Today there is almost no country that does not face the challenges of its cultural diversity. One of those challenges comes from the rise of religion, or religious activism (including religious civil society institutions and religious political organizations), moderate or radical alike, in many countries all over the world. Some scholars even rushed to conclude that religion would define the boundaries of major global conflicts in the future.Footnote ¹ Since it is widely assumed that conflict and political instability in general are to some extent provoked by real or perceived discrimination or the disadvantageous position of cultural groups (Fox Reference Fox2000; Gurr Reference Gurr1993; Thoms and Ron Reference Thoms and Ron2007), recent decades have witnessed increased international attention to the prevention of discrimination as a way of ensuring political stability (Gottlieb Reference Gottlieb1993, 48–88; Hughes and Sasse Reference Hughes and Sasse2003; Preece Reference Preece1997, 349; Spiliopoulou Akermark Reference Spiliopoulou Akermark1997; Wright Reference Wright1996).

We may begin with a brief look at the reports of civil rights organizations and mass media outlets about the hardship faced by religious minorities in Russia and Turkey. International organizations are warning about the issues of religious freedom in these countries. Non-Christians in Russia and non-Muslims in Turkey are not the only subjects of their concerns. Non-Orthodox Christians in Russia (Old Believers, Protestants, Catholics), and non-Sunni Muslims in Turkey (Alevi, Shia) are in the same boat, facing alienation and obstacles.Footnote ² At the same time, the governments in both countries seem to be opening their arms to the dominant religions. In Russia, neither Putin nor Medvedev shies from showing sympathy toward the Orthodox Church, which has become more and more visible in public life. The polls also demonstrate that more and more Russians self-identify as Orthodox (Filatov Reference Filatov2008; Papkova Reference Papkova2008). In Turkey, a party, founded by the members of the banned Islamic party, has maintained political control since 2002 (Karasipahi Reference Karasipahi2009; Cizre Reference Cizre2008). Although this party does not call itself Islamic, it does promote an increased role of Sunni Islam in society. This article seeks to understand how the increasing importance of Orthodox Christianity in Russia and Sunni Islam in Turkey for the definition of their majority's national identity affects the position of religious minorities in these countries.

There is no universally accepted definition of a minority. The definition of a minority is one of the most widely debated and controversial topics in the social sciences. The term “minority” often is used to refer to a particular cultural group that is not only numerically smaller than the majority, or the nation, but also really or potentially alienated from enjoying the social, political, and economic benefits available to the majority, or the nation.Footnote ³ As mentioned earlier, a concern about minority groups and the development of minority protection has been based on the assumption that the groups that are culturally different from the majority have or potentially can have a disadvantageous position in society. Besides, the very nature of this cultural difference, especially when it comes to differences in religion, is flexible. Although religious identity is acquired through socialization, it can be changed throughout adult life. The presence of missionary activism in Russia and Turkey, especially the existence of Protestant and Catholic groups among traditionally Orthodox Russians, shows that conversion and change in religious identity are not unthinkable even for the carriers of strong religious identity. Besides, religious identity often overlaps with other forms of identity, national identity in particular.

How to define national identity is another widely debated and hardly agreed upon question in the social sciences. Numerous definitions proposed in the academic literature include such characteristics as blood, kinship, language, religion, customs, and citizenship.Footnote ⁴ The nation is supposedly a community of people who share or believe they share a collective identity formed by different combinations of these characteristics. In many studies, religion is used as one of the characteristics that define a nation. The problem is how to differentiate between religion as a defining feature of a nation and religion as a defining feature of a minority. If religion defines the “national,” then what sense does it make to differentiate between the “national” and the “religious,” as in the 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious, and Linguistic Minorities?Footnote ⁵ In other words, keeping in mind that ethnicity and language are among the other factors that are used to define the “national,” it is not clear how religious communities are different from national, ethnic, and linguistic communities. To give some more specific examples, are Protestant Russians in Russia and Alevi Turks in Turkey a majority by virtue of their ethnicity, or a minority by virtue of their religion?

