Middle Eastern Studies, cilt.43, ss.761-777, 2007 (SSCI)
Turkey’s Roma are one of
the major minority groups in the country without the status of an officially
recognized minority. Around one million Roma are estimated to live in Turkey
with distinct cultural characteristics, primarily of language. They also
compose one of the constituents of the lower class in Turkey who face problems
of lower levels of education, income, and housing and of a higher level of
criminality. In accordance with the Europeanization of the human rights and
protection of minority standards in Turkey due to the process of accession to
the EU, the Roma became focal in EU-Turkish relations, as recent European
Commission regular reports on Turkey made assessments of the situation that the
Roma are in. It is in this context that the integration of the Roma to Turkish
society and their participation in the public sphere as a group become
important. This study has taken the task of understanding the Roma community
with its level of political participation and organisation. In light of field
research conducted in Tarlabaşı, a neighbourhood in the Bornova district of
Izmir mostly populated by the Roma, the questions of how the Roma develop
identity, organise collectively, get access to public services and perceive
membership to the EU are traced. The study discusses the research results
obtained in the research and makes an evaluation of the main problems that the
Roma experience in today’s Turkey