HAGIA SOPHIA AS A MOSQUE – THE LATEST POPULIST TROPE

Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been drastic changes in human lifestyles all over the world. The inevitability of change is not something unbeknownst, but, the drastic nature with which humanity has had to endure this change, is surely something, wherein, the temporal and spatial aspects have certainly culminated, and assumed an enmeshed form that creates the conditions for the understanding of a very bleak future, that has led to a re-definition of all that has constituted normalcy, prior to the outbreak.

It is in such tumultuous times, that a certain occurrence took place in Turkey. The Hagia Sophia, a structure constructed as a mosque, during the Byzantine period, later converted to a mosque, with the fall of Constantinople, under the Ottoman Empire, and then converted to a museum, under the Ataturk regime, has been re-converted to a mosque, under the regime of the present incumbent President Reccep Tayyip Erdogan. The structure, being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has led to further furor over this decision. The eventuality of this occurrence has led to a complete re-shuffling of the very image of Turkey as the bridge between the West and the East, an image that has been deftly upheld ever since the end of the First World War, which led to the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the rise of the secular Turkish Republic under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk.

In this respect, prior to the understanding of the decision making mechanism and the axioms that were involved, it becomes imperative to understand the very image that has been upheld by the presence of the historical monument that is the Hagia Sophia or the Ava Sophia. Its checkered history and assumption of a multiplicity of uses stand as a testament to the temporal upheavals that Turkish politics and society have gone through, over the ages. The image of the Hagia Sophia is dualistic in nature. It has a nationalized self-image and an internationalized image as that of the bridge. An aura of the Orient is certainly associated with this internationalized image, the denial of which is a blasphemous offence.

Time plays a significant aspect in the process of decision-making. The temporality of the decision is associated with a certain anarchic situation of the world. This is a moment of reckoning the truer forms of the self, with the aggrandizement of identity. It is not unbeknownst as to how, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party has been flexing muscles over its Turkish Islamic identity. Exploiting the conditions of anarchy, the regime indulged in a nomological detour, the main purpose of which is a repudiation of the secular Turkish identity.

The Ataturk version of secularism has been chiefly Western, replete with the banning of the fez in public, and a complete separation of the State from the affairs pertaining to religion. In fact, in a way, the State was in a position of hierarchy as opposed to religion, something that had become visible with the Ataturk doing away the Office of the Caliphate.

The present Erdogan regime has all the makings of a Right wing authoritarian populist. The primary goal of the regime is to create a certain equivalence of demands to be able to successfully create a majoritarian identity that can be properly harnessed at the electoral stage and emerge in augmenting power at the national level. There is a certain structural homology that guides the functional aspects of Right wing populists. The restructuring of the existing body politic is perhaps the first step in the process of creation of the majoritarian identity.

It is imperative to point out how the understanding of nationalism evolves too, in this respect. The very ontological and epistemological roots of Turkish nationalism as being distinct from that of the Ottoman Empire of the past, is put to serious challenge by the present references that  President Erdogan refers to, time and again. The statist nature of his populism is homologous with the version of the Right wing populism in India. In a previous piece, the author had examined the perspectives on how the voice of dissent that has been provided in the form of education imparted in universities, is something that has been greatly challenged by the regime.

The invocation of a certain associated postcoloniality is imperative in this respect. However, the very sinister nature of this invocation must not be missed. The recent sojourns by the Turkish military against the Kurdish people residing at the periphery of the nation as well as the outspoken nature of the Turkish demands against USA and Russia has further cemented Erdogan’s position as the yeoman of Turkish politics.

The Hagia Sophia move also comes at a point when Turkey as a nation is writhing with the conditions that have been created by the pandemic. With tourism at an all time low, Turkey is in a position of economic doldrums. Amidst these conditions, the move is not really unprecedented as a swift move towards cementing and augmentation of the power that the Justice and Development Party has able to bolster over all the years.

The status of Hagia Sophia as a UNESCO World Heritage Site must also be brought into focus, as the discourse around its restructuring ensues. The minority Greek Orthodox Christian population has been subjected to the fringes following such a decision. Destruction of the plurality that Turkey as a Republic has enshrined, as well as the secular ethos, that has been harbored by the Ataturkian ethics are all put to this enormous challenge in the form of this drastic action that has been undertaken by President Erdogan.

Populist leaders have always required a vote of confidence from the people to proceed; a periodic reinvigoration of support is something that is extremely crucial to the process that keeps them in power. To indulge in an essentialist reduction of populism to Fundamentalism or Fascism is something that the opposition has always employed as a trope in their discourse. However, populist polities around the world have certainly appeared immune to this flaccid nature of discourse that has time and again, wanted to establish a plethora of differential demands, but have failed. The restructuring of Hagia Sophia is one such moment wherein the populist tropes have reached their zenith. To pull more acts up the sleeve, is now a very difficult trope for Erdogan, and it is something only the future will tell.

Raunak Bhattacharya

Intern, AGA

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