Erdogan Rebukes West for ‘Islamophobia’ Amid Criticism over Turning Hagia Sophia into Mosque
Turkish president slams world leaders for not acting “against Islamophobia in their own countries.”
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rebuked Western countries for ‘Islamophobia’ in response to growing criticism of his decision to turn Hagia Sophia cathedral into a mosque. “Those who do not take a step against Islamophobia in their own countries … attack Turkey’s will to use its sovereign rights,” Erdogan said on Saturday.
The remarks came in response to European and Western criticism over the conversion of the 1,500-year-old Christian church into a Muslim place of worship. Friday’s announcement was met with cries of ‘Allahu akbar’ by a crowd of Erdogan supporters outside Hagia Sophia, media reports said.
The decision was slammed by the European Union and the United States. Switzerland-based World Council of Churches expressed its “grief and dismay” over turning of one of the Christianity’s first cathedral into a mosque. Archbishop of Athens Ieronymos, who represents most of the Orthodox Christianity, called it an attack on civilization.
French broadcaster France24 reported Erdogan’s remarks:
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday rejected worldwide condemnation over Turkey’s decision to convert the Byzantine-era monument Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, saying it represented his country’s will to use its “sovereign rights”. (…)
“Those who do not take a step against Islamophobia in their own countries … attack Turkey’s will to use its sovereign rights,” Erdogan said during a ceremony he attended via video-conference. (…)
Erdogan’s announcement came after the cancellation by a top court of a 1934 cabinet decision under modern Turkey’s secularising founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to preserve the church-turned-mosque as a museum.
“We made this decision not looking at what others say but looking what our right is and what our nation wants, just like what we have done in Syria, in Libya and elsewhere,” the Turkish leader said Saturday.
The Turkish president has chosen to respond to this growing criticism by playing the ‘Islamophobia’ card. This not the first time he has resorted to this. Erdogan not only funds a massive network of mosques across Europe, he also finances the narrative of Islamophobia on the continent.
Every year, Turkey’s state-funded SETA foundation publishes a so-called “European Islamophobia Report.” The report apparently seeks to smear the European critics of Islam and paint Europe as a hostile place for Muslims. “The existence of Islamophobia in Europe can now no longer be denied,” the authors of the report declared in 2016.
This Turkey-sponsored Islamophobia reports blacklists European newspapers, writers, and politicians for the crime of spreading ‘Islamophobic’ views. The 2018 edition of the report named UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson among the “central figures in Britain’s Islamophobia network.” The European Union is actively backing Erdogan in these efforts by financing SETA’s “Islamophobia” research.
While admonishing the West for its ‘Islamophobic’ intolerance, Erdogan on Friday vowed to ‘liberate’ Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa,’ the mosque built on top of the Temple Mount. The “resurrection” of Hagia Sophia is the first step towards “the liberation of the Al-Aqsa mosque,” Erdogan declared in his Friday speech. The Turkish leader has given similar calls for jihad against Israel in the past.
(Cover image via YouTube)
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Islamophobia, schmislamophobia.
Try Islamoprudence, Rec.
In Peace, and
Sincerely,
An unintimidated, practically wise infidel (your term, Rec, not mine).
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan is a corrupt thug, nothing more. He’s using visceral measures like this to try and deflect attention from the appalling state of Turkey’s economy and currency. The Turkish Lira has dropped 200% in value against the Dollar and EURO in the last decade, largely because of Erdogan’s mismanagement. He’s an ignorant street politician, nothing more. Trump would be wise do distance himself from Erdogan.
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan is a corrupt thug, nothing more. He’s using visceral measures like this to try and deflect attention from the appalling state of Turkey’s economy and currency. The Turkish Lira has dropped 200% in value against the Dollar and EURO in the last decade, largely because of Erdogan’s mismanagement. He’s an ignorant street politician, nothing more. Trump would be wise do distance himself from Erdogan.
“Islamophobia” seems an appropriate word. After all, there’s much to be feared about Islam.
“Homophobia” and “Transphobia,” on the other hand, are silly terms. Who’s afraid of gays and cross-dressers?
“Islamophobia” seems an appropriate word. After all, there’s much to be feared about Islam.
“Homophobia” and “Transphobia,” on the other hand, are silly terms. Who’s afraid of gays and cross-dressers?
“Islamophobia” seems an appropriate word. After all, there’s much to be feared about Islam.
“Homophobia” and “Transphobia,” on the other hand, are silly terms. Who’s afraid of gays and cross-dressers?
The 1915 Armenian Genocide, the 1922 anti-Greek Smyrna Atrocity, the 1955 anti-Greek riots in Istanbul, the 1964 expulsion of ethnic Greeks, the 1975 invasion of Cyprus-all demonstrate a REPEAT pattern of Turkish intolerance against Christian minority groups in their country. To America’s eternal shame we have turned a blind eye towards these and other crimes in Turkey, ostensibly because of Turkey’s strategic location on NATO’s southern flank. Turning Hagia Sophia into a Mosque is just the latest demonstration out of Turkey’s government. The Turks have an appalling record of genocide and crimes against humanity, it’s about time American admitted it and started treating that nation like it is-a criminal, corrupt enterprise. No more tolerance of their law breaking!
I’m with you 100%, Alex! As are probably most Jews and Christians worldwide.
If Recep isn’t a prime troublemaker on the world’s stage, no one is.
