The rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are a good indicator of Turkey’s record on matters of human rights, and the modes of implementation and non-implementation of these rulings are an indicator of the areas of sensitivity for the government in office. The AKP, a reformist party of Islamist origins, has a particular interest in the expression of religiosity in Turkey and been critical of Turkey’s mode of strict secularism. In the area of the freedom of religion and conscience, protected by Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the AKP’s policies have paradoxically led to a revival of the Ottoman legacy. Based on the findings of a recently completed (EU-funded) research project on the impact of the ECtHR, this paper aims to show that the AKP approaches the three major religious groups in Turkey unequally. While the AKP is highly sensitive to the demands of the self-proclaimed “pious” Muslims (Sunnis), and has also been relatively more tolerant than secularist governments toward the demands of the traditional non-Muslim groups, i.e., Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, it has been more or less dismissive of the demands of the largest minority group within Islam, i.e., the Alevis. Considered a heretic sect by the mainstream (Sunni) Muslim opinion, and by the (Sunni) authorities within both the theological faculties of universities and the state’s office of religious affairs, the Alevis themselves are divided between those who emphasize the syncretic nature of their faith and those who insist that they are just a sufi movement within Islam. But the state refuses to recognize them, despite their proportionate size in the population, whereas it has begun to grant unprecedented recognition to non-Muslim groups, whose numbers have dwindled to near oblivion because of waves of emigration due to past cycles of persecution. The greater recognition afforded to non-Muslims parallels the efforts of the AKP to legitimize the religious identity claims of the Sunni Muslim majority. But the continued non-recognition of the Alevis, combined with greater tolerance toward the (traditional) non-Muslim groups, echoes the Ottoman policy of the persecution of the Alevis and the granting of autonomy to the “people of the book.” Hence, globalization and the consequent transcendence of statist-nationalism in Turkey appears to have led to a revival of the Ottoman mode of regulating religion.