Turkey: Examining the nuances of the Mosque-State debate

Nicholas Birch: 5/29/08

In early May, Olli Rehn, the European Union's enlargement commissioner, characterized the ongoing domestic political struggle in Turkey as pitting "extreme secularists" against "Muslim democrats."

There are numerous experts in Turkey who are disputing Rehn's analysis. They contend that the political struggle – which is now centering on a Supreme Court case on a possible ban of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) – is more nuanced than what appears to be the perception from Brussels. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

"This war is not between secularists and non-secularists, but Turkish Muslims and Muslim Turks," said columnist Gokhan Ozgun. Secularists' "real fear is that their non-secular positivist Muslim state might turn into a non-secular orthodox Muslim state," Ozgun added.

His words are a response to the surreal tone of the row over headscarf bans that triggered the closure case. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Few argued that what a woman wears on her head is not the state's business. Instead, conservatives insisted the ban breached Islamic obligations for women to cover their heads. Opposition leader Deniz Baykal, often dubbed a "staunch secularist," backed bans on the grounds that a woman uncovering her head is not committing a cardinal sin in Islam.

The dominance of religion in Turkish public discourse is understandable. Instead of dividing religion and state as its secularists claim, Turkey has tended to use Sunni Islam as a means to impose homogeneity on a multi-confessional society. Being Turkish means being Sunni Muslim, as one mainstream newspaper unwittingly made clear in early May. "One Turk among world's 100 most influential," Milliyet's website headlined, referring to a US-born surgeon of Turkish origin who had made it onto a TIME magazine list. The daily omitted to mention that Bartholomew I, the Turkish-born and Istanbul-based Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, was also on the list.

The key instrument of ecclesiastical control in Turkey is the Directorate of Religious Affairs, or Diyanet, set up in 1924 when the Caliphate was replaced. With a budget rivaling expenditures on defense and education, Diyanet preaches a moderate Islam. But it maintains the authoritarian mentality of the soldiers who founded it.

It runs Turkey's 80,000 mosques and drafts Friday sermons read across the country. The presence on the drafting commission of a retired general perhaps explains why sermons often have a nationalist flavor. In February, during Turkish operations against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, congregations were told that "fighting for the motherland is jihad, dying for it martyrdom." Around the same time, Diyanet ordered imams not to officiate at funerals of Kurdish militants killed in the conflict.

Diyanet's aim has always been "to cultivate loyal citizens rather than good Muslims," says Hakan Yavuz, an expert on Turkish Islam.

Attacks on the pious nationalistic brew it represents are increasing. Some of the loudest criticisms come from Alevis, a 10-million-strong group whose Shi'a-influenced beliefs put them at the very edge of the Islamic spectrum.

On March 4, Ali Kenanoglu won a landmark court case to exempt his son from "religious culture and ethics" courses made compulsory under a military-backed 1982 constitution. (No other class has the same constitutional protection.) Other Alevi families, who see the syllabus as Sunni propaganda, have followed him to court.

Alevi attitudes to Diyanet are also changing. Most used to demand equitable representation within it. Now, many want it closed. "It would be the most important privatization in Turkey's history," jokes Aykan Erdemir, a Sunni sociologist who wrote his PhD on Alevism. "Turks gave up expecting the state to produce jam and pajamas decades ago. Should it produce religious services? No."

In a country slowly opening up as it moves towards European Union membership, this sort of talk, while still rare, is spreading, even among conservative Sunnis. There are indications, though, that such sentiments are not pervasive among AKP leaders.

Re-elected amid the polarization of society in late 2007, AKP leaders initially stirred excitement with talk of replacing the current authoritarian constitution most see as the root of the country's ills. Then silence fell. Instead of sweeping reform, the government has preferred piecemeal changes – like the headscarf issue – that play to the party's conservative Sunni base. Promises of compromise have been abandoned in favor of rhetoric about representing the will of the nation.

Indeed, Olli Rehn's characterization of the AKP as representative of a "Muslim democrat" model looks increasingly dubious. When police beat trades unionists gathered on May 1, the government supported the tough law-enforcement action. Rather than standing up for a pro-Kurdish party that, like the AKP, is facing closure, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has refused to shake hands with its MPs.

What happened to the government's earlier reformism? Some think two failed coup attempts in 2004 scared the party into moderating its stance toward the state. Others think the change is all about power, and the money it brings. The head of an NGO in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, Bulent Yilmaz has a different theory: "The state is like a black hole," he says. "It sucks everything in."

The issue with Turkey "is that all parties are Kemalist," argues Ali Murat Irat, an Alevi intellectual.

Editor's Note: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

Posted May 29, 2008 © Eurasianet