Is there Religious Freedom in Turkey?

Written by Otmar Oehring, Forum18 News Service

Friday, 14 October 2005

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, head of the human rights office at Missio , a Catholic mission based in the German city of Aachen, contributed this comment to Forum 18 News Service.

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Last Updated ( Friday, 14 October 2005 )

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