Freedom of Religion under Turkish Constitution

This paper deals with freedom of religion under the Turkish constitution. Who is entitled to which rights, to what extent, and who is under which duties corresponding to those rights? Guided by these questions, I will identify the constitutional norms related to the protection of freedom of religion and their interrelations, referring to the conception of a principle by Robert Alexy. I will examine the content and limits of subjective rights to freedom of religion, taking into account the negative and positive aspects of freedom, as well as the well-established duality - the fora internum and externum. In order to problematize the meaning of constitutional norms in this context, I will discuss the basic dichotomies that dominate the understanding of the courts and scholars alike. I argue that a few established patterns of jurisprudence will inevitably change in the future, due to the recent amendment on the Turkish Constitutional Court s mandate.