Fourteen months after the Istanbul Protestant Church filed for legal status as a religious foundation, Turkey’s highest court over-ruled previous appeals, giving a green light to establishing the first legally recognized Turkish evangelical church.
The Dec. 7 ruling was greeted by the church’s pastor as a landmark decision for the country’s few thousand Turkish Protestant Christians. Over the past decade, some 20 convert Christian congregations in Turkey have been allowed to register their places of worship as “houses of prayer.”
Nevertheless, they have been subjected to harassment throughout the past 18 months, including disruption of their meetings, police detention of their members and interrogation of their pastors. (CD)
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