Crowds of Muslim worshippers prayed Friday at Istanbul’s revered Hagia Sophia for the first time since President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared it would be transformed from a museum into a mosque — a decision that has delighted his pious Muslim supporters even as Christian leaders warned the conversion could be religiously divisive.
Thousands of people — including the president and senior cabinet ministers — attended the ceremony in Istanbul’s historic Fatih district, as a police helicopter circled overhead.
Worshippers crammed into an outside courtyard and the surrounding streets, prompting the Istanbul governor to close the area due to concerns over the coronavirus.
In footage aired on Turkish news channels, crowds could be seen overwhelming police checkpoints to reach the mosque. A limited number of people were allowed into the building for the prayers. As part of the service, Erdogan recited verses from the Quran.
Inaugurated in the Byzantine era, the nearly 1500-year old building overlooking the Bosporus was the largest church in the Christian world for nearly a millennium, then an Ottoman mosque for hundreds of years before it was transformed into a museum in 1934 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the secularizing founder of the Turkish republic.
Earlier this month, Turkey’s top administrative court ruled to annul Hagia Sophia’s status as a museum, in a victory for Turkish Islamists and nationalists who had long pushed for the site’s conversion to a mosque. Some Christian religious leaders, including Pope Francis, expressed concern, and the Trump administration said it was “disappointed” by Turkey’s decision.
Some of the sharpest criticism came from Audrey Azoulay, the director-general of UNESCO, who said in a statement earlier this month that she “deeply regrets” the decision to change the status of the Hagia Sophia, or “Holy Wisdom” in Greek.
“Hagia Sophia is an architectural masterpiece and a unique testimony to interactions between Europe and Asia over the centuries. Its status as a museum reflects the universal nature of its heritage, and makes it a powerful symbol for dialogue,” Azoulay said.
Erdogan said that the mosque — until recently Turkey’s most visited museum — would remain open to people from around the world and that admission to the mosque would be free.
Photographs released by Erdogan’s office on Thursday, during a visit by the president and his wife, Emine Erdogan, showed the physical changes underway as the building was prepared for congregational prayers. Thousands of square feet of turquoise carpeting had been laid on the marble floors, and white curtains were stretched over portions of the ceiling containing Christian mosaics, which would remain covered during prayer times.
“Dear believers, what could be more sorrowful than a mosque whose minarets are silent?” Religious Affairs Minister Ali Erbas said during his sermon at the mosque Friday. Washington Post