Recently there have been a rising number of studies that draw attention to the constructed nature of the collective identity groups and show that group boundaries are fragmentary, fluid, and short-living. These studies raise questions about the real, substantial nature of such social categories as class, ethnicity and nation (Brubaker Reference Brubaker1994; Tilly Reference Tilly2005; Tilly and Goodin Reference Tilly, Goodin, Goodin and Tilly2006). They view the differences among the various collective identity groups and meanings of the cultural identities as a product of a historical process and the influence of certain ideas whose institutionalization depends on the political power and the relations to society of their holders (Jung Reference Jung, Goodin and Tilly2006; Burguiere and Grew Reference Burguiere and Grew2004). They show how certain historical processes and certain political actors are able to spread and to institutionalize their ideas about what the collective identity should be and through which ways they are able to produce and shape the meaning and status of various collective identity groups (Mitchell Reference Mitchell1991; Bendix et al. Reference Bendix, Ollman, Bartholomew, Sparrow and Timothy1992). That means that what constitutes any collective identity group (including religious groups), as well as the status of collective identity groups, and hence what constitutes the majority and the minority, changes over time and should be analyzed in the specific historical and political context. Therefore, to understand what religious minorities are and how threatened they are, we need to look at the role assigned to religion in defining both majorities and minorities by influential political elites capable of carrying out institutional changes that can affect their status in different periods of time.

Applying these ideas to case studies of Russia and Turkey, the question is not what religious minorities are and what are their status and rights are in general, but what have they been, and what factors have affected their status and rights in different periods of time in Russian and Turkish history. Are the Old Believers in Russia and the Alevis in Turkey, even when they share a belief in the same descent with the rest of Russians and Turks, a part of the nation representing the internal cultural diversity that each nation has, or are they national minorities that deserve special rights and protections? When a group does not share a belief in the same descent (there are agnostic, Muslim, and Orthodox Tatars in Russia; for Turkey, a more urgent question would be whether Armenians, Greeks, and Jews are ethnic or religious groups, as they are defined in the constitution), the question is which factor, a belief in descent or religion, is primary for them (and how do scholars and policy-makers determine it), and hence are they ethnic groups or religious groups? This becomes especially important keeping in mind that there are different laws (domestic and international) regulating religious, linguistic, and ethnic groups. In other words, it is not only a question of what and who constitutes a religious minority, but also who is a subject of the specific laws and regulations, and who qualifies for protection and special rights.

Comparing Russia and Turkey is insightful in terms of analyzing religious minorities for a number of reasons. Both Russia and Turkey host numerous cultural groups. Some scholars estimate that there are over 180 nationalities officially recorded in Russia, and between 20 and 50 ethnic groups in Turkey.Footnote ⁶ In both countries, religion was a crucial component of the national identity in the pre-republican (pre-1922 for Russia and pre-1923 Turkey) periods. Although in the Russian Empire, religion was put under state control in the 17th-century, Orthodoxy was officially used to define the Russian nation (Bekmakhanova Reference Bekmakhanova and Trepavlov2003; Riasanovsky Reference Riasanovsky1959; Reference Riasanovsky2005, 81–86). In the Ottoman Empire, clergy (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) intermediated between their religious communities and the state until the 19th-century (Dumont Reference Dumont and Mantran1989; McCarthy Reference McCarthy1997, 127–132; Bozkurt Reference Bozkurt1996). Sunni Islam continued to be used as a defining feature of the majority-nation until the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, in both empires, non-Orthodox and non-Sunni Muslim people were perceived and treated as minorities. In the 1920s and 1930s, both Russia and Turkey undertook secularization policies aimed at undermining the role of religion and the power of clergy in their societies. Both countries also were engaged in what can be called ethnicization of identity politics by emphasizing a descent and language, and not religion, as cultural identity markers. In Soviet Russia, institutionalization of ethnicist definitions pushed the supporters of religious definitions underground (Walters Reference Walters and Ramet1993; Dunlop Reference Dunlop1983, 140–146, 296–300). From this perspective, all groups that defined themselves by religion (Orthodox Russians, or Muslim Tatars) were minorities. In Turkey too, an ethnicist definition emphasized the origins and language and prioritized the Turkish-speakers of Turkish descent in citizenship and immigration policies (Cagaptay Reference Cagaptay and Gülalp2006a, Reference Cagaptay2006b; Kirişçi Reference Kirişçi2000; Okutan Reference Okutan2004). However, additional emphasis was assigned to the groups sharing Turkish culture, and that culture was increasingly defined by Sunni Islam. This was where Russian and Turkish secularization policies of the 1920s through 1940s differed. In Turkey, since the late 1940s, despite the political domination of secular forces, the Sunni Islamic forces were gradually growing in power. The last coup of 1980 resulted in the spread of religious education (Akşin Reference Akşin2007, 280–281; Copeaux Reference Copeaux1998, 107; Margulies and Yildizoglu Reference Margulies and Yildizoglu1988; Vertigans Reference Vertigans2003, 62–63). In Russia, religious groups had to wait until the early 1990s to be able to raise their voices.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War transformed the nature of politics in both Russia and Turkey. In Russia, the establishment of the independent Russian Federation and the victory of the anti-communist political forces marked the beginning of new politics. In Turkey, the death of President Ozal and the end of the domination of his party marked a new era. For both Russia and Turkey, the 1990s were a period of political instability and a lack of consistent policies. In both countries, the 2000s were marked by a consolidation of power at the hands of one political force. Both countries also experienced a revitalization of religion in the 2000s. How did these changes affect the conceptualization of the nation and minorities? What role was assigned to religion in defining the majority-nation and hence the religious minorities? This will be analyzed in the next two sections.

