“If you look at history books, you will see that Turk equals Muslim,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday. He added that “a definition of Turkishness without the inclusion of Islam’s holy war spirit is merely an attempt to turn the Turkish nation into a folklore tale.” On Feb. 23, Turkey plans to reinforce its Islamic identity and “holy war spirit” by converting one of the most celebrated and important Byzantine churches in the world, the Chora Church in Istanbul, into a triumphal mosque.
Plans to transform Chora Church, or Church of the Holy Savior, which contains some of the most exquisite surviving examples of Medieval Byzantine iconography, have been in the works for four years. Ekathimerini reported Tuesday that “the plan to convert the church, which had been operating as a museum for nearly 80 years, dates from 2020,” when Erdogan included it in his much-criticized decree to turn the most important Byzantine church in the world, Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, into a mosque.
Yet while Hagia Sophia was duly made into a mosque in July 2020, “the Chora Church scheme was put on hold so that restoration work could be carried out.” A church was first built on the site of the present Chora Church early in the fourth century. “The present structure dates mostly from the 14th century,” according to UNESCO, and “its mosaics and frescoes, commissioned by the Byzantine humanist and poet Theodore Metochites (14th century) form one of the most complete ensembles of late Byzantine art to survive in Istanbul.”
Like Hagia Sophia, Chora Church first became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest and looting of Constantinople in 1453, although Hagia Sophia was converted immediately, and Chora Church remained a church until early in the sixteenth century. In 1945, Chora Church became a museum, but Erdogan is at war with Turkish secularism, and so it could not remain a museum any more than Hagia Sophia could.
In order to understand this, one must understand the idea of triumphal mosques in Islam. All over the world, there are mosques that have been built on the holy sites of conquered peoples, and sacred structures of non-Muslims that have been converted into mosques. This is done on purpose, so as to declare the victory of Islam over the other religion that once had a holy place on that spot and the superiority of Islam over that religion. That’s why there is a mosque — in fact, two mosques — on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and why Hagia Sophia, which was for nearly a millennium the grandest and most important cathedral in the Christian world, had to become a mosque. There are also thousands of mosques in India that are built over Hindu temples that jihadis destroyed.
Related: Muslims Scream 'Allahu Akbar' as Hagia Sophia Officially Becomes a Mosque
Erdogan is attempting to declare the victory and superiority of Islam over a different foe. By converting the Chora Church back into a mosque, he is making yet another declaration of Islamic supremacism and signaling the victory of Islam and its supremacy not only over Christianity, although that is certainly part of what he is doing, but also over Ataturk’s secularism. Secular Turkey made Hagia Sophia and the Chora Church into museums, but Erdogan has been working for years to dismantle and ultimately destroy Turkish secularism. In making these venerable churches into mosques again, Erdogan is declaring victory. Islam is thus shown to be superior to Turkish secularism, the definitive end of which is at hand.
Also noteworthy is the fact that, during the controversy over a proposed 16-story mosque that was to be built some years ago at Ground Zero in New York City, I made the point about triumphal mosques repeatedly, and I was denounced all over the establishment media for doing so. All the learned authorities assured us that the mosque at Ground Zero (which was never ultimately built) would be a mosque of reconciliation and peace, and that there was no such thing as a triumphal mosque. I was denounced as a racist, bigoted “Islamophobe” for pointing out that there actually were no mosques of reconciliation and peace, and thousands of triumphal mosques around the world.
Anyone who remembers that controversy should ask Recep Tayyip Erdogan about it, and see what he says about triumphal mosques, now that he is on the verge of creating yet another.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member