Turkey has detained Iranian Christian pastor Mojtaba Ahmadi and soon may deport him to Iran to face imprisonment if not torture and death.
Authorities arrested Ahmadi in western Turkey on questionable immigration charges on January 29, 2024, and seized his identification card. Turkish authorities have since held him at an immigration detention center. The status of any formal charges against him is unknown and he has few legal rights.
“Despite being in Turkey for over a decade and applying for refugee status, Ahmadi has never been interviewed about his case and has therefore never been granted official protection,” advocacy group Article 18 reported.
Ahmadi was born in Tehran to a devout Muslim family. His father was a Quranic teacher and imam of our local mosque. In 2002, he converted to Christianity and gradually became involved in Christian outreach, but his conversion led to discrimination at work and his university.
In 2002, [Mojtaba Ahmadi] converted to Christianity and gradually became involved in Christian outreach, but his conversion led to discrimination at work and his university.
In September 2010, Iranian authorities arrested Ahmadi and two other Christians after they gathered for an informal Bible study at a park. Ahmadi was held in solitary confinement for 170 days and endured physical and psychological torture. After a legal process, a court sentenced Ahmadi on a charge of spreading “propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The judiciary denied his appeal and gave Ahmadi 20 days to report to the court. When he did not report, the judiciary issued an arrest warrant.
Ahmadi obtained an emergency passport and secured a flight to Turkey, where he applied for United Nations refugee status and has remained for over 10 years.
While just over a month ago Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised Turkey’s “friendship” and “partnership,” and thanked President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the “insight” he provided, Blinken has remained largely silent both on threats to religious freedom in Turkey and the country’s increasingly cooperative relationship with Iran and its various “axis of resistance” proxy groups.
Ahmadi’s is not an isolated case; he represents Erdoğan’s increasingly open hostility toward Christians. Turkey today refuses to recognize officially the Protestant Christian community and declines to allow them to operate their own churches and to share their faith freely. Because Turkish law does not allow for the training of church ministers in private education centers, the Protestant community sends students abroad and brings in foreign clergy. Since 2019, however, Turkey has deported many of these foreign pastors and church members, refused residence permits, and denied entry visas into Turkey. The Turkish government continues to ban expatriate Christians from re-entering the country, often on vague security grounds.
Iran, too, persecutes Christians, treating them as second-class citizens. Christians are not allowed to worship or read the Bible in Persian or to have any contact with Christian converts. Supporting converts is punishable by prison. So, too, is conversion from Islam to Christianity.
In June 2024, for instance, Yasin Mousavi from Izeh, a town in Khuzestan, received a 15-year prison sentence for “undermining national security and promoting Zionist Christianity.” Several other Christian converts arrested in Izeh in 2023 also received harsh sentences: Hamid Afzali to 10 years, Nasrollah Mousavi, Bijan Qolizadeh, and Iman Saleh to five years each, and Zohrab Shahbazi to nine months.
The Ahmadi case may be the barometer to judge how Erdoğan views President-elect Donald Trump.
The Ahmadi case may be the barometer to judge how Erdoğan views President-elect Donald Trump. In 2016, Erdoğan imprisoned American pastor Andrew Brunson as a means to intimidate Christians and extract concessions from the United States via hostage diplomacy. Trump did not acquiesce to pressure, but instead applied some of his own, sanctioning members of the Turkish government, freezing some Turkish officials’ assets in the United States, and prohibiting certain travel to the United States. Trump’s actions temporarily crashed the Turkish currency, leading Erdoğan to reverse course and release his Christian hostage.
Trump should be prepared to repeat his action on day one of his new term, signaling to the leaders of partners and adversaries that the days of persecuting Christians and other minorities are over and that any attempt to send Ahmadi to prison, if not death, in Iran will result in permanent damage to the Turkish economy in general and Erdoğan’s private fortune specifically.
