Between citizenship and the millet: the Greek minority in republican Turkey

Abstract

Turkey's Greek minority is one of the three minorities officially recognized in the Treaty of Lausanne, the founding document of republican Turkey. Despite the protective treaty provisions, it suffered persistent discrimination throughout the republican era due to state suspicion against all minority groups, souring Greek-Turkish relations and the Cyprus question. This led to the sharp decline of the demographic size of the minority from about 125,000 persons in the mid-1920s to about 2,500 persons in the late 1990s. Nevertheless, Turkey's political reform initiated in the early 2000s opened a window of opportunity for the survival of the minority. Several measures restituting minority individuals and institutions to their rights and assets were taken.This study embarks on an overview of the history of Turkey's Greek minority. It then explores the state of Turkey's Greek minority since 2002 by focusing on three critical questions: the minority pious foundations (vakıf), the Papa Eftim affair and the Gökçeada (Imbros) and Bozcaada (Tenedos) Greeks. In doing that, it aims to answer the question why the Greek minority has not been included in the minority groups whose rights have been curtailed since Turkey's reform process has been reversed. To do that, it engages with overlapping models of social diversity which have been suggested since the early 2000s as an answer to Turkey's burning minority rights questions. Improving the protection of minority rights of Turkey's Greek minority became first possible in the context of Turkey's EU membership-driven reform process between 1999 and 2010. While Turkey's EU membership hopes faded, the liberalization wave receded and a democratic backsliding became discernible in the early 2010s, the state of Turkey's Greek minority did not sharply deteriorate, as in the case of the Alevis or the Kurds. This was due to the rise of a communitarian understanding of human rights and a normative discourse celebrating diversity along the lines of the Ottoman millet system. Turkey's Greeks belonged to a minority group whose presence could be tolerated in a society organized not along liberal multiculturalism but along Ottoman millet-style, community-based diversity. A growing Ottoman nostalgia and Turkey's ambition to serve as a model in the region have become obstacles to a deterioration in the state of the Greek minority. This did not mean, however, that the government would go as far as to solve the remaining outstanding issues, challenge Turkish nationalist stereotypes or overcome negative reciprocity in minority rights when it came to Greek-Turkish relations. This became clearer in 2015, following the alliance of the incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi -AKP) with the far-right Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi -MHP), which had momentous consequences for the treatment of the Kurdish and Alevi minorities. Moreover, viewing minority rights as privileges awarded by the state -or the head of the executive (reis) -and not as emanating from ...

How Informal Institutions Matter

“…3 Currently, there are around 20,000 Jews in the country and most of them live in the İstanbul, İzmir, and Hatay Provinces (Oran 2021). Regarding Greeks, during and after the Turkish Independence War (1919-22), around one and half million Greeks left Anatolia to settle in Greece (Grigoriadis 2021). In addition, as required by the 1923-27 Population Exchange Agreement between Turkey and Greece, close to 200,000 Greek Orthodox people were forced to move to Greece.…”

“…5 Although the Turkish state officially recognized some non-Muslim groups as religious minorities and granted them certain religious, cultural, and educational rights, the state has had a skeptical attitude toward non-Muslim communities and their demands. Viewed as "others, " "aliens, " "local foreigners, " "untrustworthy, " "ungrateful, " "the agents of foreign powers, " and "potential threat for national unity and security, " their loyalty and reliability were questioned (see Grigoriadis 2012Grigoriadis , 2021Bayir 2013;Bottoni 2013;Bayar 2014;Bardakci et al 2017;Beylunioğlu 2017;Bouquet 2017;Lord 2018;Akgönül 2019;Oran 2021). As Içduygu, Toktas, and Soner (2008, 359) also observe, 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 Muslim .…”

“…To pay the tax, many non-Muslim citizens had to sell off their private properties. 6 Hence, it is claimed that, with this unequal and excessive tax, a substantial amount of capital was transferred from non-Muslim minorities to the Muslim majority (Içduygu, Toktas, and Soner 2008;Grigoriadis 2012Grigoriadis , 2021Bayir 2013;Oran 2021). Another interesting initiative that confirms the state's skeptical attitude toward minority groups is that, in 1962, the Turkish state established the Sub-Commission on Minorities.…”

“…8 In other words, the properties of non-Muslim foundations were limited to what they had declared in 1936, and thus the properties acquired by these foundations between 1936 and 1974 were considered unlawful. As a result, they were either confiscated by the state or returned to the inheritors of those who had donated them (Grigoriadis 2008(Grigoriadis , 2021Içduygu, Toktas, and Soner 2008;Toktas and Aras 2009;Soner 2010;Oran 2021).…”

“…We should also acknowledge that, primarily due to EU accession conditions and requirements 11 and certain rulings of the European Court of Human Rights against Turkey, the Turkish governments took some steps in the 2000s to improve the rights and freedoms of non-Muslim communities (İçduygu and Soner 2006;Toktaş 2006;Yıldız 2007;Grigoriadis 2008Grigoriadis , 2012Grigoriadis , 2021Toktas and Aras 2009;Soner 2010;Kaya 2013;Yılmaz 2016;Bardakci et al 2017;Beylunioğlu 2017;Akgönül 2019;Kılınç 2019;Aslan 2021;Oran 2021). For instance, amendments to the Law on Religious Foundations in 2002 and 2003 allowed the foundations of non-Muslim religious minorities to acquire and dispose of property (Içduygu, Toktas, and Soner 2008;Soner 2010;Bayir 2013;Oran 2021).…”