Washington, DC – The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) reiterates its recommendation for the U.S. Department of State to place Turkey on its Special Watch List for severe violations of religious freedom. This recommendation echoes actions taken by the European Court of Human Rights and European Parliament this month in response to Turkey targeting foreign Christians.
“Turkey’s arbitrary labeling of foreign-born Protestant Christians as national security threats is meant to intimidate the Christian community and prevent them from gathering for worship. Everyone, regardless of residency status, has the right to freedom of religion or belief under international law,” said Chair Vicky Hartzler. “The U.S. administration should maintain the momentum President Trump made in his September meeting with President Erdoğan and push for tangible improvements to Turkey’s religious freedom record, including an end to its repressive tactics against Christians.”
Turkey maintains several laws and policies restricting religious freedom for religious minorities, including both religious minority groups and secularists. For example, authorities prevent Christian communities from training their clergy domestically, obstruct the registration of Alevi, Protestant, and Jehovah’s Witness houses of worship, and refuse to grant legal personality and full autonomy to religious communities. The government also imposes its preferred interpretation of Islam on the population, regardless of religion or belief, prosecuting those it deems to have expressed offensive religious views. Additionally, authorities hinder the exemption of students, including dissenting Muslims, from state-mandated courses on Sunni Islam.
“We welcome steps European bodies have taken to hold Turkey accountable for its systematic violations of religious freedom,” said USCIRF Vice Chair Asif Mahmood. “We urge the U.S. government to prioritize freedom of religion or belief as part of its bilateral relations with Turkey and raise with Turkish government officials the obstacles to religious minorities’ access to houses of worship and clergy, such as barriers to continued legal residency and restrictions on clerical institutions including the Theological School of Halki.”
In its 2025 Annual Report, USCIRF recommended that the State Department place Turkey on the Special Watch List for severe violations of religious freedom. In August 2025, USCIRF held a hearing on freedom of religion or belief in Turkey.
Here is the report’s section on Turkey:
TURKEY
USCIRF–RECOMMENDED FOR SPECIAL WATCH LIST
KEY FINDINGS
In 2025, the government of Turkey (Türkiye) engaged in systematic
and ongoing severe violations of religious freedom, consistent
with the previous year. At the same time, the administration
of President Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an continued its dialogue with
certain historical religious communities, including negotiations
with the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church to potentially reopen
the Halki Theological School, which closed in 1971 in response to
government policies. The government also continued restoring
some historical houses of worship, with the Ministry of Culture
and Tourism beginning renovations on Cappadocia’s medieval St.
George Church as part of a tourism promotion campaign. However,
many religious communities did not substantially benefit from such
measures, with several—including Alevis, Protestant Christians,
and Jehovah’s Witnesses—unable to secure legal recognition as
religions or approval to register, build, or restore houses of worship
for day-to-day use.
Amid a large-scale government crackdown on political expres-
sion in support of opposition leaders, authorities also systematically
violated religious freedom by punishing secularist sentiment in state
institutions and continuing to enforce Article 216 of the Turkish
Penal Code as a de facto law against blasphemy. In January, the
Ministry of Defense officially dismissed five new lieutenants and
their three superior officers for choosing a secularist oath for their
swearing-in ceremony. The government also monitored online
activity for perceived insults to Islam and prosecuted religious
dissenters under Article 216(3) for “incitement of hatred toward
another group based on religious differences.” For example, in
June, the Ministry of the Interior arrested and detained at least
four employees of the satirical magazine LeMan for publishing a
cartoon that rioters decried as an alleged caricature of the Prophet
Muhammad. Ministry of Justice officials also announced their inves-
tigation of the journalists for “publicly insulting religious values.” In
˙September, the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office charged
YouTube interviewer Bog˘aç Soydemir and his guest Enes Akgündüz
with “inciting hatred and enmity or insulting a segment of the
public” for reading aloud a viewer-submitted joke relating to the
Prophet Muhammad. In contrast to these and other state restric-
tions on religious _expression_, in March, Turkey’s top appeals court
overturned the conviction of a man who had publicly vowed to kill
Jews, Americans, and Kurds.
The national legislature also imposed additional, systematic
restrictions on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). In June, the par-
liament enacted a legislative amendment expanding the authority
of the state-controlled Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) to
ban the distribution of Qur’an translations it considers inconsistent
with Islamic principles. Prison authorities, too, restricted access to
Qur’ans, other religious literature, and daily Islamic ablutions for
some defendants, such as former detainee Aysu Öztas¸ Bayram.
Alevi advocates continued raising their own concerns over the
scope of the Diyanet, pointing to its almost exclusive emphasis on
Sunni Muslim institutions and communities—affording them official
recognition as a religion and providing them with public funding
and support for which Alevis, as part of a designated “cultural”
tradition, remained ineligible.
The government reportedly intensified a multiple-year cam-
paign invoking spurious national security concerns to cut off the
legal residency status of at least 375 foreign national Christian
clergy, their family members, and other religious workers, to date.
