Emigration of Non-Muslim Minorities from Turkey

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Ethnic and Racial Studies

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The politics of population in a nation-building process: emigration of non-Muslims from Turkey Ahmet Içduygu; Şule Toktas; B. Ali Soner First Published on: 22 October 2007 To cite this Article: Içduygu, Ahmet, Toktas, Şule and Soner, B. Ali (2007) 'The politics of population in a nation-building process: emigration of non-Muslims from Turkey', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31:2, 358 - 389 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/01419870701491937 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870701491937

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Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol. 31 No. 2 February 2008 pp. 358 389

The politics of population in a nation-building process: emigration of non-Muslims from Turkey Ahmet Ic¸duygu, S¸ule Toktas¸ and B. Ali Soner

Abstract Within the politics of nationalism and nation-building, the emigration of ethnic and religious minorities, whether voluntary or involuntary, appears to be a commonly occurring practice. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century, modern Turkey still carried the legacy of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious diversity in which its Armenian, Greek and Jewish communities had official minority status based upon the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. However, throughout the twentieth century, Turkey’s non-Muslim minority populations have undergone a mass emigration experience in which thousands of their numbers have migrated to various countries around the globe. While in the 1920s the population of non-Muslims in the country was close to 3 per cent of the total, today it has dropped to less than two per thousand. This article analyses the emigration of non-Muslim people from Turkey and relates this movement to the wider context of nation-building in the country.

Keywords: nation-building; emigration; minorities; non-Muslims; population; Turkey.

Introduction A major problem in the modern state concerns the relationship between nation-building and minority rights, which are, at their origins, closely related to each other. The main issue in this context is what might be called the politics of population in a nation-building process, an issue that also makes the distinction between majority and minority communities in the modern state. It was this nation-building process which gradually transformed ‘a society from the form of a Gesellschaft, or functional existence, to a Gemeinschaft organization, or a homogeneous community’ (Bloom 1990, p. 55). In other words,

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creating a true reconciliation between the nation and the state, between political and ethno-cultural borders, came to be regarded as the ideal social formation of our modern times (Oommen 1997). Not surprisingly, therefore, the nation-building process in various parts of the world went hand in hand with the elimination of ‘undesirable’ others who remained outside the mainstream identification category (Connor 1972, p. 336). Put differently, the Westphalia principles of nation-state formation meant the delegitimization of sub-national identities and loyalties.

One tool that has become a dimension of eliminating the ‘others’ is migration, an instrument with an integral role in nation-state formation (Preece 1998). The Turkish nation-state formation is no exception to this general framework. In the Turkish context, since Islam has been a constitutive element of the Turkish identity and nation, and being Turkish has often been equated with being Muslim1 (Yumul 1998), the nation-building process has fostered a kind of homogenization which, in practice, pointed to the demographic Islamization of the population. Non-Muslim minorities,2 despite their formal citizenship status, were not accepted as natural members of the Turkish nation but have remained as ‘others’ in the Turkish-Muslim nation (Bora 1995, p. 34; Keyman and Ic¸duygu 1998). Thus, although one of the objectives of the nation-building project was to Turkify the non-Muslim minorities (Bali 2001, p. 170), such a project has been limited by a mainstream perception of non-Muslim minorities’ permanent otherness. The emigration of non-Muslim minorities has taken a central place in creating a Turkish nation united in ethnocultural terms.

Despite the use of the category of ‘Turk’ as a building block of the nation-state, what this word referred to was initially ambiguous and this ambiguity was to persist, with the definition and content of ‘Turk’ undergoing changes in different eras, subject to the influence of events and developments (Kadıog˘lu 1998). ‘Turk’ was used to refer sometimes to an ethnic group originating in Central Asia, sometimes to a legal status of citizenship on the basis of identity cards and passports and sometimes to individuals sharing a common culture, i.e. Turkish culture (Deringil 2000).3 As to the religion of the ‘Turk’, Islam was frequently used to define Turks, the Turkish nation and Turkish culture. In other words, Islam provided a reference point in the ¨ zdog˘an 1996; O ¨ zbudun 1998; Kiris¸c¸i definition of the ordinary Turk (O 2000; Meeker 2002). As a result, the inclusion of non-Muslims has been problematic in the normative definition of ‘Turk’ (Keyman and Ic¸duygu 1998).

While the ‘top-down’ character of the nation-building process in Turkey has been noticeable, it appears that there has also been a considerable degree of ‘bottom-up’ societal participation within the

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political project. It was this ‘populist’ feature that also contributed to the gradual demise of non-Muslim populations at many levels of society. For instance, as deftly elaborated by Meeker (2002), the local elites in the eastern Black Sea coastal region of Anatolia, who appropriated the Republican tactic of nation-building, had an interest in aligning themselves with the nationalist feelings combined with the ‘official Islam’. This unique argument not only explains the question of how the nation-building process in itself led to an ipso facto exclusion of non-Muslims, but it also tends to solve ‘the paradox of a secular Republic that became increasingly, and uniformly, religious’ (Shankland 2003a).

Although Turkey today is generally considered to be a Muslim country owing to its more than 99 per cent Muslim population, historically Turkey was geographically not a predominantly Muslim country but rather contained multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multilingual groupings.4 The overwhelmingly lopsided Muslim/non-Muslim ratio is a relatively recent phenomenon. Starting from the early centuries of the last millennium, Anatolia, the mainland of Turkey, has witnessed a gradual transformation from a fully non-Muslim population to a Muslim one (Courbage and Fargues 1998). From the battle of Mantzikert in 1071, where the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines, until the First World War when the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Anatolia had become a home for people of various ethnic and religious origins. When, between 1914 and 1923, a secular nationstate emerged from the debris of the Ottoman Empire, this multinational and multi-faith demographic picture had already started to fade away.

Today, Turkey’s population exhibits a strong religious uniformity which has resulted mainly from the flows of incoming and outgoing migratory movements. Despite the fact that the main source of this demographic change lies in the emigration of non-Muslims from Turkey, there has also been an inflow of Muslim populations. In other words, as non-Muslim minorities opted to move out, Turkey received millions of Muslim immigrants, particularly from the Balkans and the Caucasus (Kiris¸c¸i 2000). In light of these migratory movements, one could argue that Turkey has traditionally become an immigrantsending country with respect to non-Muslims5 and a receiving country with respect to Muslims.6 In this article, we will argue that emigratory movements of nonMuslim minorities have operated as part of the nation-state formation in Turkey, movements that deeply and progressively dominated the social, political and economic history of the country. In doing so, this study tackles the question of what happened to the non-Muslim population of Turkey in the 1900s. It elaborates the causes and consequences of changes in Turkey’s non-Muslim population from the

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late Ottoman era to the present. By examining the changes in the population of non-Muslims in Turkey over the period, and relating these changes to the country’s social and political history, this essay aims to place the dynamics and mechanisms of these changes into their proper historical context.

There are two methodological concerns which should be noted here.

First, although this study itself largely benefits from the analysis of secondary data and literature, this should not be seen as a deficiency for several reasons: (a) there is no single comprehensive study conducted on the linkage between the Turkish nation-building and the emigration of non-Muslims from the country; (b) existing studies on the emigration of non-Muslims from Turkey are very sketchy and limited; and (c) a study that is broad enough to cover the issue thematically and historically is lacking. In other words, this analysis goes far beyond what has been said before. Second, as this article attempts to clarify the dynamics of the emigratory flows of nonMuslims from Turkey as they have become deeply embedded in the nation-building project in the country, it naturally does not refer to the position of minority non-orthodox Muslim groups such as Alevis7 or that of some ethnic minorities such as Kurds. There is no doubt that the nation-building process in itself has also led in practice to a sort of exclusion of these sociologically present but legally absent minorities at many levels of society. But, as this study focuses only on the case of officially accepted minorities, namely non-Muslims, the case of Alevis or Kurds remains beyond the scope of the study.

The article has four parts defined by historical periods differentiated on the basis of contextual factors that have shaped minority emigration from Turkey. The first part presents a historical background of Turkey’s non-Muslim population and highlights population figures in terms of the religious affiliations that Turkey inherited from the Ottoman Empire. The second part deals mainly with the early Republican period, covering the years 1923 45, which were marked by intensive Turkification policies. The third part extends the discussion to the mid-Republican Period (1945 80), when the external context displaced internal concerns over nation-building with respect to the position of non-Muslims. The fourth part focuses on the contemporary period after 1980, particularly since the 1990s, during which multiculturalism became increasingly discussed as an asset of Turkish society. Since the European Union integration process also contributed to the emergence and consolidation of this late pluralist framework, this part touches upon the current status of Turkey’s nonMuslims and relates it to the ongoing integration negotiations between the European Union and Ankara, in which minority issues often come to the fore as hot agenda items. The article ends with a short overview of essential points of the historical account.

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Background to Turkey’s non-Muslim minorities: the Ottoman legacy The key to the stability of the Ottoman order, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, was the millet system (religious community or nation in Turkish), a practice for managing the internal affairs of its multi-religious and poly-ethnic imperial setting. Under this system, the prominent non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, its GreekOrthodox, Armenian-Gregorian and Jewish communities, were granted communal autonomy in spiritual as well as secular areas, including their religious, educational, juridical and fiscal affairs. In the Ottoman imperial system, even though there existed an absolute practice of hegemonic power of Muslim-centred control over the empire’s non-Muslim populations, and the unequal and subordinate position of non-Muslim communities was quite clear, these communities had been granted state recognition and protection in the Islamic tradition. Consequently, the millet system, which was based upon the universal brotherhood of the ‘peoples of the book’ (followers of Abrahamic faiths) and was independent from the borders of ethnicities and geographies, had enabled non-Muslim communities to be successfully integrated into the central imperial structure of the Ottoman state (Braude and Lewis 1982). However, as the impact of nationalism was increasingly felt in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, both the religious universalism and geographical disregard of the millet system gradually disappeared. Religious communities of non-Muslim millets, prominently the Christian groupings, underwent a national transformation bounded by geographical and ethno-linguistic borders (Lewis 1965). It was in that age of nationalist awakening that the empire began to lose its cosmopolitan nature as many non-Muslim communities seceded from the empire, often with the political and military support of Western powers (Sonyel 1993).

In particular, in the early nineteenth century, eastern Armenia and independent Greece had become two main sources of nationalism in the empire. As noted by Courbage and Fargues, non-Muslims ‘were torn between loyalty to the empire and the new aspirations for independence which became more intense around the First World War when the Ottomanist doctrine disappeared’ (1997, p. 109). Indeed, while the nationalist mobilization of non-Muslims was rising, there were three main projects of political engineering proposed for saving the Empire: Ottomanism, the purpose of which was to build an Ottoman nation; Islamism, aiming at a state based on Islam; and Turkism, aiming to create a Turkish nation based on race or ethnicity.8 As the modern Turkish Republic emerged from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, what was really carried over was the project of Turkism, or, in other words, Turkish nationalism. However, this

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element was not the only one carried from the Ottoman past. Contrary to the view that the modern Republic was a clean break with the past, there was a remarkable level of continuity within various parts of social, political and economic spheres in the modern Turkey.9 For instance, as we discuss in the latter part of this essay, the new minority rights regime in Turkey formulated in the Treaty of Lausanne had manifestly carried the legacy of the millet system of the empire.

In the late ninetieth and early twentieth centuries, the non-Muslim population of the empire began to fall considerably, not only due to secession, but also because of migratory movements out of the empire that increasingly consolidated the Muslim nature of the population.

As a result, while the proportion of Muslims amounted to 60 per cent of the Ottoman population in the 1820s, it gradually increased first to 69 per cent in the 1870s and then to 76 per cent in the 1890s (Akarlı 1972, p. 21). The results of the 1906/7 Census confirmed the pattern into which the empire’s population had fallen in a process of homogenization vis-a`-vis religious affiliation. The Census indicated that, out of a total population of 14,321,000, there were 1,542,000 Greeks, 1,020,000 Armenians and 146,000 Jews as compared to 11,405,000 Muslims living in Ottoman lands. These figures indicated that the imperial population of the early twentieth century contained 11 per cent Greeks, 7 per cent Armenians, 1 per cent Jews and 80 per cent Muslims within the total (Karpat 1985, pp. 168 9).10 This composition was also reflected by the 1914 Census results (see Table 1).

The Balkan Wars of 1911 12 accelerated the demise of the empire’s non-Muslim presence as its predominantly non-Muslim-populated lands were lost to newly established states including Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania, as well as to Greece. In the wars’ Table 1. Muslim and non-Muslim population in Turkey, 1914 2005 (in thousands) Year Muslims Greeks Armenians Jews Others Total Percentage of non-Muslims

1914

1927

1945

12,941 13,290 18,511 1,549 110 104 1,204 77 60 128 82 77 176 71 38 15,997 13,630 18,790 19.1 2.5 1.5

1965

1990

2005

31,139 76 64 38 74 31,391 0.8

56,860 8 67 29 50 57,005 0.3

71,997 3 50 27 45 72,120 0.2

Sources: from 1914 to 1965, Ottoman and Turkish censuses and statistical abstracts; from 1990 to 2005, personal communication of the (opinion) leaders of non-Muslim communities to the authors

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aftermath, non-Muslims who remained in the Ottoman Balkans continued to flock to their kin-states. It was at this stage that a 1913 population exchange agreement was concluded with Bulgaria under which 47,000 Bulgarians in Ottoman Thrace left their homes in return for 49,000 Turks being accepted into Turkey from Bulgaria (Psomiades 1968, p. 60). In the same period, more than 100,000 Anatolian Greeks migrated to Greece at the outset of the First World War (McCarthy 1995, p. 287).

Concurrent with the demographic transformation in the western regions of the empire, in the eastern regions the pivotal factor in the shrinking non-Muslim population was the Armenian deportation of 1915 16. As some Anatolian Armenians were involved in ‘fifthcolumn activities’11 in eastern Turkey during the First World War, security concerns led to thousands of Armenians living in the region being forced brutally to move to southern provinces of the empire (Bayur 1991, pp. 6 40). In addition to this, clashes between Armenian rebels and Muslims in Anatolia caused a hostile environment in which thousands of Armenians were killed12 or forced to leave. The deportation dramatically altered the population composition of Anatolia. By 1919, official sources confirmed that there remained 543,000 Armenians, 1,015,000 Greeks and 93,000 Jews in Anatolia (Selek 1987, p. 64). In the same year, the Muslim population of Anatolia was 9,291,000 (Selek 1987, p. 64).13 These figures indicate that, on the eve of the Turkish War of Independence (1919 22), Armenians, Greeks and Jews in Anatolia altogether still constituted 15 per cent of the total population, despite the influx of ethnic Turks and Muslims from the Balkans and the Caucasus into Anatolia.14 However, non-Muslim minorities’ secessionist activities and their collaboration with the post-First World War occupying forces provoked disappointment and hostility among the national elite as well as society at large (Alexandris 1992, pp. 52 76). Because of this, the Turkish War of Independence was a war directed against nonMuslim minorities as well as the occupying forces (Oran 1997, pp. 125 8). Owing to this fact, fearing possible revenge attacks, a large number of non-Muslims left the country following the withdrawal of Western and Greek forces (Pallis 1995). In particular, towards the end of the War of Independence, Anatolian Greeks moved to Greece and Istanbul en masse. Although the size of Greek population in Istanbul swelled to around 500,000 in 1922 (Alexandris 1992, p. 80),15 the number retreated to 250,000 after the city was returned to Turkish authorities in 1923 (Alexandris 1992, p. 104).

The period during and after the War of Independence was an important time for the transition from a multinational empire to a relatively homogeneous national setting, at least in terms of religious make-up. The war had left a demographic environment compatible with

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a nation-building process. However, the transition to nation-building was not free of problems. The leaders of the new regime in Anatolia had not forgotten the destructive roles played by non-Muslims during the War of Independence, and so they looked upon these groups with suspicion. The same view went on to affect both the treatment of nonMuslims and the national concerns of the nascent state.

The early nation-building process (1923 45): Turkification policies and purification of ‘aliens’ Turkey’s Grand National Assembly was founded in 1920, and the Republic was proclaimed in 1923. In the same year, with the Treaty of Lausanne, the three minority groups Armenians, Greeks and Jews were granted official recognition and accorded educational, social and religious rights. Nevertheless, after the foundation of the new state, the recent separatist and collaborative history of Greeks and Armenians came to dominate the general perception of all non-Muslim groups. In a sense, the public refused to forget the collaboration of non-Muslims with Allied forces in invading and trying to carve up Anatolia during the War of Independence, and this betrayal was burned into the public’s collective memory. In general, society regarded non-Muslims as foreign elements in its midst and so repeatedly questioned their loyalty and reliability (Bali 1998a, p. 171).

An immediate impact of this perception was seen in the legal and political definition of the category of Turkish nationals. Notwithstanding the fact that the 1924 Constitution brought a clear civic definition of nation one free of discrimination due to religion or racial background, under which every Turkish citizen is considered a Turk (Kili 1982, p. 62) the political definition of nationality was not made comprehensively enough to cover the country’s non-Muslims.

From the political point of view, the concept of the Turkish nation inherently indicated the compact unity of Turkish-Muslim citizens, whereas non-Muslims remained at the periphery of this political definition. Parallel to the inclusion/exclusion practices of the new state, the notion of ‘us’ included the Muslim population, whereas nonMuslim groups constituted the category of the ‘them’ (Aktar 2000, p.

102). Moreover, on the basis of this legal-political ground, the full scope of citizenship status was reserved for the ‘national’ sections of the Turkish population, as this created a close linkage between citizenship and national identity. Thus, the non-Muslim residents of the country were excluded from the ethno-cultural definitions of the Turkish nation. Non-Muslim peoples were rarely seen as an integral element of the Turkish nation; rather, their presence was often considered a potentially destabilizing threat to idyllic social cohesion.

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Having based a definition of the national category on the TurkishMuslim citizens of the country, the fundamental objective of Turkish nation-building was to create a society united in a common language, culture and religion. The Turkification policies and practices of the new state, therefore, proceeded at the expense of distinctions which ideally were thought outside the mainstream identity category of nation. The essentially pluralist content of the Lausanne framework lost effect as the linguistic, religious, cultural and economic presence of the non-Muslim peoples in the country began to be subjected to policies and practices of nationalist mistreatment (Toktas¸ 2005).

One early example of this nationalist treatment arose in the area of non-Muslim minorities’ linguistic rights. As part of linguistic Turkification policies, a campaign called ‘Citizen, Speak Turkish!’ (Vatandas¸ Tu¨rkc¸e Konus¸!) was launched during the late 1920s in order to eliminate the linguistic distinctions of non-Turkish-speaking citizens (Galanti 2000). Contrary to both the ethno-cultural neutrality of the new Constitution and the commitments of the Treaty of Lausanne, speaking Turkish began to be considered a condition of Turkishness even for the country’s non-Muslim peoples, who were forced to abandon their mother tongues in favour of Turkish in public as well as in minority educational institutions (Bali 2000, pp. 131 49). Although the campaign was renounced in the middle of the 1940s, it had a farreaching impact on the attitudes of non-Muslims, who over time came to prefer Turkish as their mother tongue.

Another government practice which deviated from civic nationalism by linking Turkishness to Turkish-Islamic culture was Law No. 2510, known as the Law on Settlement. The 1934 law set forth the basic principles of immigration and settlement policy at a time when events in Europe were moving towards yet another world war (C ¸ ag˘atay 2002).

Taking into consideration security and political concerns, the law closed strategic regions of the country to non-Muslim minority settlement. Thus, although the Law on Settlement was expected to operate as an instrument for Turkifying the mass of non-Turkish speaking citizens,16 it emerged as a piece of legislation which fundamentally shook the life of non-Muslims, as evidenced in the 1934 Thrace Incidents in the immediate aftermath of the law’s passage.

Indeed, Law No. 2510 was issued on 14 June 1934, and the Thrace Incidents began just over a fortnight later, on 3 July. The incidents seeking to force out the region’s non-Muslim residents first began in C ¸ anakkale, where Jews received unsigned letters telling them to leave the city, and then escalated into a kind of anti-Semitic campaign involving economic boycotts and verbal assaults as well as physical violence against the Jews living in the various provinces of Thrace (Levi 1998, p. 128). It is estimated that out of a total 15,000 20,000 Jews living in the region, more than half fled to Istanbul during

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and after the incidents (Karabatak 1996, p. 7). However, although the Law on Settlement may well have actually provoked the incidents’ outbreak, the national authorities did not side with the attackers but swiftly intervened in the incidents. After order was restored, the governors and mayors of the provinces involved were removed from office (Toprak 1996).

During the Second World War, the policies of the Turkish government on minority issues were largely dominated by the paradigm of national security and defence. As part of these militaristic measures, in 1941, non-Muslim men age 26 45 were recruited to the military as reserve forces. After these new forces were disarmed, men drafted in this special recruitment, known as the Incident of Reserves (Yirmi Kur’a I˙htiyatlar), were assigned to civic purposes such as building national parks and roads and collecting garbage. The main concern of both the government and the military was to maintain national security by isolating society’s ‘untrustworthy’ elements in camps at a time when the war had already spread close to Turkey’s borders and was drawing nearer. These non-Muslim soldiers served in the military as reserve forces for nearly a year and were discharged from duty in 1942 (Bali 1998b).

This military measure was accompanied in 1942 by the promulgation of the Law on Capital Tax, Law No. 4305, whose impact was felt the most on non-Muslim citizens’ economic power. In fact, the act was a special one-time tax designed to provide additional resources for wartime expenses and in principle respected equality. However, its implementation created three categories of taxpayers specified as M (Muslims), N (non-Muslims) and C (Converts). The latter two categories were levied five to ten times higher than the first. In order to pay the tax, most non-Muslims were forced to sell off their property ¨ kte 1987, p. 24). Those who failed to pay the assessed amount were (O sent to labour camps in remote corners of the country where they were expected to pay off their taxes by working for the state.

The Capital Tax was superseded in 1944 by a new law, No. 4530, ending the levies and forgiving former tax debts. However, by the time of its nullification, the objective of the tax had to a large extent already been realized. In conformity with the assessment criteria, Turkish capital had been ‘nationalized’ in terms of religious affiliation.

Throughout its implementation, the law effectively transferred huge amounts of capital from non-Muslim minorities to Turkish-Muslim nationals. It is estimated that 98 per cent of the real estate belonging to non-Muslims was either bought by Muslim individuals or confiscated by the state (Aktar 2000, p. 204).

The cultural and economic policies of the early Republican governments illustrate the factors pushing minority emigration from Turkey. The most prominent result of the Turkification policies was

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how they served to consolidate non-Muslim minorities’ position as the ‘other’ in Turkish society in general. Notwithstanding the prevalence of formal equality and rights under Lausanne, the policies in question put the ethno-cultural as well as economic presence of non-Muslim minorities at risk. Therefore, on the part of these citizens, emigration from Turkey emerged as an attractive option (Alexandris 1992, pp.

326 31). Because of this, from the early years of the Republic, the proportion within Turkey’s total population of its Greeks, Armenians and Jews gradually fell, a phenomenon clearly observable in the figures of the period’s national censuses.

Although Turkey’s population totalled 12,000,000 in the immediate aftermath of the War of Independence, reliable data on its ethnocultural composition are lacking. Yet, by examining the question retrospectively, we can estimate that this population contained approximately 250,000 Greeks, 100,000 Armenians and 100,000 Jews. The first Census of the Republic was held in 1927. But before this census, the size of the Greek minority particularly underwent a significant change through the implementation of the Population Exchange Agreement of 1923 7.

In fact, since nearly 900,000 of approximately 1,500,000 Anatolian Greeks had already left the country following the Greek retreat, the population exchange provided legitimacy to that de facto emigration (Psomiades 1968, pp. 120 6). In addition, the same agreement stipulated some further emigration, excluding, however, the Greek inhabitants of Istanbul. During the exchange’s implementation, 150,000 Greeks left behind in Anatolia were sent to Greece in return for 360,000 Muslims accepted into Turkey from Greece (Geray 1970, p. 10). Meanwhile, despite the fact that the Greeks of Istanbul had been excluded from the exchange, owing to the reciprocity principle established between the Muslim population in Greek Thrace and the Greek population in Istanbul, over 150,000 Greeks living in Istanbul were subjected to the same exchange. This number covered 60,000 Greek citizens, 40,000 Greeks who were not covered in the population exchange, 38,000 Greeks who resettled in the city after 1918 and 20,000 Greeks living in the suburbs of the city (Alexandris 1992, p. 104).

