Erdogan provokes ire as he answers Muslims’ prayers
In Istanbul, a city famed for its towering minarets and echoing calls to worship, Islamic Friday prayers returned to the Hagia Sophia for the first time in almost 90 years. Worshippers had travelled thousands of miles and slept on the cobbled streets to get a spot inside the building.
Yesterday, wearing a white skull cap, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan led the pre-prayer recital, and for many in the crowd, he was the personal righter of a historic wrong.
“It should never have been turned into a museum,” said Ufuk Tavusbay, 26, who had travelled from Belgium with his younger brother for the opportunity to pray at the mosque.
“If you knew what it [meant] to Muslims, then you’d understand.”
Originally built as a Byzantine cathedral in AD537, for centuries the Hagia Sophia was a Greek Orthodox church, though it had a spell as a Roman Catholic cathedral in the 15th century.
Following his conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmet II, the Ottoman leader turned the building into a mosque for the first time. It remained so until 1935, after the Ottoman Empire had fallen. In its wake rose Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with his vision for a secular Turkey.
Ataturk designated the building a museum, open to all faiths; an artefact of Turkey’s religious and cultural diversity. The religious struggle for Turkey’s most famous building was over, or so many thought.
For 85years, the Hagia Sophia was the jewel in Turkey’s tourism industry and a Unesco World Heritage Site. Christians and Muslims from across the world could visit, though there was no organised worship.
That status quo was upended earlier this month when Mr Erdoğan decreed the building would once again open its doors for prayers as a mosque.
Conservatives in the country had long pursued the change and it played well with Mr Erdoğan’s nationalist and religious base. But, outside Turkey, it has drawn fierce criticism. Christians across the world voiced their anger, and Pope Francis said he was “pained” by the decision, and was urged to intervene by the Greek president.
In a response criticised as flippant, Mr Erdoğan invited him to the opening. Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, urged the Turkish president not to go through with the move, while others went further.
Archbishop Ieronymos, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, called it an “unholy act of defiling”, and held a day of mourning in churches across Greece yesterday.
Cultural and antiquity experts also expressed dismay. Among them Unesco, the UN’S cultural agency, which said it “deeply regrets the decision” made “without prior discussion”.
Ahead of the prayers, drapes were hung to hide mosaics of the Virgin Mary and the archangel Gabriel, and dark green carpets, chosen personally by Mr Erdoğan, were spread across the stone floor. Turkish wool was chosen over fire-retardant wool from New Zealand favoured by experts.
Mr Erdoğan’s decision has animated his political base. Thousands from the Turkish diaspora in Europe booked flights home to attend, while an army of loyal analysts and political figures stood ready to challenge any critics of the decision.
The change at the Hagia Sophia comes as Turkey also goes to war with social media companies. Mr Erdoğan’s government is going ahead with proposed measures to block social media sites if they fail to comply with strict new regulations. A draft bill was approved by Turkey’s justice commission yesterday.
Critics of Mr Erdoğan’s increasingly religious rule have described rebranding the Hagia Sophia as yet another wound in the secular Turkey that Ataturk built almost a century ago. For others, the building is an expression of the Turkey of the 21st century. Some worshippers inside justified the change by pointing to Europe’s complicated history with Muslim places of worship.
“Have you been to Spain? Have you seen the mosques turned into churches in Cordoba,” said Ozgur Gun, 40, who had travelled from Urfa, almost 1,000 kilometres away on the border with Syria.
“It was built as a place of worship. Christians are welcome to visit, of course, but they cannot pray here.
“This is about what it means to be Turkish, and what it means to be a Muslim.”