1
I N T R O D U C T I O N
The study of ethnic minorities is of vital concern in the context of 
nations consisting of different groups, some of which are immigrants 
whilst others are indigenous to the land. While a considerable degree of 
effort is made concerning studying the real-world situations of minori-
ties in Western Europe and North America, there are generally limited 
approaches to exploring the situation in the Middle East. Similarly, 
although there is important work on the experiences of minorities in 
Turkey being published, few examine minority groups holistically in 
terms of elaborating on the current state of affairs as well as situating 
the analysis into a wider discussion on the nature of ethnic and religious 
differences in contemporary Turkey. This special issue is an attempt to 
explore the nature and reality of the lived experiences of ethnic and 
religious minorities in Turkey from different conceptual and analytical 
perspectives, ranging from the sociological, historical, and anthropo-
logical to the political. 
Cultural racism highlights cultural differences or differences be-
tween nomos-es, if we borrow from Peter Berger, between value sys-
tems which arbitrarily differentiate between “civilisational” values  and 
between “inferior, barbaric, undemocratic, etc.” Local Middle Eastern 
societies are not immune to the separation of who is and who is not “us” 
or who has “legitimate” ethnicity and/or religion and who has not. Such 
reductions in religion, culture and ethnicity are a manipulation in the 
service of ideologies that indicate a fear of the consequences that diver-
sity and plurality might bring. They are also most certainly the result 
of the emergence of nation-states and related nationalisms, which often 
lead to homogenising processes of defining a common territory, history, 
culture, language or religion. Although many nations do not form a 
homogeneous body and are made up of different ethnic, linguistic, cul-
tural and religious groups, the rhetoric of nationality treats the nation 
as an integral unit. This is also the case in contemporary Turkey where 
multifold minority populations have often been rendered invisible due 
to powerful waves of Turkish nationalism, exceptionalism and, in more 
recent periods, neo-Ottomanism. 
P O L i g r A f i
2
The formation of the Turkish nation-state involved specific inclu-
sion and exclusion mechanisms vis-à-vis the population of the remain-
ing territories of the Ottoman state at the end of the great War. During 
the Ottoman era, different religious groups were granted the capacity 
to govern their internal affairs as long as they were loyal to the Sultan. 
in the transformation of the Empire into a secular republic in the early 
1920s, only the greek Orthodox, Jewish and Armenian communities 
were officially recognised as “minority” and received certain protections 
under the new Turkish republic in light of their religious affiliations. 
However, Kurdish groups, representing at least one-fifth of the popula-
tion, were denied recognition of their cultural, linguistic and ethnic 
heritage. They were Muslim by religious classification and therefore not 
counted as a minority. As other ethnic and religious groups, includ-
ing the roma, have continued to suffer at the hands of an exclusivist 
Turkification project, a Turkish-Kurdish separation remains an ongoing 
challenge for the future of Turkey.
Ethnic and religious dimensions of Turkish nationalism as reflected 
in the Turkification policies of the Young Turk government in the final 
years of Ottoman era were inherited by the republican political elite. 
This legacy, i.e. the program of creating an ethnically homogeneous 
nation and national Muslim-Turkish economy and policy, shaped not 
only the republic’s assimilationist policies against Kurdish groups, but 
also the immigration policies and several discriminatory policies against 
non-Muslim minorities. The coexistence of the ethnic, religious, and 
civic dimensions of Turkish nationalism, often resulting in contradic-
tory policies concerning minorities, could have very destructive results, 
as in the case of the Wealth Tax of 1942‒1943 or the Pogrom of 6‒7 
September 1955. in other words, religious and ethnic minorities (le-
gally recognised or not) during the republican period have been in 
a tense and precarious relationship vis-à-vis the state. The republic’s 
civic nationalist discourse which defined Turkishness on the basis of 
citizenship in the 1924 constitution, as well as the secularist principle 
which led to the removal of islam (as a “state religion”) from the consti-
tution in 1928, were in contradiction with the policies in practice. This 
very ambiguity of Turkish nationalism could also create manoeuvring 
space for minorities who have adopted a variety of strategies vis-à-vis 
I N T R O D U C T I O N
3
the government ranging from revolt to silent consent or voluntary as-
similation (as exemplified in several articles in this issue). The multi-
plicity of minority experiences continue today as the AKP government 
has not reversed these defining features of official Turkish nationalism 
despite its leadership’s islamist ideological background, as well as the 
democratic reform packages in the framework of the EU inclusion pro-
cess. The study of minorities in the Turkish republic both in the past 
and now offers scholars both the difficulties and challenges involved in 
the analysis of diverse receptions, responses, and strategies adopted by 
minority groups. The recent Syrian refugee crisis and the AKP govern-
ment’s handling of the crisis by using Syrian asylum seekers, often as 
leverage in its relationship with the EU, combined with rising anti-
Syrian nationalism within the population has created new challenges 
for the study of minorities in Turkey. This collection provides historical 
and contemporary analytical perspectives to these challenges as well as 
those of neoliberalism, authoritarianism, and globalisation in the con-
text of the broader Middle East region and its politics. 
Tahir Abbas, Umut Azak, and Anja Zalta