WHY HAGIA SOPHIA MATTERS
The political significance of
Erdogan's move on Hagia Sophia
by Hugh Fitzgerald
July 12, 2020
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees himself as the natural leader of the Muslim world.
[Since 2014, Erdogan has been proclaiming a “grand design to recreate the Ottoman caliphate with the help of the Sunni jihadist army.” A universal caliphate - the whole world under Islam - has been the dream of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and all Muslim extremists. Erdogan is emboldened by the fact that the Ottoman Caliphate (1517-1924) led by the Turks was the largest, most powerful and longest-lasting caliphate that had yet been established. It began with the conquest of Byzantium and ended when Taturk proclaimed a secular Turkish state in 1924.]
Last year saw published in his mouthpiece, the newspaper
Yeni Safak, his plan for
a pan-Islamic army that, with its huge collective armory of planes and tanks, and more than a million men under arms, would be able to attack and destroy the Jewish state.
He was surprised when his plan was not applauded by other Muslims, but instead was greeted with a telling silence. Erdogan had overlooked – or more likely refused to recognize — the resentments still felt by many Muslim Arabs at their mistreatment by the Ottoman Turks.
His latest attempt to claim leadership of the Umma [
the collective community of Muslims] against Israel are seen in statements this past June by Turkish officials warning Israel against any attempt at “annexing” Jerusalem. From the report in the
Jerusalem Post:
Turkey’s Minister of Religious Affairs Ali Erbas vowed over the weekend that “our struggle will continue until Jerusalem is completely free.”
The powerful religious scholar and voice in Turkey who is close to the country’s leadership and leading party, was speaking to an online forum of Palestinian scholars. The comments were reported in Turkish on T24 media.
He said that Jerusalem is a universal value [sic] and that “Islamic civilization has a memory of historical knowledge and values, and that it is never possible for Muslims to give up on the blessed city.”
His views echo those of Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who told a recent June 10 executive committee meeting that Turkey was putting its full support behind Palestinians against Israel’s annexation.
“The ummah [Islamic community] will never give up on a sovereign Palestinian state with Quds al-Sharif as its capital.”
Apparently not all the states in the Umma agree with this maximalist position by Turkey.
- Several Arab states – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE – have been grateful for Israeli intelligence cooperation against a common enemy, Iran, and against the Muslim Brotherhood as well.
- The ambassadors of three Arab countries, the UAE, Bahrain, and Oman, attended the White House roll-out of Trump’s peace plan, which has been interpreted as a clear sign of approval.
- The Saudi Crown Prince has even been quoted as telling Mahmoud Abbas to stop his tantrums and accept whatever deal he can from the Americans and Israelis.
The Turkish Minister of Religious Affairs fails to recognize that the Temple Mount’s status will not change under the Trump Plan. It will remain part of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf (a religious trust) under Jordanian custodianship, while Israeli security control will also continue.
Erbas, who is also a professor, has as his Twitter background a photo of Jerusalem, not Mecca, which shows how Turkey’s government is trying to adopt the Palestinian cause and make Jerusalem an “Islamic” cause to rally the Middle East against Israel.
It is part of an increasing Islamist rhetoric coming out of Turkey, where military campaigns have been compared to “jihad” and where Turkish-backed fighters call their enemies “atheists” and “infidels.” The rising rhetoric also began to suggest turning Hagia Sophia, the ancient church in Istanbul, into a mosque again.
The re-islamization of Turkey by Erdogan has been demonstrated by several developments.
- Most important has been his promotion of the Imam Hatip schools, which began as vocational schools but now have been infused with a heavy dose of religious training. These public schools are now attended by 1.5 million students; they are lavishly funded by the state, provided with at least double the support of regular public schools. And Erdogan sees them as key to his re-islamization efforts, to create a de-kemalized “pious generation.”
- He has also built nearly 20,000 new mosques in Turkey so far during his tenure, adding to the 75,000 that already exist.
- Under Erdogan, Turkey has been building thousands of mosques overseas, as well, from Accra, Ghana (the largest mosque in West Africa) to Maryland (an Islamic complex said to be the largest of its kind in the entire Western Hemisphere), to Bishkek, Kyrgystan (the largest mosque in Central Asia).
- In all of these mosques abroad, the sermons are supplied by the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs, and are identical to those heard, at the same time, in every Turkish neighborhood, village, and city.
Another example of re-Islamization is the attempt to turn back into mosques the two great edifices, richly decorated with Byzantine paintings and frescoes, that had originally been built as churches and then, after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, became mosques, only to be turned, after Ataturk’s secular reforms, into museums.
Turkey’s Supreme Court ruled in December 2019 that any structure that had once been a mosque must remain a mosque. The government has applied this ruling to the Church of St. Savior at Chora, which became a mosque – the Kariye Djami – after the Muslim conquest in 1453, but having ceased to be used as a mosque in 1948, became a museum in 1958. Now it has again become a mosque.
On July 10, Erdogan announced that the Hagia Sophia, for nearly a millennium the grandest church and largest building in Christendom, had also “reverted” to its status as a mosque.
Erbas wrote on June 10 that
“conquest expresses a great ideal and moral value in Islamic thought; it is a blessed struggle.” The word “struggle” here to bless the conquest of Istanbul appears to be used in the same religious context as the vow to “struggle” for Jerusalem.
The secular Turkish government had once eschewed these religious goals, but the current leaders of Turkey see their cause as increasingly religious.
Turkey has met with Iran and Malaysia and other countries to discuss an Islamic currency and Islamic television station over the last year.
As so often with Erdogan’s grand schemes, nothing has come of the “common Islamic currency” idea, nor is an “Islamic television station” in the offing. But it must have been fun to discuss such dreams, the same way that Muslims cheer themselves up by predicting that
“Europe will be taken over by Islam by 2030.” [Neither impossible nor improbable the way things are today.]
The comments by Turkey’s top religious official is an indication of how Turkey wants to oppose Israel’s plans for annexation. Erbas says that “those who occupy Jerusalem find courage because they see Islamic societies as scattered and weak.” This language is a reference to Israel and appears to hearken back to the period of Saladin, the Islamic leader who rallied the community against the Crusades.
Jerusalem has been a Jewish city, inhabited uninterruptedly by Jews, for more than 3,000 years. They are not “those who occupy Jerusalem,” but those who live, rather, in the city that has been identified with Jews and Judaism since 1000 B.C., when King David conquered the city and made it the capital of the Jewish kingdom.
But why should Erbas care about anything that happened in the pre-Islamic period - the Jahiliyya or Time of Ignorance, to people who, the Qur’an tells him, are as Infidels “the most vile of created beings”?
Erbas’s reference to the Jews finding courage from seeing Islamic communities as “scattered and weak” again brings to mind Erdogan’s earlier plan to remedy that, with a pan-Islamic army to be led by – who else? – Turkey.
The Turkish official appeared to channel the antisemitic comments that Malaysia’s leader Mahathir Mohamed is known for, accusing Israel of leading “the world to war and turmoil.” Mahathir had said in 2003 to the Organization of the Islamic Conference that “the Jews rule this world by proxy… not only are our governments divided, the Muslim ummah is also divided.”
The Turkish leadership now calls for Palestinian issues to be emphasized in education in Turkey and to strengthen the country’s connection to Al-Aqsa mosque and Jerusalem.
“Our president [Erdogan] advocates the loudest for the case of Jerusalem. Turkey will always be with all Muslims from East Turkestan [Xinjiang province in China] to Palestine.”
The speech didn’t appear to mention Israel, suggesting that Turkey’s officials are increasingly spreading a message denying that Israel exists, similar to the messaging that Tehran’s regime uses.
Turkey “will be with all Muslims”?
- Turkey is certainly not “with” the nearly 40 million Muslim Kurds in Syria, Iraq, Iran and, especially, in Turkey itself, who desire an independent Kurdistan, as was once promised the Kurds after World War I.
- Nor is Turkey “with” the Muslim Syrians fighting in the civil war on the side of Bashar Assad; the Turks have been steadily attacking them in Idlib Province.
- Nor has Erdogan, who likes to present himself as the defender of oppressed Muslims everywhere, “been with” the ten million Muslim Uighurs of China.
He was long silent about their mistreatment:
“Turkey under Erdoğan has consistently stood with the Chinese oppressors,” says Salih Hudayar, the founder and president of East Turkistan National Awakening Movement.
