Turkey
Turkey is the land where the church was born into the Gentile world. The Apostle Paul was a Turk β from Tarsus, in what is now southern Turkey. All seven churches of the book of Revelation stood on Turkish soil: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. Constantinople β modern Istanbul β was the capital of the Christian Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years, and the Hagia Sophia stood as the greatest church on earth for nine centuries before the Ottoman conquest of 1453 turned it into a mosque. The 20th century brought the Armenian genocide, which killed over a million Christians and erased the ancient church from Anatolia, followed by AtatΓΌrk's secular republic. In 2020, ErdoΔan converted the Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, a signal of the cultural direction Turkey is moving.
87,685,000
People live in Turkey today in a nation with one of the richest Christian histories on earth and one of the smallest Christian populations β fewer than one percent, and most of those are members of ancient ethnic minority communities, not ethnic Turks. Estimates suggest only three to five thousand Turkish Muslims have ever become followers of Jesus, making Turkey one of the least-evangelized large nations on earth. Believers face legal ambiguity, social pressure, and occasional violence. And yet interest in Jesus is growing quietly β fueled by online content, the Bible in Turkish, and a generation of Turks who are less satisfied with the answers their culture offers than their parents were.
Prayer points
The Land of the Seven Churches
Pray for Turkey β where Paul planted churches, where the early councils defined Christian doctrine, where the Hagia Sophia once rang with the worship of Christ β to hear the gospel again. Ask God to stir the memory of what this land once was and to call it back to the faith that once flourished here. "Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first." (Revelation 2:5)
88 Million Muslims
Pray for Turkey's vast Muslim population β deeply proud of their Ottoman heritage, increasingly influenced by political Islam, and yet navigating enormous questions about identity, modernity, and meaning. Ask God to give workers creative and courageous access to this nation, and to draw Turks to Himself through dreams, Scripture, and the witness of their few Turkish brothers and sisters. "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few." (Matthew 9:37)
A Fragile and Growing Church
Pray for the small, scattered community of Turkish believers β people who have paid a real price to follow Jesus and who have almost no legal recognition, no church buildings of their own, and no social support. Ask God to multiply their numbers, protect their leaders, and make them a community so marked by love that it cannot be ignored. "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." (Matthew 16:18)