Between political islamism and secularism in Turkey

The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque shows a latent conflict between the country's secular sectors and the political Islamism led by the president Erdoğan. 

The recent conversion of the Hagia Sophia Museum into a mosque shows the confrontation between the two political souls in Turkey: the struggle between political Islamism and the country's secular sectors. In Europe we tend to think that the secularity of the state should be the norm within a democracy, but this makes us forget the centuries of religious struggle, massacres, wars and peace that have brought us to the present day. In fact, Turkey is a constitutionally secular state, but the rise of political Islam represented by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, gives more and more political relevance to religion, with the conversion of the Hagia Sophia Museum into a mosque as the last symbolic struggle.  

Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is an impressive building that presides over the no less stunning city of Istanbul. The Byzantine Emperor Justinian ordered the construction of the Basilica of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which was completed in 537. It is a spectacular monument, which has been the seat of ecclesiastical authority of the Orthodox Church for centuries. With the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 in the face of the advance of the Turkish armies, the cathedral eventually became a mosque and Constantinople changed its name to Istanbul. So impressive was the Byzantine building that Turkish architects extended the architectural model of Hagia Sophia to other mosques in the Ottoman Empire, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul itself being an impressive building that rivals Hagia Sophia in beauty.  

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the great legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who led the country in the 1920s and 1930s, was to build the foundations of modern Turkey and a secular society and state. It is Atatürk himself who will order the conversion of the Hagia Sophia Mosque into a museum, with the aim of integrating the different cultures that have converged in the current Turkish state throughout history. However, in recent years the rebirth of a more aggressive Turkish nationalism, together with the growing strength of Erdoğan's political Islamism, has allowed for a growing pressure to transform the monument into a mosque. In recent years, prayers were held in front of the mosque by conservative associations and in 2018 the president read out verses from the Koran in the then museum.  

In July 2020, President Erdoğan inaugurated Muslim prayer in Hagia Sophia for the first time in 86 years. This was made possible by a Turkish court ruling, which annulled the 1934 decree turning Hagia Sophia into a museum, giving the management of the mosque to the Diyanet, which runs Turkish mosques. The building is still open to the public who wish to visit the monument, except for the five daily prayers, although the impressive Christian representations that are several centuries old will remain covered by canvases, as Islam forbids images in temples of worship. This fact has a very important symbolic power; if the transformation of Hagia Sophia into a museum sent a strong message of secularization of the state, its conversion into a mosque shows the growing influence of religion in the country.  
 

 

Atatürk and Erdoğan represent the two competing currents in Turkey. As José Albentosa Vidal in the Spanish Institute of Strategic Studies points out in his article "Turkey: Authoritarianism, Islamism and Neo-Ottomanism", Atatürk defended a westernisation and secularisation of the state with the aim of modernising the society. He promoted a series of laws based on the legislative codes of France and the United Kingdom, which advocated equal rights for women, adopting them from the Latin alphabet, implementing changes in customs or prohibiting the call to prayer in Arabic. All this was carried out not without a strong dose of authoritarianism and resistance from the population, since secularisation was stronger in the big cities than in the countryside and provinces, where the Islamic reaction came from. The mainstays of secularism were the Kemalist establishment, lawyers, judges or journalists, but above all the army, which was involved in four coups in the past century.  

The situation starts to change in Turkey with the victory of the AKP and the Prime Minister Erdoğan in 2003. With their coming to power, a period of reforms and opening with the aim to enter the European Union begins. Since 2007, however, the discourse of Erdoğan has changed with an increasing Islamist tone. It should be taken into account that while Islam is a religion, Islamism is an ideology, so the AKP has sought to Islamise society in order to make it coincide with its values. So it starts a process that multiplies the existing mosques in the country, creates restrictions on the consumption of alcohol, promotes religious education or approves and promotes the use of the veil, which was limited until then. The main problem arising then is the growing persecution of freedom of the press in the country, making Turkey one of the states with the highest number of imprisoned journalists.  

The growing power of Erdoğan in Turkey was consolidated with the failed coup attempt in 2016, which serves as an excuse to purge the plotters, but also the rest of the political rivals of the president. Erdoğan was appointed as Turkey's president in 2014, proposing a reform of the system that would turn the country into a presidentialist regime, which it achieved with the constitutional reform of 2017, which significantly increased the powers of the presidency. In 2018 Erdoğan was re-elected and has consolidated his position in the Turkish political system.  

The political success of Erdoğan and his party has been unstoppable, but the secularisation of society has not had the results expected by the government. As Andrés Mourenza pointed out in El País in his article "La islamización del gobierno no cala en la sociedad turca" (The Government's Islamisation does not fit into Turkish society), the social project of Islamism has failed. According to a survey by Konda, in the last 10 years the number of religious people (from 55% to 51%) and devotees (from 13% to 10%) has been reduced, while atheists have tripled their presence to 5% of the population, and those who are simply believers to 34%. Other indicators and surveys show that the project to Islamise Turkey is not succeeding, although the country still has a strong conservative base that supports Erdoğan.

Historically, Hagia Sophia was built by the Byzantines and embellished by the Turks, a symbol of Orthodox Christians and one of the most beautiful mosques in the Muslim world. Its history is rich and complex and reflects a multicultural world where different religions and cultures have lived together in one city, Istanbul, which serves as a meeting point between two continents. Hagia Sophia should not become the symbol of the struggle between secularism and Islamization, but a monument to the diversity of the country. The future of Turkey is at stake.