The Betrayal of Lausanne in the ‘Forgotten Holy Land’

Abstract

Turkey’s Jewish and Christian populations – whose presence in Anatolia predates the arrival of the Turks by more than a millennium – are currently subjected to a form of neo-dhimmitude rooted in nationalist alienation rather than traditional Islamic subordination. Five interlocking mechanisms define the current condition of these groups: state control over institutions and clergy; systemic legal and property discrimination; the continued use of religious affiliation on identity cards and related bureaucratic tools; the suppression of religious freedom and cultural expression; and their portrayal as internal threats and outsiders within a nationalist security framework. This paper traces how these pressures developed from Ottoman imperialism to Kemalist secular homogenization and, more recently, to Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman Islamization. Although the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) guaranteed rights to Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities, these groups are increasingly treated as “remnants” of a conquered past whose existence remains hostage to Ankara’s domestic and foreign policies. Restoring the spirit of Lausanne requires restoring its pluralist vision and reforming the structures that will continue to diminish Anatolia’s millennia-old Abrahamic heritage.

Introduction

In the long history of religion in Anatolia, few buildings have witnessed and embodied more conquests and erasures than the Hagia Sophia. Built in the 6th century by Emperor Justinian I as a symbol of Eastern Christianity and the Byzantine Empire, the building served as a church for nearly a thousand years. It was converted into a mosque following the Ottoman Empire’s conquest of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1453 and then later transformed into an interfaith museum by Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the Turkish Republic, in 1934, a gesture showing the country’s new horizon as a secular and pluralistic nation.

Eighty-six years later, on July 24, 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stood beneath the ancient Byzantine dome of the Hagia Sophia and delivered remarks that upended Kemal’s vision.[1] In his ceremonial remarks that day, Erdoğan praised previous generations of Muslims for conquering Constantinople, particularly Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, who he said had endowed and entrusted the building to “believers” on condition that “it should remain a mosque until the last day.” Anyone who infringes upon this status, Erdoğan declared, is “cursed,” a clear warning to those, particularly Turkish Christians, who would prefer the structure remain a neutral museum site.[2] He continued by describing the Hagia Sophia as a “symbol of respect to belief and of the morality of coexistence,” ignoring the message of Islamic supremacy conveyed by its reconversion to a mosque, and further declared that mosques are “the source of our unity, amity, brotherhood, faith and serenity in our civilization,” a formulation that implicitly defined the national “our” in strict Islamic terms. Such descriptions leave no space – whether rhetorical or real – for Jews or Christians, the neo-dhimmis (second-class subjects) of modern Turkey.

For the minute number of Turkish Jews (around 15,000), the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia was a quiet, but ominous signal of deepening vulnerability in an increasingly Islamist country. In fact, the Turkish Jewish community’s response to the July 2020 reconversion was notably muted. The Chief Rabbi of Turkey (Isak Haleva, who held the position at the time) and the official Turkish Jewish community (represented through the Chief Rabbinate and foundations like the Istanbul Jewish community) did not produce a public statement or issue a visible critique in the immediate aftermath. For Turkish Jews, criticizing Erdoğan or his Justice and Development Party’s actions risks backlash, antisemitic incidents, and further strained relations with the Turkish government. Their silence is rooted in the older pragmatic strategy – keep a low profile to preserve what limited security and institutional access it had under the framework of the Treaty of Lausanne, the agreement that ended World War I for the Ottoman Empire.

For Turkish Christians, also small in number (approximately 300,000), the reconversion of the most cherished masterpiece of Byzantine Christianity carried a much heavier weight. The building’s brief tenure as an interfaith museum offered the country’s remaining Christians a shared, yet fragile space in which their historical presence could be acknowledged by the Turkish state. For Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the reconversion was framed as the restoration of the property of an Islamic charitable trust (waqf) and, more importantly, a national triumph of Muslims over Christians. Among the many Christian voices that rose in frustration, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of the Eastern Orthodox Church warned that its reconversion would “turn millions of Christians across the world against Islam.”[3] The Patriarch’s language was alarmist at best. At worst, he warned the Turkish authorities that turning the building back into a mosque would negatively impact Christian-Muslim relations.

The truth is that the reconversion of Hagia Sophia was never simply about restoring the building to its Ottoman-era function as a house of worship. It was a deliberate public performance of conquest and exclusion – a pointed declaration to Turkish Muslims, the broader Ummah, and the Jews and Christians watching in Western countries that, in Erdoğan’s Turkey, the national “our” is unmistakably and exclusively Muslim.

To fully grasp the deeper implications of this moment for Turkey’s remaining Jewish and Christian populations, it is necessary to step back from the twenty-first century and examine the long history of Judaism and Christianity in Anatolia – the foundation on which any meaningful discussion of neo-dhimmitude in modern Turkey rests.

Historical Background: From Dhimmitude to Lausanne

Judaism and Christianity are not newcomers in Anatolia. In reality, Jews and Christians are among its oldest continuous communities, having woven themselves into the culture, land, and spiritual life of the country we now call Turkey.[4] Jewish settlements in Asia Minor are attested from the fourth century BCE, with archaeological remains at sites such as Ephesus, Sardis, and Smyrna confirming one of the world’s oldest Jewish diasporas.[5] The Jewish presence in Asia Minor drew the attention of Flavius Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, who related that Clearchus of Soli, a pupil of Aristotle, “met Jewish people with whom he had an exchange of views during his trip across Asia Minor.”[6] Traces of Jewish settlements have also been discovered near Bursa.[7] Comparatively, Christianity took root in Anatolia later. The Apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew established communities there in the first century. Antioch was the place where followers of Jesus were first called “Christians” and the Seven Churches of Revelation, cited in the Book of Revelation, are all located in present-day Turkey. Tarsus, the city located in south-central Turkey, was the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, author of the Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament. Ephesus also is the city to which the Apostle John reportedly took the Virgin Mary to spend the last years of her life. Equally important, the foundational councils of Nicaea and Ephesus were convened on Anatolian soil long before the arrival of Muslims or Ottoman armies. Anatolia is therefore rightly called the “forgotten Holy Land.”

