The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, a bipartisan human rights commission in the US House of Representatives, will hold a hearing Wednesday on Turkey’s democratic decline, political persecution and restrictions on freedom of expression, according to an announcement by Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey.
Smith, co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, will chair the hearing titled “Can Turkey Find Its Way Back to Freedom? Authoritarian Consolidation versus the Defense of Turkish Democracy,” Turkish Minute reported.
The hearing comes amid growing concern in Washington over President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s crackdown on political opponents, journalists, civil society groups, religious minorities and critics living abroad.
The commission said witnesses would discuss political persecution, election manipulation, censorship and the prospects for a return to judicial independence, free and fair elections and respect for basic freedoms in Turkey.
The hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m. Wednesday in 2128 Rayburn House Office Building in Washington and will also be livestreamed.
The announced witnesses include Henri Barkey, an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; Michael Rubin, director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum; Serkan Golge, a senior research scientist and former political prisoner in Turkey; and Andrew O’Donohue, the Carl J. Friedrich Fellow at Harvard University and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Smith’s office said the Turkish government has intensified its crackdown after recent electoral setbacks for Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Human rights advocates estimate that more than 15,000 political prisoners remain jailed in Turkey, including journalists, lawyers, elected officials, academics, civil society leaders and democracy activists.
The hearing follows a new crisis in Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which defeated Erdoğan’s AKP in the 2024 local elections for the first time in decades and retained control of İstanbul and Ankara and gained control of other major cities.
A Turkish court on May 21 annulled the CHP’s 2023 party congress, effectively removing Özgür Özel as party chairman and reinstating former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
The CHP has described the decision as politically motivated and aimed at weakening Erdoğan’s rivals before the next national election.
The broader crackdown on the CHP has included the detention and prosecution of party officials and mayors. İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, one of Erdoğan’s strongest potential presidential rivals, has faced a series of criminal cases that led to his imprisonment and that his supporters say are designed to remove him from politics.
The commission announcement also cited censorship and restrictions on freedom of expression, including court-ordered blocks on online content, social media accounts and opposition news platforms, along with criminal investigations targeting online speech.
Turkey has long used broad counterterrorism and insult laws to prosecute journalists, activists, opposition politicians and ordinary citizens over speeches, news reports and social media posts.
The hearing is also expected to address the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities, including restrictions affecting the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Halki Seminary, an Orthodox Christian theological school near İstanbul that Turkish authorities closed in 1971 and have not allowed to reopen despite calls from US officials and religious freedom advocates.
Another issue listed by the commission is transnational repression, a term used to describe efforts by governments to target critics beyond their borders. Turkish authorities have mostly pursued people accused of links to the faith-based Gülen movement in Europe, the United States and other countries since a failed coup in 2016.
Ankara accuses the Gülen movement of orchestrating the coup attempt, a charge the movement denies. Turkish authorities have carried out mass arrests, purges and asset seizures against people accused of links to the movement, while rights groups and UN experts say Ankara’s treatment of the movement as a terrorist group violates basic legal principles.
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission previously held a hearing on human rights in Turkey in June 2025. Smith has chaired several hearings on Turkey over the years and has criticized Ankara’s record on political prisoners, minority rights and the rule of law.
The latest hearing will examine what steps the United States and Congress could take to support democracy and human rights in Turkey, a NATO ally whose relationship with Washington had been strained for years by disputes over defense policy, regional conflicts, human rights and democratic governance but has improved under President Donald Trump, who has cultivated close personal ties with Erdoğan.
