Stripping of the Secular: Historical Interfaith Dimensions of Turkey vs Modern Policies
By Benjamin Lutz
Interfaith dialogue is the process where a group of people that includes two or more religious traditions has a conversation about the similarities and/or differences between the represented religions. Practices, rituals, traditions, and history are the focus of these discussions, but the goal is usually centered on reconciliation and peacebuilding. Dialogue serves as a consistent marker of a sustainable solution in religious-based conflicts. It provides the opportunity to create powerful relationships across religious lines as it showcases the overlap in people’s cherished beliefs. Further, interfaith dialogue can be used to continue the peace process long after the conflict has subsided as a method to ensure that the society does not revert to conflict again. Dialogue is a form of cultural diplomacy and community engagement.
Since the formation of the Turkish state, interfaith dialogue has been a central tenet of its secular identity, allowing different community groups to interact amongst each other freely. This echoes its Ottoman past as other non-Muslim religious identities were tolerated and included in Ottoman rule. The Ottoman Empire was a mosaic of unique cultures and religions, which provided relative peace amongst its members of society.
In 1924, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) was founded under article 136 of the Constitution of Turkey. It serves the same goal as many Muslim-majority countries’ Ministry of Endowments, as the Diyanet administers Turkey’s mosques and sacred worshiping places and is in charge of Islamic theology by promulgating the beliefs, worship, and ethics of Islam. It also provides Quranic education for Muslim children and trains and employs all of Turkey’s imams, who are considered civil servants. Given all of this however, Turkey remains steadfast as a secular state, whose religious nature and makeup do not make it a solely Muslim country.
The concept of secularism (laiklik) in Turkey has a unique character. Turkish laiklik is not solely a formal separation between religious and political institutions, but rather it has been a positivist state ideology to create a singular and stratified society. Having the Diyanet does not take away from Turkey’s insistence on secularism, rather it helps to reinforce the definition of what it means to be a Turk: a loyal citizen of Turkish ethnicity. There are non-Muslim Turkish citizens; however, so laiklik is a method of compartmentalizing the aspects of citizenship into a secular (non-religious character) identity with a state institution (Diyanet) focused on preserving and controlling its Islamic roots.
Source: CIA World Factbook: Turkey
Turkish society, in its entirety of Ottoman history and in relation to its modern approach of governance, has been a largely homogenous community of Sunni Muslims of a similar ethnic and linguistic background. The religious makeup in 2020 shows a 99.8% majority of Sunni Islam in Turkey. Over time, this notion of laiklik as a way to maintain a Turkish identity has done precisely that, balancing the overwhelming Muslim majority with an emphasis on community interconnectedness.
At the same time, there is a 0.2% of the modern (and historic) Turkish population that do not ascribe to Islam. This minority of Turkey is enveloped, included, and integrated into Turkish society. In 1993, for the first time, a statement calling for interfaith dialogue was included in an official document of the Diyanet: “the Diyanet should engage with the outside world, and make contact and dialogue with different groups, sects, and religions.” This became the cornerstone of the foriegn policy of then-Prime Minister Turgut Özal whose goal was to globalize Turkey and showcase that the Diyanet and his policies of interreligious dialogue would generate world peace and combat radicalization.
The Diyanet began widely promoting interfaith dialogue to include, even more so, this 0.2% of Turkey’s population in dialogue processes cherishing and celebrating the diversity of religious identities. As a governmental institution, it is quite notable that the Diyanet championed this policy of interfaith connections at the same time as the Cold War was ending. The Turkish state utilized the Diyanet to combat leftist ideologies as their Chinese and Russian near neighbors were collapsing. These ideologies were perceived as a threat to their political power, so this pivot to interreligious dialogue also allowed Turkey to enhance relations with the European Union (EU). As joining the EU became a priority, consecutively the Diyanet began pursuing interfaith connections as a focus of its responsibilities. Turkish society became even more intertwined as communities throughout and across Turkey had avenues to explore their neighbors’ views and communicate with one another.
This policy continued under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), which came to power in 2002. The AKP was the first stable Turkish government to have an Islamist base, and it emphasized the balance of positive relations with both European and Muslim countries while enhancing the reputation of Islamic politics with a economical thriving country. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan explicitly pushed for intercultural dialogue, placing stress on creating a harmony of civilizations while striving against a clash of civilizations. He personally opened the Centre for Tolerance, the campus garden included a mosque, church and synagogue so that members of each of the Abrahamic faiths could practice their religion in proximity to one another.
