Reasonable Accommodations?

Nora Fisher Onar is a Research Associate of the Centre for International Studies of the University of Oxford and a Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund in Washington DC. Fisher Onar presented "The Cosmo-Politics of Nostalgia: Istanbul, Identity, and Difference" at the March 19, 2015 workshop "Turkish Reasonable Accommodations: From Multiculturalism to Secular Nationalism and Back". The project, “Reasonable Accmommodations?“: Minorities in Globalized Nation States, is a series of four workshops that will take place during the 2014-2015 academic year and will explore religious diversity and minority religious freedoms in different regions of the world. It is directed by the Duke Council for European Studies in collaboration with the Council for North American Studies, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke University, and funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Provost’s Office at Duke University.

Michael Reynolds is an Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Reynolds presented, "Global Norms, Geopolitics, and the Evolution of Minority Politics in Turkey" at the March 19, 2015 workshop "Turkish Reasonable Accommodations: From Multiculturalism to Secular Nationalism and Back". The transformations of Turkey’s minority policies over the course of the past century have been intimately bound up with broader geopolitical processes. As a result, the origins, evolution, and contradictions of those policies can only be understood by taking into account changes in the norms of global order and Turkey’s position in the interstate system. This presentation first examines the ways in which the global proliferation of the national idea, great power competition, and imperial collapse interacted to shape the formation of official Turkish nationalism and secularism at the founding of the Turkish Republic. It then explores the synergy over the past decade between the revival of public interest in the Ottoman past, the relative liberalization of policies toward minorities, and the pursuit of a new foreign policy vision. It concludes with observations on how Turkey’s foreign policy setbacks and current external challenges complicate efforts to restructure the place of minorities inside Turkey. The project, “Reasonable Accmommodations?“: Minorities in Globalized Nation States, is a series of four workshops that will take place during the 2014-2015 academic year and will explore religious diversity and minority religious freedoms in different regions of the world. It is directed by the Duke Council for European Studies in collaboration with the Council for North American Studies, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke University, and funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Provost’s Office at Duke University.

Cemil Aydin is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Aydin presented, "Impossibility of the Millet System in the Age of Active Publics: Ottoman Tanzimat, Imperial Citizenship, and Cosmopolitan Pluralism, 1839-1915" at the March 19, 2015 workshop "Turkish Reasonable Accommodations: From Multiculturalism to Secular Nationalism and Back". This presentation will discuss why Ottoman Tanzimat Era reforms in the millet system, which included granting full equality to non-Muslim citizens of the modernizing empire, eventually failed. It argues that this failure, best symbolised by the image of Sultan Abdulhamid II as an oppressor of his Christian subjects, has global roots and comparable to the failure of imperial citizenship projects in Russian, British, Dutch, Austria-Hungarian, and French Empires. The very technologies that empowered the imperial governments in ruling diverse subjects over large areas, such as steamship, trains, telegraphs and journalism, also empowered reading publics of each empire, making their claims to imperial administration more articulate, globally entangled and organized. The Ottoman millet system tried to adjust to these new technologies of imperial governance by reforming its foundations and its social contract base thoughout the 19th century. What were the achievements and failures of this 19th century Ottoman institutionalisation of religious difference and identity accommodation? How did it transition to the notions of citizenship during the era of Turkish Republic after 1923? The project, “Reasonable Accmommodations?“: Minorities in Globalized Nation States, is a series of four workshops that will take place during the 2014-2015 academic year and will explore religious diversity and minority religious freedoms in different regions of the world. It is directed by the Duke Council for European Studies in collaboration with the Council for North American Studies, the Duke Islamic Studies Center, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke University, and funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Provost’s Office at Duke University.

The History of Religious Freedom Brandon Bayne, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Religious Studies Kevin Christiano, University of Notre Dame, Sociology

Religious Freedom and the Courts Ernest Young, Duke University, Law School Shauna Van Praagh, McGill University, Faculty of Law

Religion or Culture? The Politics of Accommodation Practices Charles Taylor, McGill University, Philosophy

Religious Freedom & Minority Religious Rights in Canadian & U.S. Foreign Policy Andrew Bennett, Canadian Ambassador for Religious Freedom Katrina Lantos Swett, Chair, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom