The Christians of Mersin: Portrait of a minority community in the 2020s

Building upon ethnographic research with the Christian community residing in 2020s Mersin and engaging with the few studies that have analyzed differentiation in other ethno-religious minority communities in Turkey, this study aims to demonstrate heterogeneity within a Turk-ish non-Muslim minority group, specifically along the axes of denomina-tion and place of origin. Ultimately, I argue that while the Christian community in Mersin is demonstrably heterogeneous, its members share a common experience of discrimination in the broader national context and in everyday life that cuts across these internal cleavages, unifying a population that has managed to survive in a challenging his-torical and geographical context like Mersin. This study aims to con-tribute to both the literature on minority heterogeneity and ethno-graphic research on ethno-religious minorities in Turkey.