What is the status of Christianity in Turkey?
Christianity in Turkey has had a long history dating back to the 1st-century AD. In modern times the percentage of Christians in Turkey has declined from 20-25 percent in 1914 to 3-5.5 percent in 1927, to 0.3-0.4\% today roughly translating to 200,000-320,000 devotees.
Can Turkey’s non-Muslim religious minorities exercise religious freedom?
Without any such financial support combined with the lack of a legal status, non-Muslim religious minorities, including the Ecumenical Patriarchate and Turkey’s Alevi Muslim minority, have difficulty in exercising religious freedom without sufficient foundation properties to produce income.
Is there a Turkish Protestant community in Turkey?
There is ethnic Turkish Protestant Christian community in Turkey which number about 7,000-8,000 adherents most of them came from Muslim Turkish background.
Is there freedom of religion in Turkey?
In the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, Turkey guaranteed freedom of religion to its non-Muslim religious minorities. Articles 40 and 42 granted non-Muslim religious minorities autonomy and legal status.
Is it possible to change the official religion of Turkey?
The state currently does not allow the individual records to be changed to anything other than Islam, Christianity or Judaism, and the latter two are only accepted with a document of recognition released by an officially recognised church or synagogue. In 2016 Islam was the major religion in Turkey comprising 98.3\%…
What are the religious freedom issues in Turkey?
Freedom of religion. The Constitution provides for freedom of religion, and Turkey is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. Turkey has a democratic government and a strong tradition of secularism. Nevertheless, the Turkish state’s interpretation of secularism has reportedly resulted in religious freedom violations for some…