Museum or mosque? The battle over the fate of Turkey's historic Hagia Sophia [View all]
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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