I’m also in no mood for his insultingly presumptuous misnomers, which, like the Dem-Lefty-Globes, just can’t seem to mislabel his legitimate and civil critics enough. We Americans have now, to be sure, bigger fish to fry.
We have enough social conflict to resolve now in the US and really don’t need his maniacal brand of xenophobic projection to correct our own travels onto a better-acting, -speaking, and -policymaking path. We know who we are and what we want for our own good.
I hope his days as Turkey’s president are numbered; they almost were, you know, a few years back.
A thoroughly secular Turkey — and the return of Hagia Sophia to Ataturk’s brilliantly magnanimous decree of it as a culture-neutral museum, emblemizing Istanbul’s intercontinental, -religious, -cultural place in the history of Western Civilization — would likely make for a better, more civilized world for all peoples and nations.
Better this way probably:
I’m also in no mood for his personally insulting, presumptuous misnomer, the entrepreneurial trademark Islamophobia, which, like the variety of others filling deplorables’ buckets and issued with spittle reflexively by the Dem-Lefty-Globes, he just can’t supply enough to meet demand. Islamophobia is everywhere! Erdogan claims, and he’s got an app for that.
We Americans have now, to be sure, bigger fish to fry in having to deal effectively, yet civilly and protectively, with the increasingly popular belief that the population’s majority is inherently racist.
Having met and hung out with a lot of great Americans from the country’s many different regions, I can safely say that our countryfolk are, for the very most part, neither racist, nor Islamophobic. They’re just too busy working hard, then enjoying themselves with family or friends 1) to think obsessively about Muslims and African-Americans, and 2) to hate so much as to fear and avoid said human beings compulsively, simply because they’re Muslim or African-Americans.
Wouldn’t those relatively rare mental events, often expressed and detected in said obsessive-compulsive individual’s peculiarly abnormal behavior, the exclusive proprietary material of a garden-variety Islamophobe or racist? Damphyno! Anyway, it’s all just like I used to do and maybe too much, and not do in my previous life. (I’m now recovering.)
Being more solution-oriented here in America, and in the words of the late German-American Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, perhaps we all need to drink more beer. I think he meant, we need to relax, and try to better understand and appreciate our “ultimate concerns”. I’m all for it.
We have enough social conflict . . .
I wish Israel removed the several mosques from the Temple Mount in response. They they should have been scrapped 30 years ago.
It hasn’t been a church for centuries. And it was a mosque for centuries, until Kamal Ataturk turned it into a museum.
Milhouse. You really can’t help yourself.
That’s what Mohammedans do…they turn holy sites and places of worship of defeated peoples into victory mosques. Yes, you are correct, it hasn’t been a church for centuries. Not because the Christians got bored and stopped going or financially supporting. It stopped being a church, cathedral actually, because invading, conquering Muslims turned it in to a mosque. Many former Hindu temples turned into mosques in India and Pakistan are flash points for religious discord there. Why-oh-why do you think there’s a mosque on the remains of the Temple in Jerusalem? By the way, other than where that guy mounted his horse to go to heaven, my understanding is Jerusalem gets scant attention in historical Muslim texts. Only the re-creation of Israel has made Jerusalem valuable to Muslims. All of a sudden the Jews are successful, and Muslims’ll value Jerusalem as a hostage to be kept from Jews and Christians.
Being tedious and pedantic. A “Devil’s Advocate” is a Catholic term, used in the process leading to canonization, to twist and examine evidence in worst possible way. We want to be sure those cannonized as saints are really saints. As a nonCatholic, that’s cultural appropriation. Please forgive me assuming you are not Catholic, if you are, as the impression I’ve gotten is that you are not Catholic. I will give you credit and honor, as I suspect a strong religious commitment from you to truth and integrity.
That’s also what Christians do. Christians did it to mosques, why should Moslems not have done it to churches?
Mils, baby, help me out.
“That’s what Christians do.” Besides mosques which were built on an existing church, when and where did Christians build a church on a mosque?
Muslims desecrate the holy sites of their vanquished foes by turning those holy sites into mosques. That’s part of the humiliation of losing to them. Christians don’t do that. In fact, Christians have avoided active pagan sites when locating new church buildings.
Bullshit. Absolute ignorant bullshit. You Christians have done exactly the same thing. When you occupied the Holy Land you turned every site holy to Moslems or Jews into a church. And in Spain there are dozens (used to be hundreds) of old churches that were synagogues.
Christianized sites
Say, what was the name of the Roman emperor who tried to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem? That didn’t go very well. His nickname was “…the Apostate”.
That would be Julian the Apostate. Jesus said the Temple wouldn’t be rebuilt, Julian tried and miraculous events stopped work.
The Hagia Sophia wasn’t just a cathedral but also a basilica, which also a Big Deal.
Not only was HAgia Sophia a Basilica, the first hospital as we understand the term was next to it.
The Temple will be rebuilt.
That would be the blessed Julian. Unfortunately it wasn’t the right time, and he fell in battle before he could carry it out.
I wonder what Turkey would say if Europe proposed restoring Byzantium? 🙂
I’d be OK with a crusade to Make Istanbul Constantinople Again.
The tactics are always the same:
What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.
More like “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable, until it’s mine and not yours”.
Islamophobia, transphobia… a diversitist projection. Erdogan learns a new trick from American psychos.
Israel should boot the mooslimes out of their most important temple. Jus’sayin’.
Hagia Sofia is in the Occupied Territory of Constantinople!
The Turks should withdraw from the Occupied Territories if they want peace in the Middle East!