Turkey and its Ethnic Minorities
The nation-building process in the Republic of Turkey necessitated two maneuvers:
Distancing from Islam and the adoption of secularism
The creation of a monolithic Turkish national identity- through language, creation of a national history that predates Islam etc.
However, due to migration, its Ottoman Empire roots, and the rich history and peoples of its geographic location, Turkey is home to tens of ethnic minority groups.
In the Republic of Turkey, the only groups that are legally considered "minorities" are non-Muslim communities of Armenians, Jews, the Rum Orthodox, and Christian groups such as Assyrians. As recognized minorities, these communities are allowed to run their own private schools, provide instruction in the mother tongue, and exercise their religion freely. However, as their numbers are very low, many of their schools are facing the danger of being closed down due to low enrollment numbers. Their churches and synagogues have also fallen on hard times.
Forgotten-or-Assimilated-Minorities-in-the-Education-System-of-Turkey.pdfMinority Rights Group International's 2009 report by Nurcan Kaya on Minorities in the Education System is an excellent resource.
Non-Muslim Minorities of Turkey
The Minority Rights Group International reports the following information on the non-Muslim minorities of Turkey:
"Armenians are among the native people of Anatolia. Their number was around 2 million during the Ottoman Empire. Today, slightly more than 60,000 remain.
Assyrians, also known as Syrian Orthodox Christians or Syriacs, are a Christian minority originating from Mardin and Hakkari provinces. Their population is estimated to be around 15,000.
Jews: The majority of Jewish community in Turkey are descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Their language is Ladino, a variant of fifteenth century Spanish. There is also an ethnic Ashkenazi minority, speaking Yiddish. There are around 23,000 Jews, in Turkey, 600 of whom are Ashkenazi.
Rum Orthodox Christians: The Rum Orthodox community comprises ethnic Rums as well as Arabic- and Turkish speaking Antakya Rum Orthodox Christians (Antiochians) who are not ethnically Rum. Their population is estimated to be around 16,000."
(Kaya 2009, 10)
The Muslim minority populations:
Quick note: Turkey's population was 71 million in 2009.
"Alevis are known to be the largest religious minority in Turkey. Their population is estimated to be between 10 and 33% of the total population. Their religious practices and philosophy are considerably different from the Sunni Muslim belief. Ethnically, they are mainly Azerbaijani Turkish, Arab, Turkish and Kurdish (there are also some Roma Alevis).
Kurds are the largest ethnic and linguistic minority in Turkey. The estimated numbers claimed by various sources range from 10 to 23% of the population. Kurds speak Kurdish, which is divided into Kurmanci, Zaza and other dialects. The majority are Sunni Muslims, while a significant number are Alevis. Historically concentrated in the eastern and southeastern region of the country, where they constitute the overwhelming majority, large numbers have migrated to urban areas in western Turkey.
Caucasians consist of various groups of peoples of Caucasian origin, each of which has its own language. Ninety per cent of Caucasians in Turkey are Circassian, while the majority of the remaining 10% are Abkhaz. All Caucasians are Muslim. According to the Federation of Caucasian Associations, there are 6 million Caucasians in Turkey.
Laz are a people of Caucasian origin sharing similar roots with the Migrels who live between Abkhazia and Georgia today. They speak Lazuri, a South Caucasian language related to Georgian and Abkhazian. Their number today is estimated to be between 750,000 and 1.5 million.
Roma live all across the country and their population is estimated to be around 2 million. The vast majority of Roma are Muslim (nearly half Sunni and half Alevi), while there are a small number of Rum Orthodox."
