Syria’s at war and millions of its people are refugees, with tens of thousands trying to sneak into mostly secular Europe from Muslim Turkey; Iraq remains a quagmire and Yemen is rapidly descending into full-blown civil … yet in Istanbul thousands of pious Turks pray for the Hagia Sophia to revert to a … mosque.

According to the daily Zaman, a huge group of worshipers (practically all men) gathered outside what was once eastern Christendom’s pre-eminent cathedral to demand it be turned into an Islamic place of worship. The early-morning prayer coincided with the 562nd anniversary of the conquest of Constantinople (May 29, 1453) by the Ottoman Turkish under the Sultan Mehmet.

Constantinople’s vastly outnumbered defenders fought almost to the last man by a huge Muslim army, aided by some of Mehmet’s Christian vassals.

The event was organized by the Anatolian Youth Association, whose slogan about the cathedral is the “The chains will be broken, Aya Sofya to be opened” and “Come with your prayer rug,” using the Turkish name for the cathedral.

According to Zaman, AGD head Salih Turhan told the gathered crowd in front of Hagia Sophia that they “demonstrated an important stance by coming here from different parts of Turkey to break the chains on Hagia Sophia.”

After the speeches, the minaret crier (muezzin) for al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem recited a call to prayer from the group’s platform.
After the prayer, Abdurrahman Sadien, who won first place in an international Qur’an memorization and recitation contest, read from the Qur’an to the crowd.

Besides the iconic Orthodox Christian cathedral, a separate group took aim at another Abrahamic religion on Sunday, with Muslim worshippers gathering for a morning prayer in front of the Israeli embassy building in Ankara to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the raid on the Mavi Marmara ship in 2010.

This group of pious Turks had set off from Istanbul for the central Anatolian city of Konya to attend a rally for the … liberation of Jerusalem — organized by the Humanitarian Aid Foundation (İHH) – before making the stop in the Turkish capital of Ankara.
In Ankara they gathered in front of the embassy, laid their prayer rugs and prayed.