State comes 1st, mosque 2nd in Turkey’s system
By Colin McMahon and Catherine Collins Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune
Sun Oct 24, 9:40 AM ET

Like the modern office building where he works, Mehmet Bekaroglu is without
flourish. His dress is Western conservative, his manner approachable, his
message conciliatory.

Islam is a peaceful religion, Bekaroglu says. And it is his job to see that it
stays that way in Turkey.

“We are like a strainer for tea,” said Bekaroglu, a senior official at Turkey’s
sprawling Religious Affairs Directorate, known as Diyanet. “We strain the
information so that when it reaches the people, it is the best possible
interpretation based on the Koran. . . . Our mission is to get people to live
in peace and harmony.”

“Peace” is invoked like a commandment at Diyanet, which supervises Turkey’s
70,000 mosques and other state religious properties. Officials prepare the
sermons for Friday prayers in pursuit of unity and understanding. Every mufti
and imam who helps Turks interpret Islam is on the Diyanet payroll.

The Diyanet system is less a separation of mosque and state than a subjugation
of mosque by state. And the goal is not to fuel Islam among Turkey’s 70 million
people. The goal is to temper it.

The outcome of this uniquely Turkish approach has implications far beyond the
borders of the geopolitically strategic nation.

No matter how Turks try to avoid the tag, many Westerners like to present
Turkey as a model of pluralism and prosperity for the Muslim world. It has
opened up politically and economically. It has expanded ties to the West. Yet
despite a constitution that dictates its secular nature, Turkey maintains a
strong Muslim identity.

This mix lends Istanbul its charm and energy. Turkey’s largest and greatest
city, though not its capital, Istanbul is a rush of narrow lanes fit for carts
and wide boulevards choked with cars; of wood-frame homes that have stood for
centuries and modern towers that mock Turkey’s deadly earthquakes; of ancient
brick and tempered steel.

Now as the European Union (news – web sites) considers whether and how to
invite Turkey in, many see a tremendous chance to exploit Turkey beyond its
cliched status as a bridge between East and West and turn it into an example
for new alliances between mostly Christian and mostly Muslim societies.

A European embrace of the nation that succeeded the Ottoman Empire, the most
powerful and longest-reigning Islamic empire the world has known, would grant
great credibility to Turkey’s approach. And it would repudiate Muslims who
argue that the West is fundamentally opposed to Islam and that Turkey has
betrayed its Islamic identity in a futile pursuit of Western riches and
respect.

If the November 2003 bombings of Jewish and British targets in Istanbul, and
about a dozen smaller bombings since, were intended to knock Turkey off its
path toward the European Union, they have so far failed. Instead the attacks
confirmed for many Turks in the military and some in civilian life that tight
control of religion is a matter of national security.

In shaping how Muslims worship, and how they don’t, the Turkish state reaches
into several critical areas of public life. It manipulates the education system
to dissuade the pious from attending religious schools and prohibit them from
expressing their piety in public schools. It imposes the first and the final
say over what is preached at mosques and who does the preaching. And it
intervenes in the political system should a religious party or leader be deemed
a threat to Turkey’s secular nature.

At the center of this system of control is Diyanet, a 75,000-member
Sunni-dominated bureaucracy surpassed in size and budget only by the education
system and the armed forces.

Most Diyanet officials are not practicing clerics but bureaucrats. They dress
in the jackets and ties that many pious Muslims shun. They rise through the
ranks by cultivating contacts and passing exams. They proudly display photos of
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and the national icon, but
also the man whose wariness of Islam led to the creation of Diyanet.

The Diyanet headquarters of glass and steel gleams off a new highway on the
edge of Ankara, the former backwater that Ataturk remade into a capital city as
he turned the Turkish state away from Istanbul, away from its mosques of tile
and stone, away from its history as the seat of the Islamic caliphate.

Though 280 miles southeast of Istanbul, Ankara feels more Western than
Istanbul. The new section, with its universities, apartment buildings, hotels,
theaters and embassies, now dwarfs ancient Ankara. And though urban growth has
squeezed its parks and strangled its wide boulevards, parts of Ankara still
have the feel of the European model used to build the city in the 20th Century.

At the same time, Ankara is clearly the seat of state power. The military
establishment is here, as are the courts and parliament. Ataturk rests here, in
a mausoleum built in 1953 that stands as an impressive monument not only to him
but also to modern Turkish architecture. And it is from here that Diyanet runs
the state enterprise that is Islam.

