Hundreds of worshippers filled the narrow streets of Istanbul’s Fatih district on Friday to listen to the sounds of Friday prayers ringing out from the newly inaugurated Kariye Mosque.
Once generally known as the Chora Church, the positioning spent the last 79 years as a museum. But it’s now the newest structure to be converted back right into a mosque by the federal government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, following the conversion of Hagia Sophia in 2020. While viewed as a triumph by many Turkish Muslims, the Greek Orthodox Church has decried it as an “ill-advised decision” that “makes a mockery of the Turkish government’s commitment to non secular tolerance and spiritual freedom.”
Chora’s conversion was announced shortly after Hagia Sophia’s, but its opening for prayer was delayed by years of restoration work.
The showing for the primary Friday prayers at Kariye was relatively quiet in comparison with Hagia Sophia, which drew a whole bunch of 1000’s who filled the streets with prayer rugs for blocks and blocks away from the constructing. By contrast, the gang on Friday was relatively average for a mosque in considered one of Istanbul’s more religiously conservative neighborhoods, where Friday worshippers ceaselessly spill out onto the streets.
Both the Chora Church and Hagia Sophia are 4th-century Byzantine constructions. They spent nearly a millennium as Christian holy sites before being converted to mosques by the Ottomans after their conquest of Constantinople within the fifteenth century. Despite their conversions, they remained revered by Orthodox Christians. After the founding of a secular Turkish Republic within the early twentieth century, the choice was made for each to be neither mosque nor church but simply museums.
“Both Hagia Sophia and Chora embodied Byzantine and Ottoman pasts, and so they became symbols of co-existence and multi-faith living practices. Their conversion fundamentally implies a hierarchy, prioritizing the Islamic past over all other layers, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Jewish, Syriac, et al,” Dr. Özgür Kaymak, a lecturer and researcher on minority rights at Istanbul’s MEF University, told Religion News Service in an email.
Rededicating the sites as mosques is greater than just a standing change. According to Islamic tradition, artwork of human figures are forbidden in places of prayer, while in Orthodox Churches, icons of Christ, saints and other biblical figures are a defining feature.
In Hagia Sophia, the mosaics of Jesus and Mary have been covered with curtains because the conversion. While Erdoğan promised Hagia Sophia would remain fully accessible and free to all visitors, Turkey reneged on that earlier this yr, reimposing an entrance fee on tourists and relegating them to the upper level, while the foremost floor is exclusive to Muslim worshippers.
Observers have also criticized the Turkish Directorate of Religion’s caretaking of the positioning, noting damage that didn’t exist when it was under the purview of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
Though Chora is significantly smaller than Hagia Sophia, it’s home to a few of the best-preserved examples of late-Byzantine art, including mosaics, icons and frescoes, and is taken into account a UNESCO World Heritage site.
“For us it’s a vital place since it remembers our culture and our traditions here,” Father Evangelos Markantonis, an Orthodox priest who was leading a gaggle of theology students to Chora on Friday, told Religion News Service.
“Though we cannot venerate as Orthodox Christians, we have now to try to seek out things we could be united on. Only with dialogue and good deeds can we proceed our lives,” Markantonis, who can also be a professor on the University of Athens, said when asked in regards to the controversy.
Erdoğan had long refused calls from his right to convert churches like Hagia Sophia and Chora, telling supporters in 2018 to fill the nearby Sultan Ahmet Mosque (also known in English because the Blue Mosque) before they talked about needing to wish in Hagia Sophia.
Nonetheless, he made an about-turn in 2020.
“My dear nation, the conquest of Istanbul and the conversion of the Hagia Sophia right into a Mosque are amongst probably the most glorious chapters in Turkish history,” Erdoğan said on the time in a speech inaugurating the Hagia Sophia as a mosque.
“This is probably the most honorable day that Islam has been looking forward to, Greek Constantinople has change into Turkish Istanbul,” he added, quoting the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet.
“The resurrection of Hagia Sophia heralds the liberation of the al-Aqsa Mosque. The resurrection of Hagia Sophia is the footsteps of the desire of Muslims the world over to return out of the interregnum,” Erdoğan said in his concluding remarks.
Chora’s opening because the Kariye Mosque comes just weeks after Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered its largest electoral defeat in 20 years during Turkey’s nationwide municipal elections.
“The recent conversion of Chora right into a mosque could also be resulting from Erdoğan’s many problems, including his geopolitical power politics, his appeal to religio-nationalism to revive his electoral popularity after the March elections or his tactic to divert attention from Turkey’s economic downturn,” Kaymak said.
Many analysts have attributed the loss to AKP bleeding votes to the more Islamist-leaning New Welfare Party, which has pressured Erdogan over his response to the Israel-Hamas war and humanitarian situation within the Gaza Strip.
Muslim worshippers on the mosque on Friday said they viewed its rededication as an Islamic site to be a national win for Turkey.
“This mosque is considered one of the symbols of the Conquest. We are proud and comfortable. There are very beautiful frescoes inside. They were also nicely renovated before they were closed. May it’s good for our country and our nation,” a bystander, Ahmet Öteyüzoğlu, told Turkish media.
“Thank God for nowadays. Not everyone has the chance of their lifetime,” one other bystander named Mehmet Çelik told the Turkish news service Anadolu Agency, in reference to having been capable of pray at each the rededicated Hagia Sophia and Kariye Mosques.
However, Greece, the U.S. State Department and Orthodox Christian institutions worldwide have all criticized the choice to revert the structure right into a mosque.
“I would like to publicly express my intense dissatisfaction, interpreting the sentiments of all Greek men and women, for the completely unnecessary conversion of a historic Byzantine temple, the Monastery of Chora, right into a mosque. It is, I think, an motion that offends the wealthy history of Istanbul itself as a crossroads of cultures,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said shortly before leaving for Turkey for a planned meeting with Erdogan.
“We encourage the Turkish government to preserve and ensure access to sites and buildings which have hosted different religious communities in a way that respects their diverse histories,” a State Department spokesperson said in response to questions from Greek media.
“The Turkish government’s appropriation of each because the property of 1 faith group not only constitutes one more sign of that government’s contempt for Turkey’s wealthy Orthodox Christian heritage but further imperils the religious freedom of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the remaining Christians of that land,” the Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate said in an announcement.
© Religion News Service
