Introduction and Summary. The Turkish Protestant community is made up of over 150 small and large fellowships, a majority are found in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. The Protestant fellowships have established 5 religious foundations, 3 foundation representative branches, 36 church associations and over 30 representative branches tied to those associations. The remaining fellowships have no legal entity status. Approximately 25 of them are house fellowships. Approximately 10 churches meet in historical church buildings. The rest use public places for worship but they are congregations that do not possess legal status.
The Protestant community does not have capability within the Turkish National Education system to train its own religious personnel. In most cases, the Protestant community trains its own religious leaders. A small percentage obtain education at theological schools abroad. Some gain necessary knowledge and skills for pastoral leadership through seminars given domestically. 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 late 80’s for the purpose of unity, solidarity and partnership between the Protestant churches. In the mid 90’s this unity gained structural momentum, so they formed The Alliance of Protestant Churches, also known as TeK (Representative Committee). Due to the limitations in the old association laws, TeK continued to have problems as a representative body before the official government institutions in Turkey. As a result of the change in the Law of Associations, 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 and makes the effort to ensure these freedoms becomes a reality for everyone, everywhere. In order to serve this purpose and not a political one, the Association desires to prepare and distribute this annual monitoring report that describes the Protestant community’s situation. 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 continued in 2017. For the purpose of contributing to the development of freedom of belief in Turkey, this report has been prepared to present some of the experiences and problems as well as positive developments that have been experienced in 2017 by the Protestant community in the area of religious freedom. The situation in 2017 can be briefly summarized as follows:
- In 2017 hate crimes committed against Protestant Christians continued, as well as physical attacks against Protestants and churches.
- Problems continued to be faced with regard to requests to establish a place of worship, to continue using a facility for worship, and to use an existing church building.
- During the Christmas and New Year season, there was some apprehension because of billboard and poster notices with hate filled slogans, brochures distributed on the street containing hate language, newspaper articles and television programs which were directed at Christmas and New Year celebrations.
- There was an increase in hate speech directed toward Christians in some national media outlets, in local media and in social media. In addition, there was an increased coupling together of churches and terror organizations in news reports. Some churches became the direct subject of a news report 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 2017. However, even though the establishment of associations has helped congregations gain legal status, it has not provided a complete solution. There was an increased pressure on church associations in 2017.
- There was no movement forward in 2017 in regards to 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 remains incarcerated on the grounds of being a member of the FETÖ/PDY terror organization
