Museum or mosque? The battle over the fate of Turkey's historic Hagia Sophia
Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia site has stood as empires rose and fell around it, as rulers and statesmen came and went, as creeds flourished and withered.
Now the more than 1,500-year-old former cathedral and then mosque is at the center of a modern struggle between Turkey’s secular roots and its president’s Islamist aspirations. The battle over who, if anybody, can pray in the UNESCO World Heritage site reflects a larger one playing out across a society split between secularism and religious conservatism.
On Thursday, Turkey’s Council of State heard arguments by lawyers for the Association for the Protection of Historic Monuments and the Environment, a group asking for the Hagia Sophia to be reverted from a museum to a mosque.
The association is pressing for an annulment of the 1935 decision that turned the iconic structure into a museum, where religious services or group prayers would not be held. A decision is expected within two weeks.
If the court decides in the NGO’s favor, it will be the latest in a long line of twists and turns for Hagia Sophia, which has long dominated Istanbul’s skyline, a symbol of the city’s status as a bridge between the East and the West, and the Muslim and the Christian worlds.
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