The book “Non-discrimination in Turkey” focuses on issue areas within the broader non-discrimination framework in Turkey. It looks domestic change in Turkey regarding non-discrimination across time. The book unpacks the principle of non-discrimination and provides analysis in many issue areas like LGBTI rights, disability rights or age discrimination that rely under the framework of non-discrimination. Adopting a comprehensive approach including many areas within non-discrimination, the book will be useful for the students, scholars and researchers of international relations, political science, Middle East and Turkish studies and those interested in human rights.

As Turkey is not a member of the European Union, Directives 2000/43/EC and 2000/78/EC have not been transposed or implemented. The Law on the Human Rights and Equality Institution of Turkey (No. 6701), the anti-discrimination law adopted in 2016, prohibits direct, indirect and multiple discrimination as well as instruction to discriminate, discrimination by assumption, segregation, harassment and mobbing in the workplace. Discrimination by association is not included. The grounds covered by the Law are limited and it prohibits discrimination only on the basis of sex, race, colour, language, religion, belief, denomination, philosophical or political opinion, ethnic origin, wealth, birth, marital status, health, disability and age. Furthermore, there are anti-discrimination provisions in the Constitution and in several laws. Most notable among the laws with anti-discrimination clauses is the Law on Persons with Disabilities, which could be considered as an anti-discrimination law. However, the law prohibits discrimination solely on the ground of disability and has limited material scope. In addition, various laws, including the Labour Law, the Turkish Penal Code and the Law on National Education, have anti-discrimination clauses, but again with limited material scope. Sexual orientation is not enumerated in any of the laws, including the Law on the Human Rights and Equality Institution of Turkey, or in the Constitution, despite the consistent efforts of human rights and LGBTI+ associations. Age is explicitly listed as a protected ground only in the Law on the Human Rights and Equality Institution of Turkey. However, as with sexual orientation, age was also recognised as a ground by the Constitutional Court. The said laws and provisions, as well as precedents set by the Constitutional Court, are not being implemented. While hatred and incitement to hatred are prohibited under the Turkish Penal Code, as noted by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), the 'definition of hate crime is excessively narrow and the Criminal Code does not explicitly provide that racist and homo/transphobic motivation constitutes an aggravating circumstance'. Moreover, hate speech grounds are exhaustive and do not include ethnicity, age and sexual orientation. Besides, existing provisions are scarcely applied to cases of hate crimes or hate speech. The anti-discrimination law does not prohibit hate speech or hate crime. The Constitutional Court for the first time found a violation in a hate speech case in 2021.

Ayhan Aktar has been working on anti-minority policies in modern Turkey since 1991. In the Ottoman Empire’s final decade (in 1906), non-Muslims constituted 20% of the population; by 1927, they were reduced to 2.5% and, nowadays, they make up less than 0.02% of the population of Modern Turkey. Armenians were subjected to deportations (1915), Greeks were ‘exchanged’ (1922–1924) and Jews were forced to migrate abroad (after 1945). Like many other nation-states in the Near East, Turkey has been able to homogenize its population on religious grounds. This book is a collection of Aktar's articles about this transformation. Aktar criticises nationalist historiographies and argues "For instance, a scholar conducting research on the Jewish community during the republican period could easily come to the conclusion that only Jews were discriminated against by the Turkish state. However, this is only partially true! All non-Muslim minorities were discriminated against and their stories cannot be understood unless the Turkish state and its policies are placed at centre stage. Utilizing diplomatic correspondence in the British and US National Archives has enabled me to understand anti-minority policies as a whole and to treat the subject within a totality." This book will interest scholars and students of nationalism, minority studies and Turkish history and politics. CONTENTS Foreword Chapter 1. Debating the Armenian Massacres in the Last Ottoman Parliament, November – December 1918 Chapter 2. Organizing The Deportations and Massacres: Ottoman Bureaucracy and the Cup, 1915 – 1918 Chapter 3. Homogenizing the Nation, Turkifying the Economy: The Turkish Experience of Population Exchange Reconsidered Chapter 4. Conversion of a ‘Country’ into a ‘Fatherland’: The Case of Turkification Examined, 1923–1934 Chapter 5. “Turkification” Policies in the Early Republican Era Chapter 6. “Tax Me to the End of My Life!” Anatomy of Anti-Minority Tax Legislation, (1942 - 3) Chapter 7. Turkish Attitudes vis à vis The Zionist Project by Ayhan Aktar and Soli Özel Chapter 8. Economic Nationalism in Turkey: The Formative Years, 1912 – 1925