the state. Men and women dressed and looked like westerners. Under the surface however Islamism never really went away. For example, during the second world war, the “ghiavhors” (infidels) including Greeks, Armenians, and Jews were the recipients of a heavy tax that the government knew they could not pay. Those unable to pay were shipped off to concentration camps in Anatolia from which most never returned.
Before the outbreak of the anti Greek pogroms of 1955 (which also targeted Armenians and Jews) Christian homes were labelled with crosses so the population would know their targets. The pogroms were primarily anti-Christian a fact that proves that secularism never penetrated the soul of the Turkish nation. During the 1950’s Prime Minister Adnan Menderes flirted with the Islamic establishment and as a result of his Islamic sympathies and authoritarian nature was executed following the Turkish Coup of 1960.
The Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 likewise demonstrated that Islam still had a hold on Turkish society. The conversion of Greek and Armenian Churches in occupied Cyprus into Mosques is proof that secularism in Turkey existed only at the official level. The conversion of Hagia Sophia may be the demise of the final vestige of secularism that existed in Turkey.
President Erdogan has brought negative attention on Turkey. This attention is on top of the negative attention that Turkey received because of Ankara’s tolerance of/and support for the Islamic State. The conversion of Hagia Sophia may come to haunt the new Turkish Sultan.
The Russian government has declared the matter of Hagia Sophia to be an internal matter for Turkey. The Russian government did take up the matter with Turkey and President Erdogan has apparently assured the Russians that the Christian-Byzantine iconography will be protected. The Russians did protest and members of the Russian Duma had sent protests to their counterparts in the Turkish Parliament. The Russian Church likewise publicly protested.
Two Bishops of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church have taken positions on Hagia Sophia. One Bishop denied that the conversion of Hagia Sophia was God’s punishment on the Ecumenical Patriarchate and stated that Hagia Sophia did not belong to the Patriarchate or to Turkey, but only to God. Another Bishop declared that the day may yet come when Hagia Sophia becomes a Church, and also went on to point out (correctly) that Hagia Sophia has been an issue for years but that Patriarch Bartholomew chose instead to intervene in the Ukrainian Church.
The Greek world must now decide how to proceed. The best idea has been suggested by some Greeks who believe that Kemal’s house in Thesaloniki should be seized from the Turkish Consulate and be turned into a genocide museum. Absolutely a great idea. The Greek Mayor of Thessaloniki in 1937 donated that house to the Turkish Consulate in a spirit of good will (without getting anything in return from Turkey such as Hagia Sophia).
In 1955, the staff at the Turkish Consulate bombed Kemal’s house in order to stir up anti Greek hatred for the pogroms in Constantinople. The Consulate should have been closed then, its staff arrested, and the house turned into a public restroom or a shelter for animals. In 2015, I walked by the Consulate-Museum while visiting Thessaloniki.
The place looks like something out of East Germany. There were security cameras and no one around to answer the door when I decided I would visit the Museum. A very sinister looking place and it is long past time the Consulate was closed and the house done away with. A genocide Museum would be perfect in honor of the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Christians slaughtered by Kemal.
It is also time to continue to work for the recognition of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides. It is also time to take the gloves off regarding Turkey. While the support for Hagia Sophia has been welcome, most articles have been too deferential to the murderous Turkish regime. Kemal has been referred to as some sort of enlightener of the Turkish nation when he was a butcher.
In recent years, two excellent books have been published. “The Great Fire” by Lou Ureneck and “The Thirty Year Genocide” by Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi which are masterpieces. The genocide of the Greeks is gradually gaining recognition. Working to gain full recognition of the genocide and working for justice for Cyprus and the defense of the Greek islands are the best ways to respond to the seizure of Hagia Sophia.
“O Lord save your people and bless your inheritance! Give victory to those who battle evil, and with your cross protect us all!
The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church held its meeting and once again expressed its opposition to the change of status of Hagia Sophia. They agreed on a statement made in recent days by Metropolitan Serapheim of Piraeus of the Church of Greece that the Ukraine schism made it difficult for the Orthodox world to unite against a common threat. In other developments in recent days, the Islamic Society of America came out in opposition to Turkish plans to convert Hagia Sophia. A very welcome gesture indeed!
