How the Hagia Sophia decision impacts Turkey, minorities and now, Syria
The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. Creative Commons image.
(ANALYSIS) The Turkish government’s conversion of the Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque has drawn sharp criticism, celebration, and now pledges to rebuild the church in Syria. But among experts on Turkey the news was far from surprising. The decision is part of a long-term agenda of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Islamist parties to restore national pride in its Ottoman past.
The Hagia Sophia was built in 537 as the largest church in the Christian Byzantine Empire and the seat of Eastern Orthodox Christianity for centuries until the fall of Constantinople, now called Istanbul, to the Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1453. After the collapse of Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic converted the mosque into a museum, opened in 1935, as a symbol of modern Turkey’s secularism and unity. It became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1985 for its unmatched Byzantine architecture and art.
In the Christian community, particularly among the Orthodox, the Hagia Sophia’s conversion to a mosque felt like another blow to the historic Christian presence in Istanbul that will deepen divisions and threaten religious minorities. Among Muslims, the reaction has been more mixed, with some Turkish Muslims openly celebrating its return as a mosque, and other Muslims both in Turkey and abroad either indifferent to or condemning the decision as a bad precedent for Turkey’s rule of law and equal treatment of people of all faiths, or even different traditions of Islam.
Turkey’s Brand of Nationalism
Dr. Lisel Hintz of Johns Hopkins University, who studies identity politics and foreign policy in Turkey, told Religion Unplugged that the economic downturn brought by COVID-19 lockdowns and Erdogan’s desire to be a leader in the Sunni Muslim world also pushed the government to transform the Hagia Sophia.
“When studying identity, people often push you to analytically separate identity as the ‘true’ motivating factor behind a policy/action and identity as the ‘tool’ used to mobilize supporters and win over new supporters,” Hintz said. “In practice it is much messier, and I think the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque exemplifies this well.”
In addition, two conservative Islamist parties that split off from Erdogan’s AKP have been gaining popularity recently, pushing Erdogan to compete for their support, according to
Dr. Yesim Bayar of St. Lawrence University, a sociologist who studies social and political change in Turkey.
But it’s not just Turkish Islamists who wanted the Hagia Sophia to be a mosque again.
Bayar emphasized that the conversion “is not only religious in nature, but also and equally part of a nationalist narrative” that is recognizable and appreciated by a large swatch of Turkish society.
That nationalist narrative-- one that draws heavily on the revival of the Ottoman past -- was on full display in the sermon given by the head of the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) Ali Erbaş at Hagia Sophia’s opening prayer as a mosque on July 24.
“Salat and salam (blessings) be to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who gave the good news about the conquest by saying, ‘One day Constantinople will be conquered. Great is the commander who will conquer it, and great are his soldiers!’” he said.
Erbas held a sword while leading the prayer. “The longing that caused deep pain in the hearts of our people has come to an end,” he said.
This nationalist pride has expanded under Erdogan’s leadership.
“Over his 18 years in power, Erdogan has rehabilitated the glorious history of the pre-Republican Ottoman Empire and made it into a spearhead of Turkish nationalist pride, the basis for meddling in formerly Ottoman regions,” said Dr. Jenny White a social anthropologist of Turkey at Stockholm University. “The transformation has enormous resonance with almost all sectors of Turkish society, not only supporters of Erdogan's AKP.”
Minority concerns
Of course, not every Turkish citizen is an ethnically Turkish Sunni Muslim who sees the Ottoman past as his or her glorious heritage. The language of conquest has raised serious concerns about the potential instigation of violence against Turkey’s religious and ethnic minority communities, particularly the small Istanbul Greek population, known as the Rum. The language used to justify the Hagia Sophia’s conversion, particularly the focus on the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul, gravely concerned several of the experts we spoke to.
“In Turkey, where minorities have been victims of systematic discrimination and persecution, the discourse of conquest is likely to fuel new waves of hate crimes,” Dr. Tugba Tanyeri Erdemir, research associate and specialist in cultural heritage and religious minorities at the University of Pittsburgh, told Religion Unplugged.
Dr. Ramazan Kilinc of the University of Nebraska at Omaha and expert on religious minorities in Turkey believes that the Turkish government did not even think about their Rum citizens when undertaking this decision, which speaks to a larger problem.
“Many Turks do not even realize that minorities are Turkish citizens,” he said. “They are considered as ‘alien’ in the lands that they have been for centuries. I think this move will contribute to that alienization.”
The vast majority of Turks are Sunni Muslims, while Christians, Jews, Yazidis, and other religious minorities make up less than .02% of the population. The Rum community now numbers a scarce 2500 individuals, many whom are elderly, according to Dr. Matthew John Hadodo, a sociolinguist at the University of Pittsburgh specializing in the Istanbul Greek dialect. However, despite the threat the politicization of religion has for religious minorities, Hadodo does not believe that this will be the death knell of the Rum community. “They have survived through much more and as a community feel that they will always have a presence in Istanbul,” he told Religion Unplugged.
