{"id":18794,"date":"2020-08-07T14:56:33","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T21:56:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/?p=18794"},"modified":"2020-08-07T14:08:45","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T21:08:45","slug":"turkey-vows-to-liberate-al-aqsa-after-turning-hagia-sophia-to-mosque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/turkey-vows-to-liberate-al-aqsa-after-turning-hagia-sophia-to-mosque\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey vows to ‘liberate Al-Aqsa’ after turning Hagia Sophia to mosque"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

SETH J. FRANTZMAN<\/a>\u00a0 – July 11, 2020<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to \u201cliberate al-Aqsa mosque\u201d from Israel after \u201cresurrecting Hagia Sophia<\/a>\u201d as a mosque on Friday.<\/p>\n

The decision to change the status of the ancient Hagia Sophia church, which had been transformed into a mosque in 1453 and then into a museum in 1934, was made controversially last week.<\/p>\n

It follows an increasingly religious authoritarian agenda from Ankara that has made Turkey the world\u2019s largest jailer of journalists, seen dissidents imprisoned for \u201cterrorism\u201d and witnessed increasing military invasions of neighboring countries by Turkey.<\/p>\n

The resurrection of Hagia Sophia heralds the liberation of the al-Aqsa mosque, the Turkish Presidency website says. \u201cThe resurrection of Hagia Sophia is the footsteps of the will of Muslims across the world to come\u2026 the resurrection of Hagia Sophia is the reignition of the fire of hope of Muslims and all oppressed, wrong, downtrodden and exploited.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speech, which was in Turkish, was translated slightly differently to Arabic and English, apparently as a way to hide part of Ankara\u2019s full views on how it has linked Hagia Sophia to a wider agenda.<\/p>\n

In Arabic the speech says that turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque is part of the \u201creturn of freedom to al-Aqsa,\u201d essentially meaning Israel should be ejected from controlling Jerusalem\u2019s Old City where al-Aqsa is located.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.jpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SETH J. FRANTZMAN\u00a0 – July 11, 2020 Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to \u201cliberate al-Aqsa mosque\u201d from Israel after \u201cresurrecting Hagia Sophia\u201d as a mosque on Friday. The decision to change the status of the ancient Hagia Sophia church, which had been transformed into a mosque in 1453 and then into a museum in … Continue reading Turkey vows to ‘liberate Al-Aqsa’ after turning Hagia Sophia to mosque<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[4305,15118,463,333,1773],"class_list":["post-18794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-watching","tag-al-aqsa-mosque","tag-hagia-sophia","tag-jerusalem","tag-muslims","tag-recep-tayyip-erdogan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8fAkI-4T8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18796,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18794\/revisions\/18796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setapartbytruth.org\/wordpress-watchman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}