The Arab News newspaper published two articles criticizing Turkey’s conversion of Hagia Sophia into a Mosque. In addition, NBC News has interviewed dissidents in Turkey who see the conversion of Hagia Sophia as an ominous sign of things to come. President Erdogan has become repressive in recent years and this attack on Hagia Sophia has been widely condemned by many Turkish intellectuals including Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk and novelist Elif Shahak. Likewise historian Taner Ackam a Turkish academic who has published books on the Armenian Genocide has also opposed the move.
In America, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese has declared July 24 a”day of mourning”. I am not quite sure what that is intended to accomplish but the fact of the matter is that the Greek Archdiocese has been quiet for the last seven years on this matter. The move to make Hagia Sophia a Mosque began in 2013 when the Church-Museum of Hagia Sophia in Trebizond was converted into a Mosque.
Since then, the Turks have converted two other Church-Museums (both named Hagia Sophia) in Nicea (Iznik) and Adrianople (Edirne) into Mosques. I do not recall any protests in response to these conversions. In my opinion, these were test runs by the Erdogan government in Turkey to get a feel for international opinion. Having received virtually no criticism for converting these former Churches, the Turkish President was encouraged to prey upon the Great Cathedral itself.
It is only now at the last minute that the international community weighed in. In recent days, the Church of Greece urged UNESCO to be more assertive on the matter. Like the Greek Archdiocese of America, the Synod of the Church of Greece remained quiet until the last minute. The same can be said for the academic community which remained quiet for many years.
Byzantine historian Judith Herrin (an author of very fine books on Byzantine history) had an op-ed published in the Washington Post. A very welcome criticism of Turkey, but what took so long? It is in fact great to see so much international interest in Hagia Sophia but it should have manifested itself earlier than this.
The Greek world in particular has to think long term at this point. In the event that a miracle does not occur (a possibility that Orthodox Christians never dismiss) the Greeks will have to consider what to do then. The Greek Churches badly need to reconcile with the Orthodox world, and this means resolving the schism in Ukraine.
Greece in turn needs to reflect on the matter of its identity and role. It is good to see Greeks taking an interest in Hagia Sophia. Let this be the occasion for the faithful in Greece to overturn gay marriage and the transgender agenda that the former ruling party of Syriza imposed on Greece. Whatever happens with Hagia Sophia, the Greek world must recapture the moral, theological, and spiritual ethos of the gospel, the apostles, and the fathers of the Church which produced Hagia Sophia.
I have ceased all commentary on anything other than Hagia Sophia. I will be counting the days till the dark day which Turkey has scheduled for July 24.
It was said that the Fall of Constantinople was God’s punishment for the apostasy of the Greeks when they signed the false union of East and Western Christians at the Council of Florence in 1439. Today, there are opinions emanating from a variety of sources suggesting that the impending conversion of Hagia Sophia is God’s punishment for the role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in fomenting the schism of the Churches in Ukraine. Whether this is true or not is impossible to say. One prominent Bishop within the Church of Greece believes this is the case while some Russian and Ukrainian Bishops deny that this is so.
The Knights of the Fourth Crusade desecrated Hagia Sophia long before the Ottoman Turks. After Constantinople was invaded and occupied by the Crusaders the Churches, palaces, and libraries of Constantinople were sacked. Hagia Sophia was not spared as it was defiled in unspeakable ways by western Christians. Other than robbing the treasures in the Church, the Latins also brought a prostitute into the Great Cathedral who sat on the Patriarch’s throne.
Hagia Sophia is also the subject of myths and legends. One legend has it that during the building of the Great Church in the sixth century, the Archangel Michael came down from heaven and asked a boy where the builders were. The boy responded and said they were eating lunch. The Archangel told the boy to go and call them for this Church needed to be built very quickly.
After the Fall of Constantinople, a legend was told about the mysterious priest in Hagia Sophia. It was said that he disappeared inside the Church so that the Turks would not defile the holy gifts. According to the legend, when Hagia Sophia becomes a Church once more the priest will reemerge to complete the liturgy.
Another story is told during the centuries of the Ottoman Empire. It was said that there was a locked door high up in the Great Church. An Englishman in Constantinople was said to have been hired by the Turks to open the door. Somewhat frightened by what might be behind the door, the Englishman advised the Sultan to leave the door alone. The Sultan is said to have complied with this advice.
