Erdogan Takes Aim at Istanbul’s Symbolic Gezi Park Again

Gezi Park is one of over 1,000 properties that the Directorate General of Foundations has taken over within the last few years, but undoubtedly the most symbolic one for Erdogan alongside Istanbul's landmark Hagia Sophia.

Last July, the Turkish president utilised a similar legal strategy to convert Hagia Sophia, his long-standing obsession, from a museum into a mosque. The Turkish government also transformed Hagia Sophia's namesakes in Iznik and Trabzon into mosques in 2011 and 2013 respectively.

Just like Istanbul's Hagia Sophia, both of these Byzantine churches which the Ottomans converted into mosques were transformed into museums during the republican period. As soon as the Directorate General of Foundations took over all three Hagia Sophias from the jurisdiction of Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Erdogan converted them into mosques.

The legal reasoning behind these cases is that an endowed property of a pious foundation should be inviolable in perpetuity. Although Turkey's myriad religious minority foundations, which have experienced a systematic plundering of their endowed properties during the republican era, have yet to enjoy a similar protection of their private property rights, the properties that Ottoman sultans captured by conquest, through the so-called 'right of the sword', are sacrosanct for the Erdogan government.

Settling scores and sustaining cronies

Protestors clash with Turkish riot police during a rally against the government's crackdown on environmentalists angered by a development project at the Gezi park near Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, 2013 Photo: EPA-EFE/SEDAT SUNA

The legal precedent that the Hagia Sophias of Iznik and Trabzon set has provided the pathway...

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