My pilgrimage started in Hagia Sophia before sunrise, and ended at night in Taksim square -- now an unfriendly cement square, adverse to any possible replay of an Occupy Istanbul. In 1934, Kemal wanted Hagia Sophia turned into a museum to honor the glorious Byzantine and Ottoman traditions. Hagia Sophia will revert to being a mosque, as soon as the Studion monastery, which was itself a mosque from 1453 to 1920, is restored.
This could be yet another manifestation of the neo-Islamic wave; or a graphic case of what Zygmunt Bauman called "religionization of politics" -- secular politics reshaped by religious certitude.
Whatever the case, the Sultan should prevail, and get his wish. He already turned NATO upside down -- spurning an alliance created to fight the USSR, and kept running against Russia, by clinching the vast Turk Stream pipeline deal with Moscow. And now Sberbank is willing to finance it -- alongside Istanbul's third airport and a nuclear power plant in Akkuyu.
Turk Stream has graphically demonstrated how Turkey is well on its way to become the ultimate crossroads between Eurasia and NATOstan -- on its own terms. And the City of Cities is bound to remain -- what else -- the jewel in the neo-Ottoman crown.
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