Asia News reported this on November 6:

Istanbul (AsiaNews) – The State Council has decided that the ancient Church of Saint Savoir [sic] Chora, be returned “to its initial cult”, that is to be used as a mosque. The pro-government newspaper “Yeni Şafak” reported this yesterday. Orthodox Christians and Catholics fear that this decision could set a precedent for the Hagia Sophia, also under the threat of being transformed from a museum into a mosque. The Church of St. Savior of Chora was built in the fifth century, and is located in the western district of Istanbul of Edirnekapı. It is one of the most splendid examples of Byzantine art, and still preserves mosaics and frescoes. Only since 1511 was it used as a mosque by the Ottoman Turks. In 1945 it was transformed into a museum until today…. The decision of the State Council for the church of Chora could open the way for a “Mosque of St. Sophia”.

Hagia Sophia was a church for nearly a thousand years, from the early sixth century to May 29, 1453, when the Muslim Turks conquered Constantinople, the largest and richest city in Christendom for half a millennium. Mehmet II, the conqueror of the city, promptly turned this largest and greatest of all Orthodox churches into a mosque. Islamic minarets were built around its Byzantine dome, proclaiming its new function to Believers and Unbelievers alike. It remained a mosque for nearly 500 years, until the 1930s when, under the secularizing rule of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and with the approval of his followers, the mosque was transformed into a museum, open to all.

It is in the news again, as some Muslims, encouraged by the relentless re-islamizing of Turkey by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sued to have the Hagia Sophia opened as a Muslim prayer house, and the State Council’s ruling regarding the Church of St. Savior of Chora could pave the way for that to happen.

In its plea, the association, a non-governmental Turkish heritage group, had claimed that barring prayers at Hagia Sophia was breaching the right to freedom of expression and conscience.

Apparently when Christian prayer was forbidden, from May 29, 1453 right up until today, in what was once the greatest church in Christendom, this did not breach any “right to freedom of expression and conscience,” for Christians have no such guaranteed rights in a Muslim polity. But keeping Muslims from praying at this former church is quite different; it does breach “the right to freedom of expression and conscience.”

There things stand, but it’s not hard to predict what Erdogan would like to do. He has always distrusted the Turkish judiciary, rightly regarding the courts as hotbeds of secularism. When he engaged in his vast roundup of more than 100,000 Turks, arresting 50,000 of them for supposedly taking part in a Gulenist coup in July 2016, there were many lawyers and judges among them. He quite possibly could let the word go out to Muslims that they should feel free to come to Hagia Sophia to recite prayers, or otherwise read verses from the Qur’an. There is now no countervailing secular force to stop him. Many of the secular Turks have lost their jobs; some have left the country, while others have been jailed. Still others are now employed in jobs that are far below, in influence and prestige, their previous employment, especially in journalism. And only 1% of Istanbul’s population is Christian.

But there is one consideration that might constrain Erdogan. The Turkish economy is on the skids. The foreign debt is enormous. Trump’s tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum have devastated those important sectors of the economy. The Turkish lira is in free fall. But there is one perennial bright spot in the Turkish economy: tourism, especially from Western Europe. Tourism now brings in about $30 billion a year. If tourists from Western Europe visit the Hagia Sophia, they expect to find a museum, but if it is officially or unofficially turned into a place for Muslim prayer (or for sermons by imams), this may discourage some of those tourists who come to visit Istanbul as a multicultural city and do not want Muslim prayers to dominate the public space of Hagia Sophia, the most important tourist site in Turkey, and for centuries the most important church in Christendom. Erdogan is impulsive, but he’s keenly aware of how tourism helps to pay the bills. It’s the fastest-growing part of the Turkish economy, and tariffs can’t touch it. For that reason alone, Erdogan is likely to allow the Hagia Sophia to remain a museum, forsooth, with the time not yet right for it to become, officially, anything else.