The US State Department’s reports on human right and on religious freedom in Turkey for 2020 may have come at a moment where US-Turkey relations are perhaps the worst ever, but they essentially recapitalutate longstanding problems highlighted in previous annual reports even as they detail the sharply increasing authoritarianism of the Erdogan regime in a sweeping array of political, economic, and social activities.
The report on religious freedom details Ankara’s violations of the religious freedom of the Ecumenical Patriarchate – the Patriarch is the first-ranking bishop for 300mn Orthodox Christians worldwide – including the decades-long closure of the Halki seminary but this year it includes criticism of Erdogan’s decision to turn the Byzantine churches that have for decades been museums – Hagia Sophia and the Monastery of Hora (Kahriye) into mosques.