Conclusions

Abstract

In conclusion, we sum up some of the most important among the many findings this book has presented regarding the evolving situations of religious minorities in Turkey in the context of European integration and changes in Turkey’s domestic politics since the late 1990s. Chapter 2 has explained how minority rights have risen to prominence as a topic in European governance, and how minority rights protection norms have evolved and been incorporated into the EU’s accession conditionality. We have learned that there is a European minority rights regime, even as minority rights policy is neither supra-nationalized nor, at least explicitly, strongly developed in the EU’s primary legislation, due to political sensitivities among the member states. We also learn that minority rights protection is an important part of the EU’s accession conditionality, which was inspired by the rise of ethnic conflict observed in Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War. The chapter’s second part then zoomed in on how the EU has been judging Turkey’s performance on minority rights protection, revealing a pattern of incomplete progress that has recently stalled.