• Please do not hurry to bring article in main namespace
• This draft article mainly intends to focus on academic and may be some intellectual discourse in the media about remosqueing of Hagia Sophia.
• Title is tentative discuss alternate options on the talk page
• Whether to merge in main Article Hagia Sophia or keep it independent we shall decide after reasonable addition of content, presently just help expand the content.
• Alternate terms for re-mosqueing used are conversion, reversion or just mosqueing but term re-mosqueing seems to depict trajectory more meticulously of course one can discuss the same on talk page
• Scope includes
• a) the tension between the anti-imperialist discourse and Hagia Sophia’s Conversions
• b) reflections on the Political, Temporal, and Aesthetic Dimensions of Heritage that accompanied the museum’s re conversion
• c) the language and symbolism of (re)conquest that simultaneously marked the opening celebrations.

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Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) was a Late Antique Christian place of worship in Istanbul, designed by the Greek geometers Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles at the order of the eastern Roman emperor Justinian I between 532 and 537.^[1] After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in1453 AD, it was converted into a mosque. In 1935, under the direction of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the secular Republic of Turkey established it as a museum. The building was reconverted into a mosque with Friday prayers on 24 July 2020 under the direction of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.^[2]

History

(Add history of how it became a museum. This can be removed if merged back into main article)

The site of the Hagia Sophia since 360 CE was a church up until and including its third construction when it was built into its current form in 534 CE.^[3][4][5][6] Following the Fall of Constantinople Sultan Mehmed II of the Ottoman Empire entered the city and performed the Friday prayer and khutbah (sermon) in Hagia Sophia, and this action marked the official conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque.^[7] One of his first acts was the waqf and the preamble states to convert all the churches into mosques and colleges.^[8] The Ottoman Empire used it as a mosque thereafter.^{[citation needed]}

Following the Treaty of Sèvres after WWII, it would lead to the Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the Turkish War of Independence, the Turkish National Movement's Grand National Assembly voted to separate the caliphate from the sultanate and abolished the latter on 1 November 1922. The Treaty of Lausanne (1923) ended all conflict and replaced previous treaties to constitute modern Turkey.^[9][10] The caliphate was abolished in 1924.

In November 1934, Turkey's Council of Ministers voted to make the Hagia Sophia a museum.^[11] The cost to repair it, as a favour to the Greeks, as a signal to Europe and the West, and the influence of Byzantinist Thomas Whittemore are reasons why it became a museum.^[11]

Reconversion into a mosque

Since 2018, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had spoken of reverting the status of the Hagia Sophia back to a mosque.^[12] On 31 March 2018 Erdoğan recited the first verse of the Quran in the Hagia Sophia, dedicating the prayer to the "souls of all who left us this work as inheritance, especially Istanbul's conqueror," strengthening the political movement to make the buildung a mosque once again, thus reversing Kemal Attaturk's measure of turning the Hagia Sophia into a secular museum.^[13] In May 2018, during the 567th anniversary of the conquest of Constantinople, passages from the Quran were read in the Hagia Sophia.^[14][15]

In early July 2020, the Council of State of Turkey annulled the Cabinet's 1934 decision to establish the museum, revoking the monument's status, and a subsequent decree by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered the reclassification of Hagia Sophia as a mosque.^[16][17][18] According to Turkish Law on Endowments, a property should be used according to the function written in its founding document (waqfiye).^[19] The 1934 decree was ruled to be unlawful under both Ottoman and Turkish law, as Hagia Sophia's waqf, endowed by Sultan Mehmed, had designated the site a mosque; proponents of the decision argued the Hagia Sophia was the personal property of the sultan.^[20][21][22]

Despite secular and global criticism, Erdoğan signed a decree annulling the Hagia Sophia's museum status, reverting it to a mosque.^[23][24] The mosque opened for Friday prayers on 24 July 2020, the 97th anniversary of the signature of the Treaty of Lausanne, which reversed many of the territorial losses Turkey incurred after World War I's Treaty of Sèvres, including ending the Allies' occupation of Constantinople, following the victory of the Turkish Republic in the Turkish War of Independence.^[25][26]

This redesignation drew condemnation from the Turkish opposition, UNESCO, the World Council of Churches, the International Association of Byzantine Studies, and many international leaders.^{[27][28][29][30][31]}

Academic studies

Hina Saleem (2021) study

A 2021 study led by Hina Saleem analyzed headlines of several prominent Western publications reporting on the reconversion, namely from the Anglo-American sphere; these included "The Hagia Sophia Was a Cathedral, a Mosque, and a Museum. It's Converting Again" (The New York Times, July 22, 2022), "Converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque is an act of cultural cleansing" (The Washington Post, July 15, 2020), "Turkey Retreats From Modernity" (The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2020), "Turkey’s president is playing religious politics" (The Economist, July 11, 2020), and "Turning the iconic Hagia Sophia into a mosque is a tragedy for travelers" (The Telegraph, July 13, 2020).^[32]

