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Defining Nation and Religious Minorities in Russia and Turkey: A Comparative Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2010

Laman Tasch
Laman Tasch*
Affiliation:
Columbia College
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Laman Tasch, Department of Humanities, History, and Social Science, Columbia College, 624 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605. E-mail: laman.tasch@comcast.net
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Abstract

Many countries today face the challenges posed by their ethnic and religious diversity. This article comparatively analyzes how defining nation in Russia and Turkey affects what groups constitute religious minorities and what their prospects of integration into the Russian and Turkish societies are. It conceptualizes religious minorities as those religious groups that are excluded from the prevailing and institutionalized definitions of nation. This article studies what role religion, comprising Orthodox Christianity, and Sunni Islam, respectively, has played historically and until nowadays in Russia and Turkey in the definitions of their national identities and what kind of religious minorities each of these definitions created. It argues that a position of religious minorities depends not only on the informal association of national identity of the majority with certain religion, but also on the institutionalized support for the dominant religion by the ruling political forces.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 3 , Special Issue 2: Post-communist Eastern Europe and the Caucasus , August 2010 , pp. 327 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2010

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