“A gesture to Muslims is [a] much more immediate [political gain] and preferable and the [gains from the] touristic side of Hagia Sophia can be negligible,” Sonmez argued. “That’s why he didn’t take it into consideration.”
That is, the benefits of asserting Islam’s superiority over both secularism and Christianity outweighed for Erdogan any economic considerations. The question now, however, is whether Turkey will retain sufficient economic strength for him to continue to try to make his caliphate dreams into reality.
“Turkey’s economy plunges as tourists stay away after Hagia Sophia, Chora conversions,” by Nicholas Frakes, Al Arabiya, August 31, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
As Turkey experiences an economic decline, the conversion of the Hagia Sophia and Chora museums into mosques dealt a blow to Turkey’s tourism industry which has already been dealt a blow from the global coronavirus pandemic. In the second quarter of 2020, Turkey’s economy shrank 9.9 percent from the previous quarter.
Revenue from the mosques was set to be around $35 million this year. But because of the pandemic and the conversions of the mosques, that revenue will not materialize.
In July 2020, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a controversial decision that was condemned by the international community, converted the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque. Built as a Christian church under the Byzantine Empire and converted to a mosque during the Ottoman Empire and then museum after the founding of the Turkish Republic, the decision sparked outrage by critics who said Erdogan was pandering to his conservative, religious base to bolster domestic support.
At the start of August, Erdogan announced that another historic site was also going to be converted into a mosque. This time it was the Chora museum.
This museum, like the Hagia Sophia, was built as a church and became a mosque under the Ottomans, only to become a museum following the founding of the Republic.
Every year, millions of people used to visit the two museums, bringing in tens of millions of tourism dollars for the Turkish economy. Now, however, tourists are still free to enter outside prayer times, but they do not pay entrance fees for the highly trafficked sites.
The loss of funds could pose a threat to the Turkish economy that depends on tourism for around 30 percent of its annual income. However, even without Erdogan’s controversial decision, this year has seen drastically lower numbers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Almost $35 million was expected [this year from the mosques],” Turkish economist Mustafa Sonmez told Al Arabiya English, “but unfortunately this is almost zero [because of the pandemic].” In 2019, total revenue from tourism hit a high $34.5 billion, Turkish state media TRT World reported….
Businesses were hoping that tourism would see a surge this autumn, when people are more likely to visit cultural sites rather than going to the beach or sea due to the drop in temperature, but some fear that with the Hagia Sophia and Chora becoming mosques, tourists may forgo planned visits.
“Turkish tourism had already suffered a blow with the pandemic when the European Union did not include Turkey as a ‘safe’ country,” Nazlan Ertan, a Turkish journalist, told Al Arabiya English. “Still the Turkish tourism operators were hoping to make a late recovery, meaning, in late autumn and when you speak of late autumn, of course, you are speaking about cultural tourism.”
According to Ertan, these decisions by Erdogan send a message that he and Turkey prioritize Islam and Muslims over other all other things, especially for those who are looking to visit from the West.
“It clinches Erdogan’s image in the eyes of the Western tourists as a conservative who has Islam foremost in his mind,” Ertan said.
This also comes at a time where Erdogan’s regional rival, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has been promoting his country’s diverse religious roots in an effort to boost tourism.
“This is when Sisi is sort of capitalizing on the Christian and Jewish heritage of Egypt,” Ertan stated. “So if you are going to come to the Middle East and on one hand you have one country which is opening its non-Muslim heritage and another that it is opening it for worship and removing their statuses as museums, which one are you going to visit?”…
“A gesture to Muslims is [a] much more immediate [political gain] and preferable and the [gains from the] touristic side of Hagia Sophia can be negligible,” Sonmez argued. “That’s why he didn’t take it into consideration.”