The Other Greeks: The Forgotten Ethnic Minority in Turkey

Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi sosyal bilimler dergisi, 2009

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the experiences of Muslim Turkish minority in Greece and the Greek Orthodox minority in Turkey in the course of nation-state making from 1924 until today. Greece and Turkey are two neighbouring nation-states created upon the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Yet, harboring two ethnic minorities reminiscent of the past Ottoman period-the Muslim Turks of Greece and the Greek Orthodox of Turkey-stood for both as an impediment in their nation-state making project. For his reason and especially until the final decade, both minorities were regarded as potential threats to the national unity and security of these states. Hence they have become victims of bilateral issues of conflict between Greece and Turkey. Brubaker's theoretical framework of ethnic relations model, the 'triadic nexus'; which links the minority communities themselves, the states in which they live, and their external homelands, is adopted in this paper in order to offer an in-depth analysis of Greek and Turkish minority policies and their implications for both minorities until the final decade. For the period post 1995 until today, though, Sata's 'quadratic nexus', which incorporates the fourth factor of 'international organizations', in this case particularly the European Union, is used to elucidate the positive change in both states' minority policies.

A comprehensive summary of the main problems ethno-national minorities face in Greece

TESEV Publications , 2010

The word most frequently uttered by Greece and Turkey with regard to their Muslim and non-Muslim minorities, respectively, is most probably ‘reciprocity.’ For more than half a century, in both countries, virtually all administrations,irrespective of their political leanings and ideological base, resorted to the good old ‘reciprocity argument’ to legitimize their laws, policies, and practices restricting the minority rights of Muslim and non-Muslim communities. Both states have for decades justified their policies on the basis of a theory that argues that Article 45 of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne provided the legal basis for reciprocity. Deliberately distorting a crystal-clear provision, which simply confers parallel obligations on Greece and Turkey for the protection of the Muslim and non-Muslim minorities, respectively, both states have for decades held their own citizens hostage, pitting them against each other in the name of defeating the other in foreign policy. Disregarding the objections of international lawyers and institutions that the reciprocity principle does not apply to human rights treaties and that states cannot condition the protection of the fundamental rights of their citizens on the policies of other states, both Greece and Turkey have successfully manipulated their national public opinion into believing in the legitimacy of treating minorities as lesser citizens. This report analyzes the implications of reciprocity policies on the day-to-day lives of Muslim and non-Muslim minorities in Greece and Turkey, specifically their impact on the community foundations2 belonging to these minorities. With a specific focus on the property and self-management issues of Muslim and non-Muslim community foundations in Greece and Turkey, the report situates the issue in its historical context and trace the evolution of the ‘community foundation issue’ from Lausanne to the present day. Drawing similarities and differences between the laws, policies, and practices of Greek and Turkish states vis-à-vis their minority foundations, the report critically assesses the progress made to this day as well as identify the outstanding issues.

2013

Examining the on-going dilemma of the management of diversity in Turkey from a historical and legal perspective, this book argues that the state’s failure to accommodate ethno-religious diversity is attributable to the founding philosophy of Turkish nationalism and its heavy penetration into the socio-political and legal fibre of the country. It examines the articulation and influence of the founding principle in law and in the higher courts’ jurisprudence in relation to the concepts of nation, citizenship, and minorities. In so doing, it adopts a sceptical approach to the claim that Turkey has a civic nationalist state, not least on the grounds that the legal system is generously littered by references to the Turkish ethnie and to Sunni Islam. Also arguing that the nationalist stance of the Turkish state and legal system has created a legal discourse which is at odds with the justification of minority protection given in international law, this book demonstrates that a reconstruction of the founding philosophy of the state and the legal system is necessary, without which any solution to the dilemmas of managing diversity would be inadequate.