The eleventh-century arrival of the Seljuk Turks and the subsequent rise of the Ottoman Empire fundamentally altered these communities. Under the Ottoman millet system, Jews and Christians were granted limited communal autonomy – with control over internal religious, educational, and legal matters – yet they remained dhimmis.[8] These two populations paid special taxes, faced restrictions on public religious expression and construction, and were legally subordinate to Muslims.[9] In certain cases, under the millet system, a dhimmi was considered evil and strange;[10] prevented from wearing the same clothes as Muslims, could not give the greeting of “peace” to a Muslim without having been greeted first, and were barred from building houses that rose higher than Muslim houses.[11] In the most unfavorable circumstances, their dhimmi status led to certain forms of discrimination or deprivations in comparison with Muslims, including arbitrary arrests, extra fees, restrictions, bans, duties, persecution, harassment, deportation, and economic coercion.[12] This hierarchical system established the formal template of dhimmitude that later Turkish regimes would adapt.

In fairness, Ottoman rule was at times more pragmatic than contemporary Christian Europe. For example, Sultan Bayezid II welcomed Sephardic refugees following the Spanish Alhambra Decree of 1492, which ordered the expulsion of unconverted Spanish Jews.[13] Jews later rose to prominent court and commercial positions. Subsequent Ottoman rulers involved them in government affairs as ministers, diplomats, and military advisors and gave them positions as physicians or doctors at the sultan’s court.[14] Yet, the underlying hierarchy of Islamic supremacy never disappeared. In this context, it is noticeable that Ottoman Jews had developed a specific psychological loyalty to the Ottomans which was based on their gratefulness for the admission as well as economic and social support extended by the Empire to their ancestors who fled life-threatening persecution and discrimination in their Christian dominated countries of origin.[15]

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Nineteenth-century Tanzimat reforms (1839-1876), including the passing of the 1856 Islahat laws, which granted new freedom for non-Muslims and equal status between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the short-lived 1876 constitution, which was based on the Islahat reforms and French constitutional law, formally abolished dhimmi status and proclaimed equality of citizenship. Sultan Abdülhamid II rescinded this constitution in 1878 as a consequence of the military and diplomatic defeats against Russia, Romania, and Serbia in that decade.[16] These advances proved fragile. From the Hamidian massacres of Armenians in 1894-1896, through the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916, and then to the broader violence of World War I and its aftermath, successive waves of killing, deportation, and forced conversion reduced the Christian population from roughly 20 percent of the empire’s Anatolian population to approximately 2 percent by 1924. Jews, whose generally cautious political posture had often aligned them with the state, largely escaped the worst of this destruction, but still suffered economic marginalization.

Today the demographic legacy of that collapse is stark. As early as 2011, there were reportedly 26,000 Jews living in Turkey, the vast majority of whom lived in Istanbul, with smaller communities in Ankara, Bursa, and Izmir.[17] Today, Jews only number around 15,000 (mostly in Istanbul), while Christians of all denominations constitute roughly 0.3 percent of Turkey’s population, putting it on the brink of extinction.[18] These denominations include Armenian Apostolic, Greek Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Syriac, Catholic (mainly migrants from African countries and the Philippines), and Protestants.[19] Turkey’s current position on minority issues originates from its 1982 Constitution which in theory provides for freedom of religion and forbids discrimination on religious grounds. However, the 1982 Constitution does not ensure full legal status for minorities and all rights are subject to state control.[20] In response to this predicament, Jews and Christians have carried out strategies of association, confrontation, and survival,[21] as the next sections discuss in detail.

This long arc – from ancient presence, through Ottoman hierarchical tolerance, to late-imperial demographic catastrophe – sets the stage for the central argument of this paper – the progressive hollowing-out of the pluralist vision embodied in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

The Lost Ideal: Lausanne’s Promise and Its Betrayal

The core thesis of this piece is that the spirit and vision of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) – the agreement ending World War I that was supposed to guarantee Turkey’s Jewish and Christian communities full equality, security, religious freedom, and the right to maintain their institutions – is dying. What was intended as a pluralist compact protecting Jews and Christians has been hollowed out by successive waves of nationalist homogenization, first under Kemalism and now under Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman Islamization. The result is a type of neo-dhimmitude in which Turkey’s ancient Jewish and Christian communities are treated not as equal citizens, but as barely tolerated remnants of a conquered past whose very existence remains hostage to Ankara’s domestic and foreign policy agenda.

The Treaty of Lausanne, concluded between the Allied Powers and Turkey, sought to re-establish peaceful relations between the relevant parties after World War I. At its heart lay a set of binding minority protections that have since been systematically eroded. Article 38 guarantees full protection of life and liberty, free exercise of religion, and freedom of movement for all inhabitants without distinction of religion.[22] Yet these foundational safeguards have been rendered largely formal, as state practices continue to mark Jews and Christians (and indeed all non-Muslims) as potential threats rather than equal citizens. Article 39 promised non-Muslim minorities the same civil and political rights as Muslims and equality before the law.[23] In practice, this equality has been undermined by administrative and legal mechanisms that reintroduced hierarchical distinctions under the guise of cultural homogeneity and national security. Articles 40 and 42 further affirmed minorities’ equal right to establish, manage, and control their own charitable, educational, religious, and social institutions, while requiring the state to protect churches, synagogues, cemeteries, and other religious establishments.[24] These institutional guarantees – central to Lausanne’s pluralist vision – have been steadily eroded through state oversight, property seizures, seminary closures, and cultural rebranding. The result is the reduction of ancient communities to managed remnants rather than self-determining equals on par with Muslims.

These four Treaty of Lausanne articles were inspired by core Western principles of religious liberty and equality before the law. They effectively established a “religion-blind” legal framework – no single faith would receive preferential treatment – and followers of all religions would stand as equals under the law. Religious minority communities were granted significant autonomy as self-governing entities, with control over their internal affairs and, ultimately, their own destiny – so long as they remained within the bounds of national law. In this sense, the Treaty of Lausanne represented a decisive break from the Ottoman past, in which Islam and Muslims had enjoyed privileged status, and signaled the dawn of a new, more secular and pluralistic era for Turkey.