Then, after more than a year of silence, not Erdogan, but a low-level official in February 2019 chastised China: In a statement the Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said the reintroduction of internment camps and the systematic assimilation of Uighur Turks represent “a great shame for humanity. It is no longer a secret that more than 1 million Uighur Turks incurring arbitrary arrests are subjected to torture and political brainwashing.” And that was it. Turkey said no more about any mistreatment.
Worse still, when Erdogan was on a visit to China in July 2019, he said that
“Turkey firmly supports the One China policy, and it’s a fact that residents of all ethnicities in China’s Xinjiang are living happily amid China’s development and prosperity.”
Of course, he’s not been alone in his moral pusillanimity; other Muslim nations have also refused to complain about China’s re-education camps for Uighurs, choosing not to antagonize the Chinese whose investments they seek. But given his pose as Defender of the Faith, more had been expected of Erdogan.
How Hagia Sophia figures
in Erdogan's caliphate scheme
by Kamel Abderrahmani
Paris, July 14, 2020 (AsiaNews) - The Hagia Sophia (some ironically call it Lalla Safia)
[Lalla is a female honorific used by Berbers, Safia was the 11th wife of the prophet Mohammed] and has a historical path marked by war and peace, hatred and cohabitation.
From basilica, testimony of the Christianity of Constantinople, to mosque in Muslim domination; then as a museum during the establishment of secularism in Turkey, before returning to being a mosque in the era of Erdogan, self-proclaimed Emir of believers, the Caliph, Al Qaradawi, as the Islamist guru and spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood calls him.
During Kamal Mustapha Atatürk's rule, Hagia Sophia enjoyed the status of museum, a place where different cultures and religions encountered each other; a highly popular historic site visited by people from all over the planet and from different religions.
In other words, before 11 July 2020 - another date that marks the history of this temple - Hagia Sophia was a place where the possibility of coexistence between religions, as well as the tolerance of Islam was manifest – an Islam separate from politics.
As Ioan Sauca, a member of the Romanian Orthodox Church, wrote to Erdogan: "It was a good test of Turkey's attachment to secularism and its desire to leave past conflicts behind," and I would add: to establish the universality of human values.
The move to turn Hagia Sophia back into a mosque has an internal and external political dimension.
- Internal: Having lost Istanbul - which passed to the opposition in the last municipal elections - and having in mind the 2023 elections, Erdogan, this 21st century Caliph, is securing the support of a religious and fundamentalist electorate, nostalgic of the Ottoman era.
- External:
The Hagia Sophia affair is a new clear message from political Islam to the West: to dominate and subjugate, always and at all times!
In other words, Erdogan wants to test how far he can go to provoke and push the envelop! Silence in the face of his maneuvers would be seen as a form of abdication, "to say in front of everyone that he, Erdogan,is free to do what he likes and when he likes".
The Western world does not seem to grasp the fundamentals of this decision. The newspaper
Le Monde [widely reputed to be France's most sophisticated journal on international affairs] naively commented: "... a reconversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque will not prevent tourists of all religions from visiting it - there are many who visit the nearby Blue Mosque every day!" As if Hagia Sofia was in history only a simple museum, and as if Erdogan's fundamentalism stopped there!
The Turkish newspaper
Hurriyet reported that the "Sultan" asked the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Presidency of Religious Affairs to prepare the basilica for the first prayer which will take place on Friday 24 July.
In the parts of the mosque dedicated to prayer, a system of lights will be placed on the ground to hide the Christian mosaics and frescoes. On the agenda there is also a project for mosaics and frescoes to be covered with a curtain mechanism during the hours of prayer.
Erdogan’s move highlights the dangerous aspect of the exploitation of religion which, in one way or another, creates tensions and prepares the ground for new clashes of cultures that could be avoided. If political Islam dominates, peace disappears, and with it fraternity and respect for other religions.
Ibrahim Negm, of the Council of the Grand Mufti of Egypt, considers the Turkish president's decision "a dangerous political game". Furthermore, this measure gives a bad image of Islam and Muslims - already quite degraded - and [confirms that] every time Islamism comes to power in a democratic and secular state, it declares war on civilizations, cultures and other religions.
Taking his time, with pauses for silence between one word and another, Pope Francis told those gathered for the Angelus of July 12 that "My thought goes to Istanbul, I think of Hagia Sophia and I am very saddened". French newspapers have translated "saddened" to "afflicted" (AFP); "struck" (IMedia); "marked by pain" (Le Parisien); "upset" (France24).
