| Summary/Abstract |
Since the establishment of the Republic in 1923, any non-Muslim born in Turkey, whatever his/her religion, is a Turkish citizen as are any of his/her Muslim fellows. However, sometimes he/she might consider him/herself an alien and might even be regarded as such by the official authorities. The purpose of this article is to shed light on this reality from an historical perspective. Based on the comparison of two terms (ecnebi and yabancı, both meaning foreigner) that had become frequently used during the last Ottoman decades, the analysis establishes to what degree ecnebi was replaced by yabancı in official republic terminology. The article argues that this change might be related to the formation of less visible categories of foreigners that partly originated from the confessional imperial framework based on the differentiation between Muslims and non-Muslims. Far from being set aside as the Kemalists have long claimed, this framework has prevailed. It partly explains to what extent, as a result, in the history of the Turkish Republic, non-Muslim Turkish citizens have sometimes been regarded as ‘foreigners within’ (içerdeki yabancı).
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