Turkey is a “key concern” for observers fearing the erasure of Christian communities of post-Assad dynasty Syria, a leading persecution expert told Breitbart News, describing Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as someone who sees “himself as a leader destined by Allah to elevate Turkey and Islam’s influence.”
Jeff King, the president of International Christian Concern (ICC), answered questions from Breitbart News in the past week on the emergence of an Islamist regime in Syria under the al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
HTS, formerly known as the Nusra Front, emerged the winner of the decade-old Syrian Civil War in December, forcing dictator Bashar Assad to flee with the vocal support of the neighboring Turkish government. While HTS has promised to respect the many ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities of Syria, it has also rejected calls for establishing a secular government.
“We take pride in our culture, our religion and our Islam. Being part of the Islamic environment does not mean the exclusion of other sects. On the contrary, it is our duty to protect them,” Ahmed al-Sharaa, the HTS leader formerly known as “Abu Mohammed al-Jolani,” insisted in an interview in December.
King explained in prior comments to Breitbart News that HTS “has historically been very violent towards Christian minorities, which should mean increased persecution” and that ICC expects, lamentably, to see Syria on its 2026 Global Persecution Index, an annual study of the most dangerous places in the world for followers of Jesus.
ICC published the 2025 edition of its Index last week, which omitted Syria since, for the vast majority of the year, it was still under the rule of the Assad regime. While a ruthless autocracy that brutally suppressed political dissent, the Assad regime did not typically persecute Christians because of their faith, imprisoning, killing, or disappearing Christians only if they criticized the regime. The Sunni jihadist HTS terrorists have a history of explicitly attacking Christian communities for not following Islam.
Under the new administration of HTS, Syria is susceptible to new foreign influences, Turkey paramount among them, according to King. Turkey has long been involved in efforts to overthrow Assad and, as long ago as 2016, Erdogan explicitly claimed that any Turkish presence in Syria was intended to “end the rule of the tyrant Assad.” It has most closely maintained relations with a separate Islamist militia in the country, the Syrian National Army (SNA), which is currently engaged in a campaign to eradicate the U.S.-allied Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), independent of any HTS activity.
Ankara has nonetheless reached out to HTS, encouraged the international community to embrace the jihadists and remove them from their terror lists, and encouraged commercial and diplomatic cooperation with them.
“The actions of international players could significantly impact the situation for Christians in Syria,” King explained to Breitbart News. “Turkey, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is the key concern. Erdogan’s leadership has shown a clear shift towards radical Islamism.”
“Erdogan has a history of building, supporting and transporting Islamist warriors (Armenia and Syria),” King explained. “In Armenia, he sought to create a vassal state, defeat the Kurdish influence and defeat Iranian and Soviet control as well as expand Turkey’s regional power.”
Erdogan’s regime was instrumental in helping the fellow Muslim state of Azerbaijan invade the Armenian Christian region of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, engaging in an ethnic cleansing campaign that by 2024 had almost entirely eliminated the majority Christian indigenous population of the region. In 2024, Freedom House declared Nagorno-Karabakh the least free place in the world.
King described Erdogan has having an expansionism Islamist vision well “beyond Turkey’s national boundaries, where he perceives himself as a leader destined by Allah to elevate Turkey and Islam’s influence, not just regionally but potentially globally.”
“Erdogan’s ambitions are not confined to Turkey’s borders. His rhetoric often speaks of restoring past Ottoman glory, suggesting a neo-Ottoman project where he would be at the helm,” King explained. “This could mean a push for Islamic governance structures in areas Turkey influences, which traditionally does not bode well for Christian minorities”
In Syria, he added, support for HTS, the SNA, and other Islamist groups “indirectly emboldens Islamist elements that are historically hostile towards Christians.”
“In summary, Turkey under Erdogan’s leadership is a significant concern for the Christian community in Syria,” King concluded. “His actions will exacerbate the persecution through direct or indirect support of Islamist factions, manipulating regional politics to his advantage, and fostering an environment where Christian minorities will feel increasingly marginalized and threatened.”
“This situation demands vigilant international oversight to ensure that the rights and safety of Christians are not further compromised,” he added.
Turkey is believed to have closer ties to the SNA, another Sunni Islamist militia, than HTS, but HTS leader Sharaa has expressed openness to having Turkey play an active role in strengthening his nascent regime. The relationship between HTS and Turkey reportedly grew in the months before HTS attacked Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, in November, a move that caught the Assad regime by surprise and ultimately ended it. The news agency Reuters, citing anonymous officials, claimed in December that HTS reached out to the Turkish government six months before the Aleppo attack to ensure that Ankara was aware of the plan.
“There was no way the rebels could go ahead without first notifying Turkey, which has been a main backer of the Syrian opposition from the war’s earliest days, said the sources,” Reuters reported.
Turkey openly cheered for the fall of the Assad regime and has since campaigned for the United States and other free countries to remove HTS from its terror lists and lift sanctions.
“I think HTS has taken huge steps to divorcing itself from al-Qaeda and Daesh [ISIS] and other radical elements,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in December.
Sharaa has returned the friendly gestures, telling the Islamist Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak that he hoped to build a “strategic relationship” with Ankara.
“There will also be mutual commercial relations. We trust Turkey when it comes to transferring its experience in economic development to Syria,” he added.
President-elect Donald Trump, during a press conference in December, identified Turkey as such a prominent actor in Syria that the fall of Assad served as essentially an “unfriendly takeover” of the country by Erdogan, hinting at the latter’s imperial ambitions.
“Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost,” Trump said, stating that the Turks “wanted it [Syria] for thousands of years and he [Erdogan] got it. And those people that went in are controlled by Turkey.”
