What caused Erdogan’s change of heart on Hagia Sophia?
Turkey’s president has pledged to change the status of Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia to a mosque, going back on his previous objections to such a move and raising questions whether the pledge is merely a populist gesture ahead of elections or something more.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent remarks that Hagia Sophia, a famed Istanbul landmark, could be reverted to a mosque have fueled both controversy and curiosity. Islamist, conservative and nationalist quarters in Turkey have long called for the ancient edifice — currently a museum — to be opened for Muslim worship.
As Turkish journalist Rusen Cakir, who closely follows Islamist movements, recalls, conservative and Islamist groups in Turkey used to raise three main demands in their demonstrations prior to the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) ascent to power in 2002. They included the lifting of bans on the Islamic headscarf, an end to restrictions on the imam-hatip religious schools and Hagia Sophia’s conversion to a mosque.
Originally built as a church, Hagia Sophia was the place where Byzantine emperors were crowned. It was converted to a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul — then Constantinople — in 1453. At the behest of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, Hagia Sophia became a museum in 1935.
Under the AKP’s 16-year rule, all demands concerning the headscarf and the imam-hatip schools have been met, but Hagia Sophia has remained a museum off-limits to Muslim worship. On various occasions and grounds over the years, Erdogan would reject the calls to transform Hagia Sophia to a mosque. At the reopening of a restored Istanbul mosque in 2014, for instance, he responded to chants for Hagia Sophia’s conversion by telling worshippers to use the existing mosques in the vicinity, including the famed Blue Mosque. “The Blue Mosque is right next to it. Let’s fill this place first and we will see thereafter,” he said.
