Turkish tourism is weakened by the pandemic and the conversion of Hagia Sophia and San Salvador de Chora into mosques

International tourism is going through one of its darkest moments. The pandemic has paralysed travel abroad this summer and most tourists have chosen to stay in the country. Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia, which have specialised in welcoming European tourists looking for sun and beaches at affordable prices, have suffered greatly this summer from the lack of tourists filling their coasts and hotels. In the case of Turkey, in particular, the conversion of the tourist sites of Hagia Sophia and San Salvador de Cora into mosques has been a further blow to the tourism business. The figures for the second quarter of 2020 already reflect problems for the Turkish economy, which has collapsed by 9.9% in that period compared to the previous quarter.  

At the beginning of the year, the Turkish authorities calculated that income from visits to tourist sites would be around 35 million dollars this year. But due to the pandemic and the conversions of the Hagia Sophia and San Salvador de Chora mosques, those revenues will not materialise. In July 2020, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a controversial decision that was condemned by the international community, converted the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. Built as a Christian church under the Byzantine Empire and converted to a mosque during the Ottoman Empire and then museum after the founding of the Turkish Republic, the decision sparked outrage by critics who said Erdogan was pandering to his conservative, religious base to bolster domestic support.

At the start of August, Erdogan announced that another historic site was also going to be converted into a mosque. This time it was the Chora museum. This museum, like the Hagia Sophia, was built as a church and became a mosque under the Ottomans, only to become a museum following the founding of the Republic. Every year, millions of people used to visit the two museums, bringing in tens of millions of tourism dollars for the Turkish economy. Now, however, tourists are still free to enter outside prayer times, but they do not pay entrance fees for the highly trafficked sites.

The loss of funds could pose a threat to the Turkish economy that depends on tourism for around 30 percent of its annual income. However, even without Erdogan’s controversial decision, this year has seen drastically lower numbers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Almost $35 million was expected [this year from the mosques],” Turkish economist Mustafa Sonmez told Al Arabiya English, “but unfortunately this is almost zero [because of the pandemic].” In 2019, total revenue from tourism hit a high $34.5 billion, Turkish state media TRT World reported.

Turkey’s lack of tourism and economic woes have already started to have an effect on the country’s tourism industry with some businesses forced to lay off employees and others having to close their doors. As of now, the government has provided very limited economic relief for the businesses in the tourism industry. “Many hotels and many other touristic places, their capacity has decreased and their employment has decreased,” Sonmez explained. “They are bad conditions and many have closed their shops and don’t work anymore. Nobody knows what will happen because the pandemic situation is not getting better and is actually worsening.”

Businesses were hoping that tourism would see a surge this autumn, when people are more likely to visit cultural sites rather than going to the beach or sea due to the drop in temperature, but some fear that with the Hagia Sophia and Chora becoming mosques, tourists may forgo planned visits. “Turkish tourism had already suffered a blow with the pandemic when the European Union did not include Turkey as a ‘safe’ country,” Nazlan Ertan, a Turkish journalist, told Al Arabiya English. “Still the Turkish tourism operators were hoping to make a late recovery, meaning, in late autumn and when you speak of late autumn, of course, you are speaking about cultural tourism.” According to Ertan, these decisions by Erdogan send a message that he and Turkey prioritize Islam and Muslims over other all other things, especially for those who are looking to visit from the West. “It clinches Erdogan’s image in the eyes of the Western tourists as a conservative who has Islam foremost in his mind,” Ertan said.

Turkey has a lot to lose. One of its main regional rivals in tourism, Egypt, is strengthening tourism related to the local culture and religion. “This is when Sisi is sort of capitalizing on the Christian and Jewish heritage of Egypt,” Ertan stated. “So if you are going to come to the Middle East and on one hand you have one country which is opening its non-Muslim heritage and another that it is opening it for worship and removing their statuses as museums, which one are you going to visit?” Ertan said.   

Before the pandemic, the Turkish government already announced its intention to bring up to 75 million tourists to the country in 2023, taking advantage of the pull of the foundation of modern Turkey by Mustaf Kemal Ataturk. However, with the value of the Turkish lira falling and inflation and unemployment rising, Erdogan is losing popularity and has chosen to win the support of the most conservative groups instead of betting on multiculturalism and opening up the country, which is what the foundation of the Republic of Turkey was based on in 1923. While nearly 3.5 million people visit the Hagia Sophia and Chora annually, Sonmez said that it is currently impossible to predict the potential economic fallout that Erdogan’s decision might have as tourism has practically ground to a halt as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

The delicate economic situation has led Erdogan to take further steps to keep the country's economic foundations afloat. One of them is to withhold an income tax of up to 20% from the minimum wage starting this September, the Turkish opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet reports on Tuesday.  A report of the magazine Foreign Policy explains that Erdogan's insistence on continuing with the same economic policies will cause severe economic damage to Turkey, which will have big financial and geopolitical consequences beyond the epidemic.