Erdogan, Hagia Sophia and the rebirth of an Islamic Turkey

Here in Greece the temperature is rising. As July rolls on, the heat thickens: people become irritable in 40 degrees. Now they have even more reason for anger. Last Friday, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia would open for Muslim prayers as a mosque. He made the announcement after a Turkish court ruled that Kemal Atatürk’s 1934 conversion of it to a museum was illegal.

Hagia Sophia is both historic and religiously central to millions of people. Completed in 537, it served first as the cathedral of Constantinople and stood as an Orthodox church until the Fourth Crusade in 1204, when Christian knights from the west converted it to a Roman Catholic church. This was a move swiftly reversed with the return of the Byzantine Empire in 1261. Unsurprisingly, it has loomed large in the spiritual imagination for Christians of all stripes ever since. On hearing the news Pope Francis was blunt: ‘My thoughts go to Istanbul.