Turkey Court: ‘Istanbul’s Main Former Cathedral Turned Into Mosque’

By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News

(Worthy News) – Turkey’s top administrative court decided Friday that the Byzantine Empire’s main cathedral, which eventually became a museum, can be converted back into a mosque. Christian leaders condemned Friday’s ruling.

The ruling ended uncertainty over the future of Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia, and it came as big victory for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he seeks to increase his conservative Islamic base.

The Council of State court noted that a 1934 decision to convert what was then a mosque into the museum was unlawful. That was paving the way for its restoration as an Islamic place of worship despite international concerns.

“The cabinet decision in 1934 that ended its use as a mosque and defined it as a museum did not comply with laws,” the Council of State said, the news agency reported.

The president had proposed restoring the UNESCO World Heritage site into a mosque. But it placed the almost 1,500-year-old building at the center of a struggle between those who want to preserve Turkey’s secular roots and the president’s aspirations.

MASSIVE STRUCTURE

The sixth-century structure was the Byzantine Empire’s main cathedral before it was changed into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic in the 20th century, then turned the majestic domed building into a museum that attracts millions of tourists each year.

The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of some 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide and based in Istanbul, expressed concern.

Ahead of the ruling, he warned that converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque would “disappoint millions of Christians around the world” and will “fracture” the East and West.

“As [a] museum, Hagia Sophia can function as place and symbol of encounter, dialogue and peaceful coexistence of peoples and cultures, mutual understanding and solidarity between Christianity and Islam,” he said in a statement.

CHRISTIAN LEGISLATOR

Tuma Celik, a Syriac Christian and a member of Parliament with the Turkish pro-Kurdish party HDP, reportedly said he was against turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque. “This court decision has made what we all know and experience in reality very clear that today’s Turkey is not secular.”

It comes amid concerns about the growing pressure on Turkey’s tiny Christian community and the reported expulsion of foreign Christians from the mainly Muslim country.

Critics argue that the conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a museum in the 1930s was part of a broader effort by Ataturk’s government to secularize the country. Today, Erdogan is doing the opposite, Christians and other critics claim.

Turkey’s Christian community is believed to number at least 100,000 people, a tiny fraction in a nation of roughly 82 million.

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