LETTER FROM ISTANBUL
It’s over, Mehmet Boynukalin will no longer lead prayers at the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul (Turkey). The chief imam of the former Byzantine basilica, which became a mosque in 1453, a museum in 1934, then became a mosque again in July 2020, resigned Thursday, April 8. Bowing out on his Twitter account, he explained that he wanted to return to his original vocation, the teaching of Islamic law at the theological faculty of the University of Marmara.
His ascent was short-lived, only eight months to exercise his magisterium on the building of VIe century, returned to Muslim worship in the summer of 2020 on the orders of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Tourists are allowed to wander there to admire the curtains that cover the figurative representations, mosaics and paintings of the Byzantine period, hidden from view so as not to insult Islam.
Nobody expected the resignation of Mehmet Boynukalin, a fifty-something with a corpulent figure and a full beard, known to be close to the Islamo-conservative power. His curriculum is impeccable; he graduated from Al-Azhar University in Cairo. His ancestry is just as important since his father, Rifat Boynukalin, was, in the 1970s, one of the founders of the National Order party (Milli Nizam partisi, political Islam), alongside Necmettin Erbakan, the mentor policy of Mr. Erdogan.
Finally his nephew, Abdurrahim Boynukalin, a former deputy of the presidential party of Justice and Development (AKP), is known for his vitality and that of his thugs, used in the context of violent actions, as in 2015, when he organized a punitive expedition against the locals and the daily journalists Hürriyet.
Commentators wonder. Why did the ulema, the doctor of Islamic law from Hagia Sophia, throw in the towel? In the statement he posted on social networks, full of references to ” Almighty God “ and at “Precious president”, Mehmet Boynukalin justifies his resignation by his concern to stay in the background, he who used to comment on the news all the time, through his three Twitter accounts, in Turkish, in Arabic and in English.
Experienced swordsman
The pious geek, whose last name means in Turkish “Thick neck”, was careful not to go against ideas dear to the Turkish Head of State. Was he not the first to adhere to the presidential economic doxa according to which we must reduce interest rates to better fight inflation?
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