The project titled “The Political Rights and Behaviors of Non-Muslim Minorities in Turkey under Rising Political Polarity” on non-Muslim minorities in Turkey, carried out by Dr. Burcu Taşkın of our Department of Political Science and Public Administration and Utku Özer from Panteion University, is entitled to receive a research grant from the Research Center for Humanities.
In the project, Taşkın focused on how new ways could be developed to protect and exercise the rights of non-Muslim minorities in Turkey in a political atmosphere that has polarized between the ruling and opposition sectors since 2013 and is now reflected in electoral alliances.
In the study, which mainly builds on identities the increasing political polarization in Turkey since 2013 due to various political and social events such as the Gezi Events, terrorist attacks, presidential elections and military uprisings, the researchers focus on the political behavior of non-Muslim minorities in Turkey, emphasizing generating creative solutions to protect their collective and individual rights. In the study, minority communities’ perceptions of political polarization, which targets them twice and limits political inclusion that allows them to express their rights and demands, were also discussed by the authors in the context of political democratization.
According to the researchers, the presence of minority deputies in the Turkish parliament since 2015 has made this study important in terms of revealing the political behaviors and preferences of minority groups. In the study, which utilized face-to-face interviews and surveys with prominent politicians, journalists, and academics from each minority group as a methodology, it was aimed to determine whether the minorities preferred to stay in the current ruling party, to vote for the secular parties closer to them or to vote for the parties that nominated candidates from the minorities.
The topics covered in the study also included recording the effectiveness of minority deputies in the Turkish parliament in terms of field work, as well as interviews with minority deputies and clarifying the discourses adopted by these communities. The research also revealed the impact of Turkey’s recent bilateral tensions between minority groups’ kin states (Greece, Armenia, and Israel) and its much-discussed policies, such as the reopening of the Hagia Sophia and Chora museums as mosques in the summer of 2020.