In May 2011 the United States Commission on International Religious Freedoms published its annual report (covering 1st April 2010 – 31st March 2011). The Commission placed Turkey on its Watch List.
Here is the Commission’s summary of religious freedom in Turkey:
“The Turkish government continues to impose serious limitations on freedom of religion or belief, thereby threatening the continued vitality and survival of minority religious communities in Turkey. Turkey has a democratic government, with an energetic civil society and media, and the country’s constitution protects the freedom of belief and worship and the private dissemination of religious ideas. However, the Turkish government’s formal, longstanding efforts to control religion by imposing suffocating regulations and by denying full legal status to religious institutions results in serious religious freedom violations. The government has failed to take decisive action to correct the climate of impunity against religious minorities and to make the necessary institutional reforms to reverse these conditions. Instead, Turkey continues to intervene in the internal governance and education of religious communities and to confiscate places of worship. The alleged involvement of state and military officials in the Ergenekon conspiracy, which included alleged plans to assassinate minority religious leaders and to bomb mosques, is also of serious concern, as is the alleged use of preventive arrests to repress critics of the AK Party. Also concerning is the rise in anti-Semitism in Turkish society and media.
Due to these concerns, and others set forth in this chapter, USCIRF continues to place Turkey on its Watch List in 2011.** Turkey was first placed on the USCIRF Watch List in 2009, and the Commission notes with concern that conditions have deteriorated further since then, underscoring the need for continued vigilance in monitoring.
State secularism in Turkey has significantly restricted religious freedom, especially for religious minority communities, including the Greek, Armenian, and Syriac Orthodox Churches; Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches; and the Jewish community, but also for the majority Sunni Muslim community and the minority Alevis, which some view as a unique sect of Islam. The government officially permits the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, but controls all official mosques and the training of Sunni Muslim clergy. However since 2007, imams reportedly may choose the content of sermons, indicating greater official openness. Despite Turkey’s obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the government has not recognized minority religious communities, such as the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Church, as independent entities with full legal status. These restrictions, including policies that deny non-Muslim communities the rights to train religious clergy, offer religious education, and own and maintain places of worship, have led to the decline, and in some cases the virtual disappearance, of these communities in Turkey. Additionally, Turkey’s military control over northern Cyprus supports a web of arbitrary regulations implemented by the local Turkish Cypriot authorities, which results in serious limitations on religious freedom. These regulations limit the religious activities of all non-Muslims living in northern Cyprus and deny these religious communities the right to restore, maintain and utilize their religious properties. Such regulations are threatening the long-term survival of all non-Muslim religious communities in the area.
As part of its EU accession process, Turkey has adopted some reforms relevant to religious freedom, and although the Turkish government has arrested those suspected of violent hate crimes linked to religion and has instituted legal reforms to decrease military involvement in civilian politics, protracted trials underscore judicial weakness in correcting impunity on religious freedom violations.”
Full report, including a more in depth analysis of Turkey and other countries, here.
