The hypocrisy of Turkey and Pakistan’s Islamophobia claims

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a sucker for conquest symbolism. As Covid-19 restrictions were being eased this year, he ensured that mosques reopened on 29 May to coincide with the 567^th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. The Turkish president has now gone on to sign a decree converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque, just in time for the fourth anniversary of the failed coup against him, which symbolises his own conquest over Turkey’s military and judiciary.

For Erdogan, the conversion of Hagia Sophia – which he has described as a ‘souvenir’ from the Ottoman conquest – has been a lifelong aspiration. As a member of the Islamist Welfare Party (RP) in the 80s and 90s, and as mayor of Istanbul, his religionist ambitions have long included Hagia Sophia’s transformation.

But it wasn’t until March 2019, following the anti-Muslim terror attack in Christchurch, and his own party’s poor showing in the polls ahead of local elections, that Erdogan made the conversion of Hagia Sophia a political rallying cry.