‘The Hagia Sophia Cause’ and the Emergence of Ottomanism in the 1950s

Abstract

Focusing on the symbolism of the Hagia Sophia for the conservative nationalist movement, this article examines the emergence of Ottomanism as an attempted challenge to the Kemalist reading of Ottoman history. The Hagia Sophia, the former imperial church that was converted into a mosque by Sultan Mehmed ii and served as the imperial mosque of the Ottomans, lost its religious function and was opened as a museum in 1934 by governmental decision. This ‘secularization’ of the building could be openly criticized especially after the transition to multiparty democracy in the late 1940s. Demands for reconverting the museum into a mosque were gradually transformed into public campaigns led by the protagonists of the conservative nationalist movement. This article analyses these campaigns as reflected in the printed press from the 1950s onwards and explores how the Hagia Sophia has since been instrumentalized for the reproduction of a xenophobic, anti-Western, Islamic and Ottomanist nationalism.