NATION AND RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN RUSSIA

Soviet Russia witnessed the institutionalization of two definitions of nation, both of which denied the importance of religion in the national identity of the masses. The first one defined the Soviet people by their loyalty to the socialist state. This was exemplified in the efforts to create a new Soviet nation, the Soviet narod, as a community of Soviet citizens for whom only their socialist identity was essential (Shevtsov Reference Shevtsov1969; Reference Shevtsov1970). The second one defined them by their descent and culture. This was exemplified in the creation of the Soviet passport nationality defined by descent (the nationality of the parents) and language, which existed from 1934 to 1997 (Arel Reference Arel2001).

None of the above mentioned definitions viewed religion as a national identity marker. The Soviet authorities adopted atheism as a part of their ideology and from the very beginning carried out massive atheist propaganda and persecutions of the religious authorities. In this context, any expressions of religious identity were viewed with suspicion and were treated as remnants of the old, pre-Soviet times.Footnote ⁷ Some scholars point out that the Soviet rulers sought to replace the unquestionable authority of religious leaders with the unquestionable domination of the communist party, substituting communism for religion (McFarland Reference McFarland1998; Kula Reference Kula2005). Religion remained important to some people informally, but there are no data to assess the extent to which Orthodoxy remained an identity marker for the Soviet people. However, the fact that all religions were viewed with suspicion was a boundary-drawing act: “we” were defined as atheist communists; “they” were the religious people. Therefore, religion was a defining feature of the minority identity.

Religion did continue to exist as a national identity marker for underground Russian nationalists. Thus, from the pages of samizdat Veche, they argued that Russian national consciousness was inconceivable outside of the Orthodoxy and could be strengthened by the “revival of Orthodox self-consciousness” (Dunlop Reference Dunlop1983, 296–300). Veche claimed that the Orthodox Church was the only true church (Dunlop Reference Dunlop1983, 140–146). In the late 1960s, there was also the Russian Democratic Movement (also known as the Russian Human Rights Movement), which was composed of the intellectuals who worried about a return to Stalinism. It published Kronika Tekushchikh Sobytiy (Chronicles of Current Events). In 1970, the Chronicles of Current Events published Slovo Natsiyi (Word of a Nation or The Nation Speaks). According to the authors of Slovo Natsiyi, until the October Revolution, the Orthodox Church had played a very positive role in Russia by helping to unite the nation, to free it from the foreign occupiers, and to revive Russian culture based on Orthodoxy (Ignurov Reference Ignurov2005). Because of the hard persecutions associated with any expression of religiosity it is impossible to determine how many Russians agreed with these statements.