Throughout 2025, authorities continued to use immigration codes
N-82 and G-87 to designate these clergy and laity as “national
security threats,” barring them from renewing their residency
status or reentering Turkey after travel abroad. These religious
leaders had long resided lawfully in the country, serving Turkish
Protestant Christian communities in part due to ongoing govern-
ment restrictions on domestic Christian clergy training programs
and educational institutions. Protestant Christians and Jehovah’s
Witnesses reported additional obstacles to their legal recognition
and access to houses of worship, with officials thwarting both their
applications for new construction and their attempts to repurpose
disused historical churches for their regular worship needs.
RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
■ Include Turkey on the Special Watch List,
or SWL, for engaging in or tolerating
severe violations of religious freedom
pursuant to the International Religious
Freedom Act (IRFA);
■ Link future U.S. security assistance and
bilateral trade policies to improvements
of religious freedom in Turkey; and
■ Capitalize on the U.S-Turkey bilateral rela-
tionship to stress the importance to FoRB
in Turkey of ceasing national security bans
on foreign national clergy and easing
restrictions on clergy training programs
and institutions, registration of religious
groups, and access to houses of worship.
The U.S. Congress should:
■ Hold hearings on religious freedom in Tur-
key and send congressional delegations to
the country to raise specific issues, including
the repression of FoRB in public education,
the denial of U.S. clergy from re-entering
the country on false security threats, and
conditions for refugees in Turkey who have
a credible fear of expulsion back to religious
persecution in their home countries; and
■ Invoke its legislative authority to conduct
an investigation into Turkey’s enforcement
of Article 216 of the Penal Code as a de
facto blasphemy law to inform future leg-
islation addressing this issue.
KEY USCIRF RESOURCES & ACTIVITIES
■ Hearing: Freedom of Religion or Belief in Turkey
■ Frank R. Wolf Freedom of Religion or Belief Victims List and Appendix 2
Background
Turkey’s distinct legacy of political secularism is a founding principle
of the 102-year-old republic, reflected in the constitution’s emphasis
on the secular nature of the state and its acknowledgment of free-
dom of religion and conscience. However, both demographic and
political trends have contributed to a recent increase in state-spon-
sored and social marginalization of non-Sunni Muslims. Turkey
classifies 99.8 percent of its almost 85 million population as Muslim,
including an estimated 10–25 million Alevis—many of whom do not
consider themselves Muslim. Ja’fari Shi’a Muslims constitute a tiny
minority of the population, and the government regards less than
one percent of the population as non-Muslim, including Greek and
Syriac Orthodox Christians, Roman and Chaldean Catholic Chris-
tians, Armenian Apostolic and Protestant Christians, Baha’is, Jews,
Yazidis, and others.
The government maintains formal relationships with some of
these religious minorities, partly in interpretation of the 1923 Treaty
of Lausanne, which acknowledged “[non-Muslim] minorities” with
longstanding ties to the former Ottoman Empire. In 2025, such rela-
tions included President Erdog˘an’s condolences in January to Turkish
Jewish communities upon the death of the country’s Chief Rabbi Rav
Isek Haleva. In November, President Erdog˘ an welcomed Pope Leo
XIV, who visited Turkey for the global celebration of the 1,700th anni-
versary of the Council of Nicaea. The pontiff met with the Ecumenical
Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I of the Eastern Orthodox
Church, as well as other Turkish Christian communities.
Other Government Policies Restricting FoRB
Eastern Orthodox Church members continued to await the results of
protracted negotiations between church leaders and the government
of Turkey to set a public date for the reopening of the Halki School, 54
years after government policies induced its closure. In the meantime,
Eastern Orthodox Christians, like their Protestant and other Christian
counterparts, remained ineligible for domestic training, resorting to
seminary programs abroad.
TURKEY
In other forms of education, a lack of religious choice and diver-
sity remained a major concern for Christian, Alevi, Shi’a Muslim, and
secularist parents. Even as new research revealed a significant decline
in the number of Turks who describe themselves as devout and an
increase in those who identify as atheists or nonbelievers, public
schools continued to require the majority of pupils to take courses in
religion, pursuant to the constitution. In light of other state policies
blocking Alevis, atheists, Protestant Christians, and others—especially
converts from Islam—from obtaining accurate and official documen-
tation of their religious identity, many pupils from these backgrounds
faced misidentification as Sunni Muslims and, consequently, compul-
sory coursework on the tenets of Islam.
Key U.S. Policy
In 2025, the administration of President Donald J. Trump maintained
the United States’ strategic bilateral relationship with Turkey. How-
ever, the administration’s pause on foreign assistance in 2025 had an
immediate impact on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Tur-
key, such as the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC)
that had supported people seeking protection from severe religious
persecution in their home countries.
In March, the House Foreign Affairs Europe Subcommittee held a
hearing on Turkey. In June, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Committee
held a hearing on human rights in Turkey, citing USCIRF’s 2025 Annual
Report recommendation that the United States add Turkey to the
Special Watch List.
In September, the administration took several measures to high-
light religious freedom in Turkey. Michael J. Rigas, deputy secretary
of state for Management and Resources, hosted an event in honor of
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. The next day, the ecumenical
patriarch and President Trump met and reportedly discussed chal-
lenging religious freedom conditions for Christians in Turkey. Later
that month, President Trump received President Erdog˘an, affirmatively
raising the question of the Halki School’s potential reopening