“We currently stand next to the Hagia Sophia mosque,” so said Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc last month during a dedication of a museum of Caucasus rugs and carpets next to the Istanbul landmark, according to the Religion News Service (RNS).
This speech was one in a line of recent statements, from offhand remarks to outright demands that the Hagia Sophia (also known as the “Church of Saint Wisdom” or “Divine Wisdom”) be converted from a museum and local attraction back into a mosque.
“We are looking at a sad Hagia Sophia but hopefully we will see it smiling again soon,” Arinc added.
One of the imams of the nearby Sultan Ahmet Mosque (locally known as the ‘Blue Mosque’) also reportedly preached a sermon that said its conversion must take place.
Although this has been an ongoing concern for many years, recent events have brought the issue into sharper focus. A campaign from the National Turkish Student Association has been targeting the issue aggressively in recent months. Also, there have been a number of successful recent attempts to convert former Byzantine churches into mosques. Arinc, in his speech, mentioned two churches that had recently been converted, one in Trabzon in the northeast and another in Iznik near Istanbul.
The most notable case of this however has yet to be completed, the Monastery of Stoudios, the largest Byzantine church in Istanbul, which will be converted into a mosque next year.
Engin Akyurek, a professor of Byzantine art at Istanbul University, has said in an RNS article this would be a disastrous loss to history. “To use this building for some function, a mosque or anything else, would mean to reconstruct almost 80% of the building … it will not be a fifth-century building anymore. It will be a catastrophe for that building.”
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