Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Tunceli MP Şerafettin Halis handed in a legislative proposal for lifting religious indication on Turkish identity cards.

Halis argued that government pressure is imposed on the Sunni section of Islam by corporations and their staff and the Ministry of Religious Affairs in particular. This opens doors for discrimination and oppression of groups with different beliefs, especially Alevis, Halis warned.

Halis suggests in his proposal to lift article 7/1-e of the Public Service Act ordering that "the individual's religion is to be written on the identity card".

Omission of religious indication only upon written application

According to current regulations, a written application has to be made to the civil registry directorate in order to omit the religious indication from a personal ID.

Article 82 of the "Regulation regarding the Application of the Public Service Act" from 23 November 2006 regulates: "Requests to the family registry related to religious indication shall be registered as personally written declarations, changed, left blank or deleted. Requests of changing or deleting the religious indication are not subject to numeric confinements".

Court decision not required

One of the novelties of the regulations is that a court decision is no longer required for changes of the religious indication. The person's written declaration is considered sufficient.

Article 96 of the regulations orders, "No amendments can be done apart from correcting concrete mistakes in the family registry and omitting or amending the religious indication by means of a general or specific writing". (TK/VK)