SECULARISM IN TURKEY MEANS GOVERNMENT CONTROLS ALL RELIGIONS
By Cindy Wooden

Catholic News Service
Nov 16 2006

ROME (CNS) — Turkey’s unique brand of secularism is not separation
of religion and state, but rather government control of religion,
impacting both the Muslim majority and religious minorities.

The government builds and funds mosques, employs Muslim prayer
leaders, controls religious education and bans Muslim women and men
from wearing certain head coverings in public offices and universities.

The Turkish Constitution guarantees the religious freedom of all the
country’s residents, and a 1923 treaty guarantees that religious
minorities will be allowed to found and operate religious and
charitable institutions.

Secularists in Turkey see control of religion as the only way to
guarantee Islam will not overpower the secularism of the state and
its institutions.

However, the fact that the constitution and Turkish law do not
recognize minority religious communities as legal entities has severely
limited their ability to own property, and laws restricting private
religious higher education have made it almost impossible for them
to operate seminaries and schools of theology.

Pope Benedict XVI is expected to address the need for a broader
understanding of the religious freedom guarantees during his Nov.
28-Dec. 1 visit to Turkey.

Otmar Oehring, head of the human rights office of Missio, the German
Catholic aid and development agency, said that when the Republic of
Turkey was founded in 1923 the Department of Religious Affairs was
established "to crush Islam and replace it with Turkish nationalism,
which was seen as the only way to promote the modernization and
development of Turkey."

"But it is clear that you cannot take religion away from a religious
country," Oehring said in a Nov. 15 telephone interview from Aachen,
Germany. "Turks are not fundamentalists and radicals, but they
are pious."

Oehring lived in Turkey until he was 16, and he wrote his doctoral
thesis on ideological tensions within the country.

Once multiparty democracy was established in Turkey in the 1950s, he
said, the Religious Affairs Department started opening more mosques
and training and hiring more imams.

Although the effort to crush Islam was set aside, a conviction that
religion had to be controlled was not, he said.

"The state controls and organizes a state brand of Islam," he said.

Particularly as Turkey’s human rights record is examined as part of
its bid to enter the European Union, "many say religious freedom in
Turkey would be dangerous" because of a perceived threat of Islamic
fundamentalism, Oehring said.

"However, I argue that under international human rights agreements
people must be given full religious freedom, but the state can take
action against those who pose a danger for public safety or the state,"
he said.

As far as religious rights go, "in Turkey they first say ‘no,’ then
try to see how they can make it work. We say ‘yes,’ then work to
prevent abuses," Oehring said.

While Turkish Muslims live their faith under government control,
minority religious communities operate under government restrictions,
and minorities often face discrimination in education and employment,
he said.

"If you are a Turkish citizen of Turkish origin, with a Turkish name
and you are a Sunni Muslim, you will have no problems," Oehring said.

"But if you are Catholic — or worse, Greek Orthodox with a Greek name
— you are considered a foreigner, even if you are a Turkish citizen."

One of the most difficult issues Christians, Jews and other religious
minorities are facing is their lack of recognition under Turkish law,
particularly as it applies to their ability to acquire and own property
for churches or synagogues, schools and hospitals, he said.

Running seminaries is evening more difficult, Oehring said.

"In 1971, the government decided there would be no more private
religious schools offering higher education," so the Greek and
Armenian Orthodox seminaries were closed, he said. The Jewish community
already was sending its rabbinical students abroad, and the Latin-rite
Catholic seminary remained open since it was housed in the compound
of the French consulate in Istanbul.

"The Muslim schools had already been closed in 1924 and were reopened
as government-run high schools or faculties of divinity in Turkish
universities," so the state controlled what the students learned,
he said.

While many people recognize the continued closure of the seminaries
as a problem, he said, "the Kemalists and secularists say if you give
Christians the possibility of opening schools, Islamic schools not
under state control also would have a right to open."

In early November, under pressure from the European Union, the
Turkish Parliament passed a "religious foundations law" ordering
the state to return property it owns that had been confiscated from
religious communities. As of Nov. 15, the legislation had not been
signed into law.

"A lot of church people prefer that this not become law because then
the government can say it did what it was asked to do and nothing
will change for another 20 years," Oehring said.

The biggest problem with the law, he said, is that it applies only to
confiscated property still owned by the state, but it does not address
the issue of compensation for confiscated property subsequently sold
by the government.

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