Country

Turkey

Also Known As Turkish

Asia

Turkey sits astride the historical boundary between the Byzantine Christian and Ottoman Islamic worlds, and its territory holds sites central to both, including the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, built as a Christian cathedral, converted to a mosque, secularized as a museum, and reconverted to a mosque in 2020. The population is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, with a significant Alevi minority practicing a distinct heterodox tradition, and small, ancient Armenian Christian, Greek Orthodox and Jewish communities remain, though much reduced from their historical size by twentieth century displacement and emigration. Anatolia was also the setting for early Christian church councils and for Sufi orders, most famously the Mevlevi order of whirling dervishes founded around the poet and mystic Rumi in Konya. The country's formally secular constitution and its Muslim majority culture remain in an ongoing tension that shapes religious life and politics.

Facts

Law and State

Establishment Status

Secular State Declared 2

Turkey has been constitutionally laicist since 1924; Sunni Islam is administered through the state Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which does not extend equivalent recognition or funding to Alevi cemevi worship houses.

State Funding Mechanism

Turkey funds Sunni Islamic religious life directly through the state budget of the Presidency of Religious Affairs, the Diyanet, which pays every imam's salary as a civil servant and builds and maintains mosques nationwide. Its 2023 budget of 35.91 billion lira, about 1.2 billion dollars, had already been outspent by nine months in, surpassing the nine-month spending of 26 other public institutions including the interior, energy, trade and foreign affairs ministries, and its 2024 budget rose to 91.83 billion lira, about 3.18 billion dollars, a roughly 156 percent increase, of which 77.6 billion lira was earmarked for personnel. Alevi and non-Sunni minority worship receives no comparable state funding. 3

Apostasy or Blasphemy Law

Turkey criminalizes blasphemy through Article 216, paragraph 3 of the Penal Code (Law No. 5237), which punishes a person who openly insults the religious values of a section of the public with six months to one year of imprisonment where the act is capable of disturbing the public peace. The provision names no specific religion, but the Venice Commission finds it applied in practice to protect the state-recognized Sunni religious establishment rather than religion in general. Turkey has no apostasy law; leaving Islam carries no criminal penalty. Article 216(3) is frequently charged alongside Article 299 (insulting the president) against musicians, actors and government critics accused of mocking Islam or state-sanctioned religious symbols, and USCIRF has tracked a rise in such prosecutions since the mid-2010s as politically motivated rather than confined to genuine public-order concerns. 4

Registration or Recognition Regime

Sunni Muslim religious life runs through the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), established in 1924, which regulates the country's registered mosques and employs local and provincial imams as civil servants. Non-Muslim minority communities cannot hold property or bring legal claims as a recognized body at all, because the state does not recognize structures such as the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate, the Ecumenical Patriarchate or the Chief Rabbinate as legal entities; their institutions instead hold property through independently organized foundations known as vakiflar, overseen by the General Directorate for Foundations, which was established the same year as the Diyanet. 2

Ban or Official Watchlist

Turkey does not recognize cemevis, the houses of worship of the Alevi community, as places of worship, and treats Alevism itself as a cultural tradition within Sunni Islam rather than a distinct faith; the government also obstructs the registration of Alevi, Protestant and Jehovah's Witness houses of worship and the residence of their foreign clergy. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended the State Department place Turkey on its Special Watch List for these violations. 2

Concordat Basisthe subject's own account

Turkey has no concordat with the Holy See. Representation dates to the Apostolic Delegation to Constantinople, established in 1868 under the Ottoman Empire, renamed the Apostolic Delegation to Turkey in 1930 as the republic's secularizing reforms dismantled the Ottoman millet system that had protected Christian minorities, then raised to an Apostolic Internunciature in 1960 and a full Apostolic Nunciature in 1966. Turkey's constitutional secularism runs its own religious affairs through the state Diyanet rather than through any bilateral instrument with Rome, and Catholic bishops still lack straightforward legal recognition under Turkish law. 5