Oxford Bibliographies, 2022

xml?pr nt 2/18 aspects of the Lausanne Convention. The findings and arguments of these bureaucrat-scholars on this crucial event laid the foundations of a more scientific approach to the historical and legal aspects of this event which would be represented by the highly specialized texts of Stephen Pericles Ladas and Dimitri Pentzopoulos. Ladas 1932 has remained the most authoritative documentation and assessment of the Lausanne Convention from the perspectives of domestic and international law. Pentzopoulos 1962 treats the legal side of the convention as part of a broader research agenda addressing all aspects of the population exchange, mostly, in relation to Greece and in a relatively favorable language. Özsu 2015 takes up the convention exclusively from the perspective of international law and provides the most comprehensive and theoretical analysis to this date. In the meantime, several general studies such as Yıldırım 2006 address the legal and institutional aspects of the exchange from more holistic and comparative perspectives. Two international conferences held at Oxford and Istanbul stand out for having provided platforms for the students of the subject to present and share their research with a wider audience. The compilation of the proceedings of these two conferences, Hirschon 2003 and Pekin 2005, facilitated the debates and research on the exchange. These two volumes contain articles on the legal aspects of the Lausanne Convention involving property liquidation and compensation as well as issues of refugee settlement and minority rights. The proceedings of the conference in Istanbul were also translated into Greek and published in Tsitselikis 2006 with a few additional articles on the subject. The centennial of the event in 2023 is anticipated to see the publication of many more monographs and collected volumes. Devedji, Alexandre. L'échange obligatoire des minorités grecques et turques en vertu de la convention de Lausanne du 30 janvier 1923. Paris: Imprimerie du Montparnasse et de Persan-Beaumont, 1929. Examines the juridical status of the Ottoman Greeks and the impact of political developments upon their status after the Balkan Wars. Legal impediments that arose during the implementation of the exchange convention concerning the status of the remaining Greek populations and the patriarchate in Constantinople highlighted. Settlement and indemnification of Greek refugees is covered. Presented as a doctorate thesis to the Faculty of Law at Université de Paris in 1929.

Libra Publisher, 2019

What influences the political representation of minorities? Does a non-core group pursue a certain pattern of collective political behavior, or does it have the ability to alter it through struggle with other groups by calculating the existing opportunities and restrictions? This book addresses these important questions by focusing on the history of political representation of the Muslim-Turkish minority in Greece and the Greek-Orthodox minority in Turkey, two communities whose rights are linked to each other via the “reciprocity principle” written in the Lausanne Treaty, signed by two countries that have long-lasting conflicts. Drawing on presentation of related political history, systematic coding of parliamentary debates and works, minority and mainstream newspapers, and elite interviews, the author analyzes and explains ignored linkages between institutions, bilateral relations between Greece and Turkey, and the role of external factors that enable or constrain minority communities’ access to political life. This study which adopts a historical institutionalism approach and, by integrating theory of both comparative politics and international relations, shows how the minority groups’ political participation and the effectiveness of their representation has been determined by the triangle of the two states’ choice of nationalism, reciprocity and Europeanization policies, mainly argues that internal factors such as groups’ capability for competition and institutional features of the political system in the host-state mostly override states’ bilateral relations with the kin-state and international factors. As a result, for the Greek and Turkish case, the host-states generally pursue the policy of state-controlled involvement of their minorities in the political life, where the existence of the threatening kin-state and minority groups’ strong demographic features lead to avoidance of full assimilation and exclusion from political representation.

2014

The hybridization of the Greek Minority in Istanbul……………………………………………….5 Chapter III The growth of Turkish Nationalist Movement………………………………………………………….7 o The development of Turkish nationalism-Causes………………………………………..8 o Turkish Nationalism: the alternative ideology to the Ottoman's Empire defunct past……………………………………………………………………………………………….9 Chapter IV The fate of the Greek minority in Istanbul after the establishment of the Turkish nation-state……………………………………………………………………………………………………………10 Chapter V Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Dimostenis Yağcıoğlu. "'Internalization' of Reciprocity Among Members of Greek-Orthodox and Turkish-Muslim Minorities: How Can it be Explained? Some Initial Reflections", in Samim Akgönül (ed): Reciprocity: Greek and Turkish Minorities - Law, Religion and Politics. İstanbul, Turkey: İstanbul Bilgi University Press, 2008. pp. 103-115