The Lead: Turkey: Erdogan’s ‘reconquest’ of Hagia Sofia part of regional power play

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan forged ahead this week with his plan to recast the historic Hagia Sofia as a mosque, despite international outcry. Erdogan’s power play has been done with one eye on his constituency at home and the other on his ambitions for regional influence.

Background: The Hagia Sofia was built as a Christian church by Roman Emperor Justinian I in 537 and was the world’s largest cathedral for almost a thousand years. The Muslim-Turkish Ottomans under Mehmed II conquered the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire in 1453, changing the name of its capital, Constantinople, to Istanbul. Mehmed II converted the cathedral to a mosque. Then, in 1935, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, turned it into a museum to mark Turkey’s secular turn.

Power Play: “Some Turkish secularists are duped by Erdogan’s emphasis on Turkey’s national sovereignty. Playing on the anti-West impulses of Turkish secularists helped him to soften the strong opposition to his move,” writes Cengiz Candar. “His message and actions make up his forceful claim for the global leadership of Muslims at a time when Turkey’s aggressive foreign policy has proliferated its military presence from the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan to Syria and with some degree of success to Libya, where he confronts such traditional power centers of the Sunni Muslim world as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.”

Listen: Listen to my podcast interview with Cengiz Candar here, where he discusses Erdogan, the Hagia Sofia, the Syria War and his new book, “Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds” (see below).