In consequence, although Turkey had embraced a multi-national society up until the years of national independence, the figures in the first Republican Census showed that this traditional diversity had to a large extent been lost. Thus, by the year 1927, Turkey had taken on a more homogeneous outlook with respect to ethno-cultural characteristics, particularly as regards the religious affiliation of its peoples. As noted earlier, according to official sources from 1919, the total number of Armenians, Greeks and Jews was around 1,650,000 (Selek 1987, p.

64), but by 1927 the Census showed a steep drop to just 269,000, with 110,000 Greeks, 77,000 Armenians and 82,000 Jews (General

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Directorate of Statistics 1929).17 That is to say, while non-Muslim minorities in Turkey before the War of Independence constituted 15 per cent of a total population of around 11 million (Selek 1987, p. 64), by 1927 this proportion had fallen drastically to 2 per cent of a total population of around 13.5 million (see Table 1). This indicates a fall of approximately 1,381,000 non-Muslims between 1919 and 1927. Leaving aside natural demographic changes, it can be argued that most of the given figure resulted from emigratory movements from Turkey in the 1920s.

Despite the decrease in the number of the ‘other’, the relatively multi-national outlook of the 1927 Census still challenged the imagined unity of the Turkish nation in the eyes of Turkish authorities.

Consequently, a number of Turkification policies or movements, including the ‘Citizen, Speak Turkish’ campaign, the Law on Settlement, the Thrace Incidents, the Incident of Reserves and the Capital Tax, were launched. Thus, violating the spirit of the Lausanne commitments, Turkish state policies limited conditions of free and equal existence for non-Muslim minorities. Most significantly, parallel to the rise of nationalism in Europe, anti-minority feelings both in the general public and in state institutions acquired a rather strong hand in Turkey by the 1930s, while pushing new sections of minority peoples towards opting for emigration, as evidenced in the second census held seven years later.

In that 1935 Census, the continued decline in the population of the three specified non-Muslim communities was clear. Accordingly, the Census indicated that by 1935 there were around 125,000 Greeks, 61,000 Armenians and 79,000 Jews, altogether totalling 265,000 or 1.6 per cent of the 16.1 million total population (General Directorate of Statistics 1937). The census results showed a slight decrease in the Armenian and Jewish communities but a rise in the Greek population.

The latter was due to the inclusion of Greek citizens in the new census regardless of their date of settlement in Istanbul.18 By the 1945 Census, the total population of Turkey had climbed to 18.8 million. In contrast, the number of Armenians fell to around 60,000, Greeks to 104,000 and Jews to 77,000, making up a total of 241,000 (see Table 1).

This figure corresponds to 1.3 per cent of the total population in Turkey at the time (General Directorate of Statistics 1950).

As argued above, the gradual decline of the non-Muslim population stemmed mainly from the Turkification policies undertaken during this period. A good example can be observed in the aftermath of the Thrace Incidents. Having faced civilian attacks, a number of Turkish Jews emigrated to Palestine either directly or via Istanbul. It is estimated that 521 Jews left Turkey for Palestine in 1934, and another 1,445 emigrated the following year (Bali 1999, p. 43). The 1942 Capital Tax also served as a spur for emigration (Bali 2000, p. 406; Du¨ndar

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2000, p. 61). Between 1943 and 1944, around 4,000 Jews emigrated and another 5,000 Turkish Jews applied to the government for emigration (Benbassa and Rodrigue 2001, p. 383). The Turkification policies had an impact on the size of the Greek and Armenian minorities as well.

However, due to the international tension and war during most of the decade, Greek and Armenian migration slowed between the 1935 and 1945 Censuses. As indicated above, over that ten years the overall size of the Greeks and Armenian populations declined by 21,000 and 1,000 respectively.

In view of the above discussion, two points mark the non-Muslim emigratory trends of the early Republican period. First, the emigration of the Jewish minority was limited in comparison to that of the Armenians and the Greeks. In other words, the latter two communities, particularly the Greeks, moved from the country in larger numbers, whereas the scale of Jewish migration remained smaller. One can conclude that the discrepancy between the three communities is closely related to the attractiveness of the receiving countries. In the case of the Greeks, Greece, and in the case of the Armenians, France and the US served as destination countries. However, as Israel’s founding still lay in the future (1948), the emigration of Jewish masses awaited the following decade.

Second, the venture of non-Muslim minority emigration from Turkey evolved in two stages, internal and external. Distressed by the plummeting non-Muslim population of Anatolia, minority peoples first moved towards the cosmopolitan environment of bigger cities. Therefore, by the early years of the Republic, the non-Muslim population of Turkey had gradually concentrated in Istanbul and Izmir. These minority peoples turned towards the option of a permanent departure only after concluding that the first stage would fall well short of protecting and promoting their distinct identities in Turkey.

Internal reflections on an external crisis: emigration of minorities in the mid-Republican period (1945 80)

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Turkey sided with the Western world, which was promoting democratic governments and individual human rights. Hence, the Turkish political system began to transform its autocratic structures towards a liberal-democratic model of politics. The single-party rule of the Republican People’s Party (RPP) was replaced by a multi-party system, and by 1950 the nation saw a former opposition party, the Democrat Party (DP), form a government. This liberal-democratic transformation of the political system raised hopes among members of minority groups as well. It came to be felt among minority citizens that, in line with the

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substantive principles of the Lausanne commitments, they would henceforth be treated equally in both law and practice (Bali 1998a).

However, it became obvious by the mid-1950s that the democratic context would hardly wipe away the traditional ‘other’ position of Turkey’s non-Muslim minorities. Still, unlike in previous decades, the position of non-Muslim minorities in the new period began to be shaped not only by nationalist aspirations of internal politics but also by the diplomatic crises of external (international) relations. NonMuslim minorities from time to time suffered socio-political and economic consequences within the country whenever Turkish governments faced diplomatic crises abroad. Like eggs caught between two stones, the minorities suffered cracks or were broken whenever the stones moved. They became internal victims whenever there was serious friction between Ankara and states where their ethnic kin resided. These minorities were seen as a kind of diplomatic tool in coping with the tension at hand.

The first example of this tendency surfaced by the mid-1950s from strained Turkish-Greek relations over the issue of Cyprus. As Ankara and Athens disagreed on the final status of the island, the loyalty of non-Muslim minorities, and particularly Greeks, once again began to be questioned in Turkey. Instead of being Turkish citizens with full and equal rights, members of the Greek minority began to be treated as ‘foreign’, ‘unreliable’ residents of the country who were to be expelled en masse (Benlisoy 2000). In 1955, in consequence of the burning in Salonika on 6 7 September of the house where Atatu¨rk was born, antiGreek violence over the Cyprus dispute erupted in Istanbul and Izmir, and then spilled over to Jewish-owned businesses. Angry crowds in Istanbul and Izmir, inflamed by the Cyprus crisis, attacked the cultural, religious and economic presence of minorities.19 These mobs were reined in only after the government declared martial law.

A number of Turkish nationalists were arrested and taken into custody in the incident’s aftermath.

In contrast to widely shared expectations that minorities would benefit from democratic transformation, the affair highlighted the traditional and continued vulnerability of minorities in Turkey.

Because of this, the civilian attacks provoked emotional upheaval, regret, resentment and fear among minorities while encouraging many Armenian and Jewish minorities to opt to flee Turkish soil. Indeed, although definite figures are unfortunately lacking, estimates indicate that an increasing number of minorities with Turkish nationality sold their property and moved abroad in the aftermath of the violence (Alexandris 1992, pp. 42 4; C ¸ elik 2000).

This incident operated, in practice, as an instrument for ending particularly the Greek presence in Turkey. The last blow to the Greek minority fell in 1964, when the Turkish government cancelled the

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Ankara Agreement (1930), pact which had granted legal status to more than 17,000 Greek citizens living in Istanbul, the so-called etablis Greeks (Go¨nlu¨bol and Sar 1974, pp. 68 9).20 Although they legally held Greek citizenship and, in principle, were subject to the population exchange, in fact they had been permitted to stay in Istanbul as the result of commercial and family connections. While remaining, many of them had engaged in intermarriages, joint investments and social and religious activities with other Turkish citizens of Greek descent.

By the 1960s, their parents and children, and grandparents and grandchildren, had come to retain different citizenships (Demir and Akar 1999, p. 90).

The terms of the Ankara Agreement were generally observed until the middle of the 1960s. The 1960 London-Zurich accords, which established a partnership government in Cyprus, seemed to further consolidate the status of Turkey’s Greek citizens. However, when in 1960 the Greek Cypriots became involved in enosis policies (i.e. seeking political union with Greece) in violation of the Zurich-London accords, diplomatic relations between the two Cypriot communities’ motherlands were also exacerbated (Bahcheli 1990, pp. 51 94). The immediate effects of this were felt in the shaky position of Turkey’s Greek minority, particularly that of the etablis Greeks (Demir and Akar 1999, pp. 64 7).21 The government cancelled the Ankara Agreement on 16 March 1964 and began to deport etablis Greeks from Turkey on the grounds that they threatened the internal and external security of the country.

In a few months, approximately 9,000 Greek citizens were obliged to leave Turkey for Greece (Bahcheli 1990, p. 174). As of September 1964, after the government refused to renew the residence permits of Greek citizens, this number exceeded 11,000 (Human Rights Watch 1992, p. 9). Nor were these expulsion measures confined to Greek citizens.

Due to the family and economic ties that many deportees had established with Turkish citizens of Greek origin, deportation of one Greek citizen often resulted, in practice, in the uprooting of the whole family. This is why the impact of the government’s decision far exceeded its original aim. Implementation of the expulsions meant that, apart from Greek citizens, 30,000 Turkish nationals of Greek descent permanently left Turkey (Human Rights Watch 1992, p. 9).

Thus, despite the fact that most of them fell under the scope of the Lausanne regime, the abrogation of the Ankara Agreement resulted in the expulsion of more than 40,000 Greeks.

The impetus of that official action was a diplomatic push to force the Greek government to come to terms with the Cyprus question (Demir and Akar 1999, p. 201 2). Thus, the fate of the Greek residents of Istanbul took shape under the shadow of Turkish-Greek diplomatic tensions. After the population exchange, the expulsion became the

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second great wave in the emigration of Greek minorities. Although no direct link was officially expressed between the distinct issues of minority rights and external relations, the persistence of diplomatic tension between Athens and Ankara affected the educational facilities of non-Muslim minorities as well. The most obvious example of this government attitude, with far-reaching implications for the Turkish minority rights regime, was the closure of the Theological Seminary of Khalki (Heybeliada Ruhban Okulu) in 1971. The seminary, located on Heybeli Island in the Istanbul Straits, had been the centre of Orthodox ecclesiastical training for centuries. In consequence, the decision affected the educational capacity of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.

It is for this reason that since the early 1990s, the restoration of the institution to its original position has occupied a prominent place in minority rights issues in Turkey (Oran 2001, p. 451).22 Furthermore, during the 1970s and 1980s, attacks on Turkish institutions and diplomats by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) served particularly to degrade the social position of Turkey’s Armenian minority.23 Under the influence of ASALA terrorism and mounting Turkish-Greek tension, the corporate power of foundations came to be seen as dangerous to Turkey’s national interests. The Council of State issued a legal ruling two months before Turkey’s July 1974 intervention in Cyprus that, ‘since corporate bodies are likely to be stronger than private individuals, no corporate body constituted by non-Turkish citizens can obtain real estate. Otherwise, it would be impossible to prevent the emergence of untoward and dangerous conditions for the security of the state’ (Cumhuriyet Dergi 1999). It was in this context that government authorities began to liquidate real estate belonging to the corporate entities of minorities’ religious foundations. The legal grounds of the official action were based on property lists that both Muslim and non-Muslim foundations had been required to submit in 1936.24 The government recognized the list of the 1936 declaration as the genuine property of a given foundation. Thus, although over the years between 1936 and 1974 religious foundations of non-Muslim minorities had obtained new properties, whether donated or purchased, all of these properties acquired in the intervening decades were considered illegal. The properties, therefore, were either confiscated or returned to the heirs of those who had donated them to the foundation (Oran 2001, p. 229).25 As for conditions needed for the protection and promotion of nonMuslim minority distinctions, the consequences of the confiscation went well beyond mere economics. Without a doubt, the liquidation caused severe financial stress or the collapse of foundations that had hitherto relied heavily on revenues earned from renting out the properties. Moreover, as the religious foundations lost these properties,

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their ability to perform communal services in the areas of religion, education and charity was also crippled. Bearing this fact in mind, it has been rightly argued that the post-1974 acts on the communal properties indicated, in practice, not only the violation of property rights but also educational rights. Indeed, having lost their financial resources, in addition to several community hospitals, many minority schools were gradually closed down (S¸ık 2002).

Independent of the acts of Turkish authorities, another external development that affected minority emigration was the 1948 founding of a Jewish state in Palestine.26 Although the establishment of Israel did not take the form of a crisis vis-a`-vis Turkey, the new state did become a destination country for Turkey’s Jewish minority. Thus, the immediate post-1948 mass emigration wave to Israel was due more to Israel’s own immense attractive power than anything in Turkey itself (Weiker 1988, p. 23).27 In the great wave of 1948 51, a total of 34,500 Jews making up nearly 40 per cent of the Jewish community in Turkey at the time emigrated to Israel (Benbassa and Rodrigue 2001, p. 386; Central Bureau of Statistics 2003). In response to objections from Arab countries, in November 1948, Ankara suspended emigration permits, however that decision was reversed after Turkey officially recognized Israel in March 1949. It was in the aftermath of that date that a breakneck rush ensued, with around 26,000 going that year alone. This wave continued in 1950 with 2,500 emigrants, and in 1951 with 1,300. By early 1951, the massive wave of Jewish emigration was completed (Weiker 1988, pp. 21 2).28 Although slowed down in the post-1951 period, the emigration of Jews to Israel continued, but the subsequent emigrations were smaller and show fluctuations by period (Tekeli 1990, p. 63). From 1951 to 1980 another 24,000 made their way to the Jewish state, for a total of 58,609 (Central Bureau of Statistics 2003). The number of emigrants swelled during and just after the Turkish political and economic turmoil, but the kin-state attraction on the side of Israel remained stable (Franz 1994, p. 333). For instance, following the 6 7 September 1955 Incidents, the number of emigrants climbed to over 1,700 in 1956 and to more than 1,900 in 1957, as compared to just 339 in 1955 (Weiker 1988, p. 22). Similarly, after Turkey’s 1960 military intervention, the number of emigrants shot up from 387 that year to 1,829 in 1961 and 968 in 1962. The 1964 conflict in Cyprus between Turks and Greeks also led to a spike in the number of Jewish emigrants, which rose above 1,000 in both 1964 and 1965. The number of Jewish emigrants also rose above 2,000 for the four years from 1969 to 1972 as a result of both the 1971 military intervention and economic woes.29 Also, when street violence among Turkish leftist and rightist groups reached its worst level in 1979 80, leading to the military intervention

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of 12 September 1980, the number of Jewish emigrants rose to nearly 1,000 per year (Weiker 1988, p. 22).

Thus, apart from minority-specific policies and practices, the same groups were also affected by the internal socio-political circumstances of the period. When external tensions were aggravated by internal crises, including military interventions, left-right cleavages, civil violence and economic problems, the contextual outcome, in addition to the founding of Israel, served as a spur to minority emigration, which can be traced through the diminishing population of minorities in census figures.

By 1955, the National Census counted 87,000 Greeks, 60,000 Armenians and 46,000 Jews, making up a total of 193,000. This figure correlated to 0.8 per cent of the 24 million total population (General Directorate of Statistics 1961). Compared to the 1945 Census, the numbers point to a decline of 17,000 in the Greek population and 31,000 in the Jewish population. The size of the Armenian population remained stable. As we have discussed, the main reason for the decline in Jewish population was the establishment of Israel. The Greeks emigrated mainly due to the impact of the Cyprus crisis.

The 1965 Census results confirm a similar declining tendency in minority populations. Altogether, there were 178,000 minorities, constituting nearly 0.6 per cent of the total 31.4 million population.

Owing to natural increases by birth, the Armenian population by and large maintained its size with 64,000. Jewish migration, on the other hand, had continued steadily since 1955 and by the 1965 Census, there were 38,000 Jews left in the country (see Table 1). Many Greeks moved to Greece after the 6 7 September Incidents, leaving behind a population of 76,000 (General Directorate of Statistics 1969).

After 1965, the Turkish Census questionnaire was changed, and the first question on religion was eliminated five years later. Since the 1985 Census no questions related to mother tongue or the language spoken at home have been asked. Interestingly, after 1965 the census data on language categories were not published, even though questions on this were included in the questionnaire. This was mainly due to increasing national sensitivity about the Kurdish issue. Consequently, data regarding the post-1965 size and changes in the Muslim and nonMuslim make-up of the Turkish population are lacking. Despite the absence of official statistics, sociological and anthropological observations of non-Muslim communities provide a basis for the assumption that the 1970s witnessed the most significant declines in Greek and Armenian populations due to emigration. In this decade, Greek emigration speeded up with the 1964 abrogation of the Ankara Agreement and continued throughout the 1970s, as discussed above.

On the other hand, the disruption of the natural Armenian population size awaited the crisis of the ASALA attacks, when many Turkish

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Armenians, who increasingly found themselves in an anxious state, left Turkey. Jewish migration to Israel continued in the 1970s, but this was mainly due to the violent cleavage between leftists and rightists at the time. The military intervention of 1980 not only ended a phase in Turkish politics but also ushered in a new era that inherited a very small minority population.

Emergence of multicultural politics: non-Muslim minorities as a signifier of the new social vision (1980 2005)

Political violence between ‘leftist’ and ‘rightist’ groups, stemming from the ideological fragmentation and societal polarization of the 1970s, culminated in 1980 with a military intervention. In 1982, the military regime replaced the 1961 Constitution with a new one. The new Constitution aimed at a major restructuring of Turkish democracy to prevent any recurrence of the recent domestic crises (Heper 1990). To this end, individual rights were for the most part restrained while it limited the rights of labour and other interest groups and barred trade unions, associations and cooperatives from engaging in political activities.

In the early 1980s, the emigration status of non-Muslim minorities in Turkey was indirectly affected by 1981 changes to the Turkish Citizenship Law. As noted by Soyarık (2000, p. 189), there was a largescale loss of citizenship by non-Muslim Turkish citizens for the reasons set out in Article 25 of the 1981 Citizenship Law. Under this article, the Council of Ministers may rule that the following persons have lost their Turkish citizenship: (1) those who have acquired foreign citizenship without obtaining permission, (2) males living abroad who are called by the authorities to do their military service but fail to do so within three months without excuse. These provisions were apparently often used as a kind of policy to make permanent the emigration of non-Muslim citizens living abroad.

The spirit of the 1982 Constitution sought to put an end to the political fragmentation of Turkish society which had dominated the previous decade. In place of ideological extremism, the military initially introduced Islam as the remedy for promoting social and political stability as well as national unity (Bora and Can 1991). A stronger emphasis began to be put upon the concept of a TurkishIslamic synthesis, which presumed that Turkishness and Islamism were complementary aspects in the fabric of Turkish nationalism (Bora 1998). The policy change took place in the arena of education, where mandatory courses with a content based upon Islamic ethics and the Sunni sect were introduced into the curriculum of primary schools.30 A widespread increase appeared in religious sentiment, publications and education alike (Salt 1995).

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The unitary function of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, however, fell short of securing national unity even among the Turkish-Muslim citizens of the country. Quite the contrary, the imagined unity of the Turkish nation entered a process of disintegration along the lines of ethno-cultural cleavages. It was in this context that particularistic claims of ethnic-Kurdish, Alevi-sectarian and fundamental-Islamist groups came to occupy Turkey’s political agenda. While seeking to liberate the religious sphere from state interference, Islamist groups, for example, projected an Islamic version of a ‘social contract’ modelled upon practices of the ‘golden age’ of religion (Bulac¸ 1992).

Turkish citizens of Kurdish origin, on the other hand, came to show greater interest in the issues of official recognition, legal-political accommodation and the free expression of ethno-linguistic traits, particularly in the fields of education, radio/TV broadcasting and cultural activities (Ekinci 1997). Additionally, non-Muslim minorities began to introduce retrospective criticisms against non-egalitarian practices of the Republican regime, and sought ways to accomplish substantive reforms that would relieve their ‘second-class’ position in the country (Levi 1998; S¸aul 1999; Bali 2000).

Thus, with the ideological bases of social confrontation fading away, ethno-cultural differentiation began to dominate Turkish minds.

Parallel to these internal developments, the end of the Cold War unleashed minority problems all over Europe in the 1990s, problems that had lain dormant within the bipolar atmosphere of the previous decades. The issue of equal accommodation of minority distinctions within a pluralistic configuration of legal-political settings came to preoccupy national and international circles for both security and humanitarian reasons (Liebich 1996). The 1993 Copenhagen Summit of the EU Council affirmed that EU candidate countries must have achieved, before accession, among other criteria, the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities (Verheugen 2000).

With the intensification of Turkish-EU relations, Turkish governments became more prone to increasing international pressures on the issues of democratization and minority protection (Toktas¸ 2005).

Starting from 1998, for example, the EU Commission’s annual reports have included comprehensive assessment of the prevailing condition of minority treatment and the legal-political status of sub-national differences in Turkey. Generally speaking, drawing attention to the traditional shortcomings of minority protection in Turkey, the reports have insisted on the extension of official recognition from three already covered non-Muslim communities (Armenians, Greeks and Jews) to the Kurdish, Alevi and Assyrian groups. To this end, it was insisted that both Muslim and non-Muslim sections of minority groups were to

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be provided with legal-political instruments through which they could promote and protect their distinct identities.31 Notwithstanding the driving impacts of the 1990s’ internal and external developments that created socio-political and diplomatic pressures on the Turkish governments to review traditional practices with regard to minority issues, officials in Turkey have long tended to associate the question of minority rights with its external dimension in those traditional categories of external interference, disloyal acts and secessionist aspirations. At first instance, the EU standards of minority rights, therefore, were largely received in official circles with great suspicion as if they would open a Pandora’s Box in the country, paving the way for national and territorial disintegration of the Republican state (Mete 1998, p. 18). More specifically, the act of granting public recognition to group-specific distinctions of both Muslim and non-Muslim groupings was generally considered an attempt destined to restore the highly destructive provisions of the Treaty of Sevres that were defeated at Lausanne (Demirel 1998).

However, the standards of the EU integration process strengthened the leverage of ethno-cultural claims within the country. Under the pressures of EU integration and increasing internal claims to cultural identity, the issue of minority rights has, over time, taken a central place in Turkish politics with a focus on what the fundamentals of Turkish citizenship should be. In this context, the concept of constitutional citizenship was viewed as a solution which would ensure internal peace as well as respect foreign policy considerations of the state (Soyarık 2000, p. 202). The concept has represented a kind of social contract safeguarding the recognition of different ethnic and religious groups whose loyalty to the state would supersede the principle of loyalty to the nation (Ic¸duygu 1996; Keyder 1997). This indicates that legal-political ramifications of the constitutional bond would be fashioned as a value-neutral ground of identification for the Turkish population without prejudicing any one section of TurkishMuslim or non-Muslim citizens. In this view, the constitution was expected to operate as an integrative mechanism through which nationals of the country would be subsumed into a common polity without divorcing themselves from their ethno-linguistic, sectarian and religious particularities (Ic¸duygu, C ¸ olak and Soyarık 1999, p. 192).

Thereby, the state would cease to be the representative institution of a single ethno-linguistic and religious community of citizens but would make room for the free expression of particular differences in protecting and promoting minorities’ cultural and linguistic features.

