Turkey disowns Ataturk

Turkey’s strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has systematically destroyed the secular foundations of the country, playing the Islamic card to entrench himself in power. The legacy of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Republic, was attacked further last week when in a questionable decision the world-renowned Hagia Sophia museum in Istanbul was converted into a mosque. The world heritage site, originally built as a cathedral by the Byzantines, was forcibly converted into a mosque several hundred years later. However, Ataturk in the mid-30s had turned it into a public museum and it had remained thus till last week when Erdogan arranged to have the judiciary clear the demand for its conversion into a mosque. The extremist Islamic elements whom Erdogan has systematically enlisted in his administration to prolong his near two-decade rule celebrated the decision. All others lamented the fast vanishing modern-secular character of the Turkish State. While Ataturk had proscribed display of all religious symbols in public, banning head scarves for women and communal academic curriculums, Erdogan has shed all vestiges of modernism to openly embrace religious extremism. Turkey has lost its vantage position as a bridge between Europe and the Islamic West Asia, with little prospect of it now getting admittance in the European Union. But so strong was the global outrage at the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque that led by the Pope, a number of global leaders decried the decision. Strong leaders feel constantly pressured to feed extreme nationalism in order to prolong their lien in power. Witness what Vladimir Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China are being up to. It is a regressive phenomenon which ruthlessly suppresses democratic impulses at home while challenging the established order abroad.