The Politics of Counting and Miscounting in Turkey

• In Event: The Political Origins of Inequality and Ethnic Difference

Abstract

The inclusion of questions on ethnic and religious identity on national censuses is hardly universal and is likely to reflect socio-political and economic calculations. In this project, I begin by exploring patterns of census enumeration across 180 countries since 1900 before drilling down on the case of Turkey, where census questions about non-Turkish language-use and religious denomination were removed in 1965. Beyond understanding the political calculations behind the questions removal, I explore the political manipulation of ethnic and religious tallies in the preceding censuses as well as the consequences of both counting and miscounting on the politicization of Kurdish identity in the decades since.

Author

• Avital Livny, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign