Answers about…
Turkey —Biblical places, Christianity, Islam, and events
also known as: Asia Minor, Asian Turkey, Anatolia, Anatolian peninsula, Anatolian plateau, and the Republic of Türkiye (official modern name)
Turkey is a Eurasian country that came into existence in 1920. It is situated in the Anatolian peninsula, located in Western Asia and Eastern Thrace. Paul, Peter, and John (the three great Apostles) are worked with churches in this area.
Modern Turkey is a secular state with no official religion, but 95-99% of its citizens are Muslim. Many have fled from less free Islamic nations. While the republic is constitutionally secular, Islam is the dominant cultural and religious identity.
Satellite view of modern Turkey
Ancient inhabitants
During biblical times, this strategic area had other names and was dominated or inhabited by…
- Hittites
- Assyrians
- Chaldeans
- Babylonians
- Galatians (Galatia)
- Persians
- Phrygians
- Lydians
- Lycians
- Greeks
- Romans
- Galatians
- Cappadocians
- Cilicians
- Nicaeans (eventually the Empire of Nicaea)
- Cimmerians
- Thracians
- Urartians
- Armenians
- Hurrians
- Hattians
Important biblical cities and areas
- Adramyttium
- Antioch (now Antakya)
- Mountains of Ararat, where Noah’s ark landed
- Asia
- Assos
- Attalia (modern Antalya)
- Bithynia
- Byzantium (later Constantinople, and now Istanbul)
- Cappadocia
- Colossae (home of the Colossians)
- Derbe
Ephesus- Galatia
- Haran, where Abraham lived after leaving Ur
- Hierapolis
- Iconium
- Laodicea
- Lystra
- Miletus
- Perga (Perge)
- Pergamum (Pergamon)
- Philadelphia
- Pisidia
- Phrygia
- Pontus
Sardis- Smyrna (modern Izmir, Turkey)
Tarsus (modern Tarsus, Turkey)- Thyatira
- Troas
More information
- Antioch On Orantes
- Ararat
- Armenia
- Assos
- Attalia
- Bithynia
- Cappadocia
- Cnidus (Cnidos)
- Derbe
- Ephesus
- Haran (Harran)
- Hittites
- Iconium
- Lystra
- Lydia
- Miletus
- Minni
- Myra
- Patara
- Perga (Perge)
- Pisidian Antioch
- Pontus Smyrna
Tarsus- Thessalonica
- Troas
Islam in Turkey
- Today Turkey is almost entirely Muslim.
- From late antiquity through the 10th century, Anatolia was overwhelmingly Christian—primarily Greek-speaking Orthodox, with Armenian and other communities in the east.
- It was once the Christian heartland of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. It served as Byzantium’s main territorial and economic base and a barrier against earlier Arab Muslim expansions in the 7th–8th centuries. Those Arab campaigns captured some southeastern fringe areas but did not Islamize the Anatolian plateau.
- Turkmen raids into eastern Anatolia intensified in the mid-11th century. The decisive event was the Battle of Manzikert (Malazgirt) in 1071, where Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan defeated and captured Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV. Byzantine authority collapsed across much of the interior amid civil war and further incursions. Large numbers of Muslim Turkic tribes then migrated and settled.
- Turkic peoples themselves originated in Central Asia as Tengrist/shamanist nomads. They converted to Islam gradually from the mid-8th century onward, especially under the influence of Muslim dynasties in Persia (modern Iran) such as the Samanids. By around 950 most had become Muslim; the Oghuz/Seljuk branch that later entered Anatolia was Sunni.
- In 1077/1081 the Sultanate of Rum (“Rome,” the Muslim name for former Byzantine lands) was established in Anatolia, with its capital later at Konya. Other Turkic principalities (e.g., the Danishmendids) also formed. Byzantium recovered some western and coastal districts, but the interior was lost. Contemporaries began calling the region “Turkey.”
- However, by mid-13th-century observers estimated that indigenous Christians still greatly outnumbered incoming Turks (one traveler suggested a 10:1 ratio). In other words, about 90% Christian.
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The shift occurred through overlapping mechanisms:
- Settlement of Muslim Turkmens and later waves of migrants
- Disruption and decline of Christian institutions: raids, warfare, confiscation of church lands and monasteries, and loss of bishoprics reduced the Orthodox Church’s ability to serve rural communities
- Economic and social incentives: non-Muslims were forced to pay the jizya poll tax; conversion offered tax relief, social mobility, and access to the new ruling elite
- Cultural and religious blending: Sufi orders and popular mysticism (notably Jalal al-Din Rumi and the Mevlevi “whirling dervishes” in 13th-century Konya) facilitated conversion by incorporating local customs
- Intermarriage and language shift over generations
- The 13th century is often seen as a turning point. The Mongol victory at Köse Dağ (1243) fragmented the Seljuks into smaller beyliks. One of these, founded by Osman I around 1299 in northwest Anatolia, became the Ottoman state. The Ottomans gradually absorbed the other principalities and remaining Byzantine territories.
- 1453: Mehmed II conquered Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire. Ottoman rule unified most of Anatolia under a Muslim dynasty that presented itself as heir to both the Seljuks and the Roman imperial tradition.
- Ottoman tax registers from the 1520s record Anatolia as roughly 92% Muslim (about 904,000 Muslim taxable households vs. 78,000 Christian). Central and western areas were even more uniformly Muslim; larger Christian minorities persisted in the northeast (around Trebizond) and parts of the east.
- Significant Christian communities (Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians) remained into the late Ottoman period. 19th-century estimates put the Muslim share of Anatolia around 80%. Wars, the Armenian Genocide and related events of 1915–1923, the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922), and especially the 1923 Convention on the Exchange of Populations (part of the Treaty of Lausanne) completed the demographic shift.
- The exchange, based on religion rather than language, moved approximately 1.2 million Greek Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece and about 350,000–400,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey. Combined with earlier losses, this left the new Republic of Turkey with a population that was overwhelmingly Muslim. Today official figures and surveys typically put Muslims at 95–99% (mostly Sunni Hanafi, with a substantial Alevi minority).
More information
- About Islam—An Overview for Christians
- How does the Qur’an compare to the Book of Genesis on the great events of history (Creation, Fall, Flood and confusion of languages)? Answer
- Witnessing to Muslims
- Recommended resources
Article Version: September 15, 2026