“At Diyanet, we are not working to make people more religious,” said Ali
Bardakoglu, a theologian and academic who heads Diyanet. “It is not our project
to convert [people] to Islam. . . . Religious services are to promote peace,
not conflict.”

The army likes it this way. So do many secular Turks who point to Iran and
Saudi Arabia as justification in silencing even a whisper of Islamic
fundamentalism. They say Turkey’s secular creed has afforded the country
political, economic and religious pluralism unmatched in the Muslim world.

But restrictions that some Turks find undemocratic, such as barring head
scarves in government offices and university classrooms, are at the heart of
efforts to protect Turkey’s secular system. Devout Turks, whose numbers are
growing, chafe under Diyanet control. All they ask, they say, is the kind of
freedom of worship enshrined in the U.S. Bill of Rights and available to their
Muslim brethren in the United States.

Bardakoglu acknowledges the criticism. But he says it is too soon to talk of
abolishing Diyanet.

“Turkey has paved a common way for modern, social and political life together
with individual religiosity,” the Diyanet leader said. “We should prevent
religion from being used for political purposes. We should pave the way for
individual religiosity instead.”

Diyanet: Then and now

The Diyanet system has its roots in Ottoman history. Turks point out that a
split in duties between state and mosque began to take shape in the early
1800s, a century before Ataturk made his mark as a young military officer.

But the theocratic trappings of the Ottoman Empire are undeniable. Though often
not especially devout, Ottoman sultans were also the Islamic caliphs, empowered
not merely with political and military might but also with spiritual authority.
Islam was synonymous with Ottoman and with Turkish governance into World War I,
even as the Young Turks were wresting power from the sultan in the empire’s
dying years.

It took Ataturk to formally sever Islam’s political role soon after proclaiming
the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Ataturk abolished the Islamic caliphate,
depriving Muslims across the world of a figure many viewed as “God’s shadow on
Earth.” He secularized the educational system and closed the religious
colleges. And in the 1924 constitution that codified his secular revolution,
Ataturk established Diyanet.

As a full-service employer, Diyanet pays not only salaries but also housing and
other benefits for its imams and muftis. Those who live on mosque property
don’t pay rent. They get health coverage and pensions, just as other civil
servants. The state pays for all of it.

Along with this, Diyanet lays down standards for its clerics. Anything that
hints at religious extremism violates those standards.

“Unfortunately, we do not have religious freedom in this country. The
government interferes in so many ways with our freedom to worship as we like,”
said Imam Abdullah Sezer of Fatih Mosque, in one of the most conservative
neighborhoods of Istanbul. “In a secular state, which is what Turkey is
supposed to be, that is not right. We want the same religious freedoms they
have in the United States.”

Turkey’s most conservative Muslims, an estimated 5 percent of the population,
want to turn Turkey into an Islamic republic. Larger minorities support a legal
system based on their version of Shariah, a code of conduct inspired by various
sources including the Koran, the sayings and conduct of the Prophet Muhammad
and rulings by Islamic scholars. On the issue of women’s rights, the Diyanet
line is far more liberal than what many imams would prefer to preach.

Letting such views have a full hearing, backed by the authority of clerics,
would foster discord and fuel radicalism, Diyanet supporters say.

Kemal Dervis, a parliamentarian and former vice president of the World Bank
(news – web sites), acknowledged the contradiction of having a secular state
run a religion. But he said Diyanet remained necessary as a regulator,
especially when conservative forces from other countries spend money in Turkey
to spread their views.

“It is a little like the state should not intervene in the banking system, but
it has to regulate it,” Dervis said.

A message of peace, down to the letter

Diyanet’s extensive reach can be seen in its elaborate process to shape and
deliver Friday sermons to mosques across the country.

A lower commission at Diyanet does much of the early work on draft sermons
submitted by imams or theologians across the country. Then the higher
commission, made up of 16 clerics, theologians or academics plus a former army
general, all appointed to 7-year terms, meets weekly to work the sermons over.

By the time the sermons are posted on the Internet and read at Friday prayers,
they conform to the commission’s view of Islam–and thus to the religious
interpretation of Diyanet and the Turkish state.

