Turkey engaging in severe violations of religious freedom: US watchdog 

Ankara: The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has urged the Donald Trump administration to include Turkey on the Special Watch List (SWL) for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom pursuant to the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA).

In its annual report, the USCIRF – a US government advisory body separate from the State Department, that monitors and reports on religious freedom abroad and makes policy recommendations to the US President, the Secretary of State, and Congress – suggested Washington to link future US security assistance and bilateral trade policies to improvements of religious freedom in Turkey.

The annual report mentioned that the government of Turkey engaged in systematic and ongoing severe violations of religious freedom in 2025, consistent with the previous year.

It stated that the government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also reportedly intensified a multiple-year campaign 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.

“Amid a large-scale government crackdown on political expression 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 Defence 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,” the report detailed.

The USCIRF urged the US Congress to hold hearings on religious freedom in Turkey and send congressional delegations to the country to raise specific issues, including the repression of FoRB (Freedom of Religion or Belief) in public education, the denial of US 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,” the report mentioned.

“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,” the annual USCIRF report stated.

According to the report, Turkey classifies 99.8 per cent 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 Shia Muslims constitute a tiny

minority of the population, and the government regards less than one per cent of the population as non-Muslim, including Greek and Syriac Orthodox Christians, Roman and Chaldean Catholic Christians, Armenian Apostolic and Protestant Christians, Bahais, Jews, Yazidis, and others.

“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 freedom of religion and conscience. However, both demographic and political trends have contributed to a recent increase in state-sponsored and social marginalization of non-Sunni Muslims,” the USCIRF report detailed.