All these translations appear euphemistic. But they are part of the lexical field of "pain, sadness, sorrow” found in the Italian word
addolorato.
[My first translation for the pope’s words would simply be, “I am pained”.] It is a sentiment that I share in all sincerity: in the perfidious game of religious conflict, Erdogan’s move on Hagia Sophia does nothing to promote peace among believers of different religions.
Hagia Sophia embodies old Istanbul –
a world at risk of disappearing
by David Abulafia
July 10, 2020
One of the most eloquent chapters in Edward Gibbons's vast book
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire comes as the book is drawing to an end, when Gibbon describes the fall of Constantinople to the Turks.
Centuries before, this had been the greatest city in Europe and the Mediterranean, but now it was a collection of shrunken and decaying villages whose emperor’s writ barely extended beyond its still impressive walls.
On May 29, 1453 Sultan Mehmet II made his triumphant entry into a defeated city now given over to the plunder of its treasures and the captivity of its inhabitants. Arriving at the great cathedral of Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia, the new master of what remained of the Eastern Roman Empire entered its cavernous interior and at once decreed its conversion into a mosque.
Then or on the following Friday a muezzin ascended to the roof of the church and called the faithful to prayer, and Mehmet performed his prostrations to Allah in front of what had been the high altar of Hagia Sophia.
Not so many hours had passed since this had been the scene of the final prayers for deliverance of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI; and not long before that the emperor had accepted the bait that had been dangled in front of his predecessors for 399 years, the re-union of the Orthodox Church to Rome and acceptance of the primacy of the See of St Peter.
The division could be traced back at least as far as the dramatic moment in 1054 when the pope’s bad-temp¬ered emissary Cardinal Humbert slammed a bull of excommunication on the high altar of this same cathedral, aimed at the patriarch but enveloping the emperor and by extension, the entire Greek Orthodox communion.
Today, Hagia Sophia is full of reminders of its Christian as well as its Muslim past. The Turks whitewashed or destroyed its mosaics, though sections have been uncovered; meanwhile the floor contains minbars (Muslim pulpits), while its four slender minarets make Aya Sofya, as it is now known, visible from miles away. Its massive dome became the model for mosques all over the Turkish empire, notably the Blue Mosque nearby.
Among the hordes of visitors who come to Aya Sofya today, you will find coachloads of Orthodox pilgrims from Greece, led by their bishops and priests, and you will also find Turkish women in their hijabs. Last time I was in the gift shop the music being played in the background sounded like the romances that used to be sung in Ladino, or Judaeo-Spanish, by the once numerous Jews of Istanbul, welcomed to the city by the sultans after their expulsion from Spain in 1492.
So I think of Aya Sofya as a place where the character of old Istanbul still has resonance: a city of Turkish Muslims, Greek Orthodox, Sephardic Jews (not to forget the Armenians and other comm¬unities), a world that has largely vanished, and is now at risk of entirely disappearing.
Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, combined intense nationalism and an insistence on the lay, westernised identity of the new republic. Life did not stay comfortable for the Greeks and most other minorities as Turkey emphasised its Turkic identity.
But this emphasis on the lay nature of the state was reflected in the conversion of Aya Sofya into a museum commemorating its Christian as well as its Muslim past. Now that President Erdoğan has moved decisively away from Ataturk’s position, and has emphasised again and again the Islamic nature of modern Turkey, the identity of Hagia Sophia is once again in the balance, with its conversionplans to convert it back into a mosque.
This would mark the end of a particular conception of the Turkish state that had been bringing the country respect and influence. It would speak for the “new Ottoman imperialism” that Erdoğan espouses in his attempt to gain primacy in the region.
Possessiveness about sacred places is all too common in the Middle East.
- The Temple Mount in Jerusalem arouses fierce antagonisms.
- So does the inside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with its many Christian sects marking out every inch.
- Claims are pressed for Muslim worship within the vast Great Mosque (now cathedral) of Córdoba.
The enormous virtue of the now superseded arrangements in Hagia Sophia was that, as a museum of the past, it was beyond the grasp of sects and factions.
David Abulafia won the UK's Wolfson History Prize 2020 for his book The Boundless Sea: a Human History of the Oceans.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/07/2020 00:01]