During the period of the Turkish war of independence and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, many Jews advocated and supported the Kemalist movement. This was mostly based on the movement’s political and social modernization and reform policies as well as its ambition to replace the Sultanate monarchy and theocratic governance with a secular parliamentary republic.[25] Kemal’s strategy of secularism was supported by a number of Jewish intellectuals who participated in the drafting of the Kemalist nationalist policy.[26] However, even this early Jewish alignment with the new republic could not secure lasting equality. The same nationalist project that welcomed their support later subordinated their communal autonomy to the demands of national homogenization, especially in recent years under the banner of the neo-Ottoman movement led by Erdoğan.

During the first decade of the Republic of Turkey (1923-1935), the Kemalist regime pushed an aggressive secular nationalist ideology. While framed as a break from Ottoman Islamic hierarchy, in practice, Kemal’s approach continued the erasure of Jewish and Christian life and further laid the institutional groundwork for twenty-first century neo-dhimmitude that treats Jews and Christians as second-class citizens. Kemal’s regime revealed its selective pragmatism in 1933, after Hitler’s rise to power, when he invited Jewish academics to leave Nazi Germany and settle in Turkey to bolster the young country’s education system.[27] However, this invitation to Jewish academics was followed in 1934 by anti-Jewish violence, boycotts, and forced flight in Thrace. These riots were not spontaneous occurrences, but rather planned actions by local Muslim elites and Republican People’s Party (RPP) local officials, and antisemitic Turkish ultra-nationalists.[28] Broader measures against Jews continued to shape Turkish policy in the years that followed. During World War II, Turkey – as a neutral country – protected its Jews by facilitating the safe land and sea passage of thousands of European Jewish refugees, mostly to Israel and the U.S, but research indicates that these cases represented exceptions or personal initiatives by leading Turkish ambassadors rather than a coordinated government policy.[29] In this light, Ankara’s policy towards Jews during World War II was highly ambivalent.

Jewish emigration from Turkey to Israel in the 1940s was pushed by the imposition of a controversial wealth tax on minorities (varlık vergisi), which led to the liquidation of older and productive non-Muslim owned firms, replaced by frailer Muslim-owned startups.[30] While the tax helped “nationalize” the Turkish economy, it ultimately had negative implications for productivity and growth and certainly had negative ramifications on Jewish communities in Turkey. Subsequent decades were engulfed by episodes of violence against Christians, including the 1955 pogroms in Smyrna and Istanbul against the Greek Orthodox Church, which also affected Jews and other non-Muslims. In 1963 and then again in 1974, Christians suffered persecution relating to Turkey’s conflict with Greece over Cyprus.

It is important to contrast the notion of Turkey as a Western-allied, European adjacent state with the far more restrictive reality experienced by its Jewish and Christian communities. Before examining the five interlocking mechanisms of neo-dhimmitude that define their condition, this gap between image and reality must be clearly acknowledged. The Turkish constitution defines the country as a secular state, provides freedom of conscience, expression, and religion, and prohibits discrimination based on religious grounds. The reality on the ground, however, paints a different picture. Few places on earth have seen as drastic a decline in their Christian population.[31] Jews, by contrast, are increasingly reduced to the label “Zionists,” a term that in much of the contemporary Muslim world is treated as equivalent to “Nazis” – a dangerous and false equation.

In my analysis in the forthcoming sections, I argue that the erosion of Lausanne’s pluralist vision has produced a distinct form of neo-dhimmitude in which the country’s remaining Jewish and Christian communities are treated as managed remnants rather than equal citizens. This dynamic is reinforced by systemic legal and property discrimination, the suppression of religious freedom and cultural expression, and their ideological portrayal as internal threats within a nationalist security framework. As I argued in a previous article,[32] a parallel (though distinct) pattern can be seen in Pakistan, where native Christians face systemic socioeconomic subordination, draconian blasphemy laws, and the framing as Western proxies – betraying Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s 1947 vision of a state in which faith has “nothing to do with the business of the State.” Just as Turkey’s Jewish and Christian communities have seen the promises of equal citizenship progressively undermined by Kemalist homogenization and Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman Islamization, these examples illustrate how post-colonial Muslim-majority states have often relegated ancient Jewish and Christian communities to majoritarian nationalist and Islamist pressures.

Institutional Regulation: State Control over Clergy and Religious Bodies

The first interlocking mechanism of neo-dhimmitude is direct state control over the institutions and clergy of Turkey’s Jewish and Christian communities. What Lausanne promised as self-governing religious autonomy has been transformed into a system of subordination in which the Turkish state retains ultimate authority over leadership selection, institutional continuity, and communal assets. In this arrangement, Jews and Christians are permitted to exist only as managed remnants whose internal affairs remain subject to Ankara’s oversight.

For the Turkish Jewish community, the Chief Rabbi is formally elected by communal representatives, creating an appearance of autonomy. In practice, however, the appointment still requires government approval. This requirement marks a clear continuity with the Ottoman millet system, in which minority religious leaders exercised limited internal authority only under the ultimate supervision of the state. Unlike religious communities in Western liberal democracies, which appoint their own leaders without state interference, Turkish Jews must secure the government’s consent before their highest spiritual authority can take office.

The same logic of supervised autonomy extends to the management of communal property. Jewish religious endowments (known as vakıfs in Turkish) that oversee cemeteries, schools, social services, and synagogues operate under the regulatory authority of the Directorate General of Foundations. This arrangement ensures that even the day-to-day administration of Jewish institutional life remains embedded within a framework of state supervision. This dynamic reinforces the neo-dhimmi status of a community whose formal rights under Lausanne have been emptied of practical force.

