The Reconversion of the Hagia Sophia: Silences and Unheard Voices

Not only parts of the European public, but also many secularly-oriented citizens in Turkey perceive the AKP's Islamization politics and its flirtation with neo-imperial political imaginaries as a threat.¹ Often the resulting unease is connected to the erosion of democracy and continued state repression against opposition members of various factions, which have–as in other countries with rightwing populist leadership–divided the country. In reaction to the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque in July 2020, other patterns of interpretation were foregrounded in Turkey. Critical voices mostly saw the act as a populist attempt to divert attention from an economic crisis that has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, steadily declining poll ratings, and signs of disintegration within the ruling party AKP. The reconversion was intended to bind right-wing conservative and nationalist milieus more closely to Erdoğan and the AKP. Others articulate their objections from a pluralist perspective on history and in solidarity with religious minorities—whose numbers have shrunk considerably, but who are still connected to memories of a more diverse past. Those who approach the issue from this perspective defend Hagia Sophia's status as a museum, or even advocate for the return of the building to the Greek Orthodox Church (e.g., member of parliament Hüda Kaya from the pro-Kurdish HDP).These latter voices were marginal, however, and I take this as prompt to reflect on the subdued voices and silences in the public debate on the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia.

Beyond Muslims, one might expect the Greek Orthodox community of the country to lay claim to the building. After all, for more than half its existence, the building served as an Orthodox cathedral. Prominent Orthodox leaders from outside the country raised their concerns about the reconversion of Hagia Sophia, and Patriarch Bartholomeus joined their chorus, interpreting it, together with the conversion of the Chora Church one month later, as an "offense to the identity, history, and culture" of the Orthodox community.² Besides a few short statements by the patriarch, however, the Orthodox community of Turkey remained largely silent. This needs to be understood against the background of the precarious situation of the official minorities in the country. Following its painful experiences with discriminatory state policies and periodic violence in the course of the republic, such as the anti-Christian pogrom in Istanbul in 1955, the Greek Orthodox minority has shrunk to no more than a few thousand people. Its members tend to refrain from public political engagement. Furthermore, the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia occurred alongside that of other Byzantine church-mosques that had been secularized in the republic, including the Hagia Sophia in Trabzon in 2012, and the Chora Church in Istanbul in August of 2020. These acts, accompanied by increasing tensions with Greece in the latest conflict concerning sovereignty rights in the Mediterranean Sea, increased existing anxieties that any resulting conflict could trigger reprisals against the Greek Orthodox minority. Considering the circumstances, the silence of the Greek-Orthodox community is not surprising.

The reconversion of the Hagia Sophia was staged as a reenactment of the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Istanbul and the subsequent conversion of the building into a mosque. The rhetoric of gaza in the sense of conquest of non-Muslim lands contributed to the Islamic-nationalist effervescence that encompassed the reconversion event. This spirit of conquest reached its climax when Ali Erbaş, head of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, the highest formal Islamic authority in the country, delivered the sermon at the inaugural Friday prayer in the reconverted Hagia Sophia with a sword in his hands. To be sure, no direct threats were voiced against the Greek Orthodox community. It seems unlikely that they were even much on the minds of those celebrating. Although the reconversion of former churches-mosques-museums into mosques is staged as the completion of an incomplete conquest, with Erdoğan presented as quasi-messianic figure renewing the work of Fatih (the Conqueror) Sultan Mehmed, the Greek Orthodox...