Tel Aviv: Ever since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reconsecrated the Hagia Sophia, a UNESCO world heritage site and museum, as a mosque, critics have questioned whether the move is a long-running attempt to undo Turkish secularism or an effort to bring caliphate back.
Frontier Alliance International (FAI) mission President Dalton Thomas said Erdogan is openly calling for the re-establishment of the Islamic State.
"The President of Turkey is openly calling for the re-establishment of the Islamic State, the restoration of its ancient borders and the conquest of Jerusalem. When the world wakes up from the corona hangover, we will face the resurrected Caliphate," Thomas tweeted.
Last month, Erdogan controversially declared the nearly 1,500-year-old monument open to Muslim worship after a top court ruled the building's conversion to a museum by modern Turkey's founding statesman in the mid-1930s was illegal.
In a recent speech, Erdogan said, "The 'resurrection of Hagia Sophia' represents the footsteps of the will of Muslims across the world to come out of the interregnum and the reignition of the fire of hope of not just Muslims, but ... of all the oppressed, wronged, downtrodden and exploited."
Thomas described the development as crushing and destruction of the secularist Turkey.
Read more:1,400-yr Hagia Sophia opens as mosque for prayers
"This is an Islamic revival taking place inside Turkey. This is the crushing, destruction, dismantling and the deconstruction of secularist Turkey moving the country back to its original formation as an Islamic state that controls the middle east," Thomas said, in a video on FIA youtube page.