(Kaya 2009, 10)
Importance of a Census to Count Minority Populations
I have been pleasantly surprised to find the above numerical estimates for Turkey's minority populations. However, I also believe they need to be taken with some grain of salt. In Turkey, the census does not ask of one's ethnic heritage. (Ironically, Turks' religious affiliation is noted on our birth certificates! Mine says "Islam" without my input or consent.) This is in stark contrast with the U.S. where the race/ ethnicity question constitutes a major part of the census. This issue comes up regularly in my Race and Ethnic Relations courses. After learning about race as a socially constructed concept, students often wonder why we do not get rid of the racial and ethnic categories altogether. "If they're not rooted in reality and if they contribute to greater prejudice and racism, why even think in racial and ethnic terms to begin with?", they ask. The answer is that while these classifications are not rooted in biology and are somewhat arbitrarily assigned (for example, what defines as person as "Black" or "Asian," especially if they come from mixed parentage?), THEY ARE REAL IN THEIR CONSEQUENCES. For example, because Black Americans have been historically discriminated against and barred from the right to own a home, their net worth suffers today. Therefore by asking the "race-ethnicity" question and looking at data on poverty, wealth, home ownership, unemployment, educational attainment etc. across different racial and ethnic groups, we can evaluate the well-being of each group vis-a-vis the other. This allows us to see, for example, that white Americans (Americans of European descent is a better term) do better overall, socio-economically speaking, compared to groups like Native Americans, Black Americans, and Latinx Americans. These data allow us to ask the "why" question. Why is that so? And how can we do better as a society by all our people, not just some people or groups?
In Turkey, unfortunately, the purposeful avoidance of the "minority" question allows us to also avoid the group by group comparisons. One of my research questions at the beginning of my project was: How well do Circassians do socio-economically, compared to other groups? In the absence of demographic data based on ethno-linguistic heritage, this question is impossible to answer.
The Ban on Teaching, Learning, and Broadcasting in the Mother Tongue
In fact, the particular social construction of Turkish nationalism in Turkey obliviates the idea of minority rights altogether. The Muslim minority populations listed above do not enjoy any minority rights. In fact, Article 42 of the Constitution bans "instruction in languages other than Turkish as mother tongue and a ban on teaching a language other than Turkish as mother tongue" (Kaya 2009). Thus, for many decades, Kurds, Circassians, Laz and other minority groups were not only de jure banned from learning and teaching their mother tongue in schools or broadcasting in their mother tongue in the mass media but also were de facto banned from even speaking it at home. This began changing in 2002.
The process of Turkey's accession to the European Union required some changes in how Turkey treated its minorities. Thus, in the last two decades, broadcast in mother tongues other than Turkish and teaching in such languages has become legal.
The Human Rights Watch notes that while the law banned education and broadcast rights in all mother tongues, other than Turkish, the real target was the Kurdish people and the teaching and learning of Kurdish. Why would that be the case?
The Kurdish "Question"
Like Armenians (and unlike Circassians), Kurds are among the native population of Anatolia. Kurds, as an ethno-linguistic group are also found in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, all Turkey's neighbors to its Southeast.
This BBC article summarizes the background of the hostility Turkey has shown against its Kurdish citizens:
"Kurds received harsh treatment at the hands of the Turkish authorities for generations. In response to uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s, many Kurds were resettled, Kurdish names and costumes were banned, the use of the Kurdish language was restricted, and even the existence of a Kurdish ethnic identity was denied, with people designated 'Mountain Turks.'
In 1978, Abdullah Ocalan established the PKK, which called for an independent state within Turkey. Six years later, the group began an armed struggle. Since then, more than 40,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.
In the 1990s the PKK rolled back on its demand for independence, calling instead for greater cultural and political autonomy, but continued to fight. In 2013, a ceasefire was agreed after secret talks were held.
The ceasefire collapsed in July 2015, after a suicide bombing blamed on IS* killed 33 young activists in the mainly Kurdish town of Suruc, near the Syrian border. The PKK accused the authorities of complicity and attacked Turkish soldiers and police. The Turkish government subsequently launched what it called a "synchronised war on terror" against the PKK and IS.
Since then, several thousand people - including hundreds of civilians - have been killed in clashes in south-eastern Turkey." (BBC 2019)
The current Recep Tayyip Erdoğan regime in Turkey has been relentless in its punitive treatment of those who are asking for a democratic treatment of the Kurdish people. In 2016, over 2,000 academics signed a petition called titled: “We will not be a party to this crime!” The petition is copied in full below:
As a result of signing this petition, the signatories, some of whom are my dear friends and some of the best academic minds of Turkey, have been subjected to criminal prosecution with an accusation of "terrorism." The Academics for Peace Initiative writes:
"Hundreds of them have been fired from their jobs, their passports have been cancelled and confiscated, they were prevented from finding jobs, several were physically and verbally threatened, others were taken into custody, four of them who read a press statement condemning these violations were imprisoned, hundreds have been robbed from the right to work in the public sector through governmental decrees and finally all of them are currently facing individualized court. In short, the signatories have faced 'civil death.'"
Today, the democratic demands of the Kurdish people are being represented by Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), whose leadership has distanced itself from armed resistance. In 2015, with an exciting left-wing pro-democracy program and inclusive platform combining green demands with women's rights, LGBTQ rights, minority rights, workers' rights etc., HDP has gained over 13% of the vote (the quota a political party has to reach to send representatives to the parliament is 10%) and entered the parliament. However, in 2016, the Turkish government began prosecuting HDP's leadership on charges of terrorism. In 2018, Ahval reported that "almost one in three members of Turkey’s top Kurdish political party have been detained since the ceasefire between Kurdish militants and the Turkish state collapsed in July 2015." Selahattin Demirtaş, the young, sympathetic, approachable chairman of the party (whom some have dubbed Turkey's Barack Obama) has been in prison since November 2016 and the voice of the party has been effectively silenced. With his imprisonment, the future of democracy and minority rights in Turkey appears bleak.
Personal Connections
I grew up in a Turkey where I hadn't heard of the words "Armenian Genocide" until I was a junior in high-school. I also did not fully know that one of my best friends in high-school was of Armenian descent. She never told me about it. I never asked. We only briefly discussed this recently, 20 years into our friendship. I also did not know that some of my best friends were of Kurdish heritage. While Armenians and Kurds hid their identities, I remember boasting about my Circassian identity openly.
I have recently asked a friend who studies the Kurdish community in the Southeast of Turkey whether she had come across any studies comparing the Circassian diaspora in Turkey to the Kurdish community. She replied that while she didn't particularly know of any comparative academic studies, her personal take was that Circassians have been positioned as the "model minority" against Kurds. Perhaps this had to do with their migrant status. Circassians had been transplanted to the Ottoman Empire through exile. They had to make it in their new home, so they had to paint themselves as loyal and docile (although the stereotype about Circassians is that they're hot blooded and wild). On the other hand, Kurds are one of the native peoples of Anatolia and therefore, had a claim to their own territorial rights. This claim was supported by the Allied Forces in the aftermath of World War I, to be quashed completely in 1923.
The BBC writes about the historical rationale behind these claims:
"After World War One and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres. Such hopes were dashed three years later, however, when the Treaty of Lausanne, which set the boundaries of modern Turkey, made no provision for a Kurdish state and left Kurds with minority status in their respective countries. Over the next 80 years, any move by Kurds to set up an independent state was brutally quashed."
The Turkish state has not been supportive of minority rights of any group since its formation. However, I do believe that Circassians have felt free to speak their own languages and follow their own customs in their communities. They have also largely assimilated to the mainstream culture. While Kurds have also assimilated, their relative geographical homogeneity has perhaps allowed them to resist the oppressive Turkish state more consistently and effectively. Therefore, they have emerged as the enemy of the state while Circassians were allowed greater autonomy.
These are some initial thoughts on the subject. I will be going deeper and reading more academic studies to answer this question. One such study I have begun reading is Ayşe Serdar's inquiry into the Laz community.