ICC Note:
Trabzon?s Hagia Sophia church is the latest victim in the efforts to reassert the place of Islam in public square. The church which is located on Turkey?s northeastern Black Sea coast is not as famous as its sister church in Istanbul but is amazing in its own right. The battle over how the building is to be used has been ongoing for decades, but the latest court decision has sealed its fate, at least for now. The most concerning aspect is this debate is being framed in the language of ?conquest? and the triumph of Islam over Christianity which raises major concerns over the democratic and secular nature of the Turkish republic.
8/07/2013 Turkey (Al-Monitor) - Perched on a grassy hill overlooking the Black Sea, the Hagia Sophia church in the northeastern port city of Trabzon is hailed as one of the finest, and pitifully rare, examples of late Byzantine architecture still standing in Turkey. As The Economist?s Bruce Clark put it in Twice a Stranger, his much acclaimed history of the population exchange between Turkey and Greece in the early 1920s, ?the frescoed biblical scenes in the church of Hagia Sophia ? are evidence that the Greek spirit flowered with particular brilliance in the 13th century.?
Today, the Greek spirit at Hagia Sophia has been all but extinguished, its frescoes determinedly concealed by tenting stretched under its central dome, and its magnificent tiled floors obscured by crimson carpeting. A Turkish flag hoisted by a newly erected preacher?s pulpit drove the message home: Hagia Sophia is ours. What had happened?
Sadly, it came as no surprise that Hagia Sophia had been converted into a mosque. Built in in the mid-13th century, the church had been at the heart of a long-running dispute between Turkey?s secularists and its Islamists. Its outcome has dramatic implications for the world-famous Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and flies in the face of the ruling Islam-based Justice and Development Party?s (AKP) moves to restore various Christian monuments across the country.
Mosque or museum?
The debate over Hagia Sophia is cloaked in historical legalese, but its essence is political. The Islamists claim that Mehmet II, the Ottoman sultan who wrested Istanbul from the Byzantines in 1453, converted the church to a mosque in 1462 following the conquest of Trabzon. Therefore, the Islamists argue, Hagia Sophia in Trabzon must remain open to Muslims for worship, otherwise the sultan?s legacy would be breached. The secularist argue that Hagia Sophia did not become a mosque until a century later and contest the claim that it belongs to the sultan, asserting there are no documents to prove this.
In fact, for the past 50 years Hagia Sophia in Trabzon was neither a church nor a mosque. After being rescued from dereliction by a team of archeologists from Edinburgh University between 1958 and 1962, the church reopened its doors to the public as a museum. This stemmed from a practical formula devised to get around the dispute and one that was successfully tested at the Istanbul Hagia Sophia, which has been a museum since 1935.
In December 2012, however, a local court ruled in favor of the General Directorate of Pious Foundations, or Vakiflar, the government body responsible for the country?s ancient mosques, declaring that the mosque was an ?inalienable? part of the foundation of Mehmet II. The Ministry of Culture, the court held, had been ?illegally occupying? the building. The government swiftly embarked on the conversion, and it was declared complete on July 5, when the mufti of Trabzon and other citizens gathered there for the first Friday prayers of the holy month of Ramadan.
The move provoked an outcry in the academic world. ?The conversion into a mosque is nothing but tragic. It will inevitably lead to damage in the structure and its priceless decoration, both sculpted and painted,? Veronica Kalas, a Byzantine historian told Al-Monitor.
Antony Eastmond of London?s Courtauld Institute has closely studied the church and agrees. ?The paintings at the Hagia Sophia are important as the best surviving imperially sponsored paintings in Turkey. They are vitally important in understanding the nature and development of the empire of Trebizond, the offshoot of the Byzantine Empire that was established in the city in 1204 and outlasted Constantinople, only to fall in 1461,? he told Al-Monitor.
?What I find most alarming in the recent changes is the fact that most of the discussion is done through a discourse of 'conquest' [fetih]. It does fit with the AKP?s neo-Ottoman ambitions and pretentions,? said Tugba Tanyeri Erdemir, a Turkish art historian.
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[Full Story]
Source: http://www.persecution.org/2013/08/08/another-byzantine-church-becomes-mosque-in-turkey/
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