I read Bloomberg religiously, which provides the most in-depth and knowledgeable coverage of Turkey affairs among major financial press outlets. As Erdogan ordered the re-re-re-conversion of the great Byzantine cathedral Hagia Sophia, the esteemed publication vexed poetic:
“To President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his religious conservative supporters, the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia to a mosque is a milestone in Turkey’s rebirth as a powerful, Muslim nation after a century of misguided efforts to imitate the Christian West.
Opponents of the move — at home and abroad — see it as the latest dramatic evidence that a less secular and tolerant Turkish state has emerged on Erdogan’s watch.
“To convert it back into a mosque is to say to the rest of the world, ‘Unfortunately we are not secular any more’,” Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning Turkish novelist, told BBC News. “There are millions of secular Turks like me who are crying against this, but their voices are not heard.”
I smiled at Orhan Pamuk’s whining, because being staunchly secular, I couldn’t get myself excited one way or the other. Neither is the Turkish public general. One of Turkey most impartial and accurate polling agencies Metropoll finds that:
“Some 44 percent of Turkish people believe that iconic Hagia Sophia’s conversion into a mosque is primarily about shifting people’s attention away from the current economic crisis, according to a survey conducted by Ankara-based Metropoll. “It is in vain to expect a political gain from the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque, if there is such an expectation,” said Metropoll chairman Özer Sencar.
Even that finding is an over-statement, because I believe most respondents answered the question in a “ohh, yeah, I should have an opinion on such an important subject, right?” mood.
Dear Christians, rest easily. No one is going to pray at Hagia Sophia which is in the Old City, where every other step there is a genuine mosque built by one Ottoman Emperor or the other, with firmly established congregations. To most of us, Hagia Sophia is an awe-inspiring architectural monument, but not the kind of place we wish to bear our souls to Allah. This sense of Muslim alienation in a cathedral which gives the impression of belonging to another age and to another culture will be reinforced by the attempts of Turkey’s meddlesome Directorate of Religious Affairs, which plans to keep the newly-christened (opps, sorry, bad pun) mosque open to tourists of all faiths at all times and to cover priceless Byzantine icons on the walls and the ceiling with “new technology” dives.
The fact is the most of the mosques go near-empty nowadays, not only because of Covid-19 concerns, because there are more of them than secondary schools and piety is on the decline in Turkey. According to a national survey conducted in 2019 by avidly pro-AKP Optimar polling agency, 25% of the public identifies itself as followers of Ataturk, with another 22% as nationalist. At the other side of the isle, “Conservatives” are only 9.7% of the population, “pious or observant” %7.8 AND Islamists at 4.8%!
At around the same time, Turkey’s allegedly most accurate forecaster KONDA delved into the question of religiosity, determining that “religious conservatives” declined from 25% to 15% of the poll-takers, while those who identify themselves as modern rose from 29% to 42%.
When it comes to those darn rebellious Z Generation, they are in a world of their own. It is not unusual to spot turban-wearing young females, with bellies open in tight t-shirts navels pierced, swinging their hips in a rock concert with their boy or girl friends. Two recent surveys one by KONDA, the other Gezici find that the young generation doesn’t care about AKP, or what their parents wish to teach them, inventing new ways of expressing their faith, sexuality and politics as they go along.
Ataturk’s secularism may be dead but his historic testament entrusting the future of Turkey to the hands of young generation is very much alive. As a post-note, Ataturk was not a secularist but a secular leader, or even liberal. It is his successors to his post which turned this wonderfully flexible doctrine of progressivity and Enlightenment into a hardcore dogma which alienated Turkey’s Moslem majority.
By Atilla Yesilada