DDHK News, Turkey - Europeans call it Hagia Sophia. Turkey named Aya Sofia. For 900 years, Hagia Sophia was a church. After Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror captured Constantiopel, this building - for the next 500 years - became the Ayasofya Mosque.
Today, the Hagia Sophia or Ayasofya is a museum. The new status of the building was given after Turkey was no longer an Islamic state. Museum symbolizes modern Turkish secularism.
Last week, to be precise Saturday (24/5), tens of thousands of Muslims gathered at Hagia Sophia or Ayasofya to ask Recep Tayyip Erdogan - Turkey's current prime minister - to re-function the building as a mosque.
"This is a serious push to break the Ayasofya chain," said Salih Turan, head of the Anatolian Youth Association, which collected 15 million signatures from across Turkey for the petition to turn Ayasofya back into a mosque.
Ayasofya, according to Turan, is a symbol of the Islamic world and the conquest of Istanbul. Without capturing Ayasofya, conquest is incomplete.
"We fail to respect Sultan Mehmet's efforts," he said, citing a 15th century deed signed by Sultan Mehmeh that anyone who changes Ayasofya's function other than a mosque is a sin.
Hagia Sophia was built in 537 by Emperor Justinian, ruler of Rome Binzantium whose territory stretched from Spain to the Middle East. Hagia Sophia is a Greek word which means 'divine wisdom'.
For 900 years the Hagia Sofia was an incomparable building, and stood in the middle of a thick-walled city that was difficult for anyone to penetrate, until Sultan Mehmet conquered it in 1453. Sultah Mehmet turned the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, but preserved all the cultural ornaments in it.
In 1934 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, leader of modern secular Turkey, turned the building into a museum. Now, Hagia Sophia or Ayasofya is one of Turkey's tourist attractions. Visited not only by Muslims, but also Christians.
New Interests
In recent years, along with the development of an Islamic identity under Erdogan, there has been a renewed interest among Turkish Muslims in performing prayers at Ayasofya. Before Erdogan emerged, Turkey was more Western-oriented, and scorned the past of the Ottoman Empire.
Erdogan promoted the Celebration of the Conquest of Constantinople, the city that is now Istanbul. "The conquest of Constantinople is the removal of the shackles of the door in the heart," said Erdogan, marking the 561th anniversary of Byzantine defeat. "Civilization comes with conquest."
A film, depicting the takeover of Constantiopel by Muslim forces, was made in 2012 and released under the title Conquest 1453. Millions of Turkish Muslims watched this film. Another version of the film was shown at the museum under the title Panoramas 1453.
Ibrahim Kalin, Erdogan's senior adviser, said there were no plans to turn Ayasofya back into a mosque. Ayasofya, or Hagia Sophia, has been open to public and visited by people of various religions from all over the world.
Last year, Erdogan also said he would not consider proposing to turn Ayasofya back into a mosque. The reason is that the Sultah Mehmed Mosque - built in the 17th century - is often empty. He also said Istanbul already has 3.000 mosques, so there is no need to convert Ayasofya as a mosque.
However, Turkish Muslims believe that making the Hagia Sophia a museum is nothing more than degrading Sultan Mehmet's merits. Thousands of Turkish Muslims responded to this statement. They gathered at the Hagia Sophia, said the call to prayer in the courtyard of the mosque, and prayed in congregation.
Campaigns are also carried out on social media. Politicians took advantage of the situation, by proposing a law allowing Muslims to pray at Ayasofya. Another politician said that if Erdogan responded positively to the wishes of Turkish Muslims, he would easily become president.
Outside Turkey, Christian communities have condemned this campaign. An International Religious Freedom commission in the US, for example, has criticized the move to turn the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. The change, he said, would only evoke a memory of the persecution of Christians in Constantinople.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians, said the Hagia Sophia was home to a museum. "If it has to be turned into a place of worship, one thing that cannot be forgotten is that it was built for a church," he said. "It is important that the place is not a church or a mosque."
As a museum, the Hagia Sophia or Ayasofya is visited by 3,3 million tourists annually. Turkey does not know how much foreign exchange has been extracted. If the place is converted back into a mosque, the only tourists who come will be Muslims, and the number will not reach 3,3 million. (ini.com). *
