Five years ago, the reverberating call to prayer inside the Ayasofya marked a historic turning point in modern Turkish history. On July 10, 2020, Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a decree reopening the Ayasofya for Muslim worship. 

"Break the chains and open Ayasofya" was a slogan chanted by everyone present at the gathering in 2020. Hundreds of thousands of believers gathered for the first Friday prayers of the opening five years ago and prayed on the streets as the congregation overflowed.

Yesterday, on the fifth anniversary of the reopening, the fervour was as high as it was then. Inside the majestic 65,000-square-foot stone structure, thousands once again gathered at dawn for the morning prayer. 

As the soft light of sunrise fell across the ancient dome, many reflected on the decades-long wait that preceded that moment.

“The Ayasofya is not merely a mosque,” says Professor Erhan Afyoncu, a senior historian and rector of the National Defence University in Istanbul.

“It is the symbol of conquest. And now, the question that lingered in the hearts of generations, ‘Why don’t our leaders reopen it?’ has finally been answered,” he tells TRT World.

The reconversion fulfilled a long-standing aspiration after Türkiye’s top court annulled the 1934 ruling that had converted the site into a museum.

“This was one of the long-standing dreams of the Turkish Right, the nationalist and conservative segments of society,” says Prof Afyoncu.

From our youth, and even earlier, the idea of the Ayasofya remaining closed to worship was seen as something unfinished, an incompleteness in our national spirit, Afyoncu adds.

For many, the moment was filled with both spiritual meaning and historical vindication. It was more than a legal decision; it was, for many in Türkiye, the realisation of a deeply rooted cultural aspiration.

Sacred legacy reawakened

Built in 537 CE under Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, the Ayasofya served as Eastern Christianity’s greatest cathedral for nearly a millennium.

That chapter shifted dramatically with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Sultan Mehmed II, who led the first Friday prayer in the former basilica and transformed it into a mosque, an act symbolic of the Ottoman Empire’s ascendancy and the city’s new Islamic identity.

“The Ayasofya was not just converted into a mosque by Sultan Mehmed, it became a seal of conquest,” says Professor Afyoncu. “It was always treated as such, by generations who saw its sanctity as inseparable from our historical inheritance.”

For nearly five centuries, the mosque stood as a cornerstone of Ottoman religious and political life. However, in 1934, the Turkish Republic reclassified it as a museum. It remained a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a global cultural icon.

The legal foundation for the change was laid in a unanimous ruling by Türkiye’s Council of State, which annulled the decree that had turned the Ayasofya into a museum.

President Erdogan signed the official order transferring authority over the site to the Directorate of Religious Affairs, officially reopening it under its historic name: Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Serifi, the Ayasofya Grand Mosque.

Overcome with emotion, Erdogan did not sleep until first light the next morning of the opening of the Ayasofya Grand Mosque. What he thought of as an era of humiliation had ended.

 ‘A petition: 46 metres long’

“This wasn’t something that emerged in the last ten years,” Afyoncu adds.

According to him, the desire to see the Ayasofya restored as a mosque has existed since the 1950s. Important figures like renowned poet Necip Fazil, writer and statesman Osman Yuksel Serdengecti, and political historian Fahir Armaoglu wrote about it passionately.

“In the 1960s, 3,000 people in Bursa signed a petition—46 metres long—and sent it to Parliament. There were petitions from Erzurum. Newspapers published open calls. This was not just political, it was cultural, even emotional,” Afyoncu adds.

He recalls the late Professor Haluk Dursun, who narrated how young people would sneak inside the Ayasofya to pray, often arrested for their quiet acts of defiance.

“One young man was brought before the court and asked, ‘Why were you praying in a museum?’ He replied, ‘I heard the adhan from the minarets. There’s a minaret and a call to prayer, so I assumed it was a mosque.’

Another said, ‘He stood for prayer, and I didn’t want him to pray alone, so I joined so we could form a congregation.’ The judge acquitted them. These moments reveal how strong the sentiment was.”

Afyoncu adds that his late grandfather prayed for Adnan Menderes until the 1970s, in gratitude for restoring the adhan (Muslim call to prayer) to its original Arabic form.

“These gestures meant a great deal to people of faith. The same kind of significance surrounded Ayasofya.”

Balancing faith and heritage

Since its reclassification, the Ayasofya continues to function as both a mosque and a heritage site. Muslim prayers are held five times daily, while non-Muslim visitors can still enter during designated hours.

However, balancing its religious function with preservation remains delicate, as some Christian mosaics are temporarily covered during prayers.

In the marble echoes of its prayer halls, the legacy of 1453 continues to live, reborn not just through legislation or architecture, but through the collective faith and enduring dreams of a nation.

The public response within Türkiye has largely been one of relief and pride.

In his inaugural remarks during the 2020 Friday prayer, President Erdogan announced:

“The Ayasofya’s reopening is a gift to our generation from our forefathers. It is the seal of conquest and the banner of our spiritual inheritance.”

Today, five years on, Ayasofya-i Kebir Cami-i Serifi stands not just as a house of worship, but as a powerful emblem of Türkiye’s layered identity—bridging past and present, religion and culture, memory and national sovereignty.