In the last years of the Soviet Union, under Gorbachev, reform-minded members of the Soviet ruling elite tended to encourage religious activity, but preference was often given to the Russian Orthodox Church. Other religions were viewed with disfavor (Ramet Reference Ramet and Ramet1993a, Reference Ramet and Ramet1993b). With the rise of the nationalist movements in the late 1980s, religion was often utilized by the nationalist leaders as a part of their respective groups' pre-Soviet collective identity. In the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), religion was used only by some nationalist leaders in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chechnya, and few other republics. Moreover, the population in the administrative units of the RSFSR varied in their support for the separatist nationalist leaders (Gorenburg Reference Gorenburg2003, 167–199). Out of 180 nationalities only a few seemed to be threatened by the growing role of Orthodoxy in the Russia. Besides, even among the Russians, the Orthodox leaders were not forerunners in the nationalist mobilization. Instead, it was Russian civic (Rossiyskiy) nationalism promoted by Yeltsin that gained the support of the majority of the political active Russian and non-Russian elites alike in the Russian Federation (Beissinger Reference Beissinger2002, 392–404). The Russian Orthodox Church avoided taking sides in the political struggle in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Anderson Reference Anderson1994, 182–183). Therefore, although on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Orthodox Church was allowed to be more visible in public, there were no indications that it was becoming a major feature of the new Russian rule, which at the time was in a struggle for the reassertion of Russian statehood, and not the Russian pre-Soviet identity.

In 1993, after two years of heated debates between the presidency and the parliament, the independent Russian Federation adopted its first constitution.Footnote ⁸ The 1993 Constitution reinforced a civic, inclusive idea of the “multinational people (narod) of the Russian Federation.” The 1993 Constitution declared the state to be based on the principles of ideological diversity and secularity. No one ideology or religion could be declared a state ideology or religion (Articles 13 and 14), and everybody enjoyed freedom of religion (Article 28). This definition was further reinforced in the first (and as of this writing the only) Conception of State Nationality Policy (Konceptsiya Gosudarstvennoy Natsionalnoy Politiki, hereinafter the 1996 Conception) adopted in June 1996.Footnote ⁹ Its ultimate goal was “to ensure the unity and integrity of Russia in the new historical conditions of development of the Russian (Rossiyskaya) statehood.” The 1996 Conception argued that state policy toward cultural groups should be based on the principles of legal equality of all races, nationalities, languages, and religions; and the unacceptability of any form of discrimination on the basis of “social, racial, national, linguistic or religious belonging” (group level characteristic) and of any activities that provoke “social, racial, national and religious hostility, hatred, or animosity.”

Provisions in both the 1993 Constitution and the 1996 Conception of State Nationality Policy defined the Russian nation in a manner compatible with the co-existence of numerous religious groups. If these provisions were truly reinforced, they would allow the conceptualization of these groups not as minorities inferior to the majority-nation, but as equal parts of the Russian nation. However, almost at the same time, the Russian government undertook steps that contradicted the provisions of the 1993 Constitution and the 1996 Conception of State Nationality Policy by elevating the status of the Russian Orthodox Church and by using Orthodox symbols in association with the Russian state (Tolz Reference Tolz, Brudny, Frankel and Hoffman2004, 165–166). This trend was apparent in the law adopted in 1997 and titled “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations.”Footnote ¹⁰ This law stated that Russia was a secular state with a separation of religion and state. It confirmed that citizens enjoyed the freedom to choose their faith and had the right to be treated equally independent of their religion. Conversely, it argued that the Orthodox Church had “a special role in development of Russia, in the formation and the development of its spirituality and culture.” Such emphasis threatened not only the equality of other non-Orthodox non-Christian groups, but also questioned the Russianness of the non-Orthodox Russian groups (Russian Catholics, Protestant, and Old Believers to name the few).

An increasing emphasis on Orthodoxy as a defining feature of the Russian nation could also be an effort to counteract the successful campaign of Yeltsin's major political rival in the 1990s, namely Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and his ultra-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). The LDPR gained a significant percentage of the votes during the 1993 and 1995 parliamentary elections. The LDPR was known for its support for the imperial, pre-Soviet definition of the Russian nation as a community of the Orthodox Russian-speakers. It demanded the abolition of the nationally-defined territorial units within the Russian Federation and the endorsement of the Orthodox Church and the Orthodox people with special privileges. Thus, in his interview given in 1993, Zhirinovsky argued that the Russian Orthodox Church was the basis of the Russian nation that other Christian denominations could be given some freedom to exist in Russia, but that the activity of all other “foreign” religions should be limited (Allenswort Reference Allensworth1998, 191–199; Kipp Reference Kipp1994; Parland Reference Parland2005, 90–93; Service Reference Service2003, 235–241).Footnote ¹¹ However, despite the fact that the LDPR dominated the Russian parliament in the 1990s, Russia did not adopt any policies actively discriminating against the non-Orthodox people.

