With the December 2004 recognition of Turkey as an official candidate for EU accession, the long-suppressed issue of minority rights both by the government and in the collective consciousness of society was placed openly on the agenda. In seeking to fulfil the minority protection conditionality of the Copenhagen Criteria the government enacted a series of constitutional and legislative reform laws implicitly granting ethnic and linguistic minorities certain language rights and making some progress towards protecting the hitherto violated property rights of non-Muslims. However, the government carefully avoided any explicit reference that could suggest an official recognition of minority identities. It made minorities' exercise of their limited rights prohibitively difficult by attaching restrictive conditions to them and by conferring on officials a virtually unchecked authority in adopting secondary legislation.

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