Saleem's study argued that the headlines demonstrate a near-unanimous consensus among Western news media that Hagia Sophia’s conversion to a mosque represents Turkey's retreat from Western notions of modernity. According to Saleem, the headlines reflect a widespread belief that Turks are intolerant, which in turn comports with the view that Muslims as a whole are a fundamentalist threat to the world. The study concluded that these Western attitudes are consistent with Edward Said's observations in his 1978 book, Orientalism, namely that Islamic and "Eastern" cultures are commonly depicted in a critical and contemptuous manner reflective of Western imperialist interactions.^[32]

Alex Corlu study

According to Alex Corlu, the remosqueing was the effect of a long campaign, most lately led by Turkey's ruling party, the AKP. Corlu says when President Erdoğan appealed for the reconversion of Hagia Sophia as a “return to its origin” (aslına rücu), Erdoğan resumed another recontextualization of the Hagia Sophia monument and the elevation of only one of many histories of Turkey.^[33]

Corlu says while removal of the monument’s museum status has been bragged as proof of Turkey’s sovereignty and a response to the past injustice of turning into museum (musealiza) under western pressure,” the reconversion is also phrased in the language of the “right of the sword,” and symbolism that combines ethnonationalist rhetoric and religious hegemony.^[33]

Corlu says, since long some historians have been pointing out that the (the first 1493) conversion of Ayasofya into the royal mosque by Sultan Mehmed II did not constitute an erasure, but, rather, was a re-consecration of the building, and its inclusion—together with that of Eastern Roman imperial heritage—into the then emerging Ottoman context.^[33] Corlu says that Hagia Sophia represents a shared heritage and collective memory, there had also been proposals for sharing the building in practice, opening Hagia Sophia for prayers for different communities, on various Christian and Islamic holidays and also sharing with secularity.^[33]

Corlu says over the past decade, scholars of the church in the Byzantine era—like Bissera Pentcheva—have begun to understand the intangible heritage of Hagia Sophia, which gives a sensorial experience of the past and goes beyond symbolism and language. In the subsequent Ottoman period Byzantine legacies are both persevered and shied in unexpected ways. For instance, a well-known anecdote: the conquering Sultan Mehmed II upon seeing the great Christian church, apparently thought over the transience of earthly power, but then decided to immortalize himself by converting the Hagia Sophia into his royal mosque.^[33]

Media influence

In the spring of 2020 during Covid's first lockdown, a Turkish TV series titled Diriliş: Ertuğrul in Turkish (Resurrection: Ertugrul in English) became one of the “top ten shows” watched on Netflix in Pakistan.^[34] The story is historical fiction set in the late 13th century, and its main character is Ertugrul, a pious warrior Turk who takes on the world to defend his tribe and religion, and becomes the father of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire (1299). It follows Ertugrul’s adventures across Central Asia as he unmasks "the nefarious plans of Crusaders, pagans, and internal traitors".^[34]

Researchers Ihsan Yilmaz and Kainat Shakil assert that the show is much more than entertainment. They write that it has allowed Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his political party (the Justice and Development Party (AKP)) to successfully transmit its narrative of “Islamist civilizationism” to the entire region.^[34] "The show depicts Turks as the protagonists dealing with contemporary political issues, “settling” accounts with their enemies as they steadfastly practice the faith of Islam (Sunni Islam)". This has resonated with Islamist populism. The pious, the “ummah”, are divided from "the 'others', such as Western countries, Jews, Indians, Armenians, etc. [which] marks the ummah as the “true people” due to their celestial superiority (Islamism) against the “evil” or “godless” others. ... The ummah is only salvaged from the brink of misery and oppression due to their strong Islamist ideals that are embodied in a jihad of nafs (the inner self) and sword (enemies of Islam, both internal and external)".^[34]

Renuka Narayanan says that, while the television series provides an interesting window into the imagined Muslim culture of the 13th century, it amounts to a state-endorsed vigorous promotion of Islamic revivalism by the Turkish government.^[35] Episodes are peppered with the word kafir or infidel.^[35] Ertrugrul’s aide Bamsi, otherwise a captivating character, jokes ad nauseam about killing non-Muslims, and Ertrugrul constantly declares his ambition of making the whole world Muslim.^[35] His enemies, be they Christian or Mongol, are portrayed as amoral and cruel.^[35] The script even takes a subtle dig at Iranians by naming a slimy trader-spy ‘Afrosiyab’ after a Persian hero.^[35]

The show has constructed a populist cultural identity that both crosses and surpasses nationalism. According to Yilmaz and Shakil, this has created "a highly effective emotional instrument of division [that] can be used to galvanize popular support in the international arena". Indeed, they say Turkey has already done so.^[34]

Narayanan contemplates that the re-mosqueing of Hagia Sophia is a result of the strong influence of "reel life on real life", bemoaned by writers like Orhan Pamuk and moderates in Turkish society.^[35] According to Anne-Christine Hoff, the Anatolia Youth Association collected fifteen million signatories for a petition calling for the re-mosqueing in 2014 because it was believed that the Ayasofya is the symbol of Istanbul's conquest for the Islamic world, and that without (re-mosqueing) it, the conquest would have been incomplete.^[36]

Yilmaz and Shakil have also concluded that the name of Istanbul and the Haggia Sophia, which was recently “reconquered” by the AKP government when it was re-converted to a mosque, "now represents the land of the “true” and “fierce” Muslims ...".^[34]