Government:

	The constitution establishes a secular government and the freedom of belief and worship.
	Religious services may only take place in designated houses of worship.
	Proselytizing is not illegal but is viewed with suspicion, especially when political overtones are suspected. Police often arrest individuals who are proselytizing for disturbing the peace or other charges both civil and political. The courts almost always drop these charges. Foreigners are often deported but are sometimes allowed to reenter the country.
	Religious instruction in state schools is mandatory for every child except for those members of religious minorities listed in the Lausanne Treaty signed in 1928.
	Due to current laws concerning historic preservation, some minority congregations are in danger of losing their building to the government if they are unable to provide adequate staff or adherents.
	The government does not fulfill any obligations to non-European refugees as outlined in the U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. It is also reported that many Iraqi and Iranian asylum seekers who claimed to be under religious persecution due to their conversion to Christianity are turned away.

Recent Actions:
   

	February 3, 2003 - Pastor Ahmet Guvener was acquitted of making illegal architectural changes to his church in Diyarbakir (see May 2002 below). (Compass Direct)
	December 2002 - Authorities dropped charges against the Ephesus Protestant Church in Selcuk. Last year the church had been charged with hold meetings without legal permission. (Compass Direct)
	July 31, 2002 - Government officials in Diyarbakir accepted the revised architectural plan for Turkish pastor Guvener's church. Construction is moving forward again. Guvener's church has met in his apartment the past 5 years and now has a total of 40 members. The press has tried to smear Guvener's name by giving false reports, but he has remained unaffected. Guvener still faces criminal charges for making "illegal changes" in the architect's drawings. His next hearing is October 8. He believes this will be his final hearing because his innocence was so clear cut in his previous hearing on May 28. (Compass Direct)
	July 9, 2002 - A 40 year old Protestant Church in the southwestern port city of Iskendrun, was ordered to close its doors by the Turkish security police. The police declared the church had no legal basis and that its activities were harmful to society. The church will file a case soon. (Compass Direct)
	June 26, 2002 - The case against Mr. Kemal Timur has been dropped (see January 30, 2001 below for details). The supposed witnesses never showed up to the court hearings and the judge decided to drop all charges.

• May 2002 - Ahmet Guvener, a Protestant pastor in Diyarbakir, will go on trial later this month for making "illegal changes" to the architectural plan of his church building. Construction on the church was halted in November of last year after the Council for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Riches decided that Guvener's church building would block the view of the Syrian Orthodox church across the street. Though Guvener and his architect had submitted the blueprints of the church and received permission to build, the authorities are now trying to make structural changes to the church and accusing Gevener of misrepresenting the building as a residence in the original plan. The first hearing of the case is scheduled for May 28. (Compass)
     
• April 14, 2002 - Protestors attempted to interrupt the services of the Agape Protestant Church in Istanbul by shouting slogans like "We don't want a church in our neighborhood!" and "No to missionaries!" (Compass)
    
• April 6, 2002 - A Protestant church in Ankara received a bomb threat from someone identifying himself as a Palestinian. The church cancelled its services, but the threat was never carried out. (Compass)
     
• February 5, 2002 - The court case against Christian Kemal Timur (see January 30, 2001 below) was postponed for the sixth time after the police officers summoned to testify against Timur failed to show up again. (Compass)
      
• October 9, 2001 – The ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) has assigned the Turkish government until October 11 to offer a formal statement of its judicial assessment of the criminal conviction of Syrian Catholic Christian Soner Onder.  (See April 2001.)   (Compass)
          
• October 5, 2001 – The scheduled hearing of Kemal Timur was once again postponed, as the police officers accusing Timur of slandering the Prophet failed to appear in the Diyarbakir Criminal Court of First Instance.  The new hearing is scheduled for February 5, 2002.  (Compass)
      
• August 17, 2001 - The Turkish Interior Ministry ordered that places of worship used by up to 40 Christian groups should be investigated to see if they are legal. The churches in Istanbul, Ankara, Diyarbakir, Bursa and Mersin are accused of violating municipal building laws. Meanwhile, the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate has admitted that 81% of mosques currently under construction had not received a license. (Compass)
              
• July 17, 2001 – The scheduled hearing of Kemal Timur was once again postponed. The new hearing is set for October 4, 2001.
              
• May 31, 2001 – The scheduled hearing of Kemal Timur (see January 30, 2001 below) was postponed until July 17, 2001.
                
