The Hagia Sophia that stands today was initially built as the cathedral for the capital of the Eastern Roman / Byzantine Empire, during the reign of Roman emperor Justinian I, it was the largest interior space and the first to employ a fully pendentive dome. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is also said to have changed the history of Architecture. Hagia Sophia became a mosque in 1453 with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.
It remained a Muslim house of worship until the early 20th century when the Turkish government secularised the Hagia Sophia and turned it into a museum in 1934. More than 50 years later, UNESCO included Hagia Sophia as part of its Historic Areas of Istanbul World Heritage Site.
The July 10 decision, does not mean that the Hagia Sophia will immediately close to secular visitors and become a full-time place of worship. Erdogan signed a decree annulling the Hagia Sophia’s museum status, reverting it to a mosque. The call to prayer was broadcast from the minarets shortly after the announcement of the change and rebroadcast by major Turkish news networks. The Hagia Sophia Museum’s social media channels were taken down the same day, with Erdogan announcing at a press conference that prayers would be held there from July 24, 2020.
A spokesperson said it would become a working mosque, open to anyone similar to the Parisian churches Sacré-Cœur and Notre-Dame. The spokesperson also said that the change would not affect the status of the Hagia Sophia as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and that "Christian icons" within it would continue to be protected.
Sharon Gerstel, a professor of Byzantine art and archaeology at UCLA, told National Geographic, that while the decision has provoked an international outcry, much remains unknown about what next steps may be taken with the status of Hagia Sophia.
"It still remains a symbol for all Orthodox Christians—it's the centre to which their compass points," Gerstel observed. "So any threat to the building will raise a lot of passions."
Concerns Over Art at Hagia Sophia
Many of the concerns regarding the change in status of the Hagia Sophia centres on the future of the stunning Byzantine paintings and mosaics that attracted 3.7 million visitors to the site last year. During its centuries as a mosque, many of the Christian-era interior decorations that violated Muslim proscriptions against the depiction of living beings were plastered or otherwise covered over, only to be revealed again during restoration work once the building became a secular museum.
It would be hard to imagine that they would try to obliterate the images. Most of the images, apart from the Virgin and Child in the apse and a few depictions of Christ and other biblical figures, are of members of the Byzantine Imperial Court. The Hagia Sophia is the top tourist destination in Turkey, so they would be very cautious of losing that revenue.
Erdogan as Ottoman Sultan
The decision was seen as a victory for Turkish president Erdogan, who has rejected the secularism of the Turkish Republic and advocates for restoring the great achievements of the Ottoman Empire. He has campaigned for years to see the architectural jewel of the country’s capital return to its role as a religious centre, and now, at a time when Turkey is stuck in international conflicts and struggling at home with the coronavirus pandemic and a weakening economy, the decision on Hagia Sophia takes on an even more outsized role.
“This is undoing another piece of the secular legacy that he’s wanted to get at,” says Stephen Flanagan, a senior political scientist at RAND Corporation. “It appeals to his more pious and nationalist base.”
The decision is Erdogan's worldview of reconstituting the Ottoman Empire in a way with himself as sultan.
History notes that the first act an Ottoman sultan would take when entering a Byzantine city would be to convert the main Christian cathedral into a house of Muslim worship. So, it’s not surprising Hagia Sophia is the building he’s focused on.
Controversy
Turning Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, has not only the alienated their secular citizens, but they’ve effectively annoyed hundreds of millions of Christians around the world, particularly of the Orthodox sect. Keeping Hagia Sophia as a museum which brings a sense of normality and peaceful relations just to turn it into a mosque again is a religious slight and have negative consequences on Turkish tourism and the Turkish lira, which has already significantly dropped under Erdogan’s rule because of his wasteful spending and militaristic ventures. Moreover the move itself is an ultimate slight to the remaining and small population of Orthodox Christians (Pontic Greeks and Armenians), who have already lost most of their homelands to genocide by the republic’s predecessor.
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