Minorities in Constitution Making in Turkey

Book excerpt: This book addresses the constitutional journey of religious minorities in modern Turkey, specifically the Lausanne minorities, who have been both coded and blacklisted in the official records for decades. It focuses on the non-Muslim citizens who have maintained their lives with confidential codes without knowing that these codes have been instrumentally used for strategic purposes. In spite of such discriminatory practices, they are on the way to a new democratic and civil constitution. It is significant to note that this will be their first constitutional experience in post-republic history. The first book to document the role of religious minorities in constitution making in modern Turkey, it lists recent discussions and findings on this controversial process. One of the important findings of this study is that government-led initiatives endeavouring to be inclusive have had the opposite effect.