Ceren Ozgul
"From Muslim Citizen to Christian Minority: Legal Implications of “Double-Conversion” in Turkey"
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Abstract
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In Turkey, where granting rights to religious minorities is increasingly viewed as an essential requirement for membership in the EU, a group of people of Armenian descent are seeking the arbitration of secular legal authorities of the Turkish Republic to convert back to Christianity, the religion of their ancestors, and to instate their baptismal Christian Armenian names. My goal is to investigate the legal and social implications of this act of "double-conversion" in Turkey that marks both conversion from Islam to Christianity and conversion from a majority status to that of a religious minority.
Turkey provides a highly significant context for the study of the relation between religious minorities and the secular state since the religious affiliation of every citizen is recorded by legal authorities and registered on national identity cards. I will investigate the ways in which religious conversion to a minority religion affects the status of citizenship in a secular nation-state by examining the legal interactions between the converted minorities and various agents of the state's legal bureaucracy to compete over the definition of "religious freedom." This exploratory research will study the central mid-level civil court in Istanbul that have jurisdiction over the issues of religion and name change. Of particular interest to me is how religious converts embrace different discourses on citizenship and religious rights as they make claims about their past and religion.
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