Minority Rights

The documentary film entitled 'residual' citizens, prepared by SUFilm, examines the property problems of non-Muslim foundations in Turkey. The documentary aims to shed light on the struggle for survival of these foundations whose managements have been taken over and/or properties confiscated through unlawful practices since the end of 1950's. Another purpose is to reveal the meaning of this struggle in the day-to-day lives of Turkey's non-Muslim citizens. The documentary has been screened at different festivals and events within Turkey and internationally in cooperation with of international, national and local partners.

Since 1960s, the Turkish state has systematically confiscated properties belonging to non-Muslim citizen foundations, kept some of them under state property and sold others to third parties. Due to these illegal procedures, the community foundations have difficulties continuing schools, hospitals, almshouses and churches. TESEV Democratization Program has been generating legal opinions and reports about the changes in the Law of Foundations concerning the restitution of properties and compensation in order to evaluate those changes and follow the implementation since 2004.

Publications

The changing, restituting and/or using of place names have been debated more recently than ever before. In this respect, there has been a series of work to create a database for changed names of cities, towns, villages and districts during early days of the Republic and to reveal the political and ideological background of the governments. The old and new names of places in Turkey, the origins and the changing dates are pictured on the Turkish map which can be found in the interactive website of Index Anatolicus.

Publications

Armenian citizens in Turkey like all other non-Muslims have suffered from violence, massacres, direct and indirect discrimination. Their freedom of expression has been violated, their participation in the public sphere has been limited and somehow their enjoyment of freedom of education and religion has been prevented. TESEV Democratization Program with its research on this area has been looking at the identity-construction process of Armenian citizens and the building of their citizenship identity, pointing the violations and coming up with policy recommendations for the compensation.

Publications