Turkey: Erdogan Pledges to Convert Byzantine Cathedral Hagia Sophia into a Mosque

by Uzay Bulut • April 7, 2019 at 5:00 am

"When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, virtually all of the city's surviving cathedrals and churches were — after being desecrated and thoroughly plundered — forcibly seized and turned over to the Turks' religious establishment to be converted to mosques and used as Muslim properties." — Dr. Alexandros K. Kyrou, professor of history, Salem State University.
Nine other former Hagia Sophia churches are either being used as mosques already or are in the process of being renovated for this purpose. The youngest of these, in Trabzon, was converted into a mosque in 2013. — Ersoy Soydan, assistant professor of communications at Kastamonu University and author of Churches and Monasteries in Turkey
Sadly, Turkey's Greek community as a whole, let alone that of Istanbul by itself, is not sizeable enough to oppose or protest infringements on their historic cathedral. The 1914-1923 genocide of Greek Christians in Anatolia, and subsequent atrocities against the survivors -- such as the 1955 anti-Greek pogroms in Istanbul -- have almost completely wiped out the region's Greek populace.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently announced plans to convert the Hagia Sophia museum, originally a Byzantine cathedral, into a mosque. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Addressing a rally ahead of the March 31 municipal elections in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced plans to convert the Hagia Sophia museum, originally a Byzantine cathedral, into a mosque.

Erdogan repeated this statement the following day during a televised interview. "Hagia Sophia will no longer be called a museum," he declared. "Its status will change. We will call it a mosque."

Erdogan took the opportunity to respond to foreign officials critical of his intention to violate the former church by venting against Israel.

"Those who remain silent when Al Aqsa mosque is attacked, trampled [and] its windows smashed cannot tell us what to do about the status of Hagia Sophia," he said, referring to clashes between Palestinian-Arab rioters and Israeli police on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Judaism and the location of the Al Aqsa mosque.

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The Floods, the Mullahs and the Cinderella in Boots

by Amir Taheri • April 7, 2019 at 4:00 am

The natural disaster has also revealed some of the fundamental weaknesses of a dysfunctional system that, having devoted its principal resources and much of its energies to promoting a weird ideology, seems to be incapable of coping with basic tasks of a normal nation-state.
President Hassan Rouhani, spending a week-long holiday in the island resort of Qishm, appeared beyond reach. "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei, too busy with a poetry gathering, was unavailable for days and found it unnecessary even to comment.
Iranians watched in amazement as special units of the regular army moved to save lives, prevent floods from spreading further, reopen roads and even start repairing some of the damage. Buoyed by the presence of regular army units, thousands of volunteers also poured in to help deal with the disaster. Contacts across Iran describe the solidarity shown by average citizens as "exemplary", implying that Iran deserves a better government.

Flooding in Poldokhtar, in Iran's Lorestan province, on April 2, 2019. (Image source: Hamid Vakili/Mehr News/Wikimedia Commons)

It may take weeks if not months before the full facts of the current nationwide floods in Iran are established. But we already know that the floods represent one of the biggest natural disasters Iran has suffered in half a century.

According to provisional data from the Islamic Red Crescent, the floods struck in over 300 towns and cities in 22 of Iran's 31 provinces, affecting 18.5 million people, almost a quarter of the nation's total population. Some 1.2 million people have been made homeless, at least temporarily.

The damage done to infrastructure across the nation is equally massive. With 141 rivers in flood and some 500 landslides over 3,000 kilometers of roads and highways connecting thousands of villages, 78 medium or large cities have been partly or totally destroyed.

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