Foreign Policy as a Determinant in the Fate of Turkey's Non-Muslim Minorities: A Dialectical Analysis.

The fate of Turkey's non-Muslim minorities has been somehow linked to the country's foreign policy since the eighteenth century. Throughout the Ottoman era, the early years of the Republic and the Cold War period, foreign policy issues had a mostly negative impact on the treatment of the non-Muslim minorities, engendering the state's suspicion and repression. This has changed at the turn of the twenty-first century, with the emergence of a new variable in Turkish foreign policy: The European Union. Reforms undertaken by Ankara since then have considerably transformed the scene, although challenges do still remain, demonstrating the dialectical nature of the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]