Hagia Sophia to be Converted Back to a Mosque

[ArchGuy1]

Turkish President Erdogan has issued a decree that the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul will be converted back to a mosque after a court ruling declared the building's conversion to a museum in the 1930's illegal. This comes despite international warnings not to convert the Hagia Sophia back to a mosque and the building is popular for both Christians and Muslims. When the monumental building was first built, it was used as a Byzantine church until the Ottoman invasion in 1453. Then the structure became a mosque and a symbol of Ottoman religious power until 1935 when it became a museum under Kemal Ataturk who was the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. UNESCO has threatened to withdraw the building's status as a World Heritage Site and the decision to convert the building back to a mosque is likely to cause tensions with the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Council of State also cancelled the 1934 decision that turned the Hagia Sophia into a museum. It is interesting to see how everything plays out.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.aljaze ... 19431.html

[McBane]

If it were a European museum being converted into a church, I wonder if there'd be more hoopla.

[Crawford]

That's really sad. Also stupid that they're removing the biggest tourist attraction in the country.

Too bad the world is currently full of idiot tinpot dictators. Isn't populism grand?

[Vlajos]

Ridiculous, so glad we visited before they fuck it up again. Haghia Sophia is one of the most important buildings in the entire world, and it was not built to be a mosque.

[flash110]

It was built by slaves for the christian church, in the mean time, the same christian church ravaged the city and after a few centuries the muslims follow suit.

Nothing against true principles of religions but the people who have some power will use anything for greed and clinch to that power but in these days, religion is not enough even in the muslim world, sooner or later people will boot Erdogan if he´s not able to give prosperity and stability

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by flash110

It was built by slaves for the christian church, in the mean time, the same christian church ravaged the city and after a few centuries the muslims follow suit.

Nothing against true principles of religions but the people who have some power will use anything for greed and clinch to that power but in these days, religion is not enough even in the muslim world, sooner or later people will boot Erdogan if he´s not able to give prosperity and stability

Wtf? Everyone had slaves in 600 AD. Pagans, Christians, Hindus, etc. How did the Christian Church ravage Constantinople?

[flash110]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Wtf? Everyone had slaves in 600 AD. Pagans, Christians, Hindus, etc. How did the Christian Church ravage Constantinople?

Not denying it was a common practice back then but that´s the way it was and the way most of those glorious buildings were built, it was not just art and ingenuity.

"The Sack of Constantinople occurred in April 1204 and marked the culmination of the Fourth Crusade. Crusader armies captured, looted, and destroyed parts of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire"

The french man who was sent by the pope among others to lead the crusades and who also led the sacks and atrocities to the city and its christian inhabitans was crowned in the same Hagia Sophia as emperor of Constantinople, so for me if they want to adore Allah or God in that place is not as relevant as the background of people using religion and believers to their own benefit and greed

[mrnyc]

way to dismantle ataturk's hard modernization work erdo guy.

last time time we went to turkey we were the first usa plane allowed back in after the okey dokey'd airport bombing and then the last plane out before the fake coup attempt.

so yeah, erdogan is not on my good side anyway.

and then there is this from 2019:

Washington - President Donald Trump emerged from hours of talks with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday to declare himself a "big fan" of Turkey's strongman leader.

dipshits.

[YegFan]

What about all the mosques in Spain that were converted to cathedrals....that's how things go...

[Oberhafenjunge]

I think the point is getting missed here!
This is not a discussion about converting a religious building into another religious building with all the moral and ideologic concerns about it. It's not about a Church that gets a Mosque. That days are over and the building we have today is the heritage of being a church hat has been transformed into a mosque already.
The discussion we are having now is a discussion about a secularized building getting transformed into a mosque again!
That a museum open to everybody which tried to preserve the cultural heritage of byzantine AND the ottoman transformation now is getting a religious use again and faces some constrains!

What about all the byzantinic-christian mosaics that have been unveiled and restored over the last decades? are they to be hidden because they are inappropriate in a mosque but must be preserved due to questions of heritage-preservation? What about the precious stone floor with the marble omphalion, now covered up again by carpets due to the mosque usage.
What about visitors and what are they allowed to visit and perceive of the building which consists of multi-cultured marks of history?

That is the kind of questions we have to ask.
To blame crusaders or ottoman conquerors or to discuss the moral implications of transforming an religious building of one kind to another kind is an obsolete duscussion because this is not the case!
We as a secular or multi-religious public just lost open access to an important piece of human heritage. And this heritage was shaped by a church being already transformed to a mosque and later opened to the public as a museum due to its universal importance!

[whatnext]

Erdogan is acting belligerently towards Greece and threatens peace in the region. Europe should push the Turks back into Asia Minor and reclaim Constantinople.

[Nightsky]

Erdogan is a horribel dictator! Glad to have visited Hagia Sophia already. During my visit in Istanbul in 2013 there were massive protest against Erdogan's plans to remove a park to build a shopping mall, and the police was very violent against the demonstrators. All the people on Taksim Square, including tourists had to flee from the police! Haven't seen anything like it in any other country. Except for that, we had a really great time in the beautiful city of Istanbul.

[Obadno]

Why not turn the Sophia back into in Orthodox Cathedral.

That being said I would expect Turkey to bubble out into more of a regional player in the coming decades as its rapidly becoming the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean.

Expect hostile diplomacy or worse with Greece, Bulgaria, Armenia, Cyprus maybe even Russia. Erdogan being the leader doesn't really matter its in Turkey's national interest to reclaim former Ottoman territory overtly or follow the Putin path of less outright conquest. If Greece wasn't in the EU I bet it would already be a Turkish vassal

[mrnyc]

who knows what erdogan is up to, but if the hagia sophia remains anything like the other istanbul mosques, this change shouldn't matter much to tourists.

you might have to wait around outside for call to prayer times for a bit before you can go in and visit, but that doesn't take very long.

at least that is my hope.

edit -- i see turkey is in an economic disaster as we speak, so erdy will want tourist money coming in.

[Stan31]

Sad, I wish I had visited it while it was a museum.