Geography

Latitude

39 degrees north 1

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Longitude

35.2 degrees east 1

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Status

Legal Status

Constitutionally laicist since 1924; Sunni Islam is administered through the state Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which does not extend equivalent recognition or funding to Alevi cemevi worship houses. 2

Government

Capital

Ankara 1

Government Type

presidential republic 1

Sovereignty Status

Sovereign UN member state 1

Established Year

1923 1

29 October 1923 (republic proclaimed, succeeding the Ottoman Empire)

Classification

State Funding of Religion

State Neutrality Among Religions 6

Open Questions

Religious Composition

About 96-99% Muslim, Sunni Hanafi majority with a substantial Alevi minority (estimates commonly range 10-20%) (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 7

Alevi population share is not officially counted and estimates vary widely by source.

Location

Learn More

Religion and History in Turkey

Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim, around 96 to 99 percent by most estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, with a Sunni Hanafi majority and a substantial Alevi minority, a heterodox tradition drawing on Shia, Sufi and Anatolian folk elements, estimated at somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the population though precise figures are contested since Alevis are not separately counted in official statistics.

Anatolia's religious history predates Islam considerably: it was a heartland of early Christianity, home to seven of the churches addressed in the Book of Revelation and to the Cappadocian Fathers who shaped Christian doctrine in the fourth century, and Constantinople, refounded as Istanbul after the 1453 Ottoman conquest, served as the seat of the Byzantine Orthodox Church for over a thousand years before becoming the center of Ottoman Sunni Islam.

The Hagia Sophia, built as a cathedral under Justinian in 537, converted to a mosque in 1453, secularized as a museum in 1934 under Ataturk's reforms, and reconverted to a mosque in 2020, embodies these successive religious transformations in a single building. Christian and Jewish minorities, protected historically under the Ottoman millet system, have shrunk dramatically since the early twentieth century through the Armenian Genocide, the 1923 population exchange with Greece, and later emigration.

Secularism, Laicism and Religion in the Turkish Republic

The Turkish Republic, founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 after the Ottoman Empire's collapse, adopted a distinctive form of secularism known as laicism, abolishing the Ottoman caliphate in 1924 and placing all religious affairs under a state body, the Presidency of Religious Affairs or Diyanet, which appoints imams, writes standardized Friday sermons and controls mosque administration to this day, an arrangement that manages Sunni Islam through the state rather than separating the two entirely.

Alevi communities have long objected to the Diyanet's exclusively Sunni character, since their own cemevi worship houses receive no equivalent state funding or legal recognition as places of worship, a grievance repeatedly raised before the European Court of Human Rights. Headscarf bans in public institutions, in place for decades under strict laicist policy, were progressively lifted in the civil service, universities and finally the military between 2013 and 2017 under the Justice and Development Party government, reflecting a broader contested shift some scholars describe as a re-Islamization of public life and others describe as expanded religious freedom for a pious Muslim majority previously restricted by a secularist elite.

Turkey

1 entry

Founded By

Practice Status

Origin Period Start Year

Liturgical Language

Ordination Practice

Doctrinal Position

Polity

Kind of order

Apostolate

Mevlevi Order

Turkey

Connections

Ancient and Historical Regions

Anatolia and Asia Minor

Anatolia and Asia Minor correspond to the Asian territory of modern Turkey.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Associated With

Abgar of Edessa

Edessa is the modern Sanliurfa in southeastern Turkey.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Ani

This source names Turkey directly: "site, now on the Turkish side of the Turkey-Armenia border, has stood abandoned and in ruins for centuries."

Source The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern TimesRichard G. Hovannisian (ed.)

Apostolic Nunciature to Turkmenistan (Wikipedia)

This source names Turkey directly: "prelate appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Turkey, resident in Turkey rather than in Turkmenistan."