Topics are selected up to a year in advance, with themes such as “Love of
Mothers” and “How to Educate Our Children” and “Laziness.” The sermons are
shaped, edited, inspected and approved a few months in advance. Sometimes,
though, a sermon is written and delivered immediately to respond to events.

That was the case in April, when Jewish leaders expressed concern to the
government about the Turkish release of the Mel Gibson movie “The Passion of
the Christ.” An age limit of 16 was applied to the film, and a sermon titled
“Christ in the Koran” was whipped up.

Jesus Christ, worshipers were told, was a servant of God but not the Son of
God. And he was put on Earth not to redeem men but “to remind them of the rules
of the Torah.”

Mehmet Bekaroglu, who as chairman of the religious services department oversees
the sermon commissions, said state officials outside Diyanet do not dictate the
sermons, though they sometimes inquire about a certain topic.

Bekaroglu’s career helps show how similar Diyanet is to other civil services
and government bureaucracies.

Born in 1954, Bekaroglu started studying the Koran not in elementary school but
at home with his parents. He went to a religious high school, then joined
Diyanet and worked as an imam outside Istanbul. He attended the Institute of
High Islam, scored well on tests and became a mufti.

By the mid-1980s, Bekaroglu was looking to move into management. He took
another exam and became a deputy inspector. Then, quickly, he scored well on
the next test and was promoted to inspector, one of 56 that Diyanet employs in
districts across Turkey.

The inspectorate system is a key aspect of Diyanet. Each department within the
bureaucracy is inspected every two years to ensure that its personnel are
complying with Turkish law and with Diyanet’s vision of Islam. Mosques are
inspected every three years.

Inspectors and their deputies field individual complaints as well. When imams
do push the limits, Ankara takes note. And if the local or regional muftis fail
to deal with the issue, Ankara will dispatch an inspector to restore order.

“Inspectors look to see if the system is breaking down,” said Bekaroglu, who
became chief inspector in 2002 and served about a year before moving up to his
current post. “The goal is to enforce peace, to get people to live in harmony.”

Flare-ups are rare, officials said, not surprising given that an imam’s whole
livelihood, not merely his post, depends on Diyanet.

“As long as the sermon doesn’t provoke terrorism or promote violence, there are
no serious punishments,” said Mufti Mustafa Cagrici of Istanbul. “If there are
complaints, we will issue a warning. There could even be a disciplinary action.
He could be suspended for a time.”

A case earlier this year in the eastern village of Kotanduzu, in one of
Turkey’s most conservative regions, showed how Diyanet polices its clerics.

Villagers complained that the local imam was haranguing them as being
un-Islamic. Women who wore head scarves and long skirts were told to switch to
the black chador, a head-to-toe garment. Men were taken to task for playing
cards.

Regional Diyanet officials stepped in, removed the imam from his post and began
an investigation. They blamed his behavior on health problems but made it clear
that he would not be back on the job unless the cure involved a change of
heart.

Turkish Islam is considered more pluralistic and more tolerant than most forms
of Arab Islam, having been influenced by shamanism in Central Asia; by Sufism,
an Islamic mysticism that emphasizes self-awareness and intimate and personal
religious experiences; by the Alevi Muslim minority, which has a more liberal
interpretation of Islam and makes up a fifth to a quarter of Turkey’s
population, and by non-Muslim minorities.

“Diversity in religion and political culture created a milieu where various
religious groups lived in peace and practiced their faith,” said Nilufer Narli,
a professor at Kadir Has University, tracing Turkey’s openness to the West and
to pluralism back to Ottoman times. “Respecting the other’s faith and his or
her human dignity and freedom were the virtues shared by all the religious
groups.”

Non-Muslim minorities, mostly Jews, and Greek and Armenian Christians, have
faced discrimination and even persecution, both under the modern republic and
during the Ottoman Empire. But today, they say they are better off in many ways
than Muslim Turks because the state interferes far less in the religious lives
of non-Muslims than in the lives of pious Muslims.

“The state has become so suspicious of all pious people,” said Hrant Dink, an
ethnic Armenian and a Christian by birth who edits the Armenian newspaper Agos.
“[Islam] here is oppressed by secularism.”

Education for all–who play by the rules

On a summer morning in a courtyard outside Istanbul University, young devout
women gathered to pay a personal price for the state policy of religious
control.

