Turkey's top cleric has been attacked for comments deemed offensive to the modern republic's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk during a sermon at Istanbul's iconic Hagia Sophia which was reconverted to a mosque.
Ali Erbas, head of the top religious body known as Diyanet, presided over prayers at the monument on Friday at a ceremony attended by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and thousands of others.
Politicians from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and İYİ (Good) Party claimed that Erbas’ remarks were targeting Ataturk, some calling on him to resign.
Turkey’s Union of Bar Associations also called on Erbas to resign.
“Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is the founding father who turned our people into free citizens via his revolutions in a country that was accepted as the sultan’s property. It’s unacceptable for the Diyanet head to say these remarks that are based on his hidden agenda,” the union said, while reminding Erbas that he owes the post he currently occupies to Ataturk.
“We expect him to urgently apologize from the people and to resign,” it added.
Erbas, whose Islamist statements often draw ire, on July 24 caused outrage for giving a sermon at Hagia Sophia that included apparent damning of Ataturk.
“Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror endowed and entrusted this outstanding place of worship as the apple of his eye to believers on condition that it should remain a mosque until the last day,” Erbas said, while holding a sword in his hand as a continuation of the Ottoman tradition of conquest.
“Any property that is endowed is inviolable in our belief and burns whoever touches it; the charter of the endower is indispensable and whoever infringes upon it is cursed,” he added.
His remarks drew anger since Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum by Ataturk in 1934.
