ToMuslims, museum a masked mosque
ISTANBUL, TURKEY — As the time for afternoon prayers approaches, Onder Soy puts on a white robe and cap and switches on the microphone in a small 19th century room adjoining the Hagia Sophia.
Soon, Soy’s melodic call to prayer rings out over a square filled with tourists hurrying to visit some of Turkey’s most famous historical sights before they close for the day.
The room Soy is in — built as a resting place for the sultan andnowofficially called the Hagia Sophia mosque — fills up with around 40 worshipers, drawn not by the modestly decorated space itself, but by the ancient building it shares awall with.
Built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in AD 537, the Hagia Sophia was originally aGreek Orthodox basilica and one of the most important churches in all of Christendom. It became a mosque in1453 after theOttoman Empire defeated the Byzantines and took over Constantinople.
With the birth of a secular Turkish Republic, the Hagia Sophia became amuseumin1935, meant to highlight the shared legacy of the space for the world’s two largest religions.
But, eight decades later, the fate of this building still tugs at the hearts of Muslims and Christians alike.
In October, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs appointed Soy as the full-timeimamfor the room adjoining the Hagia Sophia, a space that opened in 1992 but was previously only meant for workers in the area to use for prayers.
Five times a day now, Soy’s voice rings out, not just as a call to daily prayer, but also as an audible reminder for many Muslims in Turkey that their longheld dream of worshiping inside the Hagia Sophia may become a reality.
Three separate groups last month led marches to the museum calling for its opening as a mosque. One group began a campaign asking people to remove their shoes before they enter the building, just as they would amosque.
“I have never entered the Hagia Sophia, and I never will until it is reopened as a mosque,” said Emrullah Celik, 29, an activist who has helped lead a small but influential grass-roots campaign to have the building converted to a mosque. “We want to enter with a prayer rug, not with a ticket.”
“It’s not like the stones of the Hagia Sophia are holy, there is nothing inside it that makes it special, but God told us it is important,” said Salih Akyuz, the head of the youth branch of the Saadet Party, one of several Islamist groups that led a march to the Hagia Sophia on May 29, the 564th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.
“We were taught by our Prophet Muhammad that Constantinople was an important place, and this was the most important place in the city, so it is dear to our hearts.”