Religious Minorities in Turkey

Alevi, Armenians, and Syriacs and the Struggle to Desecuritize Religious Freedom

Mehmet Bardakci, Annette Freyberg-Inan, Christoph Giesel, Olaf Leisse

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781137270252
• eBook ISBN: 9781137270269
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book considers the key issue of Turkey's treatment of minorities in relation to its complex paths of both European integration and domestic and international reorientation. The expectations of Turkey's EU and other international counterparts, as well as important domestic demands, have pushed Turkey to broaden the rights of religious and other minorities. More recently a turn towards autocratic government is rolling back some earlier achievements. This book shows how these broader processes affect the lives of three important religious groups in Turkey: the Alevi as a large Muslim community and the Christian communities of Armenians and Syriacs. Drawing on a wealth of original data and extensive fieldwork, the authors compare and explain improvements, set-backs, and lingering concerns for Turkey's religious minorities and identify important challenges for Turkey's future democratic development and European path. The book will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of minority politics, contemporary Turkish politics, and religion and politics.

Table of contents

• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: European Integration and Minority Rights
• Chapter 3: Securitization and Desecuritization of Minority Rights
• Chapter 4: The Alevi, the AKP Government and the Alevi Initiative
• Chapter 5: The Ambivalent Situation of Turkey’s Armenians: Between Collective Historical Trauma and Psychological Repression, Loyal Citizenship and Minority Status, Social Integration and Discrimination, Assimilation and Self-assertion
• Chapter 6: Like a Drop in the Ocean: The Last Syriacs in Turkey in a Maelstrom of Nationalism, Islamism, Assimilation, and Diverging Socio-political Interests
• Chapter 7: General and Comparative Analysis
• Chapter 8: Conclusions
• Appendix A: Survey and Interview Questions
• Appendix B: Interviews with Alevi NGO Leaders and Experts
• Appendix C: Interviews with Armenian Institutional Representatives and Activists
• Appendix D: Interviews with Syriac Institutional Representatives and Activists
• Appendix E: Expert Interviews
• Bibliography
• Index