Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's move to convert the iconic Istanbul-based Hagia Sophia cathedral into a mosque pursued to consolidate his power amid declining popularity, but the bet on Islamist ideology is unlikely to win him any new supporters, experts told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th July, 2020) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's move to convert the iconic Istanbul-based Hagia Sophia cathedral into a mosque pursued to consolidate his power amid declining popularity, but the bet on Islamist ideology is unlikely to win him any new supporters, experts told Sputnik.
This past Friday, Turkey's top administrative court, the Council of State, annulled a 1934 decree designating Hagia Sophia a museum. Immediately after, Erdogan signed a decree to convert the cathedral into a mosque and allow Muslim prayers in it.
Hagia Sophia is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and used to be the world's largest Christian cathedral for over a thousand years at some point in history. In 1985, UNESCO inscribed Hagia Sophia on its list of World Heritage sites.
POLITICAL ATTENTION GRABBER AMID DECLINING POPULARITY
The experts, Sputnik has spoken with, were unanimous that the conversion was a political move aimed at consolidating Erdogan's plummeting popularity. The Turkish president bet on the society's religiously charged part in this endeavor.
"This was a deliberate move on Erdogan's part to consolidate his Islamist base at a turbulent time due to the pandemic and the economic crisis. Since the government no longer enjoys policy successes, it seeks symbolic issues to satisfy his base," Berk Esen, an assistant professor and vice chair in the Department of International Relations at the Bilkent University in Ankara, said.
The fact that the Council of State's role in this story was merely symbolic and the one who really took the decision was Erdogan himself was stressed by simultaneously two experts, Esen and Gareth Jenkins, a non-resident senior research fellow with the Joint Center Silk Road Studies Program and Turkey Center at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm.
"The answer lies in Erdogan's increasingly desperate attempts to halt the long-term decline in his domestic popularity, not least as the result of his mishandling of the economy," Jenkins said.
As noted by the expert, Erdogan is now trying to portray the conversion of Hagia Sophia as a victory in a cultural and religious war if one looks at the language that he uses in his statements in Turkish.
"From his perspective, the international outcry is welcome as he can use it to demonstrate to his hardcore support that he is strong enough to defy anyone who disagrees with him," Jenkins said.
But in actuality, the true purpose of the move was to distract the public attention from the multi-faceted crises that Turkey is facing at the moment, experts said unanimously.
"Erdogan is trying to distract public attention from his failure to deliver on his repeated promises of prosperity and social harmony by stamping his authority on one of the most iconic symbols of Istanbul," Jenkins said.
Ariel Salzmann, an associate professor of Islamic and World History at Canada's Queen's University, concurred, mentioning also Turkey's struggle with the coronavirus pandemic.
"First and foremost, it is a cynical move to divert attention from Turkey's health, economic and military crises," Salzmann said.
MISTARGETED STRIKE TO WIN NEW VOTERS
"The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque will please some hardcore religious and nationalistic elements among Erdogan's domestic support base. But it will not win him any new supporters," Jenkins said.
According to Esen, the pious voters in Turkey have always opposed Hagia Sophia's conversion into a museum, and the attempt to oversee this decision became a cornerstone of the Islamist movement since the 1960s.
"Erdogan has now achieved this goal but it will hardly bring him any new votes," Esen said.
As explained by the expert, while the cathedral's conversion into a mosque will be seen as a victory by pious voters who already support Erdogan, many voters � especially young ones � do not treat Hagia Sophia as a pressing matter.
"Most Turkish voters care more about their current economic conditions and will not throw their support behind Erdogan unless the economic conditions improve. This issue will not contribute to this goal. At best, this decision may persuade some swing AKP voters to refrain from supporting splinter parties led by [Erdogan's former ally and ex-prime minister Ahmet] Davutoglu and [former foreign minister and deputy prime minister Ali] Babacan," Esen said.
�Huseyin Bagci, the president of the Turkish Foreign Policy Institute and a professor of international relations at the middle East Technical University in Ankara, agreed in that the move will likely please a certain part of Turkey's population, but claimed that there is strong resistance among another good half of the society.
"Erdogan thinks not from the intellectual point of view but rather in a political and pragmatic way. What concerns him is the religious voters. Not secular ones or the orthodox world," Bagci said.
GETTING RID OF ATATURK'S HERITAGE
"It is a foreshadowing and a step toward the Erdogan regime's intention to declare the end of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's secular republic and the inauguration of the Turkish Islamic republic, which is likely scheduled for 2023, on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic," Salzmann of the Queen's University said.
This intention, according to the expert, is aimed at re-writing Turkey's history and national identity through the steady transformation of public urban space and monuments. In doing so, the Erdogan administration typically uses ersatz Ottoman structures and references, Salzmann said.
According to Esen, Hagia Sophia's conversion to a museum in 1934 was a major step in making Turkey re-emerge as a secular regime and demonstrate the young republic's desire to become a civilized global actor that respects cultural heritage and diversity of its land.
Erdogan is trying to shape new Ottoman policy and Hagia Sophia's conversion is a sign of it, it was opined by Bagci. According to the expert, the move is a harbinger of long-term domestic and external implications.
POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS INTERNATIONALLY
According to Salzmann, the international community, especially Turkey's allies in NATO and the Christian communities in Europe and the Middle East, will see this as "deliberate provocation by a government that uses religion to maintain its power domestically and extend its military influence internationally." This will likely be especially detrimental in countries like Bosnia where the wounds of religious conflict and war have yet to heal, the expert opined.
As noted by Salzmann, pious Muslims cannot pray in a house of worship that has human figures on full display, and so this raises concerns about what is going to happen to Hagia Sophia's magnificent murals, which are an integral part of this world heritage site.
Bagci concurred, saying that the move will likely ignite a new wave of confrontation between Turkey and the western countries, what he described as "intellectual and cultural escalation."
Esen, in turn, argued that the issue would likely not cause a major showdown between Turkey and the West, as there are "far more important issues" that have already caused alienation between them, such as the conflicts in Syria and Libya and the purchase by Ankara of Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems.
"So I do not think that Hagia Sophia would replace them in importance. The issue would be treated as a symbolic one and read by many states as another step in the transformation of the Turkish government along Islamist line," Esen said.