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A parallel and even more restrictive pattern governs Turkey’s Christian communities. The Greek Orthodox Halki Seminary of Heybeliada Island, opened in 1844, served for more than a century as the primary theological training institution of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, preparing generations of clergy, bishops, and patriarchs. It was closed in 1971 after Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that all private higher-education institutions must be affiliated with the state, and it remains closed to this day. The continued shuttering of Halki prevents the Greek Orthodox community from educating its own clergy inside Turkey, forcing candidates to study abroad and thereby weakening the community’s institutional continuity and demographic viability. This closure stands in direct violation of Articles 40 and 42 of the Treaty of Lausanne, which guarantee non-Muslim minorities the equal right to establish, manage, and control their own educational and religious institutions. International appeals – including repeated calls from U.S. presidents and the Ecumenical Patriarchate – have produced no change on this matter.[33] Quantitative data further show that forty-four percent of ordinary Turks support the reopening of closed Christian seminaries, yet the state has refused to act.[34]

Four years earlier, in 1967, the theological department of the Armenian Apostolic seminary at Surp Haç (Holy Cross) Tıbrevank was also closed. The school’s history stretched back centuries (it is mentioned as early as 1706). Its shuttering left the Armenian community dependent on foreign-trained priests from Armenia or Jerusalem, accelerating both institutional and demographic decline. Like the closure of Halki, the elimination of Surp Haç constitutes a clear breach of Lausanne’s institutional guarantees and reduces an ancient Christian community to a managed remnant unable to reproduce its own clerical leadership.

Like in the Jewish case, state interference extends beyond educational institutions to the very process of selecting Christian spiritual leaders. Although the Treaty of Lausanne affirmed the right of religious communities to appoint their own officials according to their internal rules, Turkish authorities continue to intervene in the election of patriarchs and other high clergy. No effective measures have been taken to eliminate this interference in the internal affairs of the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, or other non-Muslim communities.[35] When Armenian Patriarch Mesrob Mustafyan fell ill in 2008 and became unable to discharge his duties, the community applied to the Interior Ministry for permission to hold a free election, but was denied.[36] A Patriarchal Vicar was appointed instead in 2010 under state pressure. Only in 2019 was Sahak Maşalyan finally installed as Patriarch after prolonged government involvement.[37]

In each of these cases – the supervised appointment of the Chief Rabbi, the regulatory control of Jewish and Christian vakıfs, the permanent closure of Halki and Surp Haç, and the state’s repeated intrusion into patriarchal elections – the Turkish government retains decisive authority over the institutional life of non-Muslim communities. What Lausanne envisioned as equal, self-governing religious bodies has been reduced to a system of neo-dhimmitude in which the traditions of Jews and Christians barely survive. Their clergy, schools, and communal assets remain subject to the priorities of the Turkish state.

Economic Dispossession: Legal and Property Discrimination

The second interlocking mechanism of Turkish neo-dhimmitude is systemic legal and property discrimination. Under the Treaty of Lausanne, non-Muslim communities were guaranteed the equal rights to establish, manage, and control their own charitable, religious, and social institutions, as well as protection for their cemeteries, churches, synagogues, and other properties. In practice, successive Turkish governments have converted these guarantees into a regime of supervised ownership in which Jewish and Christian communal assets remain permanently vulnerable to state intervention. The result is that these ancient communities and their physical and institutional foundations can be restricted, selectively restored, or seized according to the priorities of the Turkish state.

Everyday Jewish worship is also folded into this property regime: Istanbul’s roughly sixteen operating synagogues are classified as vakıfs (religious foundations) and thus fall under the Directorate General of Foundations.[38] The deeper problem, however, is dispossession itself, rooted in the 1935 Law on Foundations. This legislation placed all religious foundations under strict government supervision and transformed non-Muslim vakıfs into “annexed” foundations, making it far easier for the state to seize their assets over time. By 2008, twenty-four Jewish foundations and twenty-four Greek Orthodox foundations – encompassing 990 individual properties – had been seized.[39] Although a 2011 decree allowed non-Muslim communities to apply for the return of some properties, the measure contains severe limitations. Only assets listed in the 1936 Declaration are eligible. Many properties, especially historic cemeteries, were never registered in 1936 and therefore cannot be reclaimed. A clear example is the Jewish cemetery in Kırklareli, whose Hebrew-inscribed tombstones unambiguously identify it as Jewish property. Because it does not appear in the 1936 papers, the Turkish government continues to refuse its return. These seizures and the restrictive restitution process demonstrate how Lausanne’s property protections have been stripped of force, leaving Jewish and Christian communities as managed remnants whose physical heritage remains at the discretion of the state.

To give the full picture, the AKP government has financed the restoration of several synagogues – most notably in Edirne, Gaziantep, Kilis, and Diyarbakır.[40] These selective restorations illustrate the logic of neo-dhimmitude. Jewish religious life is tolerated and even publicly showcased when it serves the government’s image, but it remains tightly regulated and never fully autonomous.

A parallel pattern of dispossession and restriction confronts Turkey’s Christian communities. While public opinion surveys indicate that the majority of Turks believe Christians enjoy a good level of freedom to practice their religion and express their views, and that Christians share equal social rights and security of life and property with Muslims, the actual situation is markedly different.[41] In Turkey it is almost impossible to build a new church. Christian foundations, like Jewish and other non-Muslim foundations, face a de facto ban on the construction, maintenance, or repair of their properties without state intervention. This practical prohibition, combined with the earlier seizures of hundreds of Greek Orthodox properties, once again reduces Christian communities to managed remnants whose most basic institutional needs – primarily places of worship – remain subject to state obstruction, in direct contradiction to the property guarantees of the Treaty of Lausanne.

In summary, the legal and property regime governing Jewish and Christian communities transforms Lausanne’s promise of equal ownership and self-management into a system of supervised possession. Whether through the regulation of vakıfs, the seizure of foundations, the restrictive conditions attached to synagogue restorations, or the near-total ban on church construction, the Turkish state retains decisive power over the institutional and physical foundations of these ancient communities.

