On Friday, hearing an appeal by an Islamic NGO, Turkey’s top administrative court ruled that Istanbul’s grandest monument, the Hagia Sophia...
On Friday, hearing an appeal by an Islamic NGO, Turkey’s top administrative court ruled that Istanbul’s grandest monument, the Hagia Sophia, will no longer be a museum.
The Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom” in Greek) has long carried the distinct whiff of both a mosque and a church. Built as a church by Justinian I in the sixth century, the cathedral figured prominently on the Christian map until the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmet, converted it into a mosque in 1453.
It was just 85 years ago that Kamal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic, declared that the structure would used as a museum. He wanted to Turkey to shake off the memory of defeat in World War I and its nostalgia for the Ottoman empire and push the country into another phase of its evolution.
It was a deliberate act to make the Hagia Sophia a glorious symbol of the modern and secular character that Ataturk envisaged for Turkey – a place where the passions of faith alone would not inform or influence the functioning of a state.
Last month, Reccip Erdogan, Turkey’s president of more than two decades, declared that Turkish Muslims would be able to offer namaz in the Hagia Sophia on July 15, the...
