Cultural Heritage and Nationalism : A Case Study of the (re-)conversion of Hagia Sophia into a Mosque

Abstract: The aim of this study was to assess the cultural heritage implications of converting Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey from a museum into a mosque in July 2020. Through analysing cultural heritage management as a tool that could support the building of nationalism, this thesis explores the links between nationalism and cultural heritage. Discourse Analysis was used to answer the research question, facilitating research on the selected texts and the respective political discourses. To study the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque, information was collected through the Internet, with an emphasis on interviews, articles, and tweets from Turkish government officials during the period from the reconversion of the monument to the present day. Discourse analysis shows that in our case, cultural heritage management was used within the context of emotional politics and the pursuit of political objectives of the ruling party with the side effect of disempowering subgroups of the Turkish society whose sense of history and place is not compatible with the prevailing discourse.