• May 16, 2001 – The office of a Christian ministry offering free New Testaments and a prayer hotline, was investigated by police. There had been complaints about the Istanbul-based ministry ever since an article in the local newspaper warned the public about increasing Christian missionary activity in the country.
         

• April 11, 2001 – Security Police raided the home of Christian Yashar Tugral and took him into custody for allegedly using financial enticements to produce converts. A state prosecutor ordered that he be held for 5 days in Gazientrop prison while charges against him were investigated. Mr. Tugral’s church had been closed down just two weeks before his arrest because of zoning restrictions.
           
  
• April 2001 – Recent crackdowns to restore control in the country’s prisons has led to deteriorating conditions. Christian prisoner Soner Onder is being held in an overcrowded jail cell and has been refused visits by family members. Soner Onder has been imprisoned since 1991 on false charges of participation in a Kurdish separatist group. His case is scheduled for a preliminary review before the European Court of Human Rights.
           
  
• April 5, 2001 – Father Yusuf Akbulut was acquitted on charges of "provoking religious enmity" for statements he made to the press (see December 2000 below).
           
  
• March 27, 2001 – Two of the three people accusing Mr. Kemal Timur of making blasphemous statements while handing out Christian literature appeared for his trial (see January 30, 2001 below). Only one testified against him while the other said he did not insult Islam or Muhammad. Another hearing was scheduled for May 31.
             
  
• January 30, 2001 – Christian Kemal Timur was scheduled to stand trial for uttering remarks insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad on May 1, 2000 while distributing New Testaments in Diyarbakir. Mr. Timur denies the charges saying he never speaks about his faith openly on the street but only hands out the New Testaments to those who wish to take them. If they show an interest, he arranges to meet with them later. Two of Mr. Timur’s three accusers are unknown to him. In fact he did not even find out a complaint had been filed against him until December 15 when he received an official indictment in the mail. His trial was re-scheduled for March 27, 2001 because the accusing parties failed to show up in court.
             
  
• December 7, 2000 – In a landmark decision by the Turkish Supreme Court an evangelical Protestant church was granted legal status as a religious foundation. The court’s ruling was based on upholding the equality clauses of the Turkish constitution, the UN Charter of Human Rights and religious freedom agreements signed with the European Union. Though the decision overrides several statutes of Turkish civil law, as a Supreme Court decision it must be upheld and cannot be abrogated. Two other churches have now applied for the same status and evangelicals are hopeful that they may be given more freedom.
               
  
• December 2000 – A Syrian Orthodox priest could go to prison for 3 years under Article 312 of the Turkish penal code. Father Yusuf Akbulut is accused of "provoking hatred and religious enmity" because of statements he made to the press. Fr. Akubulut had not given the press permission to publish an interview in which he stated that Syrians, as well as Armenians, were targets of Turkish genocide 85 years ago. The Turkish government denies international allegations that it massacred more than a million Armenians during World War I. Thus, Fr. Akbulut’s statements are considered divisive. The next hearing is scheduled for February 22, 2001.
            
  
• March 31, 2000 – Ercan Sengul and Necati Aydin (see below) were released from prison after a judge found no evidence of their "crime." In fact, it was discovered that prosecution witnesses signed complaints prepared by the gendarmarie without reading them thoroughly. These complaints stated that the Christian men had denigrated the Koran and its prophet and forced people to take Christian materials against their will. All three witnesses retracted the complaints when questioned.
            
  
• March 1, 2000 –Ercan Sengul and Necati Aydin were arrested while selling and distributing Christian literature near Izmir. They were accused of insulting Islam and forcing people to take Bibles. The arrests occurred a day after a television program on "Christian missionary sects" appeared on public television.
           
  
• October 3, 1999 -- Another group of believers was arrested on the charge of conducting illegal meetings, this time in Istanbul. Eleven foreigners and their children were arrested along with 35 church members. Security police claimed the congregation needed to have written permission issued by the Turkish government even though the church had gone through all of the required procedures to legalize their church in 1993.
             
  
• September 12, 1999 – Forty people were arrested by Turkish officials during a worship service in Izmir. Those arrested at the Izmir Fellowship of Jesus included 35 Turks and 5 foreigners. The detainees were held for 24 hours on the charge of meeting illegally. They were released after the Public Prosecutor threw out allegations against them, declaring that it was a legal church meeting. Unfortunately, journalists from a tabloid newspaper who were present during the arrests printed an article about the incident, calling the church a "pirate church."
          