In 2016, the Turkish government permitted an Islamic cleric to read Koranic prayers in Hagia Sophia. During that summer, an attempted Coup against the Turkish President ensued. The disturbance of Hagia Sophia was put to rest…………….until now!
“We want-oh mother -we want no mosques, no hodjas to call out, (oh, sweet mother, our lady aid us) We only want St. Sophia, the great Monastery”
From a Greek Song “We want no mosques here”
The Most Holy Theotokos (Mother of God) came to be viewed as the protector of Constantinople after the successful defeat by the Empire of the Avars after 626 AD. Enemy combatants described seeing a woman over the walls of the City during the fighting near the blachernae section of the city. There was a Church (and still is) dedicated to the Theotokos at that part of the city. An all night vigil was held in that Church asking for her intervention to save the City. The Icon of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) of God. The Great Church of Constantinople is named for the wisdom of Christ Hagia Sophia in use as a Mosque during the Ottoman Empire. This image is French and dates to 1719.
Greek political poster from the Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913. Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos led Greece to victory and presided over the liberation of Macedonia, Crete, and Epirus. I believe the woman he is picking up symbolizes Greece. The Angel on top is bringing in the new year of 1913. Note on the left the image of the Parthenon at Athens. On the right the double headed eagle over the image of Hagia Sophia. Greece was supposed to liberate the city.
Venizelos and his Ministers and Generals and Bishops of the Church in front of Hagia Sophia. In 1920 Herbert Adam Gibbons who reported on the campaign in Asia Minor and later sent news dispatches to the Christian Science Monitor documenting the genocide of the Greeks and Armenians published a biography of Venizelos. The last paragraph of the book.
“In the prayer of eight million Greeks, “Zeto Venizelos!” the aspirations of Hellenism are practically expressed. For if the Cretan lives, and continues to lead, he will accomplish what the greatest Meditteranean islander before him failed to accomplish. He will take possession of Constantinople.”
Venizelos lost the elections of December 1920 and Greece’s fortunes in Asia Minor collapsed. The Great Church awaits to become a Church once again…..someday
In 1453 the Orthodox Greeks in Constantinople were hoping that a miracle might prevent the fall of the City. It was not to be. Today we await again and place our hope in the Theotokos. I believe in miracles.
From another old Greek song on the Fall of Constantinople,
“Today the Churches chant, and all the monasteries, and Saint Sophia chants, the great monastery, A high voice came from the heavens, Saint Sophia is taken by the hand of infidels. Let the chanting stop and lower the sacred vessels, The Turks have taken the City”.
Considering the international attention on Hagia Sophia and my recent review of Elia Kazan’s masterpiece “America America” I have concluded the time is right for a review of a great Greek film. This film, “A Touch of Spice” was made in Greece and Turkey and was shown in the United States in 2005. The film is about a Greek family in Constantinople that were impacted by the expulsions of 1964.
The film tells the story of a boy and his parents who are forced to leave Constantinople by the Turkish authorities. At the time many Greeks with Hellenic citizenship were expelled from Turkey, and since they were married to Greeks native to Constantinople thousands of families were forced to leave their homes and their beloved city. Human Rights Watch in its 1992 publication “Denying Human Rights and ethnic identity the Greeks of Turkey” stated that 30,000 Greeks left Turkey after the initial deportations.
The film has wonderful Greek and Turkish actors and is filmed on location in Greece and Turkey. And yes there is a wonderful scene that includes Hagia Sophia. In addition, there is a great scene in which the boy lights a candle in a Greek Church in Constantinople.
It is a very sentimental and nostalgic film with elements of comedy. I will refrain from ruining the plot and simply recommend this film to be added to anyone’s Greek film collection with “America America”.
Here is a list I am compiling of films that include the city of Constantinople and/or Hagia Sophia. I will probably be adding to the list.
Council of Europe Condemns Hagia Sophia Conversion From Museum to Mosque
Αssociated Press
(AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)12/5/2020 Athens News Agency
BRUSSELS – The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Friday condemned Turkey’s July 13 unilateral decision to change the status of the UNESCO-protected World Heritage Site of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul from a museum to a mosque.
PACE’s Committee on Culture, Science, Education & Media also adopted a written declaration, which says the decision is “a discriminatory step backwards, that clearly undermines Turkey’s secular identity and multicultural legacy.”
