At 4: 17 am local time on the 6th, a strong earthquake of magnitude 7.8 occurred in southern Turkey, followed by two aftershocks of magnitude 5, causing a large number of casualties and building collapse. The two river basins where Turkey is located are one of the cradles of human civilization, with rich historical and ancient relics. The historic Gaziantep Castle was severely damaged in the earthquake, and there is no bad news for the time being in Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia Cathedral.
Hagia Sophia is a famous religious building with a history of nearly 1500 years. Flaubert visited Turkey at the end of 19th century. Facing the huge and elegant dome of Hagia Sophia, he lamented Istanbul in his letter to his friends: “This place will become the capital of the world within a century. With the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, in 1934, Hagia Sophia lost its religious significance and reopened to the world as a museum. On July 2, 2020, then President Erdogan resumed his role as a religious place and changed the building into a mosque, which caused an uproar for a while.
On December 19, 2017, Istanbul, Hagia Sophia Cathedral. The Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul was the main church of the Byzantine Empire until 1453, and was later occupied by the Turks and converted into a mosque.
Tao Qi, an associate professor in the history department of Peking University, started to offer the general course Islam and the Modern World in 2008, and the book From Baghdad to Istanbul: Great Changes in the Middle East from a Historical Perspective assembled a series of thoughts in his teaching process. In this book, he also discusses the memory and forgetting brought by Hagia Sophia. From the most important historical sites in Turkey, we can get a glimpse of the country’s complex historical memory and realistic politics.
Hagia Sophia: Memory and Reality (Excerpt)
Author | Yan Tao
When we discuss the related issues of Hagia Sophia, we can’t forget the fact that Turkey pays more and more attention to the historical memory of the Ottoman Empire. Here, my main concern is not the current political problems in Turkey, but the theme of “memory and forgetting” around the identity of Hagia Sophia from a historical perspective, and I will eventually fall into the cognition of neo-Ottomanism.
It is not uncommon for cities or buildings to become the focus of real political disputes. What real politics wants to show will also hope and manipulate what people remember or commemorate. However, things with a long history often carry all kinds of memories. If you want to express one, you will inevitably suppress or obliterate the others, which leads to the so-called historical memory dispute. If we look at it in the long river of history, forgetting is closely related to memory, and inhibition or erasure is one of the reasons for forgetting. Therefore, from this perspective, the Hagia Sophia Museum has recently been converted into a mosque by Turkey, which is actually a historical continuation of the political controversy about memory and forgetting around this famous religious building.
On February 7, 2023, local time, a woman waited for news of her relatives trapped under the collapsed building in Hatay. An earthquake of magnitude 7.8 occurred near Gaziantep, Turkey, in the early morning of Monday, and another earthquake of magnitude 7.5 occurred after noon. The earthquake caused extensive damage in southern Turkey and northern Syria, and the nearby countries also felt the earthquake.
At that time, Muhammad Ⅱ turned the church into a mosque, which was itself a political manipulation of historical memory and forgetting. Muhammad Ⅱ is certainly a winner, and the historical memory he wants to leave people is not only his personal victory, but also a continuation of some historical memory of his group. Perhaps there is no better symbol than turning Hagia Sophia into a royal mosque. After that, the memory and interpretation of future generations will continue around the victory of one religion over another, or even the victory of one nation over another.
Therefore, turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque is a military and political leader Muhammad Ⅱ’s disposal of trophies, a historical memory/memorial he deliberately created, while things belonging to Christians and Byzantium are deliberately concealed or removed. Later, until February 1935, Hagia Sophia was used as a mosque. These hundreds of years are enough to build a new habit, identity and memory. But for Europeans, after 1453, they still used the name “Constantinople” for a long time instead of “Istanbul” for Turks. John Darwin, a contemporary British historian, believes that it is not only a habit for Europeans to use Constantinople, but also means that this place is an occupied Christian city and needs to be “recovered”. This concept of westerners did not disappear until the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
In recent public opinion, people often refer to the decision of the Turkish cabinet meeting on November 24, 1934-it decided to turn the Ayasophia Mosque into a museum, and it will also be mentioned that this was the intention of Kemal, the father of Turkey. 1934 was more than 10 years after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. At this time, the Republic decided to turn this mosque, which has been used for five centuries, into a museum. Why?
On February 6, 2023, local time, in Karaman Maras, Turkey, buildings collapsed after earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6.
In fact, the main reason is that real politics has changed. A self-styled modern secular nation-state, the Republic of Turkey, was established. The new nation-state certainly needs new national history and memory. This is what I was most concerned about when I studied the modern history of Turkey in my early years, that is, the so-called “reconstruction of national history” has a very important problem besides fabricating national myths, that is, how to deal with the relationship with the former dynasty. In short, the new Turkish Republic has long been alienated from the Ottoman Empire in ideology and political speech, and its historical memory is indifferent, even being deliberately excluded.
In 1939, the Committee of Museologists in Turkey put forward an explanation: “Hagia Sophia, as a Byzantine church and an Ottoman mosque, is a masterpiece of architecture … The Turks completely interrupted the identity of this building, just as people once regarded it as a church, and more people defined it as a mosque. Therefore, the Republic of Turkey decided to turn this building into a museum, with the purpose of dedicating it to all mankind … “This explanation of Hagia Sophia after nearly five years as a museum is more a historical memory given to it afterwards, that is, it is neutral and universal, and the above-mentioned international political considerations cannot be publicly said.
