Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reconverted Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia into a mosque hours after the country’s highest administrative court annulled a 1934 decision to renovate the site into a museum.
Friday’s status change of the monument revered by both Christians and Muslims will likely increase religious tensions in the country.
The United States, Russia, and church leaders expressed concern about changing the status of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, according to Reuters. The Hagia Sophia was a historic focal point of both the Christian Byzantine and Muslim Ottoman empires.
Vladimir Dzhabarov, the deputy head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of Parliament, said the move was “a mistake,” according to the Associated Press.
“Turning it into a mosque will not do anything for the Muslim world,” Dzhabarov said. “It does not bring nations together, but on the contrary brings them into collision.”
The Hagia Sophia became a museum in 1935 and now attracts more than 3.7 million visitors per year.
UNESCO, the cultural body of the United Nations, called on Turkish authorities to engage in dialogue before enacting any decisions that would discredit the site’s “universal value.” UNESCO must be notified of any status changes related to the site and said the new changes may be reviewed by the World Heritage Committee.
