Turkey’s Interior Ministry confirms existence of ‘race codes’

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey’s Interior Ministry has confirmed that minorities in the country are given codes depending on which community they belong to and that such information is sent to the Education Ministry, less than a week after the categorization system was revealed by weekly Agos.

“Minority citizens’ race status is given to the Education Ministry depending on the nationality or race information taken from the state register of the Ottoman period,” the ministry said in a statement that was sent to Agos, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

The statement also said contemporary state registers did not record any information about the race or sect of citizens.

“There are no terms of race, breed, or sect in the state registers,” said the statement sent to Agos. “Depending on the citizens’ demands, religions such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism or Zoroastrianism can be recorded in the state family register, according to the 2nd and 35th articles of Law No. 5490,” the statement added.

The debate over the “race codes” was raised on Aug 1 after Agos reported an official document penned by the Istanbul Provincial Education Directorate, revealing that Turkey’s population administration system had been recording citizens who have Armenian, Jewish or Anatolian Greek (Rum) origins with secret “race codes.”

“Citizens with Armenian origins are coded with ‘2,’” Agos said.