The women knew that their wearing of head scarves was barred from public
universities. Yet they showed up anyway to take the annual entrance exam,
joining thousands of male and female students who had gathered before dawn.

A university proctor emerged to address the students.

“Boys to the left,” the proctor commanded. “Girls to the right.”

Immediately, dozens of young women stepped aside to remove head scarves and
floor-length coats. One ducked behind a building, then returned with tears of
shame streaming down her face.

She handed a scarf to another woman and ascended the stairs, eyes down before
the male proctor. “I feel sorry for these girls,” he said.

Watching her sister go, Saziye Kirbas said: “I don’t know if God will forgive
this sin of uncovering her head, but she needs to go to school, and this is the
only way to do it.”

Though surveys show that most of the country opposes the head scarf ban, many
Turks have decided that it is better to go along.

“I never got an education, and today I am completely dependent on my husband,”
said Havva Altuntas, who brought her daughter, also covered, to the university
exam. “I don’t want my daughter to be dependent on any man. . . . Covered,
uncovered, what does it matter? Only an education matters.”

But no matter how much an education matters, some Turks want the right to put
faith first.

Covered head to heel in cloth and coat on the day of her high school
graduation, Tugba Unlu ignored the hot summer sun as she spun out a sermon
about Islam and democracy.

“They want us to give up our head scarves,” Unlu said, clutching a certificate
of academic achievement and a copy of the Koran the school had awarded her.
“But instead of compromising our religious beliefs we would rather compromise
our education.”

Unlu had been honored as a top student at her religious school in Sincan, an
Ankara township of nearly 300,000 people. For all her talk of becoming a
doctor, she knew this day might end up the highlight of her academic career.

“I don’t understand why they are trying to change us,” Unlu said. “Maybe they
think the devout among us pose a threat of Islamic terrorism and that we want
to change the democratic system. This is proof there is not democracy, there is
no equality in this country.”

Head scarves are the most visible and potent symbol of the conflict between the
devout and the state. But they are not the only way the state uses the
education system to control Islam. To get into the overcrowded university
system, graduates of religious schools must score better on their entrance
exams than students from public schools.

The state asserts that because religious schools are better academically,
public school applicants must be given a leg up. Parents who send their
children to religious schools, many because they see those schools as more
disciplined and morally upright, assert that the policy is pure discrimination.

“Everyone should be able to live the life he wants,” said Ismail Dogan, a
retired textile worker in Kayseri, a conservative city of about 500,000. “They
should respect the devout, and the devout should respect them. We are not
against the secularists. But we also want them to respect us.”

Dogan’s older sons and his daughter all graduated from religious high schools
and went on to private universities that required great financial sacrifice, he
said. But the youngest son will go to a public high school in hopes of a better
shot at a public university. It wasn’t fair, Dogan said, but for now it is the
Turkish system.

“We don’t want to cause problems in the country. We don’t want to go to the
protests,” Dogan said. “It is better to keep quiet, not to cause divisions.”

Politic in public, at home with Islam

For Turks who fear any hint of Allah in politics, the controversy last month
over a proposal to criminalize adultery affirmed their searing distrust of
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development
Party, known by its Turkish acronym, AKP or AK Party.

Suggested as part of a sweeping revision of Turkey’s penal code, the measure to
restore potential prison sentences for adulterers had the strong support of AK
Party’s conservative base. But it angered liberals and women’s groups. It
alarmed European Union officials, already concerned about Turkey’s limits on
religious freedom.

And it provided AK Party critics with fresh ammunition: Never mind that AKP had
won praise for its 22 months of governance, opponents said, Erdogan was finally
revealing his “secret agenda.”

AK Party eventually dropped the adultery provision and pushed through the rest
of the legal package. To Erdogan’s supporters, the decision provided evidence
of how far he had come as a politician.

“AK Party is not an Islamic party, it’s a center-right party,” said Celal
Hasnalcaci, a factory owner in Kayseri, which proved to be an AKP stronghold in
the party’s stunning victory in national elections in November 2002. “The
people of the party may be Islamic, but the party is not. The vote for AK Party
was a vote against the old order.”

Though Kayseri may have voted against the old political order, its people
revere the old ways. As they have done for centuries in this city, which dates
to the 4th millennium BC, residents make room in their homes for workshops
where they make carpets coveted around the world. Families are close, and the
mosque is a center of many people’s lives.

