BY DEAN ANTOS –
One would be remiss to think that history is run by impersonal forces.
When humanity looks back at the year of 2020 they will undoubtedly see the difference personalities make. One such personality who more recently joins the plethora of world leaders to cement a legacy is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Recently, Erdoğan signed a decree allowing Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) to act as a “functioning mosque”, allowing the country’s General Directorate of Religious Affairs to take control of its operations. This Friday will mark the first time in 85 years that Hagia Sophia will be open for prayer. It also poignantly falls on the 97th anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, which drew the boundaries of modern Turkey.
Hagia Sophia, located in Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) has had three functions over its 1,500 year history. It has served as a place of Christian worship for a millennium, a place of Muslim worship for 500 years and has been open to all civilisation as a UNESCO World Heritage site for 85 years. The universal value of Hagia Sophia was strengthened by its status as a museum, allowing for Christians and Muslims to enter with their own particular spiritual motivations and find solace there. Erdoğan’s decision encourages exclusivity rather than the inclusivity sought by its UNESCO title.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis poignantly stated that “Hagia Sophia has followed an ecumenical course. It was Orthodox, Catholic and a mosque, and eventually became a world monument, something that does not change. Hagia Sophia surpasses us all.”
In 1935 the first president of the Republic of Turkey Mustafa Kemal Atatürk converted Hagia Sophia into a museum, underlining his commitment to a Turkey that would become a secular democratic republic. Conversely, Erdoğan has sought to recalibrate the work undertaken by Atatürk who used Hagia Sophia as a symbol for his secularist approach. Erdoğan has pioneered a nativist populist form of politics, promoting a discourse for his base that they are victims. Hagia Sophia is the one remaining issue that appeals to his base and enlivens the narrative of victimisation. As such it is clear that Erdoğan seeks a religious revolution of his own vis-a-vis Atatürk’s revolution.
Erdoğan’s legacy in Istanbul consists of three mosques. The Çamlıca Mosque known as “Erdoğan’s Mosque” sits on Istanbul’s virtual “eighth hill” and competes against the city’s seven hills which each harbour a mosque, built by Ottoman sultans. The second mosque Erdoğan is building is on Taksim Square, Istanbul’s main square which up until recently only had a Greek church on it, Agia Triada. The third and final “mosque” is that of the recently converted Hagia Sophia.
Erdoğan first rose to prominence in Istanbul. As a former Mayor of Istanbul he later went on to form the Islamist-rooted AK Parti which encouraged his tough language and defence of traditional Muslim values. His supporters have nicknamed him “Sultan” referring back to the Ottoman Empire, symbolising the nativist populist approach he takes as leader. He was jailed in 1999 for four months, having read a nationalist poem consisting of the line, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers”. In 2018, in a major symbolic move Erdoğan recited the opening verse of the Quran inside Hagia Sophia. More recently, Erdoğan was re-elected as President availing him the opportunity to exploit the sweeping new presidential powers granted during a controversial referendum in 2017; including the power to intervene in the country’s legal system. It is no surprise that with such powers, Turkey’s high administrative court annulled the 1934 cabinet decision that turned Hagia Sophia into a museum.
This cataclysmic change ordered by Erdoğan is not a new phenomenon. The world has continually been rocked by the effects of religious conflict, where claiming exclusivity of sacred land ironically violates the very scriptures of the religion in which the land serves. The Islamic Society of North America released a statement condemning Turkey’s conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Their statement illustrated that the Quran (40:22) condemns the demolition or conversion of places of worship. “Hagia Sophia was built as a Church and a pride of the Greek Orthodox Church which commands the loyalty of Greek Orthodox Christians counting some 300 million in Greece, Turkey and around the world.”
Hagia Sophia is an indispensable part of world cultural heritage, such a decision affects not only Turkey’s relations with Greece but also its relations with the West more broadly, including the European Union. Erdoğan’s divisive decree comes at a time when Turkey as a state has many problems to face. A shortage of mosques in Istanbul is not one of them.