Today, opponents of turning the Hagia Sophia Museum into a mosque still emphasize that it is “the common cultural heritage of mankind” and a symbol of peace between Islam and Christianity. It may also be inferred that the modernist meanings given to the Hagia Sophia Museum by secularists today, such as secularization and modernization, should be added by people at home and abroad in Turkey.
Of course, the voice of cultural pluralism, represented by museums, which is constantly being explained, also exists, and the debate has gone deep. First, the memory of the Ottoman Empire is not only about military conquest and victory, or religious glory, but also emphasizes the tolerance and cosmopolitanism of the Ottoman Empire; Second, Istanbul, a city with a long history, will deliberately emphasize its inclusiveness and cosmopolitanism when participating in cultural activities in Europe. For example, it is a good gesture that the angel head found on the dome of Hagia Sophia in 2009 was opened for tourists to visit. Istanbul was also recognized as “european capital of culture” in 2010.
On February 6, 2023, local time, after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake occurred in Gaziantep, the southern province of Turkey, overlooking the damaged historic building Gaziantep Castle.
In the first half of 2020, the news that the Hagia Sophia Museum in Turkey was changed back to the mosque triggered a big round of world public opinion.
The reason why Sophia changed from a museum to a mosque should not mainly come from religion itself, because some people have calculated that there is no shortage of mosques in Istanbul, and not many people go to the blue mosque opposite the Hagia Sophia Museum to worship. Therefore, the reason is still politics, or specifically, it is a political operation that uses religious feelings and historical memory. From the perspective of historical memory, the restoration of the mosque represents the historical memory that the conqueror Muhammad Ⅱ wanted to preserve, that is, the victory of Turks/Muslims over the West/Christians.
At present, the arousal and commemoration of this victory caters to the political proposition of religious nationalism and is also manipulated by it. Turkish President Erdogan is a great orator who is best at grafting his political behavior into the memory of the empire. In his speech on “Conquest Day” on May 29, 2020, he said: “We want to leave a turkey that will satisfy our ancestor fatih (Muhammad Ⅱ).” This is his consistent emphasis, prominence and utilization of religion and imperial historical memory.
The demand to restore the mosque is pressing step by step until today’s “victory”, which also reflects the historical changes in Turkey after Kemal. If there is mainstream public opinion, just look at the poll data. It is said that over 70% of Turks support turning the Hagia Sophia Museum into a mosque. In today’s public opinion environment in Turkey, it is more and more difficult to publicly express the voice of opposition. Of course, foreigners are the exception (but opposition from outside may be exactly what Turkey needs in its domestic politics).
Once something similar happens, the general analysis always likes to discuss it from the perspective of secularism and modernization. It seems that anything related to Muslim religious symbols can be arbitrarily labeled as Islamism, and then Kemal Ataturk and Erdoğ an, who are regarded as “contrary to common sense”, are often regarded as two extremes. The former is secular, progressive and enlightened, while the latter is religious, retrogressive and reactionary. As we all know, in Turkey, most people don’t think so.
On January 2, 2023, in Ankara, Turkey, Turkish President Erdogan presided over the meeting of the Central Executive Committee.
I say this not to deny Kemalism, let alone praise Erdoğ an, but to emphasize the complexity of related issues. Since the late 20th century, with the development of the worldwide religious revival movement, the secularization theory, which is closely related to the modernization theory, has been regarded as problematic by many social scientists.
On the surface, the Turkish Republic imitated the French model, but in fact, the Turkish model is not a simple imitation, it is also a continuation of the Ottoman system, even the entire Sunni caliphate system. The difference is that it abolished the sultan and caliphate system and moved towards a republic. At the same time, the source of political legitimacy has also changed, from religion to secularism. Religion has not disappeared, but has been removed from the public sphere as much as possible, replaced by what the Republic has learned from the West, but its control and utilization have not changed. In addition, among the people, religion has also become private and confined to the field of personal morality.
With the death of Kemal, politics is diversified, and things that have been suppressed and marginalized will naturally come out. People who are dissatisfied with reality and their descendants also have new political space. After all, in a country and society where 99% of the population are Muslims, how can the spirit and soul related to religion/belief be put together?
From Baghdad to Istanbul: Great Changes in the Middle East from a Historical Perspective
Author Yan Tao
Xinsi Culture CITIC Publishing Group 2022-05
Later, this new class and its allies won the political power, that is, but the environment for the growth and development of this group of people is still based on Kemalism in Turkey, and there are checks and balances of secularism. Therefore, Kemalism and its secularism are still the big framework of their activities. The traditional dispute between secularism and religion is also changing in nature. Ideologically, Turkey’s political Islamic forces are moderate and pragmatic as a whole, and we have not seen any signs of Turkey taking the road of Iran’s religious country.
Therefore, in the above sense, the Hagia Sophia Museum has been transformed into a mosque. Although it can be considered as a moderate act of Turkish political Islam, it is difficult to directly describe it as a retrogression of secularism. In other words, it has little to do with religion itself, but more to do with the manipulation of imperial historical memory by realistic politics, with the