PanARMENIAN.Net

Secular Turks facing discrimination
20.12.2008 12:26 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A report in Turkey has highlighted "very worrying"
evidence of increased discrimination against secular Turks. The study,
called "Being Different in Turkey", links this directly to the
presence of the religious conservative AK Party in government. It
details widespread social pressure on non-devout Muslims to attend
Friday prayers, fast during the month of Ramadan or wear a
headscarf. It was conducted by the Open Society Institute and
Bosphorus University.

It suggests that a government policy of making appointments to local
administrations on the basis of political and religious beliefs,
rather than competence, is forcing non-devout Turks to change their
habits in order to protect their business or their jobs.

The AK Party has its roots in Political Islam, but has always insisted
its views have changed.

Last year, the party survived an attempt to close it down, as a threat
to Turkey’s strict secular system.

The study documents what many secular Turks have complained about in
the years since the AK Party came to power. Based on interviews with
almost 5,000 secular Turks, Alevites and Christians in 12 cities, it
concludes that religious conservatism is flourishing, breeding
increasing intolerance of those outside the Sunni Muslim majority. It
claims that the appointment of AK Party devotees to local
administrations, schools and hospitals is changing the social
atmosphere in Turkey in what it calls a very worrying way.

The report cites page upon page of examples: non-religious nurses put
on permanent night shift; landlords refusing to take female student
tenants unless they wear a headscarf; secular civil servants bypassed
for promotion. It talks of increased social pressure to attend Friday
prayers and fast during Ramadan, and documents the difficulty in many
cities of obtaining licenses to sell alcohol.

The report’s authors accept that much of the Turkish heartland has
always been socially conservative. But they blame the AK Party for
failing to promote tolerance for other groups’ rights and freedoms
while in government. Instead, the government’s practices have had
quite the opposite effect, BBC reports.