Unravelling a Trade-Off: Reconciling Minority Rights and Full Citizenship in Turkey

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With Turkey’s recognition as an official candidate for accession to the EU, the rhetoric of minority rights has become a part of the national discourse. Various ethnic and religious groups started to raise their voice in demanding not only individual rights, but also the constitutional recognition of their distinct identities through the effective granting of minority rights. At the same time, they vehemently opposed being 'branded' as minorities. What may seem to be a counter-intuitive reaction at first glance is explicable and indeed expected in light of the unique historical context of Turkey, where official minority status has been exclusively granted to non-Muslim citizens who are by and large perceived by both state and society as lesser citizens whose loyalty to the nation is untrustworthy. Aware of this social reality, and not having been immune to the widespread social prejudices against non-Muslim minorities, the unrecognized minorities rejected minority status arguing instead that they were among the ‘founding peoples.The paradoxical situation in which various minorities demand cultural recognition and what are essentially minority rights while at the same time vehemently rejecting the ‘minority tag’ begs for the question: how should Turkey’s minority question be resolved without consolidating the existing social pillarizations within society? To address that question, this article advocates the development of a new constitutional citizenship model universally encompassing all minorities rather than the creation of new minority regimes granting special protection to specific groups.