Source Apostolic Nunciature to Turkmenistan (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Black Sea

The Ottomans closed the sea to foreign shipping after 1475 and held it as an internal sea for three centuries.

Source The Black Sea: A HistoryCharles King

Caliph, Abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate 1924 (Wikipedia)

This source names Turkey directly: "of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, deposing the last Ottoman caliph, Abdulmecid II, elected 19 November 1922 with a purely ceremonial role."

Source Caliph, Abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate 1924 (Wikipedia)

Crimean War

The Ottoman Empire refused the Russian demand, summoned its subjects in the name of the caliphate, and issued the reform edict of 1856 in place of a foreign protectorate.

Source Crimea: The Last CrusadeOrlando Figes

Folio from an Unidentified Text, the Angel Israfil (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, S1986.219)

This source names Turkey directly: "Islamic manuscript, Iran or Turkey, circa 1580 to 1590, painted in opaque watercolor, ink and gold on paper."

Source Folio from an Unidentified Text, the Angel Israfil, accession S1986.219 (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art)

Folio from an Unidentified Text, the Angel Israfil, accession S1986.219 (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art)

This source names Turkey directly: "manuscript painting, Islamic, Iran or Turkey, circa 1580 to 1590, opaque watercolor, ink and gold on paper."

Source Folio from an Unidentified Text, the Angel Israfil, accession S1986.219 (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art)

Grand Mufti

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Holy See-Turkey Relations (Wikipedia)

This source names Turkey directly: "traces Holy See representation in Turkey from the Apostolic Delegation to Constantinople, established in 1868 under the Ottoman Empire, through its renaming to Apostolic Delegation to Turkey in..."

Source Holy See-Turkey Relations (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Islam

About 96 to 99% Muslim, Sunni Hanafi majority with a substantial Alevi minority.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Kansas

This source names Turkey directly: "Mennonite immigrants from Russia brought Turkey Red winter wheat and a plain communal faith to central Kansas in the 1870s."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Karaite Judaism (Wikipedia)

This source names Turkey directly: "in Israel with smaller communities in Turkey, Europe and the United States."

Source Karaite Judaism (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Mevlevi Order, 1925 Ban and 1953 Tourism Permission (Wikipedia and Corroborating Sources)

This source names Turkey directly: "pass, states Sufism was outlawed in Turkey in September 1925 under Ataturk's republic, every dervish lodge was closed, and that Sufism remains officially illegal in Turkey today, public sema..."

Source Mevlevi Order, 1925 Ban and 1953 Tourism Permission (Wikipedia and Corroborating Sources)

Ottoman Empire

The Turkish Grand National Assembly abolished the sultanate in 1922 and the caliphate on 3 March 1924.

Source Turkey: A Modern History, 3rd editionErik J. Zurcher

Sazanikos, les derniers Donmehs

This source names Turkey directly: "to Islam, then travels to modern Turkey to meet descendants of his followers who maintained a dual Muslim-and-hidden-Jewish identity across three centuries."

Source Sazanikos, the Last Donmeh (Mavi Boncuk)

Sea of Marmara

The North Anatolian fault runs beneath the sea, and the earthquake of August 1999 on its eastern end killed more than seventeen thousand people.

Source Osman's Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923Caroline Finkel

Sephardic Jews

The Ottoman lands of modern Turkey, with Istanbul and Izmir, sheltered the largest Sephardic settlement after the expulsion.

Source The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic ExperienceJane S. Gerber

The 1934 Thrace Pogrom

Fought across the towns of the Turkish province of Eastern Thrace.

Source Turkey, the Jews, and the HolocaustCorry Guttstadt

The 1955 Istanbul Pogrom

Fought in Istanbul.

Source The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom of September 6-7, 1955, and the Destruction of the Greek Community of IstanbulSperos Vryonis Jr.

The 1964 Istanbul Greek Expulsion

Ordered by the Turkish government and carried out in Istanbul.