The Committee stresses that it “also runs counter to the Parliamentary Assembly’s core values and principles, particularly as regards interreligious and intercultural dialogue and the principle of living together.
Chairperson of the Greek Parliamentary Delegation to PACE Dora Bakoyannis, wrote on Twitter: “Europe takes a stand against Turkey’s systematic policy of violating democratic principles and values.”https://disqusservice.com/iframe/fallback/?position=top&shortname=ekirikas&position=top&anchorColor=%230000ee&colorScheme=light&sourceUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenationalherald.com%2Fcommunity_church_world%2Farthro%2Fcouncil_of_europe_condemns_hagia_sophia_conversion_from_museum_to_mosque-1347241%2F&typeface=serif&canonicalUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenationalherald.com%2Fcommunity_church_world%2Farthro%2Fcouncil_of_europe_condemns_hagia_sophia_conversion_from_museum_to_mosque-1347241%2F&disqus_version=363c4ce
How a Historian Stuffed Hagia Sophia’s Sound Into a Studio
Bissera Pentcheva used virtual acoustics to bring Istanbul to California and reconstruct the sonic world of Byzantine cathedral music.
Hagia Sophia’s rededication as a Muslim place of worship, after decades as a museum, threatens to cloak its extravagantly reverberant acoustics.Credit…Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times
By Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
July 30,2020
Turquoise carpets covered the marble floor, with its geometric designs. White drapes concealed the mosaic of the Virgin and Christ. Scaffolding obscured crosses and other Christian symbols.
Footage broadcast around the world last week captured some of these striking changes to Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine cathedral in Istanbul, which served as a mosque under Ottoman rule before becoming a museum in 1934. On the orders of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is now once again used as a mosque.
But for a group of scholars, scientists and musicians, Hagia Sophia’s rededication as a Muslim place of worship threatens to cloak a less tangible treasure: its sound. Bissera Pentcheva, an art historian at Stanford University and an expert in the burgeoning field of acoustic archaeology, has spent the past decade studying the building’s extravagantly reverberant acoustics to reconstructthe sonic world of Byzantine cathedral music. Ms. Pentcheva argues that Hagia Sophia’s mystical brilliance reveals itself fully only if it is viewed as a vessel for animated light — and sound.
The building was reopened for worship for the first time in 86 years last week.Credit…Nevzat Yildirim/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images
“The void is a stage,” she said in a recent interview over Zoom.
Conducting research inside this contested monument has required a mixture of diplomacy, ingenuity and technology. Turkish authorities forbade singing inside Hagia Sophia, even when it was operated as a museum. Now that the building falls under the jurisdiction of religious authorities, that ban will harden, and further research may be even more difficult.
But Ms. Pentcheva’s existing work culminated last fall in the release of “The Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia,” an album that brings to life the stately mystery of Byzantine cathedral liturgy, bathed in the glittering acoustics of the space for which it was written — even though it was recorded in a studio in California.
For about 20 years, it has been possible to superimpose the acoustics of a particular space onto recorded music during postproduction. A pioneer was Altiverb, a plug-in software that draws on a large library of virtual spaces so that a recorded track can be retrofitted to seem like it was done in, for example, the Berlin Philharmonie or the King’s Chamber inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
But in what has become known as live virtual acoustics, processors and speakers provide the acoustic feedback of a particular space in real time, so that musicians can adjust their performance as if they were really in another building.
Jonathan Abel, a consulting professor at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford, devised a plan with Ms. Bissera that allowed her to capture vital information about the acoustic properties of Hagia Sophia with the help of a balloon, discreet recording equipment and a cooperative security guard.
In the winter of 2010, Ms. Pentcheva obtained permission to enter what was then a museum at dawn, when Istanbul was quiet. She persuaded a guard to stand in a spot that would have been occupied by singers during the Byzantine era and to pop a balloon. In the meantime, she stationed herself where a privileged member of the public might have experienced mass. Microphones captured the explosion of sound and the ensuing wash of reverberations.
Ms. Pentcheva was allowed to capture only four such pops over two visits. But those bursts of sound yielded a wealth of data.
One of the balloon pops in 2010 that helped Bissera Pentcheva capture the acoustics of Hagia Sophia.Credit…Bissera V. Pentcheva
“That little balloon pop brings back all the information about the material and the size of the space,” Mr. Abel said. “You can think of a human voice as being made up of a whole bunch of balloon pops. Each voice drags behind it a bunch of impulse responses, like streamers behind a wedding car.”
