BDP Going After the Religious Vote?

From Milliyet (translated by World Bulletin):

Pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) leader Selahattin Demirtaş has called on Kurds in the country's Southeast not to pray behind state imams on the grounds that they are spying for the state and working to promote the government.

Speaking to the Milliyet daily, Demirtaş claimed that the list of imams sent to the country's predominantly Southeast is made at National Security Council (MGK) meetings as he said: "Those imams are selected by the MGK and then sent here. We ask our people not to pray behind those imams who are sent here with a special mission. There are imams working for the Justice and Development Party [AK Party] there."

Demirtaş claimed that those imams are imposing Turkishness and statism on the people.

Last month, the BDP made an announcement calling on Turkey's Kurdish population to stage acts of civil disobedience.

Demirtaş's statements came as a response to the recent statements of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who accused the BDP of plaguing religion with separatism. Demirtaş also dwelled on the Kurdish sermon issue and asked Erdoğan why sermons in Kurdish are not allowed in mosques in the country's Southeast.

He said the rules in the mosques should not be made by the state, but by those attending the mosque, and that sermons in Kurdish should be allowed. "Everyone listens to sermons in Kurdish in the mass prayers held in city squares in the Southeast. Mosques are not the homes of the state, but Allah. The rules in the mosques should be set by the people attending that mosque, not by the state. If the state is deciding which language is going to be spoken in mosques, this has nothing to do with religion. Let people pray in the way they want," he said.

The BDP's politics are starkly secular, but recently it has made efforts to court more religious voters who over the years have been inclined to vote for the AKP. The PKK was suspected of killing two imams last year.

United States Issues Religious Freedom Report

The United States Department has issued its annual International Religious Freedom Report. For DRL's report on Turkey, click here.

Though many accusations might be leveled at the United States for not taking a consistent position on democracy and human rights issues, a difficult task for any country, the State Department's reports on human rights and religious freedom are refreshingly objective.

Issued by the State Department's Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the reports are issued independent of the State Department's other policy making arms. For a bit on how, why, and the history behind these reports, click here.

Art Gallery in Tophane Attacked

From Hurriyet Daily News:

A group numbering dozens attacked the opening of several art galleries on Tuesday night, putting at least five people in the hospital with injuries from pepper spray, broken bottles, batons and knives. The hospitalized included one Polish and one German citizen. The attack was first believed to have been in response to art pieces on exhibit because Galeri Non had an exhibition by the collective Ekstramücadele (Ekstrastruggle) that featured content on the taboos of Islam and Atatürk both. However, witnesses at the scene who spoke right after the incident and the following morning confirmed that the scuffle broke out due to alcohol consumption in the streets.

After the incident, neighborhood residents claimed gala visitors had been harassing and disturbing other people in the street. One person also said the gallery owners had been told previously that their guests were disturbing neighborhood residents. More comments from locals in the media on Wednesday focused on them being disturbed by not only the art galleries but also the apart hotels and alcohol-serving restaurants that have multiplied in the neighborhood in recent years. As well, locals said they were disturbed by people drinking in the streets due to the smoking ban. However, the restaurants and hotels are also perceived to have a negative effect on morals, according to various comments offered to the media or stated on the Internet.

The attack took place in Tophane, a gentrifying neighborhood in Beyoglu that is home to newly renovated art galleries and restaurants in addition to traditional (men-only) tea houses and residences of migrants who moved into neighborhood from more conservative Anatolia in the past 30 years. Tophane, like much of the rest of Beyoglu, is home to a hodgepodge of residents from diverse backgrounds who hold several different viewpoints. No one is sure how organized the attack was or what the motivation, but it has led many to claim the incident should be viewed in terms of the neighborhood's ongoing gentrification and the inevitable clashes of values and basic attitudes that have accompanied the neighborhood's transformation.

Though Tophane is viewed as a conservative neighborhood -- and after this attack, will likely be viewed as an even more conservative neighborhood (Islamic fundamentalist?) -- it is likely the the gentrification process will continue. The question is whether the neighborhoods residents can learn to live with each other in a spirit of tolerance and respect for difference. Sure, the art-going crowd should watch their volume and perhaps not go onto the streets with glasses of wine in mid-daylight if it is offensive to the neighbors, but surely violence is not a solution and might there not be some give and take on both sides? All of a sudden that does not seem a question for Tophane alone . . .

