TÜRKİYE ORTA ASYA HABER KKUORDİNATÖRÜ

COUNTRY UPDATE TURKEY USA UNITED STATES COMMISSION RELIGIOUS FREEDOM TURKEY, POWER IN A DANGEROUS GAME: MUSLIMS AND SECULARISTS Religious Freedom Conditions in Türkiye Overview Recent political and social conditions in Türkiye continue to create challenges to religious freedom in the country. Along with other significant human rights violations in Türkiye, including increased levels of international pressure, the government has maintained or developed policies that disenfranchise or threaten religious minorities both in Türkiye and in neighboring countries. Non-state actors have also intensified religiously motivated campaigns of violence. This country update summarizes how Turkish religious nationalism contributes to these restrictions and describes the violations faced by religious minority communities and secularists in Türkiye. The report also highlights attacks carried out on the basis of religion by non-state actors. State Religious Nationalism: Freedom of Religion or Belief and its Effects on Religious Minorities The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan continues to both utilize and fuel an ambitious form of religious and ethnic nationalism that equates Turkish national identity with a specific framework of Sunni Islam. The usefulness of this ideology as a populist political tool appears to have triggered many restrictions imposed by the government on both religious minorities and secular Turks whom it perceives as a threat to the regime. For example, authorities continue to apply Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code as a functional blasphemy law against those whom the government sees as obstacles to its religious nationalist political narrative. This law criminalizes publicly inciting hostility or hatred against another group on the basis of social class, race, religion, or sectarian or regional differences. In February 2024, Beykoz Chief Public Prosecutor's Office detained lawyer Feyza Altun under Article 216 for a social media post condemning Sharia law with a blasphemous statement. Altun was held in custody for one day on charges of incitement (a crime punishable by up to three years in prison), after which she was released under judicial control measures, including an international travel ban and mandatory weekly police checks. In her statement, Altun emphasized that she defined Sharia law not as a religious phenomenon but as a “political regime,” echoing the 20th-century Turkish secular tradition and potentially triggering concerns within the Erdoğan administration regarding expressions of secular political opposition.