This volume provides the documentation on which TAVO maps A VIII 14 a-b (Republic of Turkey: Rural Ethnic Minorities) were based, together with supplementary data on the Turkish majority and urban populations. The compilation of this information, which had not previously been attempted on this scale, presented particular problems. First among these is the absence of official recognition for any ethnic minorities other than the Greek Christians, the Armenians, and the Jews. Even the figures for those speaking mother-tongues other than Turkish have been absent from the published census after 1965. Turkish anthropologists have, by a tacit understanding, refrained from fostering university studies on tribes or villages of non-Turkish groups since about 1970. The information gathered by the Government for the Village Inventory in the 1960s has remained largely unpublished. Compared to the anthropological activity in Iran and Afghanistan, remarkably little work has been allowed or carried out since the threshold date of 1950. Very diverse sources had, therefore, to be consulted to obtain the necessary information, and these are presented comprehensively for the first time, including a transcription of the Village Inventory. As a result, 47 different groups have been identified and located. The data are presented in a synoptical catalogue entry for each group, a series of surveys for specific groups, lists of the known locations of each group with their geographical coordinates, and a series of essays by fourteen authors on particular aspects of ethnicity in Turkey.

This volume represents a supplement to the first volume, which appeared in 1989, and provided the documentation on which TAVO maps A VIII 14 a-b (Republic of Turkey: Rural Ethnic Minorities) were based. The book remains the only comprehensive treatment of ethnic groups in Turkey yet attempted, and volume II brings it up to date.The new volume includes extensive documentation on areas for which material was not available in 1989, together with an index of villages, covering those referred to in both volumes, revised to include the administrative allocations in the latest census. The new material is concerned principally with Kurdish and Alevi villages in Central Anatolia, and differs from the lists in volume I in that it is provided mainly by the ethnic actors themselves, either in the form of regional surveys compiled privately by people from specific ethnic groups, or as lists culled from journals representing ethnic groups, in wich surveys began to appear only in the course of the last ten years. In addition there are new surveys compiled by specialist outsiders, such as one on the Laz, one on the Daghistanis and one on Arab settlements in Hatay. Further listings by villages and administrative districts provide additions to the lists in volume I, and where necessary, corrections. The numbering of surveys and lists is consistent with that in volume I. One additional ethnic group is considered, bringing the total described to 48.Volume II also contains a reappraisal of the present ethnic situation in Turkey, and an evaluation of current attitudes towards it, together with a postscript on the latest dramatic development in eastern Anatolia. Contributions on specific aspects of ethnicity in its latest manifestations are provided by R. Benninghaus on the Mhallami, L. Paul on the Zaza language and its ethnic implications, D. Shankland on an Alevi group in Central Anatolia and G. Wiessner on the Kurds.As before, it is hoped that the book will provide the basis for a wide variety of future work in which the identification of local cultures is important.

Though Turkey is a land of vast ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity - home not only to Turks, Kurds and Armenians, but also, among others, Alevis, Ezidis, Assyrians, Laz, Caferis, Roma, Rum, Caucasians and Jews, the history of the state is one of severe repression of minorities in the name of nationalism. This report sets current law and practice in Turkey against the backdrop of equivalent international standards on linguistic rights of minorities; freedom of religion, thought and conscience; freedom of expression; freedom of assembly and association; political participation; property rights and anti-discrimination.

In 1909, the US Circuit Court in Cincinnati set out to decide “whether a Turkish citizen shall be naturalized as a white person”; the New York Times article on the decision, discussing the question of Turks’ whiteness, was cheekily entitled “Is the Turk a White Man?” Within a few decades, having understood the importance of this question for their modernization efforts, Turkish elites had already started a fantastic scientific mobilization to position the Turks in world history as the generators of Western civilization, the creators of human language, and the forgotten source of white racial stock. In this book, Murat Ergin examines how race figures into Turkish modernization in a process of interaction between global racial discourses and local responses.

The Kurds, one of the oldest ethnic groups in the Middle East, are reasserting their identity—politically and through violence. Divided mainly among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, the Kurds have posed increasingly sharp challenges to all of these states in their quest for greater autonomy if not outright independence. Turkey's essentially democratic structure and civil society_ideal tools for coping with and incorporating minority challenge_have so far been suspended on this issue, which the government is treating almost exclusively as a security problem to be dealt with by force. For the West the situation in Turkey is particularly significant because of the country's importance in the region and because of the economic, political, and diplomatic damage that the conflict has caused. If Turkey fails to find a peaceful solution within its current borders, then the outlook is grim for ethnic and separatist challenges elsewhere in the region. This study explores the roots, dimensions, character, and evolution of the problem, offers a range of approaches to a resolution of the conflict, and draws broader parallels between the Kurdish question and other separatist movements worldwide.