Although constitutional citizenship was suggested primarily as a possible solution to the Kurdish problem or the Islamic question, it also had implications for non-Muslim minorities. Turkish practices had hitherto established a close link between two notions of citizen-

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ship, namely equality and nationality. The full and complete scope of Turkish citizenship has been reserved to the privilege of ‘national citizens’, which has involved Turkish-Muslim citizens irrespective of ethno-linguistic distinctions. Although non-Muslim minorities have been considered within the formal scope of Turkish citizenship, because of the nationality-citizenship connection they have, at times, been subjected to unequal treatment through legal-political and economic policies, while the same understanding had inhibited the legal-political expression and accommodation of Muslim distinctions.

Partly under the impact of EU integration and partly in response to internal claims centred on the rise of ethno-cultural concerns and debates on constitutional citizenship, significant steps have been taken in the direction of creating a legal-political basis for a pluralistic setting in the country (Toktas¸ 2006a). In the 1990s, although Turkey continued to resist enlarging the existing framework of minority rights, the standards required by EU integration came to be recognized within the context of individual rights and freedoms. In 2002, major constitutional amendments were introduced. Under them, it became legal to broadcast in minority languages and dialects used traditionally by many Turkish citizens in their daily lives. Although the official language of education in the schools remained Turkish, special courses for different languages and dialects were thenceforth allowed. The Law on Religious Foundations was also amended. Foundations run by non-Muslim minorities were allowed to acquire and dispose of property.32 The year after, the establishment of new synagogues and churches was also allowed after the wording of the Law on Public Works was altered by replacing the word ‘mosques’ with the ecumenical ‘places of worship’.

Notwithstanding their shortcomings, the reforms have improved the legal-political standing of minority distinctions in Turkey. Yet, nonMuslim minorities continue to face problems, particularly due to the absence of legal recognition of religious foundations as well as restrictions on the training of clergy. Since it has not been considered within the scope of the Lausanne regime, the Assyrian community, for example, has not yet been permitted to have its own educational establishments and, consequently, has no legal ability to teach its liturgical language to its youth. Similarly, although they have traditionally been considered within the terms of the minority status and treated accordingly, the Greek-Orthodox and Armenian communities have not yet been permitted to establish theological schools to educate clergy. For example, government authorities have not yet permitted the re-opening of the Orthodox Seminary of Khalki, which has been closed since 1971.

However, the latest government measures signify that the Turkish nation-building process no longer proceeds in an exclusionist manner in terms of minority distinctions but has come to cover ethno-cultural

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differences within a pluralistic framework of a political formula of nationhood. The traditional connection, which had hitherto existed between nationality and citizenship and which had constituted a prime impetus in drawing a national portrait of the cultural unity of the Turkish-Muslim citizens of the country, underwent a comprehensive transformation. This transformation not only opened the doors wide for granting official recognition to intra-Muslim diversity but also fostered equal accommodation of non-Muslim minorities.

Without a doubt, as they credited the grounds of ethno-cultural diversity in Turkey, the post-1980 developments removed many of the factors promoting the emigration of non-Muslim minorities. However, attempts towards creating a Turkish nation of Turkish-Muslim citizens had already resulted in the gradual homogenization of the population in terms of religious affiliation as many of the non-Muslim minorities moved out. Coming into the 1990s, the proportion of the latter group of citizens in the general population had declined to 0.2 per cent.

According to estimates from the early 1990s, apart from earlier migrations, during the last three decades, over 20,000 Armenians, 23,000 Jews and more than 55,000 Greeks had emigrated from Turkey (Franz 1994, p. 331). Today, community sources count no more than 50,000 Armenian, 27,000 Jewish and 3,000 Greek minorities left behind (Du¨ndar 2000, p. 138) (see Table 1). Interestingly enough, it is estimated that under normal demographic conditions, non-Muslim minorities in Turkey would have numbered today around 1.2 million had they not emigrated (Courbage and Fargues 1998, p. 115).

Concluding remarks As far as the status of non-Muslims is concerned, today the main impediment to the modern Turkish nation-state restructuring itself as an entity that accommodates religious and ethnic diversities is the persistence of the ideas of ‘political integrity’ and ‘organic society’ as the central political ethos and the purpose of the state. However, the politics of state-society relationship of the past decade has been moulded by events challenging the current idea of a minority rights regime in the country. Among several factors, the revival of ethnic and religious identities and Turkey’s EU membership prospect have been of particular significance. Both of these developments have been issues questioning and challenging the current status of non-Muslims in Turkey. In accordance with these challenges, new modalities of minority rights regime have been suggested along with the likelihood of a new understating of the notions of nation-state and citizenship in our globalized world.

The process and transformation of nation-building in Turkey entail two major characteristics concerning the status of non-Muslim mino-

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rities. First, the dual formulation of Turkish citizenship has operated in an assimilationist manner with respect to Turkish-Muslim elements.

Since they have historically represented ethno-cultural others of the Turkish-Muslim population, the same formula has shown an exclusivist attitude towards members of the non-Muslim minorities. The demographic, linguistic, cultural and economic policies of nation-building have, therefore, advanced at the expense of non-Muslim minorities’ ethno-cultural, demographic and economic presence in the country.

Second, the inherent linkage that was constituted between national and religious identity has also affected the citizenship position of Turkey’s non-Muslim minorities. The nation-building process has usually gone hand-in-hand with the construction of modern citizenship. Thus, although the three non-Muslim groups the Armenians, Greeks and Jews were granted a secure position under the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the policy practices of the Republican government have often created two categories of citizenry: ‘national’ and ‘nonnational’ citizens. It was because of this outsider position in the mainstream identity category that non-Muslims minorities have often opted for emigration ever since the lands of Turkey felt the impact of modern nationalism. Putting aside the inflow of Muslims from former Ottoman lands to Turkey, particularly from the Balkans and the Caucasus, the outflow of non-Muslims out of Turkey has contributed to the emergence of a demographic, that is ‘national’ Islamization’ in modern Turkey. It was this process that created today’s widely used characterization of Turkey as ‘a Muslim country because of its 99 per cent Muslim population’. This indeed, runs contrary to the demographic profile presented on the eve of the Republic, as the size of the non-Muslim population in Turkey today amounts to no more than 0.14 per cent out of over 70 million in total.

As recent European Union-based reforms bring about a substantial transformation in the traditional parameters of the Turkish minority rights regime, it seems that a system of equality within ethno-cultural diversity will gradually replace the dual practices of the Turkish regime (Ic¸duygu and Soner, 2006, p. 464). Post-Cold-War Turkish politics, particularly from the outset of the twenty-first century, is paving the way for a regime which is more responsive to both Muslim and nonMuslim minority distinctions. However, it is still not overly easy to claim that universal principles of equality and non-discrimination, embedded in the modern concept of citizenship status, are implemented fully in the Turkish context with regard to the treatment of nonMuslim minorities. As a country ‘whose state-centric politics has been facing a strong legitimacy and governing crisis, and whose social and cultural life has been generating identity-based conflict’ (Keyman and Ic¸duygu 2005, p. 1), today Turkey has to make a crucial decision about the future of its non-Muslim minorities. These political dynamics are

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forcing Turkey to decide either to shake itself radically in such a way as to alter its minorities-related policies and practices in a democratic and liberal form or to decide once again to keep its state-centric and nationalist stand towards pluralism. Although the latter choice has been the dominant tendency in the political culture of Turkey for decades, today, in the context of EU accession process, there is a great and realistic possibility for the reforms which may stop the diminution of the presence of non-Muslims in the country.

Notes 1. Throughout this article, while the terms ‘Muslims’ and ‘Islam’ are sometimes used interchangeably, we are aware of the fact that referring in blanket terms to Islam and Muslims poses some problems. Therefore here one must note that at both theoretical and empirical levels, while the term ‘Muslims’ is often justified as a collective self-ascriptive label, the term ‘Islam’ in fact covers a huge variety of practices, from the secular to the fundamentalist, and of course in Turkey from Sunnis to Alevis in terms of religious grouping.

2. In this essay, the term ‘minority’ refers to officially recognized minority groups in Turkey. The minority rights regime in Turkey carries the legacy of the Ottoman millet system as codified in Articles 37 45 of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. The Ottoman millet system had granted recognition and protection to three major non-Muslim communities, i.e. the Greeks, Armenians and Jews. In a similar vein, the Lausanne framework recognized the same groups as the country’s minority populations. Thus, smaller churches of the East, including Assyrians, were neither taken into the context of the traditional millet system nor granted official recognition in modern Turkey.