Hasnalcaci belongs to an Islamic chamber of commerce known as MUSIAD, which AKP
opponents portray as a kind of Muslim cabal funding an Islamic revolution.

MUSIAD members reject that characterization and say they merely want what
capitalists the world over want: lower taxes, private ownership rather than
state control and transparency in the government bidding process. AK Party,
they say, is the most capable of breaking the cycle of corruption that has long
been a part of the Turkish government’s relationship with big business.

Looking out over the floor of his factory, located in a Kayseri industrial park
in a valley beneath the extinct Mt. Erciyes volcano, Hasnalcaci watched a few
dozen men and women, some in head scarves and some not, assemble his Keep Out
brand of clothing.

Keep Out jeans fit tight and ride low. The sleeveless shirts ride high. It’s
all designed for the bare-midriff look that competes with pious dress on the
vibrant Istiklal Avenue in central Istanbul.

If a fundamentalist regime came to power in Turkey, Hasnalcaci might not lose
his factory, but he would certainly have to redesign Keep Out’s casual line.
And an adult daughter of his who goes uncovered would have to change her ways
too.

“Yes, yes, the hidden agenda,” Hasnalcaci said, a bit exasperated by the whole
question of Turkey’s turning fundamentalist. “Well, it’s not possible.”

Power upfront and behind the scenes

With his party dominating parliament by a two-thirds majority, his approval
ratings high and his international image glossy, Erdogan is the most powerful
person in Turkish politics. But there are limits to Erdogan’s power, some
dictated by the rule of law and some by Turkey’s own complex rules of the game.

In Turkey the government and the state are not always synonymous. The state
bureaucracy can prove hard to control for even the most adept party in power.
And Turkey’s so-called deep state, made up of ruling elites from the military,
judicial branch, business and media, has long wielded tremendous power behind
the scenes.

The deep state’s various players are seen as unofficial protectors of Turkey’s
secular system. The army, meanwhile, is empowered by the constitution to be its
official protector.

Erdogan knows firsthand the dangers of being holier than they allow, having
spent four months in prison in 1999 for reciting a poem that included such
lines as, “The mosques are our barracks.”

Erdogan now leavens his piety with heaps of practicality. “In the office I’m a
democrat,” says the politician who once pursued a professional soccer career.
“At home I’m a Muslim.”

Many Turks fear this commitment to individual liberty is all talk. Some women
in particular fear that Turkey, even if it does not become Islamic by law, will
become so conservatively religious that space will shrink for liberal women to
work where they want, see whom they care to and dress as they wish.

“Trying to do my job has never been so difficult,” said theater director Almula
Merter, who has battled censors to put on various productions, including most
recently “The Vagina Monologues” and a play about incest called “Taboo.” Merter
has lived in Istanbul and New York City for the past 10 years, and she has seen
Turkey move backward on liberal values and women’s rights in that time.

“I sometimes wonder: Am I doing the wrong thing by staying here and
performing?” Merter said.

Notwithstanding its history of coups–three military overthrows, plus the
orchestrated fall of Welfare’s coalition government–the army has kept to the
sidelines. Even when Erdogan pushed for a resolution of the Cyprus conflict
that drew Turkey back from the hard line many generals supported, the military
went along.

Today, the military remains Turkey’s most respected institution. But that
public trust would be severely jeopardized were the army to override democracy
again, analysts say.

“Any Turkish army reaction that is not formulated correctly is seen as a
reaction against Islam,” said Umit Ozdag of the Center for Eurasian Strategic
Studies, an Ankara think tank with good sources among the army’s senior
officers. “An army move on AKP strengthens AKP.”

An army move on AKP would also almost certainly doom Turkey’s hopes of joining
the European Union. But then, so would a sharp swing toward conservatism by the
party’s devout leaders.

In December, the EU is to decide whether to begin negotiations that would lead
to Turkey’s membership. Should the vote go Turkey’s way, the invitation would
signal a profound break from the suspicion and hostility that have marked the
Christian West’s attitude toward the Turkish people for nearly a millennium.

A no vote, however, no matter what the justification, would fuel resentment.

“If Turkey and Europe do not become full partners, that creates more fertile
ground for extremism,” said political analyst and commentator Cengiz Candar.
“Turkey is bigger than Turkey now.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress