Minorities in Turkey and the European Union

Today in our world, in which nearly four thousand ethnic groups are livingand six thousand languages are spoken, the concept of minority rights has become agenerally accepted fact, at least as much as human rights. Especially after the year1990, the minority rights, which have broaden in terms of geography and which havebecome deep and strong in terms of quality as a result of the improvements of theworld, have reached a dimension in which the governments aren't able to ignore orrefuse.In this thesis, in which European Union and Turkey examples are beingstudied on, the situation written above is thought fundamental and in general theirapproach (European Union's and Turkey's) towards the concepts of ?minorities? and?minority rights? has been evaluated according to the interior law arrangements ofthese countries. According to this, at the beginning of the study the questions suchas ?what does minority mean ?? and ?what are the minority rights ?? were tried to beanswered first and because of this target the impovements on the subjects ofminorities and minority rights during the historical process have been superficiallymentioned. After the introduction which forms the historical and conceptual layout ofthe study, the subject about "European Union and Minorities" (Chapter I) has beendealt with and the developments which are about the unity of minorities, have beenassessed with their different perpormances and the decisions and documents thatthe member countries accepted.In the last chapter of the study which is called ?Minority Rights Problem inTurkey", Turkey?s minority law which depends on the historical process of peoplewho are not Muslims was taken with the international documents and the last reformswhich become true in the process of membership.