Democracy and difference is hard to be sure.

Human Rights Discourses and the European Process

The European Stability Initative has posted a paper by Anne K. Duncker, a doctoral candidate at Phillips-University of Marburg in Germany, on the use of human rights discourses by various Turkish human rights groups competing for funding and media attention in the thick of the European process and the tremendou amount of grant monies that have come with it. The whole paper is well worth the read. Excerpted here is the abstract:

During the past two decades a diverse landscape of Turkish human rights NGOs has developed, representing all sorts of political and religious orientations. The comparison of Kemalist and Islamic NGOs in regard to freedom of religion and homosexuals’ rights illustrates the divergence between the underlying human rights concepts. Referring to these differing concepts, the paper aims at explaining the criticism Turkish civil society actors voice regarding the European process, leading to the fundamental question of whether one set of rights can claim universal validity or whether human rights must be adjusted according to national, cultural, or religious prerequisites.

The ECHR, the Aczmendis, and Bad Reporting

PHOTO from Hurriyet Daily News

From Hurriyet:

The European Court of Human Rights approved a complaint by a Turkish religious group regarding clothing regulations during hearings in Turkish courts.

The case was filed by Müslüm Gündüz and 126 other members of the Aczmendi community, which describes itself as an Islamic order, reported broadcaster CNNTürk on Tuesday.

The groups’ special attire consists of wearing black robes and a black turban, while males in the community have long beards.

The court had already ruled in favor of Gündüz in two instances against Turkey, both in 2003 for violations of his freedom of expression, and in 2005, for violations of his right to a fair trial.

The European court has now ruled that Aczmendis can attend court hearings in the outfit of their choice.

Gündüz, who founded the Aczmendi community, graduated from an Elazığ evening school 1985 and is an alleged member of the Islamic Nurcu movement.

Today's Zaman has a different account of the case, reporting that the ECHR "ruled that the 1997 conviction of 127 Turkish citizens for a breach both of the law on the wearing of headgear and of the rules on the wearing of certain garments, specifically religious garments, in public other than for religious ceremonies were found to be a violation of Article 9 of the convention." According to the Today's Zaman article, "the [Aczmendis] met in Ankara for a religious ceremony held at the Kocatepe Mosque. They toured the city streets while wearing the distinctive dress of their group, which comprised a turban, şalvar (baggy trousers), a tunic and a stick. Following various incidents on the same day, they were arrested and placed in police custody."

However, neither Today's Zaman nor Hurriyet Daily News have the entire story. In fact, the ECHR ruled that the Aczmendis, in this particular circumstance, could not be convicted (as they had been in 1997) for wearing religious garb in "public." Also, contrary to the Hurriyet Daily News, public places are not limited to "hearings," but all public places, including the march the group held. Generally both papers reporting is much better, but perhaps the ECHR is still a difficult subject on which to report since it is a bit different system about which Turkish opinion leaders have learned a lot in only the past few years as its decisions have come to play a greater role.

From the ECHR press release :

It was established that the applicants had not received criminal-law convictions for indiscipline or lack of respect before the State Security Court, but rather for their manner of dressing in public areas that were open to everyone (such as public streets or squares), a manner that was held to be contrary to the legislative provisions.

The applicants’ conviction for having worn the clothing in question fell within the ambit of Article 9 – which protected, among other things, the freedom to manifest one’s religious beliefs – since the applicants were members of a religious group and considered that their religion required them to dress in that manner. Accordingly, the Turkish courts’ decisions had amounted to interference in the applicants’ freedom of conscience and religion, the legal basis for which was not contested (the law on the wearing of headgear and regulations on the wearing of certain garments in public).

It could be accepted, particularly given the importance of the principle of secularism for the democratic system in Turkey, that this interference pursued the legitimate aims of protection of public safety, prevention of disorder and protection of the rights and freedoms of others. However, the sole reasoning given by the Turkish courts had consisted in a reference to the legal provisions and, on appeal, a finding that the disputed conviction was in conformity with the law.

The Court further emphasised that this case concerned punishment [Emphasis Added] for the wearing of particular dress in public areas that were open to all [Emphasis Added], and not, as in other cases that it had had to judge, regulation of the wearing of religious symbols in public establishments, where religious neutrality might take precedence over the right to manifest one’s religion.

