As millions of Christians were celebrating Christmas Eve on December 24, 2021, the Head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) opened a historic church, also known as Ainos (Enez) Hagia Sophia Church in Edirne, as a mosque after its restoration was completed by Turkey’s General Directorate of Foundations.
Referring to the former Greek church as a “historic mosque,” the website of Diyanet announced on its website:
The historic mosque, which was turned into a mosque after the conquest of Enez by [Ottoman sultan] Mehmed the Conqueror and became unusable as a result of the earthquakes in the following years, reunited with its congregants after 56 years through the Friday prayers led by the President of Diyanet, Ali Erbaş.
Edirne is in eastern Thrace, where, according to genocide scholars, the 1913-23 Christian genocide that targeted Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks commenced prior to the First World War. The decision to eliminate Christians was made by the political party in power in the Ottoman Empire, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), also known as the Young Turks. The city, ethnically cleansed of its indigenous Greek population by Turks, is a former Greek city – like other cities in Thrace and Asia Minor. The Ottoman Turks captured Adrianopolis (Edirne), a major Byzantine Greek city in Thrace, in the fourteenth century and made it the Ottoman capital until they invaded Constantinople in 1453.
The Greek Genocide Resource Center details the persecution of the Greeks of Eastern Thrace:
The methods used to eliminate Greeks in the region included: boycotting businesses, looting, murders, deportation, extortion and the pillaging of towns, villages and places of worship. The methods were so effective and were met with such little or no resistance and international condemnation, that similar methods were later used against other Greeks and other minorities in the Empire to bring about their destruction.
Over one hundred years after the genocide, the history and cultural heritage of indigenous Christians is still being systematically erased in Turkey. Countless churches, monasteries and other religious and cultural heritage sites belonging to Christians have been violated, destroyed, or left in disrepair across Turkey. For instance, only a wall remains of the Armenian St. Bartholomew Monastery, which has become an excavation site for treasure hunters and villagers in the city of Van, eastern Turkey.
The Firat News Agency (ANF) reported on January 1 that the monastery was once used as a police station. The monastery was for years closed to transportation as it was within the borders of Albayrak Police Station, which was used as a base by the Turkish Special Operations Teams since 1990. After the police station was moved to a new building, the [usage right of the] church was transferred to Turkey’s Ministry of Culture. Although the then Governor of Van Münir Karaloğlu announced in 2011 that the restoration works would be started, no steps have since been taken. President of the Environment Association of Van, Ali Kalçık, stated that the mentality of “We have destroyed the Armenians in the past; let’s destroy their history now” continues to wreak havoc on historic structures.
Van was a majority-Armenian populated city for millennia until the genocide collapsed the Christian population there. The city was invaded by Seljuq Turks in the eleventh century. In 1548, it was besieged and captured from the Safavid Empire by Ottoman Turks. This city, writes Raffi Tapanian, “has a long history of being populated by thousands of Armenians in the past 3,000 years under the various Armenian kingdoms and foreign empires, but following the Armenian Genocide of 1915 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian population has vanished. Along with the erasure of the Armenian population of Van, the erasure of thousands of years of Armenian heritage has and continues to take place.” Tapanian refers to the destruction as “cultural genocide.”
Tapanian then gives some examples of churches and monasteries in Van that are in ruins, have been demolished or used for sacrilegious purposes. The Hokiats Monastery, for instance, was used by locals in Van to hold livestock. He continues:
In 1914 there were 2,538 functioning Armenian churches and monasteries in the Ottoman Empire. Following the Armenian Genocide of 1915, this number was reduced drastically, now there are only 34 functioning Armenian churches, mainly in Constantinople.”
Assyrian (Syriac) churches face the same pattern of desecration. The Syriac Mor Addai Church in a village in the Idil district of Şırnak, for instance, fell into disrepair, and the villagers started to use it as a barn. The church is estimated to have been built in 620 C.E. According to 2021 media reports, although the walls of the historic church are mostly standing, the rest of the church is largely in ruins, for it has not been preserved or restored. The indigenous Assyrians were forced to leave the village completely in the 1990s as the war between the Turkish army and the Kurdish PKK intensified in the region. The village headman told the Mesopotamia Agency (MA) that “The church is a structure that can be included in the UNESCO world heritage list. There is not a greater church than this in the area… However, if it remains as it is [and not restored], its collapse is inevitable.”
Idil (Azakh, or Beth Zabday in Assyrian) is situated in Tur Abdin, the historic Assyrian homeland in southeast Turkey. Today it is a demographically Kurdish town with few Christians left, although it was originally built and resided in by Assyrians. To learn more about the history of de-Christianization of the town, please read this report.
In the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922), the sultan had the authority to decide the “fate” of churches in cities conquered by Ottomans. Traditionally, Ottomans converted the biggest church of the cities they conquered into a mosque to demonstrate their superiority and dominance over other faiths.