Source The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek-Turkish Relations, 1918-1974Alexis Alexandris

The Abraham Path

This source names Turkey directly: "Initiative, beginning at Harran in Turkey, where Abraham is said to have heard the call to "go forth," and crossing Syria, Lebanon and Jordan before passing through Jerusalem and ending at Abraham's..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition

This source names Turkey directly: "fieldwork among Alevi communities in Turkey, observing and recording the cem ceremony and community life as actually practiced rather than reconstructing Alevi practice from historical documents..."

Source The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic TraditionDavid Shankland

The Assyrian Genocide (Sayfo, 1914 to 1924)

Carried out across the Hakkari and Diyarbekir regions of what is now southeastern Turkey, and in Persia's neighboring Azerbaijan province.

Source Sayfo (Wikipedia)

The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China

This source names Turkey directly: "separately wrote a history of modern Turkey."

Source The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval ChinaErik Zurcher

The Carp

This source names Turkey directly: "pools of Balikligol at Sanliurfa in Turkey, tied in local and Islamic tradition to the account of Abraham (Ibrahim) cast into a fire that God turned to water, with the burning coals becoming these..."

Source A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols: Hidden Symbols in Chinese Life and ThoughtWolfram Eberhard

The Donme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks (Baer, 2010)

This source names Turkey directly: "were forced to leave Salonica for Turkey in the 1923-24 Greek-Turkish population exchange, and that no more than a hundred remained in Salonica by 1924."

Source The Donme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks (Baer, 2010)Marc David Baer

The Forty Rules of Love

This source names Turkey directly: "The book has sold more than 750,000 copies across Turkey and France combined and was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2012."

Source Wikipedia, "The Forty Rules of Love"

The Greek Orthodox Minority in Turkey Faces the Threat of Disappearance (Nordic Monitor, 2024)

This source names Turkey directly: "of the Greek Orthodox minority in Turkey, read directly 2026-08-16."

Source The Greek Orthodox Minority in Turkey Faces the Threat of Disappearance (Nordic Monitor, 2024)

The Hamidian Massacres (1894 to 1897)

Carried out across the Ottoman Empire's interior provinces, in the territory of the modern Turkish state.

Source Hamidian Massacres (Wikipedia)

The Mardin Fatwa of Ibn Taymiyya

This source names Turkey directly: "a town in what is now southeastern Turkey that remained under Mongol Ilkhanate rule with a largely Muslim population."

Source Ibn Taymiyya (Makers of the Muslim World)Jon Hoover

Turkey: A Modern History, 3rd edition

This source names Turkey directly: "Erik Zurcher's Turkey: A Modern History is a widely used scholarly survey of Turkish history from the late Ottoman period through the modern republic, now in its third edition from I.B."

Source Turkey: A Modern History, 3rd editionErik J. Zurcher

Turkish

This source names Turkey directly: "Turkish is the Oghuz Turkic language of Turkey and Cyprus, and of Turkish-speaking communities across the Balkans and the wider Turkic-speaking world, descended from Ottoman Turkish."

Source An Introduction to the History of the Turkic PeoplesPeter B. Golden

Uyghurs

This source names Turkey directly: "communities across Central Asia, Turkey and elsewhere, most Uyghurs today follow the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam."

Source Eurasian Crossroads: A History of XinjiangJames A. Millward

Waqf

Source Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic WorldPascale Ghazaleh (ed.)

Wikipedia: Bektashi Order

This source names Turkey directly: "shut down the Bektashi lodges in Turkey in 1925, after which the order's leadership relocated to Albania."

Source Wikipedia: Bektashi Order

Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam

This source names Turkey directly: "Press, examines how Alevi identity in Turkey came to be defined and categorized, particularly by the modern Turkish state and by Alevis themselves, as a form of Islam or as something distinct from it."

