On the eve of Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Turkey for the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, America spoke with Jean-Marc Balhan, S.J., a Belgian Jesuit who has lived in the country since 2001, about the situation of Christians, the state of interreligious dialogue and how the pope’s visit is viewed there.

Father Balhan came to Turkey 25 years ago after completing Islamic and Arabic studies in Egypt and Rome. After engaging in academic work for some time, he served as a parish priest in Ankara for nine years. For 12 years, he has been president of the Union of the Religious of Turkey, a body of around 130 members from different religious orders. He also teaches Islamic studies in Paris.

Speaking by phone from the Jesuit house in Ankara, the capital city where he lives with three fellow Jesuits, Father Balhan first described the situation of Christians in this officially secular state of 87 million people, where, he said, “to be a Turk is to be a Muslim.” Conversion, he said, is legal but not always easy. However, “it’s no longer necessary to identify your religion on the I.D. card, as had been the case in the past,” he said.

There are two groups of Christians in Turkey, making up less than 1 percent of the population, he said: the locals and the foreigners.

“The local Turkish church counts around 100,000 people,” he said. “Half of them are Armenian Christians, 15,000 to 20,000 are Syriac Christians, 2,000 at most are Greek Orthodox, and 7,000 to 8,000 are Protestants who are present in all mid-sized cities in Turkey. Historically speaking, the Latin Catholics are the Levantines, descendants of the foreigners who came to the Ottoman Empire for trade. There are also some converts.”

Furthermore, he said, “there are hundreds of thousands of foreigners who are Christians; there is an important group of Orthodox, mainly Russian or Ukrainian, but there are also Protestants and Catholics, including many African students, Iraqi Chaldeans, Filipinos and other migrant workers, as well as expats.”

The Catholic episcopal conference has six bishops: Three are Latin rite, and three are Eastern rite (Armenian Catholic, Syriac Catholic, and Chaldean). The majority of the Christians and Catholics in Turkey live in Istanbul or Izmir, he said.

“Turkey wants to be seen as a country where there is freedom of religion,” Father Balhan said. He noted, for example, “when we have our Masses and our celebrations, we always have police nearby to be sure that there will be no problem. Turkey is afraid of having a bad reputation for not protecting the minorities and the Christians, so it really does whatever it can to be sure that we are well protected [and] nothing happens to us.”

“If you go to Istanbul,” he said, “the church of Saint Anthony is a parish church of the Franciscans, the biggest church in Istanbul, where hundreds of people visit every day, and, most of them are not Christian; they are curious, and they go there to light a candle or to pray or to ask questions and so on. The Turks are quite curious and positive, I would say.”

In the past, Father Balhan said, Asia Minor boasted hundreds of Armenian and Greek churches, but today, most are in ruins or have been transformed into mosques. The most famous is the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which was a Greek Orthodox cathedral at the time of the Ottoman conquest in the 15th century. It was transformed into a mosque until 1935, when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of the Republic of Turkey, turned it into a museum. Then, in 2020, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan converted the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, a move that was met with strong opposition from Orthodox leaders.

Father Balhan says he believes it was a “nationalistic stance” that was taken “for political reasons.” 

“Then for the outside world, it’s a way of saying, ‘we are Turks, we exist, and we have conquered Istanbul,’” he said.

Still, the situation of Christians in Turkey today is “far better” than when he first came to this country 25 years ago, Father Balhan said. He attributed this to the change in the political situation. “The A.K.P.—the Justice and Development Party led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan—came to power in 2002. It is a conservative party that looks at religion in a positive way.”

Father Balhan emphasized that “the enemy of Christianity in Turkey—if I can speak in that way—is not Islam; it is nationalism because, in the eyes of many, being a Turk means being Muslim.” Before the A.K.P. came to power, “the situation was very nationalistic, and religion—whatever religion, whether Islam or Christianity—was really looked down upon by the state. But since the A.K.P. is a more conservative party and more open to the religious dimension, slowly, under this party, the relationship became far better with the authorities.”

Interfaith relations 

Father Balhan said interreligious dialogue began in the 1980s among religious groups and in universities. In the 1990s, he said, the Presidency of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, a state institution that is responsible for the administration of Islamic matters, opened an office for interreligious dialogue, which also “had an official link with the Vatican.”

However, after a failed coup attempt against President Erdogan in 2016, Turkey closed itself off, and dialogue has suffered as a result, he noted. 

“After a few years, however, things began to change, especially after Covid,” Father Balhan recalled. “Dialogue restarted in different ways, in academic and cultural ways; for example, intercultural concerts were held in churches, and things like that.”

He explained that there are different levels of dialogue. “The main ideology in Turkey is not Islam; it’s nationalism,” Father Balhan said. “Religion is often seen through the eyes of nationalism. So, the main problem comes from that. Catholics are mainly seen as foreigners. Armenian Christians are seen as Armenian and the Greek Orthodox are seen as Greek, both in relationship with what happened in history.” 

“The extreme nationalists in Turkey,” Father Balhan said, “are not at ease with the international dimension” of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I. “They say, ‘This is Turkey, this is Turkish soil, we do not want an ecumenical patriarch.’ So, speaking about the ‘ecumenical’ patriarch is a sensitive issue in Turkey. He is considered the patriarch of the Phanar [the neighborhood in Istanbul where the patriarchate is], and that’s it.”

Pope Leo’s visit

For the Turkish authorities, however, the visit is also seen from the cultural point of view as “an issue of tourism, and so they have completely transformed Iznik [modern-day Nicaea] and reorganized the excavations, and they hope that after his visit, tourists will go to pilgrimage there, too.”

From the political point of view, Father Balhan said relations between the Vatican and Turkey are “quite good, especially in the context of what is happening in the Middle East, with the war in Gaza.”

“The pope is welcomed especially because of his role in the Middle East,” he said, “because he attracts the attention of the world to the plight of the Palestinians. And the situation of the Palestinians is a very sensitive issue in Turkey.”

“Pope Leo is coming to visit the country, obviously, but it’s really for the 1,700th anniversary of Nicaea,” Father Balhan said. After the break between the Roman and Orthodox churches in 1054, the relationship started anew when Pope Paul VI met Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem in 1964. Since then, all the popes have come to Turkey near the beginning of their pontificate to meet with the ecumenical patriarch on the occasion of the Feast of St. Andrew. Pope Francis came to Turkey in 2014 and wanted to come for the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea. “Pope Leo is going to do both things on this visit: his official meeting with the ecumenical patriarch, and on that occasion, the celebration in Nicaea,” Father Balhan said. “And Turkey welcomes him.”

He added, “The relationship between the Orthodox and the Catholic churches is a good one today. Pope Francis wanted to always improve this relationship, and I think Pope Leo does, too.”

Gerard O’Connell is America’s senior Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History. He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.