In a 2005 ruling, Leyla Sahin v. Turkey, the ECHR ruled Turkey had a legitimate interest in banning the headscarf (türban) in public universities and other state institutions.

Power and Discipline?: Religion and Identity Cards

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that religion cannot be listed as a field on Turkish national identification cards, which all Turkish citizens are required by law to carry. In 2006, Turkey began allowing people the right to leave the field blank or change their religious designation by application, though the ECHR ruled that the new regulation did not go far enough. The ECHR decision also said it was not the duty of the state to collect religious information about its citizens, which the Turkish Statistical Institute collects all the same regardless of whether religion is left blank or entered on the ID card.

The case that resulted in the ECHR decision came from an Alevi man who claimed state authorities would not allow him to change the religion on his identifiation card from "Islam" to "Alevi," and that this violated Article 9 ("freedom of thought, conscience, and religion") of the European Convention of Human Rights, as well as the Turkish constitutional prohibition against anyone being coerced to disclose religious beliefs (Article 24).

At the moment, the Turkish government has only a limited number of categories citizen may declare on their identification cards: Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Confucian, Taoist, Buddhist, Religionless, Other, or Unknown. As the U.S. Department of State's report on religious freedom in Turkey observes, some religions, such as the Baha'i, have complained about not having their religion included in the listing. As the report also documents, several non-Muslim minorities have complained of exposure to harassment and discrimination as a result of the inclusion of their religion on their identification cards, and as is the case with the Alevi petitioner, others have complained of harassment by local authorities when seeking to change their religious designation. Additionally, some groups, like Protestants and Syriac Christians, have faced particular difficulty opting out of otherwise compulsory religion classes if their identification cards did not include a religion other than "Islam." The courses teach world religions, but minorities, including Alevis, have long complained about a Hanafi Sunni Muslim slant.

There is also the question, of course, of the sheer construction of such categories by the state, in particular the consideration of "Alevi" as apart from "Muslim," the lack of specific categories for Syriac Christians (who are not Greek Orthodox or Rumeli), and as aforementioned, the fact that some religions in Turkey are simply not represented in the choices available.

Also of interest are demands from women and gender groups to remove marital status and gender from religious identification cards, as well as to change the current law governing women's surnames. Divorce can result in discrimination and other difficulties fror women that men simply do not experience, and LGBT and other gender-conscious groups have long decried the blue and pink color of the cards in terms of LGBT rights.


UPDATE I (2/11) -- Ayse Karabat of Today's Zaman has written more about the demands from women's groups. The article expounds on the Bianet article linked above, and gives some more specific examples of discrimination. In regard to surnames, several women's groups are also demanding amendment of Article 187 of the Civil Code, which restricts women's surnames. A local court has petitioned for the Constitutional Court to consider the matter, implying that the article might violate the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). According to the Turkish Constitution, and thanks to the EU-inspired reform process, treaty law supercedes the Civil Code.

Postmodernity and the Arc of Turkish Identity

Ferhat Kentel, Professor at Istanbul Sehir University / PHOTO from the Balkans Project

The Balkans Project recently featured a fascinating interview with Ferhat Kentel, a sociologist at Istanbul Sehir University. Working on the construction of Turkish national identity, Kentel is examining one of the most controversial and heuristic themes in Turkish politics -- in many ways, a theme that defines, and most certainly pervades, every aspect of political discourse, be it Turkey's efforts to come to terms with its minorities (Muslim and non-Muslim), its attempts to reconcile Islam and the Turkish naton-state, its ongoing EU accession process, its confrontration with ultra-nationalist elements like Ergenekon, its international relations, etc. I have provided excerpts in this post, though I most definitely recommend reading though the whole interview.

This new situation is not just about the disappearance of the old Turkish national identity. Someone can feel that he or she is Kurdish, another Turkish, another Moslem, and these all together. All are negotiating identities. Turkishness is a negotiation as well. It becomes a crisis situation for the integration and unity of this society. I am working on this polarization between the early national construction and the new emerging complex identities and trying to find if there is a possibility of a new language, another way of speaking about this society.

I’m not just focusing on identity, but also people’s relationship with everyday life. Everyday life is the humus that lies beneath these identities. These different identities emerge from everyday life.

