{"id":152203,"date":"2012-01-09T13:23:16","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T09:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=152203"},"modified":"2012-01-09T14:26:31","modified_gmt":"2012-01-09T10:26:31","slug":"turkeys-minorities-complain-of-state-efforts-of-assimilation-stigmatization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2012\/01\/09\/turkeys-minorities-complain-of-state-efforts-of-assimilation-stigmatization.html","title":{"rendered":"Turkey’s Minorities Complain of State Efforts of Assimilation, Stigmatization"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto\u011flu warned of an emergence of fresh sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East, the leader of the nearly 3 million Shiite Muslims in Sunni-dominated Turkey, Selahattin \u00d6zg\u00fcnd\u00fcz, claimed Caferis (a sect of Shiites) in Turkey were being subjected to assimilation and stigmatization by government policies, the H\u00fcrriyet Daily News<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span> reports.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state\u2019s Directorate of Religious Affairs shows the Shiites as the inner enemy of Islam and instigator within the Islamic religion in the books they publish. We are subjected to insults, and our children are being raised according to Sunni-Islam\u2019s teachings in the schools. This is directly assimilation and stigmatization,\u201d Turkish Caferi leader \u00d6zg\u00fcnd\u00fcz told the Daily News in a recent interview.<\/p>\n

\u00d6zg\u00fcnd\u00fcz claimed the state\u2019s Directorate of Religious Affairs was acting like an official organization of once sect, Sunni Islam, and stigmatizing the other sects in Turkey.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe taxes we pay are returning to us as \u2018denial, assimilation and insults.\u2019 If our taxes are transferring to an organization that serves only one sect and ignores the others, then we have a legal problem here,\u201d \u00d6zg\u00fcnd\u00fcz said.<\/p>\n

\u2018Including the Alevis we are more than 20 million\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cCaferis are shown as \u2018perverted\u2019 people in the books published by the Directorate of Religious Affairs. We are so much offended and stigmatized by these kinds of policies. I also include the Alevis into this phenomenon. Including the Alevis, the number of all Caferis is more than 20 million in Turkey,\u201d \u00d6zg\u00fcnd\u00fcz said.<\/p>\n

\u00d6zg\u00fcnd\u00fcz claimed Dec. 27, 2011, in a TV program called \u201cAngle\u201d (A\u00e7\u0131) broadcasted on the state\u2019s Turkish Radio Television Channel (TRT), insulting words were used against the Shiites.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur sect is stigmatized and insulted, and a smear campaign is run against us by also using the names of the Shiite countries in the region. We are fed up with the rhetoric such as \u2018Shiite Maliki [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki] is racking the Sunnis in Iraq\u2019 or \u2018Shiite Iran is trying to spread Shiism in the region.\u2019 People are targeted due to their sects; however, I belong to the same sect as al-Maliki, with the Shiites in Bahrain, Kuwait and Iran. You can have problems with certain people or states, but you should not recall these problems by referring to their sects,\u201d \u00d6zg\u00fcnd\u00fcz said.<\/p>\n

\u00d6zg\u00fcnd\u00fcz said because of the article in the Turkish Constitution that makes religious education mandatory in Turkey, their children are raised in schools with the teachings and ideas of one single sect in Islam, which is Sunni. \u201cThis is truly assimilation, and it is against international human rights laws and the EU acquis; this should change immediately,\u201d \u00d6zg\u00fcnd\u00fcz said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe state\u2019s Directorate of Religious Affairs shows the Shiites as the inner enemy of Islam and instigator …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":152165,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[36426,36427,13687,36425,36424,36423,10222],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}