Ekathimerini here provides a useful summary report on the U.S. State Department’s latest assessment of Turkey’s record on religious freedom. The State Department is forthright in highlighting how the Turkish government restricts the activities of religious minority groups, including the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and refuses to treat them with the dignity and respect which they should be accorded. The most notable example of this is that the Turkish government “continued not to recognize Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I as the leader of the world’s approximately 300 million Orthodox Christians.”

State Department report slams Turkey on Ecumenical Patriarchate, Hagia Sophia

The US State Department slammed Turkey on its record on religious freedoms citing the pressures exerted on the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the limitations on the rights of non-Muslim religious minorities in the country in its new report for 2020.

The report said that the Turkish government “continued to restrict efforts of minority religious groups to train their clergy,” and the Greek Orthodox Halki Seminary remained closed, while it “continued not to recognize Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I as the leader of the world’s approximately 300 million Orthodox Christians, consistent with the government’s stance that there was no legal obligation for it to do so.”