Should Hagia Sophia be converted into a mosque?

With the fate of Hagia Sophia, one of Istanbul’s most visited tourist attractions, hanging in the balance, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arınc angered Christians when he called to turn it into a mosque. “The days of a mosque being a museum are over,” he said on national television.

A former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, which served as the seat of the Patriarchate of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople. In 1935, Hagia Sophia opened as a museum.

With his statement, Arınc, who oversees policy toward historical buildings that once belonged to religious minorities, pitted the country’s Orthodox Christian community against Turkey’s Islamist-rooted government. Greece has also reacted.

In an op-ed published in Greece’s daily Kathimerini, Evangelos Venetis of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) says that converting Hagia Sophia (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) from a museum into a mosque “cannot be seen as anything but a departure from the political moderation and cultural equilibrium represented by the museum as a bridge between Hagia Sophia’s Christian and Muslim pasts”. According to Venetis, this departure from moderation would also imply the creation of a cultural and political chain reaction on an international level.

“We do hope that the Turkish government will reconsider and have to think very seriously,” said Metropolitan Genadios of Sassima, a senior official in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, one of the world’s 14 autocephalous Orthodox Christian communities.

“We are surprised and not surprised with this statement,” he added. ”I don’t want to believe our Turkish authorities said this in a concrete way or that they realised the consequences of this decision to open Hagia Sophia as a place of worship [for Muslims]. Hagia Sophia, for Christians and [the] Orthodox… represents for us a monument of Christianity.”

However, with elections in Turkey just 18 months away, Arnc’s statement should come as no surprise. Even Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has entered colourful footnotes about the country’s Ottoman past into his speeches in an effort to court religious and nationalist voters.

If the matter is not resolved, some social and political analysts believe the fate of Hagia Sophia could develop into a controversy over Greece and Turkey (long-time rivals) and religious freedom.

via Should Hagia Sophia be converted into a mosque? | neurope.eu.