Cyprus Mail

The Islamic case for religious liberty

By Mustafa Akyol Published on January 30, 2010

ECUMENICAL Patriarch Bartholomew of the Orthodox Church recently said
on American TV that he feels `crucified’ in Turkey, upsetting many
Turks. Sadly, his Holiness is right. Yet his complaint is not with
Islam but with the secular Turkish Republic.

The Turkish state has kept the Halki Seminary, the only institution
able to train Orthodox priests, closed since 1971. Even the
Patriarch’s title `ecumenical’ is lashed out at by some Turkish
authorities and their nationalist supporters. Every year,
international reports on religious freedom point to such pressures on
the Patriarchate with concern, and they are right to do so. But why
does Turkey do all this? What is the source of the problem?

Things were better long ago. The first Turkish ruler to reign over the
Ecumenical Patriarchate was Mehmed II, the Ottoman Sultan who
conquered Constantinople in 1453. In line with the Islamic tradition
of accepting the `People of the Book,’ the young sultan granted
amnesty to the patriarchate. He also gave the institution many
privileges and authorities, no less than that which existed under the
Byzantine emperors. Armenians and Jews later enjoyed the same
autonomies.

In the 19th century, the non-Muslim peoples of the empire also
achieved the rights of equal citizenship with Muslims. That’s why the
late Ottoman bureaucracy and the Ottoman Parliament included a great
number of Greeks, Armenians and Jews – something you never see in
republican Turkey. The Halki Seminary, opened in 1844, is a relic from
that bygone age of pluralism.

Nationalism is what destroyed this Pax Ottomana. It affected the
peoples of the empire one by one, including, towards the end, the
Turks. Many conflicts took place between the latter and the rest, and
the great empire’s colossal collapse left a bitter taste in the mouths
of all. The Armenians, who suffered the worst tragedy in 1915, never
forgot nor forgave.

What the Turks remember, however, was the perceived `treason’ of the
other components of the empire, especially that of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate. The latter had cheered the Greek armies when they
invaded western Anatolia in 1919. From that point on, the
Patriarchate, in the eyes of many Turks, became a `fifth column.’

When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the Republic in 1923, he defined
the Patriarchate as `a centre of perfidy.’ As an alternative, he
promoted a rival `Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate,’ which became a
bastion of ultra-nationalist ideology. (Some members of this
artificial `Patriarchate’ are currently on trial in the so-called
Ergenekon case, a covert network of officers and civilians accused at
conspiring to stage a military coup against the current Turkish
government.)

Over the years, Atatürk’s ideas evolved into an official ideology
called `Kemalism,’ which had two main pillars: a self-styled
secularism that bans anything but `the secular way of life,’ and a
fierce nationalism that defies anything it deems `non-Turkish.’

The Ecumenical Patriarchate, as both a religious and `non-Turkish’
institution, fits in neither category. Hence, throughout the
Republican regime, and especially at times of military dominance, it
faced official pressure and confiscation of property, as did all other
non-Muslim and Muslim religious institutions.

So part of the problem is the curse of history. But you can either
trap yourself inside history or take lessons from it and move on. To
date, unfortunately, Turkey’s nationalists, within both state and
society, have opted for the former option.

If one cause of the repression of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is
nationalism, though, the other one is the other pillar of the Kemalist
ideology: secularism. Turkey’ draconian laws on `national education’
ban any sort of religious education unless it is strictly controlled
by the state. The real motive behind this is the regime’s distaste for
Islam. The Ecumenical Patriarchate, as a foreign observer observes,
only receives `collateral damage.’

A telling manifestation of this was seen recently in a live discussion
on CNNTurk, the Turkish counterpart of the international news channel.
A deputy from the CHP, the staunchly Kemalist People’s Republican
Party, Muharrem Ince, who opposed the reopening of the Halki Seminary
became angry. `Do you know who most wants to open the seminary in this
country,’ he loudly asked. `The Islamists! They want this, because
they want to open Islamic schools as well.’

Yes, this is indeed the position increasingly adopted by Turkey’s
Islamic opinion leaders – who are striving not for jihad or an
`Islamic state,’ but just a modest preservation of tradition. They
realise that religious freedom must be championed for all. And they
have a good frame of reference in the pluralism of the Ottomans.

This more liberal approach to non-Muslims can be observed in today’s
AKP (Justice and Development Party) government, in power since 2002.
Although labelled as `Islamist’ by its opponents, the AKP has been
much more willing to liberalise Turkey than its secular counterparts,
most of which are zealously nationalist. The Annual Report of the
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom makes this
point nicely:

`In November 2006, the [AKP dominated] Turkish parliament, as part of
the reforms related to possible EU accession, passed a new law
governing Lausanne religious minority foundations, easing procedures
to establish foundations and allowing non-Turkish citizens in Turkey
to open them… Then President Ahmet Necdet Sezer [a staunch Kemalist],
however, vetoed the legislation. In February 2008, the parliament
passed a similar law on the return of property confiscated from
non-Muslim minorities… President Gül signed the legislation, which
was also supported by Prime Minister Erdogan, but was vehemently
opposed by Turkish nationalists on the grounds that the law granted
too many rights to minority communities.’

The Ecumenical Patriarch himself acknowledged in a recent interview
that the AKP has shown goodwill on this issue. His All Holiness also
said that the real obstacle is probably `the deep state’ – a reference
to Turkey’s Kemalist state establishment that considers itself above
any elected government and democratic law.

* Mustafa Akyol is an Istanbul-based political commentator and the
author of the forthcoming The Islamic Case for Liberty