Changes started to take place in the 2000s, when the Russian Parliament became dominated by United Russia, a party explicitly supported by then-President Vladimir Putin. United Russia is not a party with a religious agenda. Under Putin's leadership, in 2004 and 2006, new projects to replace the 1996 Conception of the State Nationality Policy were proposed and discussed. Both projects were based on the idea of reinforcing or possibly creating a sense of collective identity that would incorporate various cultural groups into the civic definition of the Russian nation. None of them contained any explicit reference to religion, and Orthodoxy in particular.Footnote ¹² To this day, none of these projects has been officially adopted. What kind of new nationality policy will be adopted under President Medvedev remains to be seen.

Contrary to definitions of the nation that sought to reconcile the different cultural (including religious) groups through the concept of shared citizenship and loyalty to the Russian state, it seemed that the new rulers of Russia were supporting an increased role of Orthodoxy. Thus, in September 2006, the elementary schools in four regions of Russia (Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga, Smolensk) introduced lessons about Orthodoxy to their curricula as a course titled “The Bases of the Orthodox Culture.” In the 11 other regions of Russia this course was made an elective. This move was initiated by the Russian Orthodox Church and provoked a heated debate about the role of religion, more specifically Orthodoxy, in Russian society. In July 2006, 10 scholars from the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation sent a letter to President Putin protesting this decision and arguing that it was incompatible with the freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state.Footnote ¹³ This decision was also opposed by many Islamic and Jewish religious leaders, as well as members of the State Duma. According to them, this policy could contribute to an increase in religious intolerance in Russian society. They argued that, since Russia was always a multi-religious state, all four of its traditional religions should be taught in the schools. The Ministry of Education of Russia supported the concerns of organizations of Protestants and Catholics that teaching Orthodoxy in the schools would make society more intolerant toward other denominations of Christianity, reinforcing their minority status. Those who supported the introduction of this course justified it by arguing that ethnic Russians and Orthodox people composed the majority in the Russian Federation and had a right to study their religion and that the teaching of Orthodoxy was a remedy to many social problems.Footnote ¹⁴ Although the majority of the ethnic Russians do not practice any form of religion, the majority of them do identify with Orthodoxy.Footnote ¹⁵ The introduction of this course in regions where ethnic Russians predominated may serve to strengthen the religious identity of Russians. Since 2006, no efforts have been made to introduce the teachings of Orthodoxy in other schools, especially in the non-Russian regions. In June 2007, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation discussed a bill of law “About Making Changes to the Certain Acts (to change a section related to the state educational standard)” which foresaw the abolishment of the divisions of the school programs into the federal, regional, and school parts, thus giving the federal educational structures more control over the regional school curricula.Footnote ¹⁶ This bill of law was widely discussed in the Russian mass media and as of February 2010 had not been adopted. Most of the critiques of this bill of law pointed out that, if adopted, it would eliminate the possibility of regional teaching of the “Bases of Orthodox Culture,” or other courses related to the “traditional” religions.

