Washington (International Christian Concern) — President Donald Trump announced last week that he would host Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the White House today. The visit, occurring on the sidelines of the ongoing U.N. General Assembly in New York, is Erdogan’s first visit to the White House since 2019. 

According to statements, the meeting will focus on trade and military agreements. Turkey is a longstanding military ally of the United States and hosts a significant U.S. military presence, including American nuclear weaponry. 

However, in the time since Erdogan’s last visit, Turkey has undergone significant democratic backsliding and deepened repression against Christians and other religious minorities across the country. 

In recent years, Erdogan’s government has accelerated efforts to expel foreign Christian missionaries from Turkey, a move critics argue is part of a broader crackdown on religious freedom. Since Erdogan’s last visit, roughly 200 missionaries — many of whom had lived in the country for years with families, jobs, and community ties — have been expelled and placed on secretive entry ban lists without explanation. 

The government frames these expulsions as necessary for national security, but rights advocates contend that such claims lack transparency and amount to targeting individuals solely for their religious identity and activities. 

By pushing out Christian missionaries, Ankara is signaling a troubling intolerance toward minority faiths. The expulsions appear designed to suppress peaceful religious expression, raising alarms among international observers who see them as part of a pattern of shrinking civic space under Erdogan’s rule. 

Beyond violating the missionaries’ basic rights, these actions erode the fragile protections afforded to Turkey’s small Christian population, sending a chilling message that the government will not tolerate religious diversity when it challenges nationalist or Islamist narratives. 

The case of Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who spent more than two decades ministering in Turkey, became a flashpoint in U.S.–Turkey relations after his arrest in 2016. Accused by Turkish authorities of espionage and links to the Gülen movement — charges widely criticized as baseless — Brunson was imprisoned for nearly two years before being placed under house arrest. 

His detention drew international condemnation, with human rights groups decrying it as a politically motivated attack on religious freedom. The first Trump administration made Brunson’s release a top diplomatic priority, with President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence publicly pressuring Ankara and imposing targeted sanctions on Turkish officials. 

This high-stakes standoff ultimately compelled Turkish courts to free Brunson in October 2018, underscoring both the politicization of religious freedom cases under President Erdogan and the willingness of the Trump administration to leverage economic and diplomatic power in defense of an American pastor abroad. 

The U.S. is currently considering the renewal of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Turkey regarding the handling of cultural heritage artifacts. The Armenian Bar Association recently urged the U.S. Department of State to reject the renewal, warning that it risks enabling Ankara to seize and reframe Armenian heritage as its own. 

In a formal submission to the State Department’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee, the Association argued that the MoU would allow the Turkish government to co-opt archaeological and ethnological materials that predate the existence of modern Turkey and originate from Armenian communities in their historic homeland. Critics say the agreement fails to distinguish between artifacts belonging to the Turkish state and those tied to persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, leaving centuries of Armenian cultural patrimony vulnerable to erasure. 

This concern is not without precedent. Turkey has faced international criticism for its record of sidelining minority history and repurposing sacred sites to bolster nationalist narratives. The reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 2020, after decades as a museum and centuries as a Byzantine church, stands as one of the most visible examples of Ankara privileging political symbolism over preservation. 

The legacies of Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian cultures have often been neglected or reframed by state authorities, raising alarm among scholars and advocates who fear that renewing the MoU would legitimize a pattern of historical appropriation. As the Armenian Bar Association’s statement underscores, the agreement could compromise the global mission of cultural preservation — one rooted in education and research, not state-driven narratives of exclusion. 

If left unchecked, Turkey risks abandoning its secular and democratic traditions in favor of a nationalist narrative of hatred and exclusion. As the international community, including the United States, engages with Erdogan and other Turkish leaders, the preservation of religious freedom must become a greater priority.

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