Everyday Discrimination: Religious Affiliation on ID Cards and State Registries

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A less overt, but equally significant feature of neo-dhimmitude in Turkey concerns the religious affiliation recorded on Turkish national identity cards, our third interlocking mechanism. Historically, Turkish ID cards – first issued as booklets following the 1927 census and later transformed into laminated wallet-sized documents in 1976 – explicitly displayed the bearer’s religion. In the long run, this institutional marking of religious identity created a bureaucratic surveillance tool that Turkish governments would adapt into a modern instrument of neo-dhimmitude, allowing the state to distinguish Jews and Christians (and other religious minorities) from Muslims decades after the Treaty of Lausanne had guaranteed equal citizenship.

The European Court of Human Rights’ landmark 2010 judgement in Sinan Işık v. Turkey further exposed the discriminatory logic embedded in this system.[42] Işık, a Turkish citizen and member of the Alevi community, had “Islam” listed in the mandatory “religion” box on his national identity card. He went to a domestic court seeking to replace it with “Alevi,” arguing that Alevism was his actual faith and that being forced to display “Islam” violated his freedom of religion and conscience. The case established that the mere presence of a religion field on identity cards – whether mandatory or optional – violates Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights by compelling individuals to disclose their beliefs or to signal non-conformity through a blank entry. In 2016, the Turkish parliament voted to remove the visible religious affiliation from the cards. However, this change was only partial. Religious information continued to be embedded in the polycarbonate biometric chips of the new IDs, remaining an official part of the state registry.[43]

Garo Paylan, an Armenian parliamentarian of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has previously campaigned for the complete removal of religious affiliation from identification documents, noting that internal security codes still classify citizens by faith – Greeks as “1,” Armenians as “2,” Jews as “3,” and Assyrians as “4" – and these designations facilitate discrimination across various government departments and services.[44] These codes transform basic administrative record keeping into tracking systems. As such, they reduce Jews and Christians to populations whose loyalty is permanently questioned, perpetuating the logic of neo-dhimmitude that Lausanne was meant to abolish.

Turkish ID cards also enable employers to easily discriminate against Jews and Christians, particularly during hiring processes. Authorities are branding Christians with so-called “N-82" or “G-87" security codes, which are used to label a person as a “threat to public order and security.”[45] The N-82 code requires prior approval for re-entry to the country and functions in practice as a de-facto permanent ban. On the other hand, the G-87 code – normally reserved for terrorists or serious security risks – imposes an indefinite prohibition. Reports by the Association of Protestant Churches documented that hundreds of individuals and their families have been affected, with new codes still being issued.[46]

The N-82 and G-87 security codes constitute a contemporary expression of neo-dhimmitude in that the Turkish government treats religious identity as potential evidence of disloyalty, amounting to a nullification of Lausanne’s guarantee of equal citizenship. A 2024 Constitutional Court ruling exposed the extent to which Turkey’s intelligence agency – Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MIT) – has surveilled and profiled Western Protestants as national-security threats. Leaked MIT reports revealed that the files of long-term legal Turkish residents – including American, Australian, and German citizens – were marked with the N-82 security code, resulting in the cancellation of residency permits, deportation orders, and de-facto entry bans.[47] Although the N-82 designation formally requires only prior approval for re-entry, Turkish consulates routinely rejected all such applications. In one documented instance, attendance at a long-running Protestant Family Conference in Antalya in 2019 was itself cited by MIT as evidence of a plot to “promote missionary work,” leading to the blacklisting of approximately 120 participants.[48] The Turkish Constitutional Court, dominated by Erdoğan loyalists, found no violation of religious freedom or due process.

Ultimately, the ability for authorized public officials to see a listing of a religion other than Islam, or a blank field, presents the risk of discrimination on the basis of religion or belief.[49] Closely related to this and the previous two mechanisms is the suppression of religious freedom and cultural expression, the fourth interlocking mechanism of Turkey’s neo-dhimmitude environment, to which we now turn.

Cultural Erasure: The Suppression of Jewish and Christian Heritage

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A key finding thus far is that Jews and Christians experience only conditional tolerance in Turkey. Equally significant is the rebranding of their cultural and religious heritage. A February 2026 investigative report by Camille Scali captures the precarious condition of Izmir’s remaining Jewish community – now reduced to roughly 1,000-1,200 people in a city of nearly three million.[50] Scali found that almost all that physically survives of a once-flourishing Sephardic presence are two former juderías (Jewish quarter), a handful of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century decaying synagogues, and a fish market in the Kemeraltı bazaar. In response, the Jewish community in Izmir has been mobilizing to preserve its heritage. With EU support, the Jewish community launched a reclamation project that it sees as a countermeasure to the Turkish nationalist narrative.”[51] Community activists have led a multi-year effort to restore the synagogues on “Synagogue Street” and to stage cultural festivals in the hope, as Scali notes, of “reclaiming [Jewish] history, which has been overlooked and forgotten, if not confiscated by the national narrative.” However, the Jewish community in Izmir is concerned that the reclamation project has been sidelined by the “touristification” of Jewish heritage, as Turkish municipal authorities prioritize tourism and gentrification over the needs of a living, thriving Jewish community. The goal here is to transform the old Jewish quarter into an economic asset rather than restore it as a vibrant home for the small number of Jews still living there, in a similar fashion to the old Jewish neighborhoods in Moroccan cities like Fez and Marrkech. What this reveals is that the community’s survival is subordinated to the soft power of state and municipal entities along with economic interests. In short, Jewish cultural memory is tolerated – at best – only when it can be packaged as a tourist attraction that poses no threat to Erdoğan’s Islamist nationalism.