It is noteworthy that in February 2007, United Russia introduced the “Russian (Russkiy) Project,” which openly promoted an increased role of Orthodoxy. In 2007, United Russia maintained a website devoted to the “Russian Project,” www.rus-proekt.ru.Footnote ¹⁷ This website published a number of articles emphasizing the importance of Orthodoxy for the national identity of Russians. For example, Professor V. Shchuchenko argued that it was impossible to merge the culture of ethnic Russians with the culture of other groups in Russia because each of them was unique and different from the rest (Shchuchenko Reference Shchuchenko and Scchuchenko2001).Footnote ¹⁸ K.A. Frolov, a department director of the Institute of the Countries of the CIS, assured the readers that the new president, Dmitri Medvedev, was a “liturgical” Christian, for whom the secularism of the Russian state did not mean that it should be impossible to use Christian ideas to guide policy. Medvedev, according to Frolov, approved the idea of teaching “The Bases of Orthodox culture” verbally, but it would take time before he would be able to implement it in real life (Frolov Reference Frolov2008). In late 2007, United Russia stopped its website devoted to the Russian Project. All articles published on that website are now available from the social-scientific (as it calls itself) website called Social Theology (Sotsial'noe bogoslovie).Footnote ¹⁹ The Center of the Social Conservative Policy claims to be unaffiliated with any political party, although all of its members happen to be members of United Russia.Footnote ²⁰ United Russia never publicly rejected the Russian Project. At the same time, it shifted its attention to the idea of a citizenship-based Russian (Rossiyskaya) nation. Thus, in 2008, the website of United Russia published numerous articles and interviews emphasizing an all-inclusive Russian civic (Rossiyskaya) nation.Footnote ²¹ In late 2007 and in 2008, the newspaper Izvestiya published a number of interviews with both Russian and non-Russian scholars about the future of the Russian Project (Antipova Reference Antipova2007; Leskov, Reference Leskov2007a, Reference Leskov2007b, Reference Leskov2008a, Reference Leskov2008b; Tishkov Reference Tishkov2007). These publications shared in common an emphasis on the cultural diversity of Russia, on the existence of such diversity since ancient times, and on the fact that it was a strong state and a shared civil identity that prevented Russia from being partitioned.

This does not mean that the proponents of the policies to reinforce the Orthodox component of the Russian identity at the expense of other religious groups are out of the political game. They are active, but not strong enough to put their ideas into practice. It seems that whether the non-Orthodox people of the Russian Federation will face organized discriminatory policies will depend on their political strength.

However, it should also be kept in mind that an increased public association of the Russians with Orthodoxy means that non-Orthodox Russians would be increasingly viewed as “others.” Scholars analyzing the views of various Russian Orthodox Church leaders notice that they share hostility not only toward Western institutions and values, but also toward non-Orthodox denominations and other religions (Filatov Reference Filatov2008). If the primacy and uniqueness of the Russian Orthodox civilization is emphasized in their preaching, then other religious groups would inevitably constitute heretics and unbelievers. In other words, if more Russians take them seriously and view themselves as primarily Orthodox, their understanding of “us” would have less room for the integration of other religious groups. This may not necessarily lead to discriminatory policies against minorities, but may make any policies accommodating these groups less likely and thus render the successful integration of these groups into a civic multi-cultural definition of the Russian nation more difficult. In April 2010, the Russian government decided to introduce in the 19 administrative units (this time including non-Russian republics) a new course in the school curriculum, entitled “The Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethic,” which had to include the basics about Orthodox, Islamic, Buddhist, and Jewish religions. In February 2010, the government started to provide special training for the instructors of this course.Footnote ²² It is noteworthy that the teaching of this course includes only “traditional” religions and does not extend to the Old Believers, Catholics, Protestants, or other religions and denominations in Russia.

The situation is different in Turkey where a Justice and Development Party (JDP) has been in power since 2002. By contrast with Russia where more inclusive civic definitions of nation at least theoretically exist and have room for the accommodation of various religious groups, in Turkey, civic definitions existed only in the constitution and failed to be institutionalized even under the domination of the JDP. This will be analyzed in the next section.

NATION AND RELIGIOUS MINORITIES IN TURKEY

The Lausanne Treaty, the founding treaty of the Republic of Turkey, recognized as minorities only three non-Muslim, religion-defined groups: the Greeks, the Armenians, and the Jews (Okutan Reference Okutan2004, 306–308). Everybody else, including all other non-Muslim and Muslim communities, was considered to be a part of the Turkish nation. This was one definition of the Turkish nation in the Republic of Turkey. There were also two other definitions: one that defined the Turkish nation as a community of all the citizens of the republic irrespective of their ethnic or religious characteristics, and another one that defined the Turkish nation as a community of Turkish-speaking Muslims of Turkish descent who shared a Turkish culture.

