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