KFG Working Paper No. 41 "Tolerance as a European Norm or an Ottoman Practice? An Analysis of Turkish Public Debates on the (Re)Opening of an Armenian Church in the Context of Turkey’s EU Candidacy and Neo-Ottoman Revival" has been published.

Within the paper, the author Bilgin Ayata analyzes if the increasing institutional compliance with EU criteria concerning cultural and minority rights in Turkey has also led to fransformations at a normative level in the Turkish public discourse. She presents results from a qualitativ media analysis and demonstrates that the key words of tolerance and plurality reflect a rediscovery and reinterpretation of Turkey's Ottoman past practices as a multi-religious empire. Moreover, the author argues that without an acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide Turkey’s nostalgic embracement of the Ottoman past and representation of norms such as tolerance as the ‘true’ Turkish/Islamic norms do not stand for a norm internalization or a norm adaption process, but instead, for a disconnection between norm and practice.

 

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