Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is being so blatantly hypocritical it is almost a joke. While furiously condemning the temporary closure of a mosque in Jerusalem due to repeated Iranian missile attacks on the area, he has totally ignored his exclusion of Christian worshippers from multiple historic churches, especially the Hagia Sophia.
The Iranian regime has fired missiles at Old City Jerusalem multiple times, including the area with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the Western Wall of the last Jewish Temple, and the Al Aqsa mosque compound. Shrapnel from one missile fell very close to the latter two and shrapnel from another missile damaged the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. In consequence, Israeli authorities have temporarily closed access to all three sites, in a laudable effort to save lives from potentially deadly missile strikes. But if you believe the propaganda from Erdoğan and Western antisemites, then you probably didn’t hear any of that context.
“Israel has been keeping Al-Aqsa Mosque closed to Muslim worship for 17 days without any authority and for completely arbitrary reasons,” Erdoğan asserted. That is a lie, but on the other hand his insistence that Hagia Sophia be a mosque is in fact arbitrary and unjust.
Ever since the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453, the Hagia Sophia — once a glorious and magnificent Christian church, originally built before Islam even existed — has been transformed into a mosque. The Muslims took a house of worship to the true God and redecorated and restructured it to honor Allah. Under Kemal Atatürk and the brief secularization of Turkey, the Hagia Sophia became a museum and Christians were welcomed to identify their spiritual heritage there as well. Under Erdoğan, in 2020, the Turkish government reversed that decision and made the ancient church a mosque again.
By the way, the Al Aqsa Mosque compound is in itself a desecration just like turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque. Al Aqsa was built by Muslim invaders on the Temple Mount, as a visible representation of their false claim that the spiritual and physical heritage of Judaism and Christianity belonged to the Islamic religion. If everything were as it should be, Al Aqsa would have been destroyed and the Temple Mount would be reserved for Jewish worship. So spare me the griping, Erdoğan.
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Erdoğan's outrage has nothing to do with justice or reality; he's just eager for any opportunity to criticize Israel, as he supports jihadis who want to destroy Israel, including the Islamic regime of Iran. When Operation Epic Fury claimed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Erdoğan expressed his deep “condolences”. The two dictators were in sympathy with each other, and Erdoğa would be sorry to see the genocidal Iranian Islamic regime collapse.
Erdoğan is extremely anti-Christian and anti-Jewish, too. International Christian Concern reported last September that Turkish persecution of Christians was growing worse. Turkish authorities were deporting missionaries or labeling them security threats while ignoring attacks on Christians. Churches have had to close down.
Unlike Israel, Turkey is not a land of religious freedom and does not value individual lives.
