THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND HAGIA SOPHIA

Kathimerini- Greece
April 16 2015

By Nikos Konstandaras

Pope Francis’s declaration that the slaughter of Armenians by Ottoman
forces 100 years ago was “the first genocide of the 20th century”
will hasten the conversion of the Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque,
the top Muslim official in Ankara responded. The Turkish government
has long wanted to turn the symbol of Orthodox Christianity into a
mosque, and last Friday – Good Friday for the Orthodox – verses from
the Koran were recited at the opening of an exhibition at Hagia Sophia,
84 years after it was converted from a mosque into a museum by the
founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The statement by
mufti Mefail Hizli, reported by the Hurriyet Daily News on Thursday,
suggests that Turkey’s rage at its inability to stop a growing tide
of recognition of the Armenian genocide is encouraging autocratic
tendencies and bigotry. It is not only the country’s few remaining
Christians who will suffer but Turkish society as a whole.

It is difficult to comprehend how a papal statement on the Armenian
issue should weigh on Hagia Sophia, seeing as the roads of Catholic
and Orthodox Christians separated nearly 1,000 years ago (in 1054).

Today’s Turkish government shows the arrogance of a conqueror
who believes that all he sees is hostage to his will. The Ottoman
conquerors did convert the Hagia Sophia church into a mosque, but they
also commissioned their best architects to build grand new mosques –
the Fatih, Suleyman and Sultan Ahmet mosques – honoring Hagia Sophia
by trying to outdo it. In his conviction that Turkey had to be built
on secular foundations, Ataturk turned Hagia Sophia into a museum,
acknowledging the building’s ecumenical significance.

Under the dominance of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was prime minister
from 2003 until his election as president last year, Turkey is at the
crossroads between East and West, between autocracy and democracy,
between tolerance and bigotry. In next June’s parliamentary elections,
the AKP party which Erdogan founded and still controls, could triumph
with about 50 percent of the vote, according to recent polls. After
the election, Ergodan aims to strengthen the office of the presidency
and will do all that is necessary to achieve this. Converting Hagia
Sophia into a mosque will please the AKP’s religious voters and also
make clear that the secular regime founded by Ataturk is dead.

Recently, Erdogan has shown increasingly autocratic tendencies. Now,
the government’s inability to prevent international recognition of
the Armenian genocide is driving him to greater displays of anger,
arrogance, greed and envy. He will learn that he can neither ignore
history nor subject an ecumenical symbol to his will.