Turkish citizens seeking asylum in Europe may face tougher odds under new European Union migration rules that took effect Friday, even as Turkey continues to prosecute people accused of links to the faith-based Gülen movement.
The rules expand the use of accelerated and border procedures for applicants from countries whose citizens are considered unlikely to receive protection.
Under rules cited by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), EU accession candidate countries can be included on the bloc’s safe-countries-of-origin list if they meet several conditions, including having an EU-wide asylum recognition rate of 20 percent or lower. Turkey falls within the EU’s safe-country framework due to its candidate status, and its asylum recognition rate had already dropped below 20 percent before the new system took effect. According to the EUAA Asylum Report 2026, Turkey’s recognition rate fell to 13 percent in 2025, down from 17 percent in 2024 and 54 percent in 2019.
That classification can carry major procedural consequences. The EUAA said applications from nationals of countries with recognition rates of 20 percent or lower may be processed under accelerated or border procedures, allowing authorities to move more quickly through cases considered likely to be unfounded.
The 2025 data showed Turkish nationals were already heavily exposed to rejection before the new rules took effect. The EUAA said around 56 percent of first-instance decisions that year were issued to nationals of countries with low recognition rates. Nationals of Turkey, Venezuela, Bangladesh and Colombia received one-third of all negative decisions, with Turkey listed first among them.
The concern is particularly acute for Turkish applicants who say they face politically motivated prosecution or detention if sent back. Those cases can include people accused of links to the Gülen movement, Kurdish political activists, journalists, opposition figures, lawyers, human rights defenders and social media users prosecuted under the counterterrorism law or a law criminalizing insulting the president.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and later designated the movement a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.
Turkish authorities arrested 1,601 people in 2025 as part of an ongoing crackdown on the faith-based Gülen movement.
The number of pending Turkish cases also dropped sharply in 2025, from about 66,000 to 23,000, reflecting faster processing and fewer new applications. At the same time, repeat applications by Turkish citizens increased, suggesting that a growing share of applicants were people already inside Europe rather than new arrivals from Turkey.
Under the new system, people entering the EU irregularly can undergo identity, security and biometric checks during a screening process lasting up to seven days. Applicants considered unlikely to receive protection or deemed to pose a security risk can be routed into accelerated procedures near the EU’s external borders, where their claims may be processed within 12 weeks.
The issue is not whether every Turkish applicant qualifies for asylum, but whether accelerated procedures can reliably identify those who do before they are rejected and returned.
Human Rights Watch has also criticized the EU pact more broadly. Judith Sunderland, the group’s associate Europe and Central Asia director, said the pact “takes a sledgehammer to the right to asylum” at a time when Europe should be defending human rights.
EU migration commissioner Magnus Brunner defended the reform, saying the bloc had, “for the first time,” a comprehensive European system that would give member states greater control over who enters, stays and leaves.
Applications by Turkish citizens in EU+ countries fell by about 40 percent in 2025, dropping to 33,202 from 55,678 a year earlier, according to the agency. EU+ countries include EU member states, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
Turkish nationals still accounted for about 4 percent of all asylum applications in EU+ countries, making Turkey one of the top five countries of origin after Afghanistan, Venezuela, Syria and Bangladesh.
