Citing Opaque Security Laws, Turkey Puts Christian Foreign Residents on Notice

The land where Saint Paul walked, where the disciples were first called Christians, where the Nicene Creed was formalized, and where the greatest cathedral in Christendom once stood is systematically emptying of the faith that built it. Just one tenth of one percent of the population of Turkey, heir to the ancient heartland of Christianity, is Christian. By the evidence accumulating before international courts and legislatures in recent months, that decrease is not merely the residue of history. It is ongoing, deliberate, and accelerating.The clearest signal yet came earlier this year, when the European Court of Human Rights formally took up and “communicated” 20 cases brought by Christians whom Turkey effectively banned from re-entry, solely for living out their faith. The cases stem from the Turkish government’s use of internal security codes to label peaceful foreign Christian residents as threats to national security, blocking them from entering or remaining in the country despite long-standing lawful residence. The court’s decision to hear them is a signal that Strasbourg sees something more than isolated administrative error — it sees a pattern.“Turkey aims at these pastors to suppress Christian worship and to discourage and intimidate entire congregations,” the director of its Center for Religious Freedom and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Nina Shea, told The New York Sun. “Government policies to restrict religious instruction are designed to suppress and gradually reduce the entire Christian presence in Turkey to the vanishing point.”The security code trapSince 2019, Turkish authorities have reportedly used internal security codes to deny residence permits or prevent Christians from re-entering Turkey after trips abroad. These measures have affected more than 200 foreign workers and their families, totaling roughly 350 individuals, many of whom have lived in Turkey for decades, according to the independent evangelical media company Christian Today. Between December 2024 and January 2025 alone, at least 35 new codes were reportedly issued against foreign Christians.Those targeted carry no criminal records. They have committed no provable offense under Turkish law. The government’s use of these codes effectively labels individuals as a “threat to public order and security,” a classification normally reserved for terrorism suspects. In practice, the files on which these designations rest are never disclosed to those accused, offering no meaningful avenue of appeal, says the European Center for Law and Justice. The accusation functions as its own verdict.The European Parliament took direct aim at this practice in February, adopting a resolution on February 12 strongly condemning Turkey’s expulsion of Christian missionaries under what parliamentarians described as opaque national security pretexts. The resolution passed with 502 votes in favor, two against, and 59 abstentions, reflecting broad cross-party concern over the treatment of foreign Christian religious workers. The resolution stated that at least 300 foreign Christian pastors, missionaries, and their family members have been deported from Turkey and denied re-entry. The Turkish Foreign Ministry swiftly dismissed the resolution as containing “unfounded allegations” and characterized it as interference in the country’s internal affairs.Days later, on February 26, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the State Department to add Turkey to its “Special Watch List” due to severe violations of religious freedom. The commission’s chairwoman Vicky Hartzler stated that 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.” She called on the Trump administration to push for tangible improvements to Turkey’s religious freedom record.Turkey’s strategy, experts say, is not random. Though not a single incident of terrorism has ever been recorded involving domestic or foreign Christians in the country, by systematically targeting pastors, missionaries, and lay leaders, Turkish authorities are striking at the structural heart of Protestant communities. Many churches in Turkey rely heavily on foreign Christians for pastoral leadership, theological training, and community support. Strip a congregation of its clergy and it withers.A structural system of erosionTurkish law also creates additional exposures for religious minorities. No church holds “legal personality,” which means religious institutions such as patriarchates, dioceses, and churches cannot own property in their own name nor can they initiate legal proceedings, employ staff, open bank accounts, or formally interact with public authorities. Instead, heavily supervised communities aligned to religious organizations serve as “foundations” for these institutions.Despite a 2011 decree by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, ostensibly to return property seized from religious groups, Turkey’s General Directorate of Foundations has declared minority religious foundations stripped of their holdings as “non-functioning” — and with no right of appeal — has nationalized thousands of properties previously owned by foundations. Authorities also use zoning decisions and administrative paperwork to weaken Christian foundations without an outright seizure. Land can be reclassified for public use, titles challenged through older foundation records, foundations placed under state control, and some properties denied recognition altogether because of their historical registration. The result is a slow erosion through legal and bureaucratic accumulation rather than any single dramatic confiscation, harder to photograph, harder to indict, but no less devastating in its cumulative effect.Turkey’s persistent refusal to recognize the legal personality of the Ecumenical or Armenian Patriarchates compounds this vulnerability, as does the continued closure of the Greek Orthodox theological school, the Heybeliada Theological School, known as the Halki Seminary, shuttered by Ankara in 1971 and once home to the church’s global leadership. The seminary produced nearly 1,000 graduates over its history, including 12 patriarchs.High-level diplomacy has generated cautious optimism. In September 2025, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew met privately with President Trump in the Oval Office, briefing him on the situation of Christians in Turkey and raising the Halki question directly. “We want to expedite this dialogue so that in September 2026 we can welcome the first students,” the patriarch told Mr. Trump. Days later, President Erdogan told Mr. Trump at the White House, “We are ready to do whatever is incumbent upon us regarding the Heybeliada school.” United States Special Envoy Tom Barrack subsequently set September 2026 as a formal target for reopening.Ms. Shea, however, is skeptical. “I have no confidence that the opening of the Halki Seminary will be permitted to reopen under Erdogan, his promise to President Trump notwithstanding,” she said. “Turkey does not respect the rule of law or religious freedom. Halki is the main theological school for the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate and critical for that church’s perpetuation in Turkey.”The conversion of the Hagia Sophia, built in 537 AD and serving for centuries as the preeminent seat of Eastern Christendom, into a mosque in 2020 looms as a precedent that diplomats have struggled to address adequately.“Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, was one of five seats of ancient Christianity and is the home of the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate,” Ms. Shea said. “The Patriarch’s basilica was seized and turned into a mosque by the Ottomans then made into a museum under secular rule, before being converted back into a mosque in 2020 as demanded by Islamists. These are clear signs of consolidating Islamist cultural domination.”Ghosts of Christian civilizationThe numbers alone tell a story that transcends any single policy dispute. The percentage of Christians located in what was formerly Greek territory dropped from 20 percent in just one century. The collapse began with forced expulsions and mass elimination of Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian communities of the First World War period. It accelerated through the population exchanges and pogroms of subsequent decades, and has continued — more quietly, more bureaucratically — into the present. Communities that were once integral to Anatolia’s cultural, religious, and historical fabric have been reduced to a fragile remnant.The irony is not lost on historians. Antioch, now the Turkish city of Antakya, is where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. The seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelation all stood on Turkish soil. The First Council of Nicaea met in what is today Iznik. For a millennium, Constantinople, now Istanbul, was the capital of Christendom. Whether Washington will convert international pressure into consequence for the ongoing squeeze of religious minorities, or whether Turkey’s NATO membership and regional strategic weight will once more provide sufficient cover for its leaders to ignore the religious liberty said to be guaranteed in modern Turkey’s constitution, is an open question. Ms. Shea sees little reason for optimism. “I don’t think Western pressure so far is sufficient to make a difference,” she said. “Turkey has the second-largest military in NATO, and the United States won’t be willing to impose any sanctions with real teeth against it because Washington needs its cooperation in the wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine. There seems to be little appetite to take on Turkey in the midst of the current push to eliminate the nuclear and military threat from Iran.”

Citing Opaque Security Laws, Turkey Puts Christian Foreign Residents on Notice

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