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Published
by Forum
18 News Service,
October 12, 2005
IS
THERE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN TURKEY?
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By
Otmar Oehring
The European Union (EU) must make full religious
freedom for all a core demand in the EU membership
negotiations with Turkey which have just begun,
argues Otmar Oehring, head of the human rights
office of the German Catholic charity Missio. Here
are some extracts from this highly important
report.
Go to any mosque or church in Turkey and you will
see people worshipping. So clearly some religious
freedom exists. Yet serious problems persist.
Religious communities are not allowed to organise
themselves as they choose. As soon as a religious
community wants to organise itself, problems
arise. This holds just as much for Muslims as for
communities of other faiths.
Although many Turks dislike the term "State
Islam", it has to be stated that Islam is
organised by the state. Sunnis who consider this
an unacceptable innovation are not allowed to
organise. Although Sufi orders exist, some even
with a vast membership, they have been officially
forbidden banned since the 1920s.
The main problem religious communities identify is
their lack of legal status as religious
communities. Religious meetings and services
without authorisation remain illegal, though it
remains unclear in law what constitutes legal and
illegal worship. The Ottoman millet system
recognised some religious minorities and the 1923
Lausanne Treaty spoke vaguely of religious
minority rights without naming them, but the
Turkish authorities interpret this to exclude
communities such as the Roman Catholics, Syriac
Orthodox and Lutherans, even though these
communities have found ways to function.
The Law on Associations - adopted by Parliament in
October 2004 - does not allow the founding of
associations with a religious purpose, so founding
a religious discussion group or even a religious
freedom group is impossible, even if some
religious communities do try to register as
associations. Some Sufi orders and new Islamic
movements have registered as businesses, even with
religious names.
Religious education remains tightly controlled. It
is generally impossible to found higher education
establishments for Muslims, Christians and others.
The Armenian Apostolic and the Greek Orthodox
seminaries were closed down in the 1970s and the
government has resisted all attempts to reopen
them. Protestants cannot normally establish Bible
colleges.
The Law on Construction - which came into force
into July 2003 - makes it possible to
"establish" places of worship. But the
law - probably deliberately - does not define if
this means "build", "rent" or
"buy". Protestant churches face problems
trying to build. Any community wishing to build a
place of worship officially can do so in an area
with a minimum number of adherents of their faith
- but the state decides if the community has
enough members to get the land it needs. There is
no authoritative definition of how the law should
be interpreted. The Justice Minister said recently
that religious communities intending to establish
a place of worship should apply, but how can
religious communities apply if officially they
cannot exist?
Some religious communities can officially invite
foreign religious workers. The Catholics can under
the 1923 Lausanne Treaty invite foreign priests up
to a certain number, though even then the
government makes this difficult, asking why the
Church needs so many priests when there are so few
Catholics. It is more difficult for Protestant
communities, as officially they do not exist as
religious communities.
All religious communities are under state
surveillance, with religious minorities facing the
closest scrutiny. Christian leaders know they are
listened in to and their telephones are tapped.
The Ecumenical Patriarch states that "walls
have ears," even when speaking within his own
Patriarchate in the Fener district of Istanbul.
Police visit individual Christian churches to ask
who attends, which foreigners have visited, what
they discussed. They are particularly interested
in which Turkish citizens attend.
One former Interior Minister stated that
Christians should only conduct missionary activity
among such people of Christian descent. He
estimated the numbers of such people at between
800,000 and three million people.
You have to be very courageous to set up a
Protestant church in remote areas, as pastor Ahmet
Guvener found in Diyarbakir. Problems can come
from neighbours and from the authorities. Even if
not working hand in hand, neighbours and officials
share the same hostility. They cannot understand
why anyone would convert to Christianity. People
are not upset seeing old Christian churches -
Syriac Orthodox and other Christian churches have
always existed in Anatolia - but seeing a new
Protestant church, even when housed in a shop or
private flat, arouses hostility.
Officials vary in their attitudes. The Kemalist
bureaucracy follows Ataturk's secularist line and
is against anything religious. There is a
nationalist, chauvinistic wing of officialdom
which believes that anything not Turkish is a
threat to be countered. The security and
intelligence services, including the powerful
military, are both Kemalist and nationalist.
Anyone considered not to be Turkish and not Sunni
Muslim faces problems. Even Sunni Muslim Kurds are
excluded, while Alevi Kurds are regarded as even
worse.
It is very difficult to imagine that in the next
decade or so Turkish society will change to allow
full religious freedom. To take one example, for
the change to be conceivable the chauvinistic
content of primary and secondary school education
- constant praise of Ataturk, Turkey and all
things Turkish - will have to change. Unless this
happens, it is very hard to imagine Turkey
evolving into an open society that is truly ready
to accept European Union (EU) human rights
requirements. One non-religious illustration of
the lack of openness in Turkish society is the
near impossibility of free discussion of the
genocide of 1.5 million Armenians and Assyrians in
the last years of the Ottoman empire, along with
continued official denial that the genocide took
place.
Christian churches have welcomed the prospect of
Turkish EU accession, often due to their own
communities' experience and hopes. If negotiations
last for more than a few years some improvements
for religious minorities - including Islamic
minorities - might be possible.
Foreign churches and religious communities should
be talking to their own governments, to press them
to promote religious freedom in Turkey. They will
have to convince them they are not simply
advocating greater rights for their
co-religionists but truly advocate religious
freedom for all in Turkey, including Muslims.
The big question remains: do the Turkish
government and people have the will to allow full
religious freedom for all? The Turkish media
speculates that the current government might not
be in favour of EU membership, but is merely using
this as a way to introduce domestic developments
to achieve Islamist aims. The suggestion put
forward in the media is that, if democracy
develops, the military will be prevented from
mounting a coup and so there will no longer be any
obstacle to Islamist aims.
Whether or not this media speculation reflects
reality, all those who believe in religious
freedom in Turkey - both within the country and
abroad - must keep the issue on the domestic and
international agenda - and be honest about the
continuing obstructions to religious life of
Turkey's Muslim, Christian and other religious
communities.
Dr Otmar Oehring is head of the human rights
office at Missio , a Catholic mission based in the
German city of Aachen.
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