“It was a very special day, July 24 [2020],” said France’s leading expert on Islam, Gilles Kepel. “It was pilgrimage time to Mecca and, due to the pandemic, no one was there! It was the anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, the origin of modern Turkey within its current borders. Erdogan was about to twist the arm of the secular Ataturk, who had turned the old Hagia Sophia basilica into a museum that he had donated ‘to humanity’. Erdogan… turned it back into a mosque”. This was the moment, remarked Kepel – who just published a new book, “Le Prophète…