Contrary to Russia, where nationality, but not religion, was regularly recorded (as a passport nationality) since 1934, the official statistics of the Republic of Turkey have never recorded the nationality, but only the religion of Turkish citizens.Footnote ²³ The first definition of the Turkish nation reflected the late Ottoman view of the nation as a community of all Sunni Muslim citizens of the empire. In the Republic of Turkey, this definition was exemplified in the official recognition of the religious minorities mentioned in the Lausanne Treaty (known as Lausanne minorities); in the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey in 1920s when who was Greek and who was Turk was determined solely on the basis of religion (Okutan Reference Okutan2004, 227–235); in the immigration policy that prioritized Sunni Muslims over other groups (Kirişçi Reference Kirişçi2000); and in the definitions of nation defended by the Islamic groups (Gülalp Reference Gülalp2005, 159–171). It should be noted that the Lausanne minorities, who are, as of today, the only officially recognized minorities in the Republic of Turkey, were initially defined by religion, not by descent or language. The Greeks were defined as Orthodox people; the Armenians were the members of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the Jews were followers of Judaism. An internal diversity of the Muslim community has never been officially recognized in Turkey. The first policies of the Turkish state in the 1920s reflected this idea that the primary marker of group identity was religion. Populations were exchanged on the basis of religious identity. Although the Caliphate was abolished, the Shariat was outlawed, religion was removed from the constitution, religious orders were banned, and use of religion for political mobilization was prohibited, in 1924 the Turkish government established a Directorate of Religious Affairs (known as Diyanet Işleri Başkanlığı, or Diyanet), which functions today. It is a governmental organization responsible for “activities related to the beliefs, worship and moral fundamentals of Islam (interpreted as Sunni Islam)” and authorized “to enlighten the society about Islam and to manage the places of worship” (Denli Reference Denli, Kabasakal and Zehra2007; Parla and Davison Reference Parla, Davison, Jakobsen and Pellegrini2008).Footnote ²⁴ Some scholars argue that Diyanet was created by the government to control Islam by banning the ways for oppositional religious mobilization, to teach the public a correct, more state-obedient version of official Islam (Parla and Davison Reference Parla, Davison, Jakobsen and Pellegrini2008). These policies reinforced a perception of the Turkish nation as a community of Sunni Muslims and turned all other religious and denominational Muslim groups, as well as Sunni Muslim groups operating outside the governmental control, into religious minorities.

The religious definition of the nation has never lost its supporters, even in the secular Turkish government. Not only the Muslim clergy, which was driven underground in the 1930s and 1940s, but recovered and started influencing the Turkish state in the 1950s, but also many other political forces remain active supporters of this definition. Although Islamic parties (parties seeking re-introduction of the Shariat) were regularly banned (Coskun Reference Coskun2003), many political groups have actively used the appeals to the religious identity of the people to gain their electoral support since the multi-party system was introduced in the 1950s.Footnote ²⁵ The Turkish government introduced a teaching of Sunni Islam on an elective basis in the primary schools in the late 1940s and in the secondary schools in the 1950s. After the 1980 coup d'etat, they became compulsory in all schools and for all students, even for non-Muslim or non-Sunni Muslim. The number of imam hatip schools (vocational training schools preparing Sunni Muslim clergy) and Qur'an courses has also been gradually growing since the late 1960s (Denli Reference Denli, Kabasakal and Zehra2007; Parla and Davison Reference Parla, Davison, Jakobsen and Pellegrini2008).

Defining the nation by Islam (more specifically, by Sunni Islam) alienates the non-Sunni Muslim and non-Muslim citizens of Turkey, reinforcing their de facto minority status. While the existence of the non-Muslims reinforces this boundary, the existence of non-Sunni Muslims, or moderate Muslims whose expression of religious beliefs is different from that practiced by the ruling elites, challenges it. It is not surprising that, despite all the pressure from the European Union, the Turkish government was more willing to improve (or, at least, negotiate) the legal conditions of non-Muslim citizens than to make any changes in the rights of non-Sunni Muslim citizens of the republic (Grigoriadis Reference Grigoriadis2007; Oran Reference Oran2006). However, it should also be mentioned that no significant changes have been made since 2003.

