Religious Freedom In Turkey Essay

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Religious freedom in Turkey continues to be a delicate subject, its delicacy is directly linked to religion’s place in society and the state’s approach towards it. It remains a delicate matter as Turkey is founded on the principle of secularism and yet continuously restricts activities of religious groups and individuals in most societal atmospheres, including the political, social and private spheres (BEYLUNİOĞLU, 2015). This state interference has arguable exposed non-Sunni Muslims to the most negative effects. In fact Beylunioglu argues that religious minorities have experienced severe difficulties and extrajudicial practices regarding their rights to manifest their belief in practice, worship, and teaching, despite guarantees made by the …show more content…

In fact it can clearly be observed in Carkoglu and Toprak’s statistical observations, which detect a clear difference in regards to sensitivity to basic rights (Carkoglu and Toprak, 2007). Thus, issues of importance to citizens of Sunni Muslim faith and of ethnic Turkish background, such as religious schools or the right to wear religious symbols, are viewed as part of basic human rights. When asked about issues of relevance to Turkish Alevis or citizens of Kurdish origin the same kind of sensitivity to their basic rights is not shown. Sensitivity to any kind of minority rights is severely lacking. It is therefore evident that the Turkish majority population of Sunni Muslims do not acknowledge religious minority groups as an equal part of society and in many cases don’t even want them as neighbours (Carkoglu and Toprak, 2007, p.36). Although this bigotry has been indoctrinated into public consciousness since the founding of Turkey, it is disputable whether this sensitivity reflects a general reaction concerning the rights of each sector of

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