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Another significant factor that adds to Turkey’s disregard for its commitments to the Treaty of Lausanne is the state’s cultural heritage policy, which has been deployed as a “cudgel” against the country’s ancient Christian communities. Ankara’s cultural heritage policies have been decried by international cultural heritage experts as “a domestic and foreign policy propaganda tool for state-regime aggrandizement.”[52] Emblematic is the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s “conservation and protection measures” applied to ancient Christian monastic sites built into the Cappadocian rocks of Turkey’s central Anatolian Plateau.[53] These cave dwellings constituted some of early Christianity’s most formative monastic communities and include unrivalled examples of Byzantine art. Turkey’s dwindling Christian communities are deprived of the active use of these monastic religious spaces. Instead, the Cappadocian cave complexes were converted into luxury hotels with hot air balloon approaches.[54]

A similar pattern of appropriation and rebranding extends beyond Cappadocia. In July 2025, Turkish officials and state media referred to the restored eleventh-century Armenian Cathedral of Ani as “Fethiye Camii” (Conquest Mosque), emphasizing the 1064 Islamic conquest of the site and thus scrubbing its Christian Armenian identity from the official narrative.[55] Parallel restrictions have affected the historic Sumela Monastery in Trabzon, where the Turkish government has repeatedly limited or postponed the traditional August 15 Divine Liturgy on the grounds that the date coincides with the anniversary of the Ottoman conquest of the city. These cases form part of a longer continuum that includes the conversion of multiple sites back into functioning mosques. In these kind of cases, cultural-heritage policy is deployed not to preserve living religious communities, but to assert an Islamist nationalism over Turkey’s Christian past.

The “Enemy Within": Portraying Jews and Christians as Internal Threats

The fifth and final interlocking mechanism of neo-dhimmitude in the Turkish context is the ideological portrayal of Jews and Christians as internal threats – a perception closely linked to Sèvres Syndrome. This term derives from the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which was imposed on the defeated Ottoman Empire by the victorious Allies and envisioned the partition of much of Anatolia and imperial land. The treaty proposed carving up the remaining Ottoman territories: Britain and France were to take control of the former Arab provinces, an independent Armenian state was to be created, a Kurdish state was planned for eastern Anatolia, and Greece was awarded significant territories in western Anatolia, including the city of Smyrna (today’s Izmir). Although Allied forces briefly occupied parts of Turkey after the treaty was signed in 1920, the Ottoman government that accepted the deal had little real authority left abide by it. In response, the Turkish Nationalist Movement – led by Mustafa Kemal (later known as Atatürk) – refused to recognize the agreement. Kemal’s forces fought a successful War of Independence against the occupying armies, which ultimately forced the Allies back to the negotiating table. The result was the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which replaced the terms of Sèvres, recognized the sovereignty of the new Turkish Republic, and laid the foundations for the modern Turkish state we know today.

Although the treaty was never implemented and was superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), Sèvres Syndrome remains embedded in the Turkish national psyche. Today, as in years past, there is a persistent fear that external powers, especially the West, work in tandem with internal minorities, seeking ultimately to weaken and divide the Turkish state. In this Sèvres worldview, Jews are routinely associated with the State of Israel, while Christians are viewed as proxies for the U.S. and Western powers. Together, Jews and Christians are often cast as outsiders and potential fifth columns. Instead of fostering trust among these communities, this mindset reproduces their depiction as existential threats, and thus reinforces their neo-dhimmitude status.

Israel’s war against Hamas and Hezbollah and the intensity of increasing conflict with Iran and its proxies in the Middle East has fueled and reinforced the already existing anti-Zionism, anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish, and antisemitic sentiments among large parts of Turkey’s Muslim population, which in previous decades represented a phenomenon at the margins of Turkish society.[56] This reality has proved to be a heavy burden for Turkish Jews who are blamed for the suffering of Palestinians and Muslims worldwide, and are regarded as collaborators and supporters of Israel simply because of their Jewish heritage.[57] In this climate, Jews are relegated, once again, to their neo-dhimmi role as a small minority held responsible for the actions of a distant state.

The scapegoating of Turkey’s Jews is enhanced by the Turkish media’s frequent targeting of the population with defamation, insults, and hatred.[58] In March 2026, Abdullah Bozkurt, a leading Turkish journalist based in Sweden, wrote an article for The Nordic Monitor explaining how Sabah, a Turkish government outlet owned by the family of Erdoğan, had intensified its long-running antisemitic messaging, promoting conspiracy theories that portray Jews collectively as criminals, intelligence operatives, and members of a global cabal controlling the media, finance, intelligence networks, and international conflicts.[59] In a similar interview, Abdurrahman Şimşek, a news coordinator for Sabah and a Turkish intelligence asset, went far beyond criticism of Israeli government policies, telling viewers “When you say media in the world, Jews run it” and “Every Jew is an agent – a Mossad agent.”[60] As Bozkurt explained, Şimşek’s remarks assign collective guilt to Jews as a whole, erase the distinction between Jewish identity and Israeli state policy, and portray an entire religious and ethnic community as inherently conspiratorial and dangerous.[61] Furthermore, the Jerusalem Post reported in February 2026 that Melih Abuaf, a popular Jewish YouTuber in Turkey, had been targeted for “controlling the minds of Turkish children.”[62] TVNET, a Turkish media company, published several exposé-style features on Abuaf, claiming he “controls the YouTube side of the Turkish children’s entertainment sector,” had relatives living in Israel, and that his father has interacted closely with Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers. Here, Abuaf is treated as a “mastermind” and proof that Jews in Turkey have alleged nefarious, hidden influences.

A parallel and yet similar dynamic affects Turkey’s Christian communities. The surge in global anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish sentiment occurs within a broader climate of rising neo-Ottoman nationalism, which often portrays non-Muslims – including Christians – as disloyal “internal enemies,” Western agents, or historical adversaries. Reports document a rise in the media of anti-Christian rhetoric, including portrayals of Christians as “crusaders,” foreign missionaries undermining Turkey, or security threats. Church leaders and Protestant communities in particular have reported online harassment, physical attacks on places of worship, and public accusations that Christians are agents of Western countries.[63]

Beyond these hostilities, a key barrier relating to the integration of Christians in Turkish society is the general negative perception of Christianity and Christians among Turkish citizens, due largely to the low level of knowledge about Christianity in Turkey[64] and the treatment of Christianity as an agent of foreign subversion.[65] Survey results have revealed that for the vast majority of Turks, Christianity is not associated with being Turkish.[66] As Behnan Konutgan, a Turkish Christian scholar, put it, “To be a Turk, means to be a Muslim. Other religions are not accepted and tolerated.”[67] The same bears true in light of the Jewish population of Turkey.

