Right of foreigners to vote of other supranational groupings of countries. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty imposed reciprocity inside the European Union concerning voting rights in local elections; this already existed for the European elections. In several European states, the public debate on the right of foreigners to vote was therefore renewed, as some foreign residents had the right to vote (European foreign residents) while others, non-Europeans, did not. As a result of this debate, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Slovenia and Belgium extended the right to vote, in different manners, to all foreign residents (which was already the case in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Netherlands). The European Parliament,
Accession of Turkey to the European Union with the Shi'a Alevi branch. The Christians (Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Gregorian, Syriac, Protestant) and Jews (Sephardic, Ashkenazi) were formerly sizable religious minorities in the country, until the genocide of Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians. Turkey would be the first Muslim-majority country to join the European Union. Official population census polls in Turkey do not include information regarding a person's religious belief or ethnic background due to the regulations set by the Turkish constitution, which defines all citizens of the Republic of Turkey as Turkish in terms of nationality, regardless of faith or race. There is a tradition of secularism in Turkey.