More Than A Building – Why Religious Minorities Are Concerned About The Hagia Sophia Conversion

The Hagia Sophia, once the cathedral of the ancient city of Byzantium, is being converted into a Mosque. The move comes after Turkey’s Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, revoked its status as a museum. This opened the door for it to be converted to a Mosque. The Council of State’s decision followed another similar decision in November 2019 which permitted the Chora (Kariye) Museum, a former Greek Orthodox church, to be converted back into a mosque. In doing so, it set a precedent for the conversion of the Hagia Sophia. While the Hagia Sophia is a religiously contested space, the recent decision is highly controversial as it was born from a desire to find favor with Turkey’s voters.

Built by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, the Hagia Sophia severed as a Greek Orthodox cathedral before it was converted into a mosque by the Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453. Over the past 85 years, the Hagia Sophia was used as a museum, a symbol of Turkey’s secularism, after a decree of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the constitutionally secular Republic of Turkey.

The consequence of converting the Hagia Sophia reaches further than the change to its use. Indeed, the conversion is expected to have a profound effect on religious minorities in Turkey and in the Middle East more broadly. In the days since the decision, several experts have sent warnings on what minorities should expect.

Dr Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir, a research associate at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Anthropology warned that “Turkey already has a problematic track record when it comes to minority rights and freedom of religion or belief… It can embolden extremists to intensify their campaign of forced conversion and destruction of minority heritage sites.” Nury Turkel, Commissioner with USCIRF, commented that, “This decision comes at a time of increased fear and insecurity due to recent attacks on churches and other threats against religious and ethnic minorities and will only add to their sense of marginalization under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government.”

Indeed, in its 2020 Annual Report, USCIRF recommended that the U.S. State Department place Turkey on its Special Watch List for engaging in or tolerating severe religious freedom violations. As identified by USCIRF, religious minorities in Turkey have expressed concerns that “governmental rhetoric and policies contributed to an increasingly hostile environment and implicitly encouraged acts of societal aggression and violence. Government officials and politicians continued to propagate expressions of anti-Semitism and hate speech, and no progress was made during the year to repeal Turkey’s blasphemy law or to provide an alternative to mandatory military service and permit conscientious objection.” In 2019, Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek religious and cultural sites, including numerous cemeteries, faced severe damage or destruction—often due to vandalism or state-endorsed construction projects.

The move poses renewed threats to religious minorities in the region. Only a few months ago, on May 29, 2020, Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking, sent a chilling warning that “Turkish-backed militias are silently carrying out a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Yazidis in Afrin, Syria. They are kidnapping women, killing civilians, and destroying houses and shrines.” However, religious minorities are not the only groups concerned about the controversial move. Many secular Turks fear that this is the first step towards a move away from secularism. This fear is substantiated by the ever-growing rhetoric of conquest. What is going to be next, it is unclear. However, it is clear that the conversion of the Hagia Sophia is more than converting a building.