The AKP used Diyanet-sanctioned imams abroad in mosques throughout Europe to protect Turkish migrants from Islamic extremism, advocating a moderate form of Islam that is compatible with modernity and democracy. They liaised with European academic and research institutions, granting them high praise in 2004 from the Scientific Council for Government Policy of the Netherlands stating: “from neither historical developments, nor characteristics of present-day Turkey and Turkish Islam justify the argument that Turkish Islam forms an obstacle to Turkey’s accession to the EU.”
However, the deterioration of the democratic system in Turkey and subsequent shift to authoritarianism after 2011 resulted in a reversal of this policy. Suddenly, the Turkish state turned on interfaith dialogue, and the Diyanet followed suit by reshaping its definition and practices of interfaith diplomacy into a tool to create a Turkey based solely on Hanafi Sunni practices. The Diyanet, under AKP rule, has been transformed into a pliable state apparatus geared towards implementing the political ideology of the government by further controlling the community dimensions of Turkey to become one of a Islamist regime. In exploring this recent transformation, it is apparent how the Diyanet has become synchronized with the ruling party’s discourses and actions.
After 2011, the Diyanet became not only the biggest beneficiary of government funding amongst the ministries but also the most politicized and undisputed ideological tool of the state. Erdoğan and the AKP have seen their ethno-religious desires become dominant in all areas, including religion. Within this new identity and structure of the state, Sunni Islam has become one of the regime’s key focal points. Pre-2011, the Diyanet mosques throughout Europe were neutral spaces offering religious services. But then, a mere five years later, the Turkish government changed the imams and they changed the Turkish diplomats managing the mosques — both groups were hired due to their AKP affiliations. They transformed the mosques into the political headquarters of AKP Europe.
This transformation of Diyanet’s local and global role is a large shock to the secular and inclusive history of Turkey. Both of the interfaith and intrafaith (amongst the different schools of Islam) dimensions of Turkey began to evaporate in favor of the mainstream Hanafi Sunni school of Islam, AKP’s Islamist backing. Within the 99.8% of Turkey’s Muslim population, around 60–65% follow the Hannafi school, one of the reasons the AKP has gained prominence. Effectively, using the Diyanet as a tool for only the Hannafi has excluded much more than the remaining 35–40% of Turkey’s population (non-Hannafi Sunni Muslim and non-Muslim). It has effectively isolated Turkey’s connections globally, as other governments reject the authoritarian pathways that the AKP is taking Turkey down.
Belonging to the Turkish nation today means being increasingly defined by Islamic practices and rituals. Thus, the AKP has not paused to cultivate a singular version of Turkish Islam that reshapes the defining features of Turkish identity. In 2019, an academic article on Turkish secularlism, two scholars wrote this scenario that explains the growing rise of Islam as a national identity: “Take the following hypothetical situation: a Turkish pilgrim in Mecca walks with a Turkish flag, and an Indian Muslim from Hyderabad asks the Turkish pilgrim, `Why are you carrying a Turkish flag in Mecca?’ His response is, `I am a Muslim because I am a Turk! This is the flag of Islam!’ This explains how in Turkey, Islam has been reduced to a predominantly national identity.”
Interfaith dialogue, once a strategy for Turkish democratization and entrypoint to the EU and the West, is now rebuffed throughout the AKP-led government. In its eyes, interfaith dialogue is completely antithetical to the goals of the Islamist regime: allowing different communites to share ideas, collaborate, and discuss does not give the AKP any sense of control. By propagating its ideology throughout its Friday sermons, choosing AKP-affiliated imams to lead in its global mosques, and using the Diyanet as a tool of enforcement and control, the AKP has shown that the entirety of Turkey’s history of interfaith dialogue does not aid its modern goals.
Ironically, 2002–2011, when the AKP was in power, interfaith dialogue and diplomacy were cornerstones of its foreign policy as it expanded the Diyanet to focus on building tolerance and cross-cultural initiatives throughout Europe and the Muslim world. This recent history within the same ruling party demonstrates the lengths that the AKP has gone (and may continue to go) to maintain hegemonic control over Turkey. In 2011, they completely reversed their policies on interfaith and the use of the Diyanet (not to mention all of the other policies they also changed), in order to have a tighter grip on Turkish society. Undoubtedly, the non-Hanafi members of the Turkish society have a lot more to be concerned about in the evolving future of Turkey.