In a landmark case on religious freedom, a human rights organization is challenging the Turkish government in the European Court of Human Rights for its ban on the re-entry of a U.S. citizen who has lived in Turkey since 1985.
Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADFI) argues that the ban on Kenneth Arthur Wiest, a Christian assisting a church in Turkey, is part of a campaign of “systematically targeting” foreign Christians by expelling them under the guise of “national security.”
Wiest, who has lived in Turkey for thirty-four years with his wife and their three children, ages 35 to 41, has been fighting his expulsion since 2021. Turkey says it denied the American entry in 2019 based on information from its National Intelligence Organization.
[Kenneth Arthur] Wiest, who has lived in Turkey for thirty-four years with his wife and their three children ... has been fighting his expulsion since 2021.
Turkey has expelled more than 200 foreign Christian workers and their families since 2020, Lidia Rieder, legal officer for ADFI, told the Warsaw conference of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on October 13, 2025. Between December 2024 and January 2025, Turkey’s Ministry of the Interior issued at least thirty-five new “security codes” against foreign Christians. These include the N-82 and G-87 codes, which ban their re-entry by classifying them as national security threats, Rieder said.
According to RL Turkey, a law firm offering immigration advice, the G-87 code bans foreigners who pose a threat to national security. Turkey has a separate G code for almost every crime. The N-82 results in a permanent entry ban and is imposed on a foreigner who has committed forgery.
While the Wiest case is the most high-profile, the ADFI is also fighting thirty other cases on behalf of Christians challenging the bans before the European Court of Human Rights and the Turkish courts. Observers expected the Kenneth Arthur Wiest v. Turkey judgment to set a precedent for how a predominantly Muslim country, which has applied for membership in the European Union, frames its policy on human rights and religious freedom.
Since a significant number of Christian workers are American citizens, the case has wider ramifications for U.S. immigration policy and the State Department’s annual report to Congress on International Religious Freedom, since Turkey has also expelled citizens of other European nations, including Germany. Many of the foreigners have lived in Turkey for decades with their families.
On October 15, 2025, the Turkish government’s Center for Combating Disinformation slammed the accusations as “completely unfounded and part of a deliberate disinformation campaign targeting Türkiye.”
Turkey makes administrative decisions on foreign nationals for multiple reasons, including visa violations, disturbance of public order, or a lack of legal permits, it explained, noting: “No disinformation campaign aimed at undermining Türkiye’s strong state tradition, which is based on religious freedom, pluralism, and social peace, will succeed.”
However, in observations to the European Court of Human Rights, the European Center for Law and Justice said Turkish authorities gave no evidence to show that Wiest is a threat to national security. Rather, one can explain the ban on Wiest’s entry “by a more general desire on Turkey’s part to hinder the missionary work of Christians and Christian worship,” the European Center for Law and Justice observed, noting that, unlike Christians, Turkey had not expelled foreign Muslims for their religious or proselytizing activities.
“Christians in Turkey, for the most part, predate and are alien to the Turkish nation, and therefore perceived as a threat to the country’s unity,” the European Center for Law and Justice added.
“Christians in Turkey, for the most part, predate and are alien to the Turkish nation, and therefore perceived as a threat to the country’s unity.”
In August 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Ankara over its refusal to free pastor Andrew Brunson, a North Carolina native who had ministered to a small Protestant congregation in the city of Izmir for more than two decades. The move triggered a sharp downturn for the Turkish lira, and Turkey freed Brunson in October 2018 after he served two years in custody on questionable terrorism allegations, including purported ties to those who orchestrated the failed coup in July 2016.
“The Trump administration made Brunson’s case a symbol of the defense of religious freedom, with personal involvement by both President Trump and Vice President Pence,” Thibault van den Bossche, advocacy officer for persecuted Christians at the European Center for Law and Justice, told me.
“It seems that, since then, Turkey has adopted a different strategy: Rather than risking direct confrontation, it relies on silent, administrative, and non-judicial measures—no arrests, no trials, but simple refusals of entry or non-renewals of residence permits for ‘national security reasons,’ without ever providing a shred of evidence,” van den Bossche explained.
The advocacy officer added that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended that the Department of State placed Turkey on its Special Watch List, but this remains only a formal diplomatic warning. “As for the European Union, it has been completely absent on this issue,” he said.