The Path Forward—Overcoming Neo-Dhimmitude in Turkey

(Shutterstock)

To recap, the spirit and vision of the Treaty of Lausanne has been progressively hollowed out. What began as an ambitious attempt to move beyond the Ottoman millet system and dhimmi status toward a more pluralistic republic has instead produced a distinct form of neo-dhimmitude. Under successive waves of Kemalist secular nationalism and, more recently, Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman Islamization, Turkey’s ancient Jewish and Christian communities have been reduced to barely tolerated remnants of a conquered past and are subject to Ankara’s domestic and foreign policy priorities. The five interlocking mechanisms examined in this piece – state control over clergy and religious bodies, systemic legal and property discrimination, bureaucratic tools such as identity cards, the suppression of religious freedom and cultural expression, and the ideological portrayal of Jews and Christians as internal threats – all demonstrate how formal guarantees of previous commitments, especially that of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), have been undermined in practice. The reconversion of Hagia Sophia in 2020 stands as the ultimate symbol of this shift – a public performance of Islamic and national supremacy that leaves little rhetorical or physical space for Jews and Christians in Turkey’s national story.

This erosion is not merely a domestic Turkish issue. It symbolizes a broader pattern in post-Ottoman and post-colonial Muslim-majority states where religious minorities are subordinated to majoritarian nationalist and Islamist pressures. Just as Pakistan has betrayed Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of a state in which faith has “nothing to do with the business of the State,” Turkey has moved away from Mustafa Kemal’s early secular experiments toward a more exclusionary identity. The result is the steady cultural and demographic disappearance of communities whose presence in Anatolia predates the arrival of Islam and the Turks by millennia. Anatolia – the “forgotten Holy Land” and home to some of the world’s oldest Jewish and Christian communities – is losing the very diversity that once defined it.

Yet, this decline does not need to be inevitable. Restoring Lausanne’s pluralist vision requires concrete, solution-oriented reforms. First, Turkey should fully implement Articles 38–42 of the Treaty by reopening the Halki Seminary and allowing Jewish and other minority communities to establish or revive their own educational and religious training institutions without state obstruction. Second, the Directorate General of Foundations (VGM) must be reformed so that non-Muslim vakıfs regain genuine autonomy over their properties, with a transparent process for returning seized assets, including unregistered cemeteries. Third, religious affiliation should be completely removed from identity cards and state registries to eliminate a key tool of discrimination. Fourth, civic education programs should be introduced in Turkish schools to teach the rich pre-Turkish and multi-faith history of Anatolia, fostering genuine knowledge and respect rather than suspicion. Finally, the government should engage in meaningful dialogue with minority communities and international partners, moving beyond symbolic gestures (such as occasional synagogue restorations) to structural legal changes that guarantee freedom of religion in practice, not just in rhetoric.

Turkey’s long-term stability and global standing would benefit from embracing its full historical diversity rather than erasing it. By restoring the pluralist promise of Lausanne and reforming the structures that diminish Anatolia’s millennia-old heritage, Turkey can move from a narrative of conquest and exclusion toward one of genuine coexistence. The ancient stones of Hagia Sophia, the Jewish ruins of Sardis, and the cave monasteries of Cappadocia are watching.

Endnotes

[1] The Independent, “Hagia Sophia: Erdogan Recites Koran at Reopening of Historic Mosque,” The Independent, July 24, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hagia-sophia-reopens-mosque-erdogan-koran-prayer-a9635986.html.

[2] Melis Alemdar, “Hagia Sophia Friday Prayer: Full Transcript of the Sermon,” TRT World, July 24, 2020, https://www.trtworld.com/article/12871163.

[3] Yesim Dikmen and Bulent Usta, “Orthodox Patriarch Says Turning Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia into Mosque Would Be Divisive,” Reuters, June 30, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/orthodox-patriarch-says-turning-istanbuls-hagia-sophia-into-mosque-would-be-div-idUSKBN2412TZ/

[4] Armenian National Committee of America, Early Christianity in the Lands of Present-Day Turkey: The Legacy of Christianity in Turkey (Washington, DC: Armenian National Committee of America, 2015), https://anca.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Christianity-Legacy-in-Turkey.pdf.

[5] Bülent Şenay, “Jews in Turkey,” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture, ed. Judith R. Baskin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1.

[6] Jewish Virtual Library, “Turkey Virtual Jewish History Tour,” Jewish Virtual Library, accessed July 6, 2026, https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/turkey-virtual-jewish-history-tour.

[7] Jewish Virtual Library, “Bursa,” Jewish Virtual Library, accessed August 5, 2026, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_03758.html.

[8] Hüseyin Yılmaz, Non-Muslims in the Light of the Koran (İstanbul: Kayıhan Yayınları, 1996), 26–38.

[9] Şenay, “Jews in Turkey,” 1.

[10] Gülnihal Bozkurt, Alman-İngiliz Belgelerinin ve Siyasi Gelişmelerin Işığı Altında Gayrimüslim Osmanlı Vatandaşlarının Hukukî Durumu (1839–1914) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1989), 42–50.

[11] Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh–Twentieth Century (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), 153–57.

[12] Christoph Giesel, “Status and Situation of the Jews in Turkey: Historical Lines of Development and Contemporary Circumstances in the Context of Socio-political Transformations,” ESBA Dergisi, no. 9 (2014): 4

[13] Şenay, “Jews in Turkey,” 1.

[14] Giesel, “Status and Situation of the Jews in Turkey,” 5.

[15] Ibid., 7.

[16] Ibid., 6.

[17] Şenay, “Jews in Turkey,” 1.

[18] ADF International, “Christians Banned and Facing Persecution in Türkiye,” https://adfinternational.org/cases/christians-banned-from-turkey.

[19] U.S. Department of State, “2023 Report on International Religious Freedom: Turkey (Türkiye),” https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-report-on-international-religious-freedom/turkey.

[20] Xsights Research and Consultancy, Public Perceptions of the Christian Minority in Turkey: Survey Results (London: Screen Changers, 2015), https://www.xsights.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/public_perceptions_regarding_the_christian_minority_in__turkey__survey_report_final_dec15.pdf.

