Identity, Cultural Heritage and the Politics of Sovereignty: Narrating Turkey and Greece Through Ayasofya

Fulya Hisarlıoğlu, Chara Karagiannopoulou and Lerna K. Yanık

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2025, vol. 27, issue 1, 36-55

Abstract: The article examines how Turkey’s decision to reconvert the Ayasofya Museum into a mosque in June 2020 has shaped the ‘self’ and ‘other’ perceptions of the Greek and Turkish politicians of their respective countries by instrumentalizing the concept of sovereignty. We argue that what has been termed ‘the right to sovereignty’ by Turkey’s leadership through the reconversion of Ayasofya—from a museum to a mosque—is indeed a ‘sovereignty performance’. What is more, we deconstruct how ‘sovereignty performances’ centred on the conversion of Ayasofya produced by Turkey and Greece came to define, narrate and naturalize the essence and standards of ‘national’ and ‘foreign/international’ legitimizing mutual and respective identity perceptions held for themselves and each other.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19448953.2024.2318675 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cjsbxx:v:27:y:2025:i:1:p:36-55

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cjsb20

DOI: 10.1080/19448953.2024.2318675

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies is currently edited by Professor Vassilis Fouskas

More articles in Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().