How the Hagia Sophia will change tourism, art conservation
On July 29, the Syrian regime under President Bashar Al-Assad announced that it would build a small replica with help from Russia. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, called the Hagia Sophia one of the greatest monuments of Christian culture and said Russians would respond to any attempts to trample on it with bitterness and indignation. But many mourning the decision to convert the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, including clergy associated with the Antiochian Orthodox Church, which serves Syrian and Leventine Christians, took the news of this new replica with a large grain of salt.
An Antiochian Orthodox priest serving in Pennsylvania told Religion Unplugged that he believes that the Syrian government decision is politically motivated and “constitute[s] nothing less than a way for Syria to deliver a poke-in-the-eye to its adversary Turkey—all under the guise of magnanimity toward the Syrian Christian population, on whose support al-Assad continues to depend.”
Dr. John Mark Reynolds, President of the St. Constantine School, welcomes any effort to build a Christian Church, but he would “trust, but verify” this effort on the part of the Syrian government. Moreover, the Hagia Sophia itself is not something that can be replicated. “You can’t rebuild something that already exists, just as you can’t replace your mother,” he said.
Dr. Elizabeth Prodromou of Tufts University Fletcher School of Diplomacy and expert in religious freedom and religious minorities in MENA emphasized that smaller churches built on the model of the Hagia Sophia have been built the world over and even the Ottoman took it as a model to build their most stunning mosques. “The announcement about the possible construction of a smaller version in Hama fits into the long historical trajectory of Hagia Sophia’s greatness as a structural masterpiece,” she told Religion Unplugged. “However, in terms of sheer size and scope, there has been no other ‘relocation’” like the original, she said.
As an irreplaceable wonder of the world, the Hagia Sophia will likely remain a tourist destination in Istanbul despite its status and use change. But the maintenance and visitor experience of the building as a mosque will be much different than it was as a museum.
“The Hagia Sophia as a museum allowed some room for it to feel more like an interfaith space,” said Garrett Fugate, a PhD candidate in religion at Boston specializing in sacred space. “Transforming it into a mosque really limits the possibilities of what the space can be.”
Turkish municipalities and the central government are notorious for over-restoring historic structures as well as ignoring the ongoing decay of the country’s Byzantine sites, particularly in Istanbul. As a mosque, the Turkish government may decide to overemphasize a flattened, idealized version of the building’s history during the Ottoman period, and undertake restoration projects to this end, while simultaneously ignoring its Byzantine history and art, to the detriment of structures from both periods.
“The AKP has a tendency towards ‘Disneyfication’ of heritage sites, and it is possible that Hagia Sophia might have a similar fate,” said Dr. Gizem Zencirci of Providence College, an expert in Turkish politics.
In fact, this kind of damage is already likely being done with the installation of the carpets for worshippers and curtains to cover images during prayer times. As a museum, the Hagia Sophia was maintained by professional staff with international teams of experts in conservation and restoration of Byzantine art. Tanyeri Erdemir, the expert in cultural heritage and religious minorities, believes removing the Hagia Sophia from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and placing it under the Directorate of Religious Affairs will undermine preservation efforts.
“There has been a worrying lack of transparency in changes done to the building to prepare it for Islamic worship,” Tanyeri Erdemir said.
What the conversion means for rule of law
The legal implications of the conversion decision point to an increasingly uncertain legal climate for Turkish citizens.
“Hagia Sophia's conversion as a political stunt was a silver bullet that Erdogan could only use once to divert the electorate's attention from Turkey's troubles,” according to Tanyeri Erdemir. “Hagia Sophia's opening as a mosque created a euphoria for those who had been longing for this moment, however, once it is done, the Turkish citizens will have to face that Turkey's long-standing problems are still there and continue to worsen.”
Turkey’s government ranks among the highest in the world for jailing journalists who criticize their administration. Even though their constitution has protections for press freedom, a handful of more recent laws since a 2016 coup have majorly repressed free speech. A recent social media campaign is drawing attention to the high murder rate of Turkish women and how most offenders are never charged or put on trial.
“This decision is important because it speaks to the ongoing collapse of the rule law in Turkey, and Turkey’s respect for international legal commitments, like those vis a vis UNESCO,” Dr. Elizabeth Prodromou said. “If you are a Turkish citizen of any belief there is cause for concern because this is a state sending a signal that it is willing to use religion in ways that run counter to equality before the state, and that can only hurt all Turkish citizens.”
Claire Sadar is a freelance journalist based in Boston specializing in Turkey, religion, politics, and social justice. She holds an MA in religion from Boston University and has been reporting on Turkey since 2012. Her work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Religion News Service, and Ahval (a Turkey-focused online news site) among other publications. Follow her work at ClaireSadar.com.