3. A number of studies on citizenship and nationalism in Turkey illustrate the periodic shifts in the definition and content of ‘Turk’ (Bora 1998; Kiris¸c¸i 2000; Soyarık 2000; Toktas¸ 2006b).

4. For a comprehensive elaboration of the ethnic and religious diversity of the population in Turkey, see Andrews (1989).

5. The emigration of Muslims from Turkey is a relatively new phenomenon. Unlike the British, Germans, Italians, Greeks, Chinese or Indians, for example, the Muslim Turks had no particular history of large-scale emigration in modern times until after the signing of the bilateral 1961 Turkish-West German agreement, which initially permitted Turkish men to enter West Germany on temporary one-year work contracts and was later expanded to permit the entry of women and families.

6. Only over the last decade or so has Turkey been increasingly confronted with the migration of non-Muslims coming from neighbouring countries, largely to find temporary informal employment or to use Turkey as a transit zone to go to the countries in the West.

7. For a detailed elaboration of the Alevis in Turkey, see, for instance, Shankland (2003b).

8. As elaborated in detail by Yıldız (1998), the first articulation of these three dominant currents of thought, ‘the three ways of policy’, was by Yusuf Akc¸ura, a prominent figure of pan-Turkism.

9. Some aspects of this type of argument are very clear in Kazancıgil (1981) and Meeker (2002).

10. In the same census Bulgarians numbered 135,887, for a share of 0.9 per cent of the total population (Karpat 1985, pp. 148 9).

11. In the related literature, the notion of ‘fifth-column activities’ refers to a group of persons inside the battle lines of a territory engaged in a conflict, who secretly sympathize with the enemy, and who engage in espionage or sabotage sometimes also referred to as a ‘Trojan horse’.

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12. Here one should note that the tragic events of the forced migration and mass killings of Armenians in Anatolia in 1915 16 caused the unresolved issue of the long-standing ‘genocide’ claims of Armenians and their rejection by Turks.

13. Some of the figures given by Selek (1987) are significantly lower than the related figures given by other sources; for instance, various sources give the number of Greeks as over 1.2 1.5 million in the period 1914 20 and the total number of Muslims more than 11 million.

14. Between the second half of the nineteenth century and the years of the War of Independence, around 5.5 million Muslims arrived in today’s Turkish lands from the Balkans, the Caucasus and Crimea (Kiris¸c¸i 1996, p. 385).

15. During the later stages of the War of Independence, some Greeks in the Black Sea region, specifically the Pontiac Greeks, fled to Istanbul, thus raising the size of the city’s Greek population.

16. The law mainly served to relocate Kurdish tribes in eastern and south-eastern Anatolia in response to then-ongoing Kurdish rebellions (Kiris¸c¸i and Winrow 1997).

17. It should be mentioned that the Turkish census did not make categorizations on the basis of recognized minority groups. Instead it covered the religious and linguistic breakdown of the non-Muslim population. Although the majority of Armenians in Turkey were Gregorian, there were also Catholic and Protestant Armenians. Similarly, among the Greeks, there were Protestants as well. Therefore, the figures here were arrived at by distributing different sects into the three major non-Muslim groups.

18. The 1930 Ankara Agreement between the Turkish and Greek governments provided that, regardless of their birthplace and nationality, all Greeks living in Istanbul were granted the right of residence.

19. The damage in Istanbul included 1,004 houses, 4,348 shops, twenty-seven pharmacies and laboratories, twenty-one factories, 110 restaurants, a number of cafes and hotels, seventy-three churches, twenty-six schools, five sports clubs and two cemeteries (Alexandris 1992, pp. 259). In Izmir, the attacks destroyed fourteen houses, six shops, one pavilion, the Greek Consulate and a Greek church. It was reported that fifty-seven persons were wounded in the same city (Kılıc¸dere 2000).

20. The Greek citizens of Istanbul numbered 26,431 in 1927, 17,672 in 1935, 13,598 in 1945 and 11,879 in 1955 (Alexandris 1992, p. 281).

21. In July 1964, government spokesman M. Soysal, announced: In response to the unfriendly policy of the Greek government, the Turkish government has decided to terminate the privileged treatment that has been accorded to Greek nationals in Turkey. . . . Unless the Greek government changes its prevailing attitude related to the Cyprus question, all Greek nationals in Istanbul may be expelled en masse’ (Alexandris 1992, p. 282).

22. In the context of Turkey’s European Union membership bid, the question of how Turkey is handling the issue of reopening Heybeliada seminary has been hotly debated in recent years, and in 2004 some argued that Ankara favoured reopening the school for Orthodox priests. One should note that the European Union often criticizes Turkey for failing to ensure the religious freedoms of non-Muslim minorities.

23. ASALA staged eighty-six attacks against Turkish nationals between the years of 1975 and 1985, resulting in the deaths of forty-seven Turkish citizens, thirty-two of whom were officials, and the injuries of nineteen other officials (Franz 1994, p. 327).

24. In order to put the economic resources of religious foundations particularly those of non-Muslims under state control, the Law on Religious Foundations (Vakıflar Kanunu), dated 1936, required these foundations to declare a list of properties in their possession.

25. It was asserted that (in a secret declaration) the militarily ruled government made assurances in 1981 that no further action would be taken against the property of non-Muslim minorities’ religious foundations (Ac¸an 1999). However, the law remained in force and the

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confiscation remained permanent, especially of the properties belonging to Armenian foundations (Oran 2001, p. 229).

26. For an in-depth elaboration of Jewish immigration from Turkey to Israel, see Toktas¸ (2006a).

27. It must also be noted that Jews immigrated to countries other than Israel. According to one estimate, between 1948 and 1973 around 20,000 Jews immigrated to nations such as France and Austria, as well as countries in the Americas (Liberles 1984, p. 141).

28. Not all the Jews in this emigration wave ultimately remained in Israel. In the mid-1950s, 10 per cent of the total immigrants returned to Turkey. Some returnees later re-migrated from Turkey to other countries in Europe and North and South America (Benbassa and Rodrigue 2001, p. 386).

29. It should be noted that the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War that ended with Israel’s victory also drew some of Turkey’s Jews to move to Israel. It was not only the pride felt in winning a war in just six days that attracted many Jews worldwide, but also that Israel’s economy moved into a period of development and prosperity after the war.

30. It was only in 1987 that Christians and Jews were excused from these lessons, and in 1990 they were completely freed from any obligation to participate in classes on religion or ethics (Franz 1994, p. 333).

31. Such a point has been emphasized in the most recent regular report on Turkey released by the Commission as well (EU Commission 2005).

32. Throughout the implementation of the confiscations, foundations of the Greek minority lost 152 of their properties, Armenian minority foundations lost forty-eight and Assyrian foundations lost six. Today, the religious foundations of non-Muslim minorities have 165 properties (77 Greek, 52 Armenian, 10 Assyrian, 19 Jewish, 1 Bulgarian, 3 Chaldean and 2 Georgian) (Sık 2002). After the amendment was adopted, complications arose. Religious foundations run by non-Muslim minorities were allowed to register property that they actually used as long as they could provide proof of ownership. However, the procedures for registration were complicated and subject to frequent bureaucratic intervention. Furthermore, the amendment did not cover the authority of the General Directorate of Foundations to dismiss the board of trustees. The amendment also failed to address the question of the already confiscated properties of non-Muslim foundations. The problems related to bureaucratic procedures were resolved with additional decrees in 2003.

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AHMET IC ¸ DUYGU is Professor in the Department of International Relations, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkey.

ADDRESS: Department of International Relations, Koc University, Rumeli Feneri Yolu, 34450, Sariyer, Istanbul, Turkey. Email: aicduygu @ ku.edu.tr

S¸ULE TOKTAS¸ is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations, Isik University, Istanbul, Turkey.

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ADDRESS: Department of International Relations, Isik University, 34980, Sile, Istanbul, Turkey. Email: sule@isikun.edu.tr B. ALI SONER is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications, Izmir University of Economics, Izmir, Turkey.

ADDRESS: Department of Media and Communications, lzmir University of Economics, Sakarya Caddesi, No. 156, 35330, Balcova, lzmir. Email: ali.soner@ieu.edu.tr