The definition of the nation as the community of Sunni Muslims faces strong competition from the ethnic definition of the nation, which also has its supporters among the political elites. This definition was introduced in the late 1920s and 1930s and conceptualized the Turkish nation as the community of Turkish-speakers of Turkish descent. It is noteworthy that if, in Russia, an ethnicization of nationality was reflected in the assignment of a descent-defined passport nationality, in Turkey a reinforcement of the ethnic definition of the nation was accompanied by the forceful assimilation of those who did not fit this definition. The ethnic definition of the nation was reflected in the ban on public discussions of minority issues; on the usage of ethnicity for political purposes; in the forced population resettlements that categorized the entire population of the country according to their degree of Turkishness; in the bans of non-Turkish languages; in the advantages given to the immigrants of Turkish descent in the citizenship policy, as well as in the aggressive policy toward non-Turkish groups (Cagaptay Reference Cagaptay and Gülalp2006a, Reference Cagaptay2006b). Although formally the government emphasized the secular (non-religious) nature of the descent- and language-based Turkish nation, it implicitly defined the national culture as Sunni Muslim. This implicit element in the ethnic definition of the nation was explored by the Islamists. In other words, the ethnic definition of the Turkish nation was only explicitly, or formally, neutral with respect to religion. This formal neutrality, deliberately or not, succeeded in gaining the support of non-Sunni Muslim groups for whom it meant less emphasis on their religious identity and hence, less persecution. However, even for supporters of the ethnic definition of the Turkish nation, Islam remained an important identity marker, as it was reflected in the hierarchy of citizens and refugees that was established by the state (Cagaptay Reference Cagaptay and Gülalp2006a, Reference Cagaptay2006b).

There is a significant difference between Soviet Russia and republican Turkey in the pre-1991 period. The Soviet leadership was both explicitly and implicitly atheist. In Soviet Russia, there was only a short period of flirtation with the Orthodox clergy during World War II, which ended with Khrushchev's new anti-religious campaign in the late 1950s (Filatov Reference Filatov2008). By contrast, in the Republic of Turkey even the formally secular Turkish leadership co-opted the Islamic groups throughout the entire period between the 1950s and 1980s. In Soviet Russia, the Orthodox clergy did not have opportunities to make any claims. In post-Soviet Russia, the revival of Orthodoxy was more about spiritual revival than about the influence of Orthodoxy on the political system and laws. In other words, Putin and Medvedev might be ardent church-goers, but it is hardly likely that they would refer to the sacred books or consult Orthodox clergy before making decisions about any policy in the Russian Federation. In Turkey, Islamic parties never stopped claiming the need to apply the Shariat to the legal system of the country. Although the contemporary leadership avoids explicit references to the Islamic state and wants to disassociate itself from Islamist parties (Akdoğan Reference Akdoğan and Yavuz2006; Hale Reference Hale and Yavuz2006), some of their failed efforts indicate they still have the desire to apply the Shariat to the state.Footnote ²⁶

Interestingly, in 2004, the JDP-controlled government proposed to replace the existing constitutional definition of the Turkish nation as Turk (which theoretically can mean both the ethnic Turkish and any citizen of Turkey irrespective of ethnicity or religion) with Turkiyeli, meaning somebody from Turkey, to make it more compatible with the existence of ethnic and religious diversity of Turkey. This proposal (known as the Minority Report) came from the working group on minority and cultural rights of the Human Rights Advisory Boards at the Office of the Prime Minister of TurkeyFootnote ²⁷ when the JDP dominated the Turkish Parliament. The JDP never explicitly stood by this report, but it became widely associated with its new emphasis on the need to re-define the Turkish national identity to enable integration of Turkey's cultural diversity. The new identity would have allowed equal treatment of all sub-identities (ethnic, religious, and others). The 2004 Minority Report concluded that the state project of creating a homogenous Turkish nation had failed, and diverse cultural groups survived. A new model identity should be based on the “European multi-identity, multi-cultural, democratic, liberal and plural social model.” The 2004 Minority Report proposed openly to acknowledge the ethnic and religious diversity of Turkey and to guarantee equal cultural rights to all citizens.Footnote ²⁸ The idea of a new civic Turkish nation provoked such a negative reaction from some leaders,Footnote ²⁹ that the authors of the 2004 Minority Report were forced to compromise and to exclude this idea from the edited version of their Minority Report.Footnote ³⁰

Recently, the Turkish government has shown signs of openness to negotiate the status and conditions of the non-Muslim minorities. However, little effort was made to recognize the diversity of the Muslim community, and to address the issues of the non-Sunni Muslim or non-pious citizens of Turkey (Öktem Reference Öktem2008; Yakley Reference Yakley2009). As in Russia, it seems that real changes in the conditions of religious minorities will depend on how much the Turkish government is able to promoting understandings, which are more integrative of the religious diversity of the country.