Erdogan’s Move Toward an Islamic Caliphate
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently declared that his decision to convert the Church of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul’s massive sixth-century Byzantine cathedral, into a mosque foreshadows a future pan-Islamic reconquest of Jerusalem.
Erdogan’s Move Toward an Islamic Caliphate
Soeren Kern | Israel My Glory | November/December 2020
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently declared that his decision to convert the Church of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul’s massive sixth-century Byzantine cathedral, into a mosque foreshadows a future pan-Islamic reconquest of Jerusalem.
The Hagia Sophia was dedicated to Jesus Christ as the Word, or Logos, of God and was consecrated in 537 in Constantinople by Byzantine Emperor Justinian the Great. It was the most important church in the Eastern Christian world (Byzantine Empire) for nearly 1,000 years until Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople in 1453 and turned it into a mosque.
After the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1922, the founder of the secular Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, transformed the Hagia Sophia into a museum in an effort to westernize Turkey.
On July 24, exactly 97 years to the day after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, in which Turkey gave up all claims to the former Ottoman Empire, Erdogan turned the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, fulfilling long-standing Islamist demands.