The balloon noises, along with maps of the interior, allowed Mr. Abel to identify what he called the acoustic fingerprint of the building, including the multidirectional refraction of sound as it bounces off the dome and marble colonnades. His computer simulation was then integrated into a set of microphones and speakers.
Thus the members of Cappella Romana, a vocal ensemble based in Portland, Ore., specializing in Byzantine chant, recorded “The Lost Voices” in a space that persuasively mimicked the acoustics of Hagia Sophia — with its luscious reverberation, cross echoes and amplification of particular frequencies.
Alexander Lingas, a musicologist and the music director of Cappella Romana, said that the live virtual acoustics were transformative to his understanding of the group’s repertory. The long reverberation time dictated slower tempos. Basses singing drones made subtle pitch adjustments to match frequencies of maximum resonance.
Mr. Lingas said that some pieces only “made sense” inside the simulated acoustics. One example featured on the album is a cherubic hymn that likens the singers to angels.
“The music is designed to convey that,” Mr. Lingas said. “But I remember editing this piece and thinking, ‘My, this is really strange.’” Yet, he added, as the group rehearsed it with the virtual acoustics, a pattern of repeated undulating motifs built up rippling momentum until, as he described it, “the sound essentially achieved liftoff.”
Ms. Pentcheva believed that in Byzantine cathedral chant, reverberation was key to invoking the divine presence. She pointed to the exuberant amount of melisma in the repertory, where a single syllable is stretched over multiple notes. In the liquid acoustics of Hagia Sophia, words sung in this way blur, the way a line drawn in ink bleeds on wet paper.
“Rather than containing this smearing of semantics, the music itself actually intensifies it,” Ms. Pentcheva said. “So there is this process of alienation and estrangement from the register of human language that happens in Hagia Sophia, and is a desired goal.”
In Greek Orthodox rites, Ms. Pentcheva argued, acoustics and chant interact in a way that “is not about sound carrying information, but sound precipitating experience. It is a fully corporeal investment.”
The recording provides a glimpse of that experience. Phrases chanted in unison leave a ghostly imprint. Rhythmic shudders and grace notes set off blurry squiggles of overlapping echoes. Chords unfurl in reverberant bloom.
The acoustic drama of Hagia Sophia would have unfolded alongside the changing light and curling smoke of burning incense, enveloping the senses. The effect is described in a 6th-century description of the building by Paul the Silentiary, an aristocrat and poet at the court of Justinian.
“He speaks about a human action that brings into presence the divine reaction, the divine voice,” Ms. Pentcheva said. “In a sense that is the reverberation of the space: After the human voice stops singing, the building continues.”
Ali Erbas, head of Turkey’s religious-affairs directorate, visits Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, July 22.PHOTO: RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS DIRECTORATE/REUTERS
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).
In 2019, the Hagia-Sophia was the most-visited museum in Turkey.Credit…Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times
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.
A mosaic panel inside the Hagia Sophia.Credit…Frank Bienewald/LightRocket, via Getty Images
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.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visiting the Hagia Sophia on July 19.Credit…Turkish President Office
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.
The Hagia Sophia is one of the world’s greatest architectural and cultural landmarks.Credit…Umit Bektas/Reuters
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.
Hagia Sophia in Istanbul on Friday.Credit…Chris McGrath/Getty Images
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€
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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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.
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.
July 14, 2020
A 19th-century illustration of the interior of the Hagia Sophia, before it became a museum in 1935.Credit…Mansell/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images
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 romanticistsbegan 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.
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.
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 Hagia Sophia.Credit…Tolga Bozoglu/EPA, via Shutterstock
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€
A visitor at the Hagia Sophia last week before it was turned back into a mosque.Credit…Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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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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 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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People celebrate outside Hagia Sophia in Istanbul on July 12. (Erdem Sahin/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
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.
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€
Tourists visit the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul on July 10. (Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images)
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€
Read more:
The New York Times
Turkey’s President Formally Makes Hagia Sophia a Mosque
By The Associated Press
July 10, 2020
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€
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
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€
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
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.
Do you approve of President Erdogan’s policies? Source: Metropoll
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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€
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.