  
• August 1999 — Australian Ian McLure and an unnamed native Turk were arrested in a suburb of Istanbul for selling books (Christian literature) without permission. McLure, an English teacher in Istanbul for 12 years had to pay a $35 fine. The Turk’s charges were later dropped. Soon thereafter, new charges were made against McLure stating that he was illegally employed selling the books. His passport was confiscated pending trial. Interestingly, the books had been sold at that location for over three years without any sort of problem even with full knowledge of the authorities.
              
  
• July, 1999 — A group of 16 American students from Arkansas were arrested for propagandizing as they were offering Turkish New Testaments to people passing by in the port city of Izmir (formerly ancient Smyrna). The Turkish press claimed that they were offering $100 bills for anybody who would convert. In addition, they were accused of supporting Kurdish separatism because of a pamphlet concerning the identity of the Kurdish people that was found in the luggage of one of them. They were forced to pay for their own deportation back to the United States on June 30^th.
              

July 16, 1999 — A group of European tourists who were offering New Testaments to local people in Istanbul was arrested and questioned. Their New Testaments and other materials were confiscated. During the same week two Turkish national Christians who had converted and a South Korean were arrested in Izmit for selling Christian materials at a book stand. They were released the following day.

February 1999 — A grade school of 45 Armenian children was evicted without notice from its location in Istanbul. The Bomanti Armenian Elementary School had been opened in 1808 and received the current property in 1963. However, a 1936 ruling stipulated that a religious minority foundation may not receive new property. Therefore, the school was ordered to leave the premises. All school property including furniture, blackboards, and supplies was dumped outside in the schoolyard. The case is still being contested in court. Muslim foundations are said to not have this sort of problem, but many other Christian properties in Istanbul are similarly at risk. 40 other pieces of property have already been lost in this way in Istanbul over the years.

Prisoners: One Christian man, Soner Onder, has been imprisoned since 1991 for supposed ties to a Kurdish separatist group.Other than that there is no evidence that prisoners are being held for their religious beliefs at this time. However, there have been reported cases of Christians being arrested falsely on charges of terrorism and other political crimes. Some observers have felt that this was intended to intimidate the small struggling Christian minority.
          

You may write a letter of encouragement to Soner at the following address:
Soner Onder
E-Tipi Umraniye Ceza Evi
Umraniye
TURKEY

Suggested Actions You Might Take:

• Pray for the Christians of Turkey that they may be protected from harm and that the Christian message may be heard and received by all. Pray that the recent earthquake and subsequent compassion of Christian organizations would be well received by both the government and people and would open their hearts to God’s love.
          
• Write a respectful letter to one or more of the government officials listed below. Express your continuing concern for the safety and wellbeing of the Christian community in Turkey. Request information about what steps the government is taking to ensure their protection and freedom to practice their faith as laid out in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights documents.
           
• Contact the elected national officials (Senators, Congressman etc.) for your area as well as the U.S. State Department and express concern for the well being of the Christians in Turkey asking them to make an inquiry into their status.
            
• Please keep us informed of any replies or results you may receive! Contact ICC by email at ICC@persecution.org.

Official Contacts:

Ambassador Dr. Osman Frank Logoglu Embassy of Turkey 2525 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington, D.C. 20008 Tel: (202) 612-6700 Fax: (202) 612-6744 Ahmed Necdet Sezer, President Cumhurbaskanligi Kosku Cankaya, 06100 Ankara Turkey fax 90-312-468-5026 e-mail: cankaya@tccb.gov.tr http://www.cankaya.gov.tr

Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Disisleri Bakanligi Yeni Hizmet Binasi 06520 Belgat-Ankara, Cumhuriyeti Turkiye Tel: 011 90 312 287 1665 Fax: 011 90 312 287 3869 Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Basbakanlik 06573 Ankara, Turkey Fax: 90-312-417-0476

*We make every attempt to keep up with and reflect changes in the national government of Turkey and the current human rights situation. We appreciate your feedback if you find any discrepancies in this information. You can contact us by e-mail at: icc@persecution.org. Thanks.

POSTED: March 24, 2003

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ICC Articles on Turkey:

• May 18, 2002 - Prayer - May Prayer Points for China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Vietnam
• April 28, 2001 - Prayer Points - Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan, Vietnam, Turkey

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