[21] Under Caesar’s Sword, “Turkey,” University of Notre Dame, updated June 2022, https://ucs.nd.edu/learn/turkey/

[22] Treaty of Peace with Turkey Signed at Lausanne, July 24, 1923, https://www.svi-bz.org/uploads/tx_bh/141/treaty_of_peace_with_turkey_signed_at_lausanne_july_24_1923.pdf.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Giesel, “Status and Situation of the Jews in Turkey,” 9.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Arnold Reisman, “Jewish Refugees from Nazism, Albert Einstein, and the Modernization of Higher Education in Turkey (1933–1945),” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science & Judaism 7 (2007): 253.

[28] Banu Eligür, “The 1934 Anti-Jewish Thrace Riots: The Jewish Exodus of Thrace through the Lens of Nationalism and Collective Violence,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 44, no. 1 (January 2017): 88.

[29] Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, The Jews of the Balkans: The Judeo-Spanish Community, 15th to 20th Centuries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 179–184.

[30] Seven Ağır and Cihan Artunç, “The Wealth Tax of 1942 and the Disappearance of Non-Muslim Enterprises in Turkey,” Journal of Economic History 79, no. 1 (March 2019): 201.

[31] R. Cavanaugh, “Turkey’s Christians Face the Future with Reasons for Hope, Caution,” International Christian Concern, January 28, 2026.

[32] Craig Considine, “Neo-Dhimmitude in the Land of the Pure: Pakistan’s Native Christians and the Betrayal of Jinnah’s Pluralism,” Middle East Forum, April 20, 2026, https://www.meforum.org/dhimmitude-project/neo-dhimmitude-in-the-land-of-the-pure-pakistans-native-christians-and-the-betrayal-of-jinnahs-pluralism.

[33] United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), “50 Years and Counting: The Continued Closure of Halki Seminary in Turkey,” May 20, 2021, https://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/uscirf-spotlight/50-years-and-counting-continued-closure-halki-seminary-turkey.

[34] Xsights Research and Consultancy, Public Perceptions of the Christian Minority in Turkey.

[35] Yıldırım, An Appeal to Move Forward from Aspirations to Actions, 40.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Şenay, “Jews in Turkey,” 1.

[39] Yıldırım, An Appeal to Move Forward from Aspirations to Actions, 52.

[40] Camille Scali, “The Conflicted Memory of the Last Jews of Izmir,” K. La Revue, February 26, 2026, https://k-larevue.com/en/2026/02/26/the-conflicted-memory-of-the-last-jews-of-izmir/.

[41] Xsights Research and Consultancy, Public Perceptions of the Christian Minority in Turkey.

[42] European Court of Human Rights, Sinan Işık v. Turkey, Application no. 21924/05 (Judgment of 2 February 2010), https://ceceurope.org/storage/app/media/uploads/2015/08/CASE_OF_SINAN_ISIK_v._TURKEY.pdf.

[43] Armenian National Committee of America, “Turkey to Remove Religious Affiliation on ID Cards, Hide It in Chips,” February 18, 2016, https://anca.org/turkey-to-remove-religious-affiliation-on-id-cards-hide-it-in-chips/.

[44] Ibid.

[45] ADF International, “Christians Banned and Facing Persecution in Türkiye,” https://adfinternational.org/cases/christians-banned-from-turkey.

[46] Association of Protestant Churches (Protestan Kiliseler Derneği), 2025 Human Rights Violation Report (Istanbul: Association of Protestant Churches, 25 March 2026), https://protestankiliseler.org/en/2025-hak-ihlalleri-izleme-raporu/.

[47] Abdullah Bozkurt, “Western Protestants in Turkey Labeled Threats to the Turkish State,” Middle East Forum, June 13, 2024, https://www.meforum.org/western-protestants-in-turkey-labeled-threats-to.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Yıldırım, An Appeal to Move Forward from Aspirations to Actions, 19.

[50] Scali, “The Conflicted Memory of the Last Jews of Izmir.”

[51] Ibid.

[52] Elizabeth H. Prodromou, “Turkey’s Cultural Heritage Cudgel,” Cornerstone Forum, no. 275, Religious Freedom Institute, June 12, 2020, https://religiousfreedominstitute.org/turkeys-cultural-heritage-cudgel/.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Prodromou, “Turkey’s Cultural Heritage Cudgel.”

[55] Kate Fitz Gibbon, “Turkey Declares Ancient Armenian Cathedral of Ani is Mosque,” Cultural Property News, July 10, 2025, https://culturalpropertynews.org/turkey_declares_armenian_cathedral_mosque/.

[56] Giesel, “Status and Situation of the Jews in Turkey,” 12.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Yıldırım, “An Appeal to Move Forward from Aspirations to Actions,” 18.

[59] Abdullah Bozkurt, “Erdogan-owned outlet portrays all Jews as Mossad spies controlling wars, finance and media,” Nordic Monitor, March 23, 2026, https://nordicmonitor.com/2026/03/erdogan-owned-outlet-portrays-all-jews-as-mossad-spies-controlling-wars-finance-and-media/.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Mathilda Heller, “Turkish News Claim Jewish Creator Control Children’s Minds,” The Jerusalem Post, February 26, 2026, https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-888136.

[63] Association of Protestant Churches, 2025 Human Rights Violation Report.

[64] Xsights Research and Consultancy, Public Perceptions of the Christian Minority in Turkey.

[65] R. Cavanaugh, “Turkey’s Christians Face the Future with Reasons for Hope, Caution,” International Christian Concern, January 28, 2026, https://persecution.org/2026/01/28/turkeys-christians-face-the-future-with-reasons-for-hope-caution/.

[66] Xsights Research and Consultancy, Public Perceptions of the Christian Minority in Turkey.

[67] Behnan Konutgan, “Christians still second-class citizens under Turkish secularism: Decades of experience of a Turkish Christian leader,” The International Journal for Religious Freedom (IJRF) 2, no. 1 (2009): 102.

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