Turkey’s Decision to Turn Hagia Sophia Into a Mosque Dismays Christians, Neighbors, Historians

ISTANBUL—With its large dome and towering minarets, Hagia Sophia is to humanity what the Grand Canyon is to geology: an open-air e book that concentrates approximately one and a half millennia of heritage as the successive heart of Orthodox Christian and Muslim empires, punctuated by ransacking, fires and earthquakes.

But by deciding on Friday to remodel again into a complete-fledged mosque a developing that has been a museum considering the fact that the thirties and has turn out to be a potent image of ecumenical relations, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent…