A new global report says religious minorities in Turkey face growing hostility, citing hate speech, attacks on houses of worship and policies favoring the Sunni Muslim majority at the expense of Christians, Jews, Alevis and Yazidis.
The findings appear in the Turkey chapter of the Religious Freedom in the World Report 2025, released last month by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). The biennial study puts Turkey among 38 countries where religious discrimination is systemic, placing it in the second-most severe category behind outright persecution.
The report, covering January 2023 through December 2024, documents what it describes as a trend toward greater influence of conservative Islam in public institutions and society under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s long-ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
In 2024 nationalists pressured authorities to postpone the annual Dormition of Mary liturgy at the historic Sumela Monastery. The event, typically attended by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, was rescheduled after backlash from political figures and commentators who claimed it was politically motivated. Amid growing hostility, Bartholomew declined to attend for the first time since 2010.
Concerns over religious heritage also resurfaced. In May 2024 the government reconsecrated the 4th-century Church of St. Saviour in Chora as a mosque, following the precedent set by the Hagia Sophia in 2020.
In August 2024 a Greek Orthodox cemetery in İstanbul was vandalized, with multiple graves damaged and earth excavated. In the western province of Bursa, authorities ordered the temporary closure of the city’s only functioning Christian church, citing earthquake safety concerns — a move contested by church leaders citing independent structural assessments.
Protestant communities, long under scrutiny, continued to face legal pressures. Missionaries and pastors were denied entry or expelled under a national security code that treats missionary work as a potential threat. In June Turkey’s Constitutional Court upheld these measures, ruling that they did not violate religious freedom when justified by intelligence assessments.
The report also highlights growing concern over antisemitism. After the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October 2023, antisemitic rhetoric surged in public and media discourse. A local AKP city council member in the northern province of Samsun publicly praised Adolf Hitler, and a protest outside Istanbul’s Or-Ahayim Jewish Hospital featured demonstrators in white doctor’s coats smeared with red handprints. A pro-government daily suggested stripping citizenship from Turkish Jews serving in the Israeli military. In a separate incident students at a high school football match were reported to have made Nazi salutes toward a Jewish team.
Yazidi families in southeastern Turkey reported repeated acts of harassment and sabotage as they attempted to reclaim ancestral land. Incidents included vandalized graves, damaged vehicles and severed irrigation lines. Alevis, too, faced targeted hostility: The report documented seven hate-motivated incidents in 2023 alone, including shrine desecration and physical assaults.
Meanwhile, religious expression in education came under renewed scrutiny. In 2023 a government-backed program known as ÇEDES introduced imams and preachers as “spiritual counselors” in public schools and expanded weekly Sunni Islamic instruction. Teachers unions and opposition figures condemned the initiative as a breach of secular education principles. Later that year the education ministry banned Christmas and Easter celebrations in private schools, stating that such observances conflicted with “national and cultural values.”
The report underscores structural issues affecting all non-Sunni groups. Religious education in public schools remains compulsory and is based solely on Sunni Islam. Only Christian and Jewish students may formally apply for exemptions, leaving Alevi and other non-Sunni students without alternatives.
Christian communities also face longstanding limitations on clergy training. The Greek Orthodox Halki Seminary has been closed since 1971, though in 2024 Patriarch Bartholomew expressed cautious optimism about a possible reopening.
The Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet), Turkey’s state body overseeing Islamic affairs, was granted a proposed 2025 budget of 130.1 billion Turkish lira (about $3.8 billion), surpassing the budgets of multiple key ministries. The report describes the Diyanet’s expanding influence as a symbol of the state’s growing alignment with Sunni Islam.
While Turkey’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion and defines the state as secular, the government recognizes only three non-Muslim minorities — Armenians, Greeks and Jews — under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Other groups, including Protestants and Syriacs, must operate through associations or foundations and cannot hold legal status as religious communities.
The report concludes that Turkey’s overall religious freedom climate remains “negative,” citing the persistence of hate speech, social intolerance and administrative obstacles faced by religious minorities.
