CIRCASSIAN MINORITY IN TURKEY: THE SAMSUN CASE Dr. Yasemin Oral

The Legal Framework for the Linguistic Rights of Minorities in Turkey The most direct and relevant jurisprudential basis of the minority rights in Turkey are the Treaty of Lausanne and the Turkish Constitution. [...] Traditional homeland of the speakers of NWC languages are the areas to the north and partly to the south of the western part of the Caucasian Ridge including the northeastern coast of the Black Sea (Arkadier and Lander, MARC Minorities, Accountability, Rights and Cooperation (NEAR-TS2020419-94) Funded by the European Union 2020: 370). [...] This fragile linguistic ecology can be accounted for, according to Friedman (2010: 135), historically by the Russian wars of conquest in the mid-nineteenth century, the famines and Stalin’s deportations of the mid-twentieth century, and the wars, rebellions, and ethnic cleansings of the end of the twentieth century, and recently by the processes of modernization, urbanization, and the ongoing effe. [...] The language and educational policies of the Russian Federation, especially since 2000, has reinforced and elevated the role of the Russian language as the state language and downgraded the status of minority languages and their role MARC Minorities, Accountability, Rights and Cooperation (NEAR-TS2020419-94) Funded by the European Union in education with a significant decrease in teaching official. [...] The Roles of Politics Although language shift is mostly perceived as an internal matter of the Circassians primarily related to the individual, family and organizations, the role of politics and political institutions come to the fore in the context of language maintenance.