Father Milovan Katanic has reposted an article from the Washington Times which reports that the Turkish Parliament is considering reconverting the Hagia Sophia, one of Christendom's greatest treasures, into a mosque. At present, the site is operated as a museum.
Completed c. 360 AD, the great cathedral served as the center of Eastern Christianity for over a thousand years. With the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 AD, the edifice was converted for use as an Islamic place of worship. Accordingly, four minarets were added to accommodate muezzins who recite the adhan, or call to prayer, five times each day. When the secular Turkish Republic was established at the close of the First World War, the government of General Ataturk transformed the Hagia Sophia into a museum, in part to pacify the Greek Orthodox faction which had long protested persecution at the hands of the Turkish Muslim majority.
In recent years, secular forces in Turkey have seemed to be on the retreat as Islamic fundamentalists and more "traditional" political parties rise to power. A revitalized Turkish conservatism, which looks to the "more Islamic" political movements across the Middle East, has already accomplished radical reforms that would have been unimaginable only a short while ago. The headscarf, for example, is now allowed in public institutions such as schools, as Reuters reports. In short, laicite is in retreat.
On some level, I am sympathetic to Turkish Muslims who feel that their religion and culture is threatened by the secular, republican forces that have dominated domestic politics since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. As the political experience in France can attest, aggressive republicanism and laicism can be just as oppressive and obnoxious to liberty as the most oppressive monarchial or theocratic regime. That being said, conservative Turkish politicians aren't really interested in accommodating religious practice and expression as we do in the United States. Instead, as Fr. Milovan seems to suggest, they are motivated by "neo-Ottoman" aspirations. Their goal is to use the power of the State to enforce religious law and practices, and reestablish, for all intents and purposes, an empire. (This is somewhat analogous to the political situation in the Russian Federation, where Putin and Russian nationalists wish to retain the sphere of influence enjoyed by the Soviet government.)
This is most unfortunate. And it provides a perfect example of how intoxicating political power can be. As the Lord Acton suggested: "power tends to corrupt." Any movement that bemoans a lack of liberty, if given the right opportunity, will appropriate political power to itself only to aggress and oppress those formerly in power. It is, as they say, a vicious cycle.
There is also little doubt that this move is another effort to stamp out the great Christian culture that once thrived along the Bosphorus. So frequently the battled is couched in terms of ethnicity: Greek vs. Turk. But the heart of the matter concerns religion. A few years ago, 60 Minutes ran a superb video interview with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. In the final scene, he described his situation, and the way he feels, with a haunting word: "Crucified." The status of the Orthodox is pitiful in Turkey. They truly are treated as second-class citizens. The restoration of the Hagia Sophia and its reconversion into a mosque will openly pour salt into an already ugly and festering wound. It will ignite tension between Turks and those few Greek who remain in the area. And, most importantly of all, it will represent another step towards an increasingly oppressive Turkish state.
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