Source Writing Religion: The Making of Turkish Alevi IslamMarkus Dressler

Contains

Antioch

Ancient Antioch on the Orontes is the modern city of Antakya in Turkey.

Çatalhöyük

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Cathedral of Ani

Its own text: the building "survives roofless but largely standing amid the ruins of Ani, now on the Turkish side of the Turkey-Armenia border."

Source The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern TimesRichard G. Hovannisian (ed.)

Chalcedon

The site is now the Kadikoy district on the Asian side of Istanbul.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)

Constantinople

Constantinople, as modern Istanbul, lies within the Republic of Turkey.

Source Emperor and Priest: The Imperial Office in ByzantiumGilbert Dagron

Edessa

Ancient Edessa is the modern city of Sanliurfa in southeastern Turkey.

Ephesus

The ruins of Ephesus lie near Selcuk in modern Turkey.

Ephesus and the Temple of Artemis

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Göbekli Tepe

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Hagia Sophia

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Hattusa

The site of Hattusa lies near Bogazkale in central Turkey.

Konya

Nicaea

Nicaea is the modern town of Iznik in north western Turkey.

Source Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 volumesNorman P. Tanner (ed.)

Pharos Chapel

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

The Süleymaniye Mosque

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

The Tomb of Rumi

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Topkapi Palace Museum

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Troy (Ilium)

Source Divinity Atlas Entity Records, First Edition

Originated Here

Hittites

Mevlevi Order

Founded in Konya, in present day Turkey, where the order's central lodge and Rumi's tomb remain.

Source The Sufi Orders in IslamJ. Spencer Trimingham

Phrygians

Spread Events Here

Antiochus I of Commagene Builds His Hierothesion atop Nemrud Dagi

Source Antiochus of Commagene (Encyclopaedia Iranica)

Edessa And Osrhoene, An Early Christian Kingdom

Edessa, capital of the client kingdom of Osrhoene, modern day Sanliurfa in Turkey. Cites Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, book one, chapter thirteen, a different passage from the same source cited elsewhere in this atlas for book two (Roman Judea) and book ten (the Edict of Milan).

Source The Ecclesiastical History (Historia Ecclesiastica)Eusebius of Caesarea

Pauline Missions Through Asia Minor and Greece

Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe and Ephesus, across the first three journeys; anchored to Turkey, since the same missions also reached Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens and Corinth in Greece, named in the description rather than split across a second edge.

Source The New Testament, Acts of the ApostlesAnonymous

The 1955 Istanbul Pogrom

The 1964 Istanbul Greek Expulsion

The Greco-Persian Wars

Sources

1. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)

Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source

2. International Religious Freedom Report

United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source

3. Record Surge in Diyanet Budget to Serve Erdogan's Political Objectives at Home and Abroad (Nordic Monitor)

Nordic Monitor, 2023View the Source

4. Venice Commission Opinion on Articles 216, 299, 301 and 314 of the Turkish Penal Code (CDL-AD(2016)002)

European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission), Council of EuropeView the Source

5. Holy See-Turkey Relations (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia contributors, WikipediaView the Source

6. The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition

Oxford University Press, Oxford University Press

demonym / adjectival form
Entity description, state-funding
The country's formally secular constitution and its Muslim majority culture remain in an ongoing tension that shapes religious life and politics.

View the Source

7. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020

Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source

Open Questions (1 open question)

What share of Turkey's population identifies as Alevi?

Turkish national censuses do not ask about sectarian or Alevi religious identity, so no official count of the Alevi population exists. Published estimates commonly range from about 10 to 20 percent of the population, a spread wide enough to reflect the absence of a count rather than disagreement over one.

What would resolve this A nationally representative census or independently conducted survey that specifically asks about Alevi self-identification, which the Turkish state census currently does not do.

Demography, religious studiesPew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020

Essays About This Entity (1 essay)

Three Countries, and the Same Reason Nobody Has Actually Counted

A census that has never asked the sectarian question at all

Read the Essay

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