in Front of around a thousand five hundred years ago, the then Emperor Justinian built the Hagia Sophia as a Church. They remained known until 1453, when the Ottomans Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, conquered. From then on it was a mosque until Ataturk you umwidmete in 1935 into a Museum. Now, since last Friday, is the Hagia Sophia again as a mosque. And the expression of the ongoing commitment of the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to win the votes of the centre-right and the Religious for the left of his party, the AKP, meanwhile, lost.
The Turkish version of the column
Yaz?n?n Türkçe orijinalini okumak için t?klay?n
this is the reason why he did at the risk of international protests by now, what he had done in the eighteen previous years of his government. He left the decision of atatürk in 1934, to make the Hagia Sophia a Museum, by a court to cancel, and it opened last Friday officially as a mosque. With around five hundred invited “accredited believers” from where he held the Friday prayer. “Ordinary believers” were allowed to the historic moment on prayer rugs to see the goods up front has been at the Sultanahmet square, the Hagia Sophia is in compliance with the spacing rules laid out.
The crowd in front of the “Hagia Sophia mosque”, as it is now called, has prayer in the days after the first Friday of 24. July is not removed yet. From the whole of Anatolia, at a cost of tens of thousands of people pouring in. A countless number of German Turks, it’s easy to see on your Turkish with an accent, come to visit the rededicated the historic building of Istanbul. As in Istanbul Journalist living I wanted to have a look at this historical Phase, once out of the vicinity. From my apartment I went on Sunday to walk to the Sultanahmet square. Several kilometers away is the Hagia Sophia-the mood was felt. On the Galata bridge over the Golden Horn, the great signs of the ACP-governed district with thanks to hot for us to Erdogan welcome. After the bridge, continue to the historical Peninsula with Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet, or Blue mosque. Here, the “mosque-euphoria” is much greater. Posters of Erdogan, side-by-side with Sultan Mehmet II who had conquered in 1453, Istanbul adorn the walls. In large groups, the people of the coastal currents to the Hagia Sophia up: street vendors offer flags with the Ottoman coat-of-arms feil, men with Fez or Sultan caftan are, most of the veiled women with child and cone.
As I reach the Sultanahmet square, one of the main tourist attractions in Istanbul, it was swollen the size even more. Up to the street, people stand in line to get into the Hagia Sophia, separately for men and women. To get inside is not so easy. You have to pass two security rings and at least an hour wait to get in there. Who does not want to wait for almost 35 degrees in the sun, a picnic under the trees outside until the queue becomes smaller.
Earlier filled foreign tourists in sandals, Shorts and t-shirt the place, now there are women with headscarf or Çarsaf, the Turkish Chador. It prevailed a festive mood. Stands with Chestnuts or corn itinerant traders offering counterfeit well-known trademarks piston. Still, it was only when the call rang out in prayer to the afternoon. Before the otherwise of foreign tourists crowded cafes and ice cream parlors swarmed now to Hagia Sophia streaming Turks.
Whether Erdogan can stop his voice loss?
What is the meaning of this influx of politically? What impact will it have that Erdogan, who has ruled since eighteen years, has now converted the Hagia Sophia into a mosque? For an answer to these questions, we need to do a great work of political analysis. The words of the owner of a café that served earlier foreign tourists cold beer, and today visitors to the Hagia Sophia mosque supplied with tea and coffee, speak for themselves: “to make It a mosque does not make this full. The people who come here now, because it was a mosque, in a couple of days away. Tourists bring foreign exchange, come anyway, not again. The economy will only get worse.“ When I ask him if I may quote his words with his name, shows his answer, what prevails is a climate of fear in Turkey: “For God’s sake, I don’t want to pull the displeasure of the rice!” (“Rice”, literally the head, called Erdogan by his followers.)
With the words of the Café owner in the head, I walk on the way home through the Gülhane Park below the Topkapi Palace and down to the coast. I see a young girl at the foot of the high walls of the garbage container according to any leftovers to Eat, and I feel with the harsh reality of the short-before-heard analysis faced. The impression takes place shortly after confirmation. Barely a hundred meters further on, a young woman in the garbage of a Fast-Food chain has been poking around in search of Food for themselves and the child in front of her chest. The two brothers try, at the bread enough to eat, have you fished out of the garbage.