For this reason, the Hagia Sophia, the then largest church in Constantinople, was converted into a mosque and became a property of the Sultan Mehmed’s foundation after the Ottoman takeover of the city in 1453, but it was not the only Hagia Sophia that was converted into a mosque. There are at least nine historic (former) churches named Hagia Sophia in Turkey today. They are now either used as mosques, or are so-called “abandoned” buildings being restored as mosques, according to the book Türkiye’de Kilise ve Manastırlar (Churches and Monasteries in Turkey) by Dr. Ersoy Soydan.
This was also the case in Ottoman-occupied Cyprus (1571–1878). The St. Nicholas Cathedral in the Cypriot city of Famagusta, for example, was transformed into a mosque with the addition of a mihrab and a minaret after the 1571 Ottoman invasion of Cyprus. It was opened to worship through a sermon that Lala Mustafa Pasha gave on behalf of Ottoman Sultan Selim II. From the date it was converted into a mosque, it was known as “the Little Hagia Sophia”, “Famagusta’s Hagia Sophia” and “the Great Mosque”. In 1954, the then Muslim mufti of Cyprus, Mehmet Dana Efendi, renamed the mosque “Lala Mustafa Pasha Mosque” after the Ottoman commander who invaded and captured the island.
The status of churches and synagogues in the Ottoman Empire was regulated in accordance with Islamic sharia law. Dr. Mehmet Akman, who teaches at the school of law at Marmara University, writes that according to the Islamic law, “the property rights of non-Muslim temples in the lands captured through war belongs to the Islamic state… In the cities they conquered, the Ottomans turned the biggest church of that place into a mosque as a sign of domination.
According to classical period Islamic jurists, Christians and Jews could perform their religious rites and worship collectively only inside churches and synagogues. Church bells could not be rung in Muslim cities; crosses were not allowed to be carried through the streets and the rituals were not to be performed in a way that Muslims could hear.
As a rule, new church construction was not allowed in the Ottoman empire. As stated in the Bosnian Sanjak Laws of 1516, 1530 and 1541, the churches that were built later [after the Ottoman conquest] and that were built in places where churches were not registered officially had to be demolished. The prohibition of building new churches continued until the last years of the Ottoman state, but there were some exceptions to this rule.”
Dr. Aşkın Koyuncu, a historian, presents some information about the rules concerning the building and repairing of churches during the Ottoman era:
In the Ottoman Empire, in accordance with the Sharia law and until the declaration of the [1856] Reform Edict, it was forbidden to build new churches and synagogues. The repair or rebuilding of temples was subject to the approval of the Sultan. It was also forbidden to heighten or expand the buildings. There are many examples of temples that were built later, or whose parts were repaired without being faithful to the original form that were demolished.
He also notes:
When the policies of the Ottoman Empire towards churches, synagogues, and monasteries until the declaration of the Reform Edict are examined, it is understood that the construction of new churches, synagogues and monasteries was not theoretically allowed within the framework of Islamic law. Repairing the existing ones in accordance with their original forms or rebuilding them depended on the approval of the Sultan. The expansion or elevation of the buildings during the repairs was prohibited. As a matter of fact, there are many examples of the demolition of churches that were built later and the destruction of additional parts of the buildings built without permission.
The Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923, is not ruled according to the Islamic law. However, an even more abusive version of the sharia-based Ottoman tradition that systematically violates churches is ongoing in Turkey, a NATO member and candidate for the European Union membership.
Dr. Vasileios Meichanetsidis is a Greek Genocide scholar and temporary Teaching Assistant at the University of Athens.
noel says
Is the present Pope giving matches to help them destroy the churches.
mortimer says
Pope Francis is certainly not literally giving matches, but he is not visibly doing anything. He may be expressing ‘concern’ behind the scenes.
This deluded pope has not understand the totalitarian and expansion and militant nature of Islam and continues to believe that Muslims want modern human rights.
Muslims today continue to want something very similar to the late Ottoman Empire, but not led by the Turks.
gravenimage says
Agreed, Mortimer.
Except that Muslim Turks like Erdogan do indeed want to see a new Caliphate headquartered in Turkey.
mortimer says
The people of the Eastern Empire (‘Byzantine’ Roman Empire) were Romans and called themselves Rhomaioi … and many do even today. They were and are still a multicultural group, but they were all Romans and solidly Christian. The Muslims believed that Mohammed has commanded them to take Constantinople and its great riches which they did with the aid of the perfidious Venetians.
The Rhomaioi are still yearning for their old capital city Constantinople which is both a religious and political capital for the Rhomaioi. The genocide against the Rhomaioi continues under Erdogan who has brought it out into the open.
The invading Ottoman Muslims called the Rhomaioi ‘Rum’ which eventually became the name for all Christians in Anatolia and Ottoman-occupied Europe. A large swath of this conquered land was labelled ‘Rumeli’ by the Turks or ‘Rumelia’ in European languages.
Rumelia became the region from which most of the Christian boys were kidnapped and sent to be converted to Islam and made Janissary soldiers who would be sent back to attack their own countries and repress them further.
