Introduction and Summary:
The Turkish Protestant community is made up of over 140 small and large fellowships, mostly in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.
The Protestant fellowships have established 5 religious foundations, 3 foundation representatives, 34 church associations and over 30 representatives tied to those associations. The remaining fellowships have no official/legal status. Approximately 25 of them are house fellowships, the rest use public places for worship but do not have official/legal status.
The Protestant community does not have capability within the Turkish National Education system to train/develop its own religious personnel. The Protestant community in the majority of cases train their own religious leaders, a small percentage obtain education at theological schools overseas while others gain necesssary knowledge and skills for pastoral leadership through seminars given here in Turkey. Because there are not enough local Protestant leaders some church’s spiritual leadership is done by foreign pastors.
The Protestant community does not have a hierarchical or centralized structure. Every local church acts independently. However, church pastors began meeting together in the 80’s for the purpose of unity, solidarity and partnership between the Protestant churches, and in the mid 90’s they formed TeK (Turkish Pastors Association, throughout the document called TeK) in order to structurally improve unity. Because of the former Association Rule’s limits, TeK continued to have problems as a representative body before the official bodies in Turkey; as a result of the change in the Association Rule, TeK chose to become an association. The Association of Protestant Churches was officially formed on Jan. 23, 2009. At this time the Association of Protestant Churches acts as the Turkish Protestant community’s representative and institution for unity.
Since 2007 the Association of Protestant Church has published these monitoring reports which explain the Protestant community’s situation in Turkey.1 The Association of Protestant Churches attaches importance to the freedom of religion and belief for all people everywhere, and makes an effort to ensure this becomes a reality. In order to serve this purpose, the Association desires to prepare and distribute this annual monitoring report that describes the Protestant community’s situation.
In 2016 Turkey as a whole faced a wave of terror and violence on every front, in particular through a significant coup attempt on July 15th. For all these reasons a state of emergency was declared which continues in Turkey today. The Protestant community, just like the rest of Turkey, has been affected by these difficult developments. Yet the Protestant community from the first day has stood for democracy against terrrorism and the coup attempt and it continues to do so.
The freedom of religion and belief as one of the basic rights found in national and international laws, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is secured under national and international laws and constitutional authority in our country. However, from the perspective of the Protestant community some basic problems still continue in 2016. For the purpose of contributing to the development of freedom of belief in Turkey, this report presents some of the experiences and problems as well as positive developments that have been experienced in 2016 by the Protestant community in the area of religious freedom.2 2016 can be briefly summarized as follows:
- In 2016 hate crimes committed against Protestant Christians continued, as well as physical attacks against Protestants and churches. In 2016 chuches faced serious terror threats and took heavy security precautions.
- Requests related to establishing a place of worship, to continuing to use a facility for worship, and to use an existing church building were met with problems.
- During Christmas and the period around New Years, the following caused apprehension during Christmas celebrations: billboard notices with hate filled slogans, brochures distributed on the street which also contained hate language, newspaper and television programs, and especially a street show featuring a Santa Claus with a gun pointed at his head. Christmas celebrations, due to this language and terror threats, were carried out under heavy security.
- In some national media organizations, local media and social media hate speech directed against Christians showed a marked increase, along with an increase of using churches and terror organizations together in publications. Some churches became a direct news item and this raised concern in those churches and among their members.
- The trend for gaining legal status for the Protestant community through establishing associations continued in 2015. However, even though the establishment of associations has helped congregations gain legal status, it has not provided a complete solution.
- There were still problems experienced with compulsory participation in the Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge classes (RCMK) in schools along with the elective classes in Islamic religion recently added to the curriculum.
- A textbook has been prepared and submitted to the Ministry of Education for Christian pupils as an elective course of Basic Religious Knowledge. Even though it has been approved by the Ministry of Education, there has not been any further progress at this point.
- There was no movement forward in 2016 in the area of protecting the rights of Christians to train their own religious workers. Some foreign church leaders were deported, were denied entry back into Turkey or faced problems with getting their residence permits renewed. A foreign church leader in Izmir was arrested for being a member of the Fetö/PDY terror organization.
- The use of the religion section on identity cards continued in 2016, thus continuing the risk of discrimination.
- The first court case regarding the killing of 3 Christians in Malatya in 2007 was concluded.
- Public celebrations of Christmas and Easter in 2016 were not allowed due to security reasons.