The genocide against Ottoman Christians was kicked into high gear during the Hamidian Massacres and then it continued 30 years until 1924 when a forcible expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Anatolian Rhomaioi was effected. A concomitant ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Rumelia paralleled it effected by the countries which had seized Rumelia from the Ottomans and carved it up after fighting one another savagely.
It is impossible to find any heroes among the vicious bigots who attacked Ottoman Rumelia and then committed atrocities against one another. Their war crimes were meticulously documented by a distinguished panel of judges and politicians of the International Carnegie Commission on the Conduct of the Balkan Wars. These war criminals were never tried and punished as they deserved because WWI came along. That is the context of the genocides committed by Ottoman Turkey and Ataturk’s new dictatorship. They were all villains, but the Turks were worse villains that the lot and Islam was the justification for their crimes. The Universal Fatwa to All the People of Islam of 1915, issued by the Sultan gave the authority required to murder non-Muslims anywhere in the world, but not German allies.
Rafael says
Mustafa Kemal Aditurk (In order to understand it you should know Turkish) was not even a Turk! He was only Turk by name. However this invader, Aditurk, he came here, to Anatolia from Macedonia, and violently suppressed the native Turkish, Kurdish, Greek Roman, and Armenian peoples’ rights in these lands. Kemal Aditurk gave the way to the dictatorial remnant President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by creating the bigoted Diyanet Isleri Baskanligi! Ali Erbas, who insulted Aditurk in the Hagia Sophia by calling him “cursed” has both betrayed Aditurk and the republic which created him! But I don’t care about them. Both Islamist and secularists in Turkey are blinded by Turkish ultranationalist ideology which suppresses the rights of the Kurds and other minorities.
gravenimage says
It is true that the Armenian Genocide–really, a genocide against *all* Christians in greater Turkey–began under the Ottoman Empire, continued under the “Young Turks”, and continued further under Attaturk. He may have restricted many aspects of Islam, but not the mass murder of Christians.
Rafael says
Agreed, Gravenimage. Ataturk adopted the violent jihad ideology of Islam and used it against Christians. He also forcibly expelled the remaining Christians in Turkey. Because of this policies, today, sadly there are no more than 0.2% Christians in Turkey. Turkey still agressively denies this genocide and makes the life of remaining Christians worse.
mortimer says
The destruction or planned neglect of Christian buildings is the DEFAULT POSITION of Muslims who instinctively apply the PACT OF OMAR wherever Muslims are in the political ascendency.
The PACT OF OMAR (or the ‘DHIMMI PACT’) stipulates that Christians may not repare churches that fall into disrepair nor build new ones.
Thought the DHIMMI PACT is not in the Koran or hadiths, it is given EQUAL AUTHORITY to those primary Islamic source texts.
Islamic law is based on a series of texts and traditions that never do anything in favor of the non-Muslim KAFIRS.
There is nothing in Islam that is good for the kafir.
gravenimage says
Spot on, Mortimer. The ugly Pact of Umar is here:
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/pact-umar.asp
born saturday says
turkey has a criminal record, rather than history…..
the main problem now, is that they are restoring these old practises of islam, together with dreams of a modern ottomaniac empire chalifate….
gravenimage says
Yes–this is what Erdogan has been doing for the past twenty years.
somehistory says
The snake of turkey, the snakes of iran, and elsewhere, are all being gathered together for a fight, a war, that they will not, cannot, win.
Christians know, have been warned, that these things would happen, and have been strongly admonished not to give in and lose faith.
islam, the government of turkey, etc. are weapons of satan the devil. The demon may seem to be winning this spiritual war, and in turkey, nigeria, pakistan, and so many places, it is a physical war being waged with complete destruction as their goal. However, the final outcome will be truly unexpected by those who do not believe in Christ as a Savior and King.
Rafael says
Amen, somehistory. Sometimes it could be seen that they are winning the war in Turkey, as you wrote, which the people of that country hates Christians. But I trust our Lord Jesus Christ that he will help us.
somehistory says
The threat to Christians is also here in the U.S.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/supreme-court-rejects-bid-for-religious-opt-out-from-covid-19-vaccine-mandate_4294393.html?utm_source=News&utm_
“Supreme Court Rejects Bid for Religious Opt-Out From COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate”
A person commenting asked whether this would also apply to mozlums who refuse. It doesn’t apply to the illegals who, seemingly, don’t have to comply with any laws.
GreekEmpress says
+1 to all above posters.
My ancestors were Rhomaioi. We still think of ourselves that way rather than as Hellenes. My family was from Constantinople. And we still pray for a “free Constantinople” some day. Turks are just barbaric squatters.
gravenimage says
GreekEmpress, I believe it is the same for Robert Spencer’s background.
gravenimage says
Turkey Continues Desecrating Historic Churches
……………
Just sickening–but who can be surprised?
Kudos to Vasileios Meichanetsidis for this story, and good to see him contributing at Jihad Watch again.