What does it mean to be a Turk today? The most prominent aspect of this established modern identity is a defensive one. When it emerged at the end of the Ottoman Empire, Turkishness was new. It was promoted in the name of a modernizing subject, in the name of enlightenment. It was connected to the creation of a new modern nation-state, to Ataturk, to Kemalism, to secularism, to the flag. To be Turkish was to be something modern. But today, it is more and more defensive. It refers to an older time. For that reason, it is more and more aggressive against the new voices.

Kentel goes onto discuss the origins of Turkish national identity, and the haven Muslims in the Balkans found here in the face of Christian racism and European nationalism following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. As Kentel notes, these Turks are the most keen to identify themselves as Kemalists, and eager to embrace Turkey as a newfound home, largely left their old identities behind for something new and modern. In the epigram of his epilogue to Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, Tony Judt quotes Ernest Renan:

Forgetting, I would even go so far to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation; thus the progress of historical studies is often a danger for national identity . . . The essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and also that they have forgotten many things.

Turks, like other European nations, have forgotten many things. At the same time, what awaited those immigrants was a refuge from the discrimination, suffering, and war they had known in the past; in Turkey, they found a new home. Kentel's analysis of ultranationalists is different: not having immigrated from the Balkans, they were often left outside of the Kemalist project. According to Kentel, ultranationalists generally look to the Caucasus and Asia for their roots, often pointing to Central Anatolia as the origin of Turkish identity. Yet, I have met plenty of people who share both perspectives, often the products of mixed marriages between Balkan and Anatolian Turks, merely all the more proving Kentel's argument of the negotiation, multiplicity, and inherent complexity underlying Turkish national identity.

Kentel also explores the lack of understanding between Turks and Turkish minority groups, who are all too routinely bifurcated from one another in the literature into the oversimplified categories of "majority" and "minority." One need only to look at Hrant Dink to see how reality is far more complicated. Dink, proud of his Armenian heritage, never rejected his "Turkishness," but rather understood it differenty; sadly, it was this "different" understanding that led to his murder by people who adopted a defensive understanding of what it meant to be Turkish, and in turn, conspired to kill Dink. Similar kinds of negotiation and multiplicity also hold true for Kurds, Alevis, Greeks, Circassians, Laz, Roma, all of these groups and the diverse individuals in them approaching what it means to be Turkish differently. Many of the identities overlap, and few break down into the nice, neat categories in which they are often placed. Yet, for those Turks who did leave so much of their history behind, the issue of settling these multiple identities and the insistence that they be recognized is difficult. Kentel explains:

These Balkan-origin Turks are also the most reticent on the Kurdish issue. It seems to be a psychological dimension: These Turks left behind their traditional sense of belonging, so they cannot accept another people claiming their original identity. “We gave up ours,” they say, “why can’t you give up yours?” I hear this even from the Uyghur-origin people who came to Turkey during the last decades. “We were oppressed by the Chinese state,” they say. “We came to Turkey and this state protected us. We cannot betray this state. How can you Kurds do what you are doing?” Of course, the Kurds were not migrants to this country. Nor were the Armenians. They are autochthonous peoples of the Anatolian territories.

Holding the traditional/pre-modern construction of Turkish national identity in opposition to the modern, Atatürkist understanding, Kentel highlights the conflicts and convergences between the two. Though Kentel does dwell too much on Ottomanism in his analysis, I think it too is probably worth examining in the mix, conflicting and converging with the other two in all sorts of ways relevant to political identity. And when religion is added into the mix, identity becomes all the more complicated, pushing and pulling with all of these other elements in what I have described elsewhere in this blog as a kaleidoscopic fashion, shifting and turning to suit the situation at hand or whatever the mood of the moment may be. Identity not being something intractable and constant, but rather adaptable and changing, Turks may well be all the richer for the multi-dimensional complexity of their specific identity(ies) despite the difficulties in its negotiation.

And, yet, though Turks have long negotiated these identities, and too often with a good bit of phobic defensiveness, the increased travel and business between countries (which Kentel assesses as weakening the defensive posture of Turkish nationalism -- see my post, "Article 301: An Imperialist Discourse," on the Sevres syndrome), the rise of political Islam, and European discourses about a postnational, multicultural Europe have all drastically pushed that negotiation into a new realm. I perhaps too optimistically evaluate the role of Europe, but the former two have certainly had a tremendous impact on just what observers of Turkish politics are seeing. Yet, as Kentel describes, this "opening" is not unqualified.

There are two contradictory tendencies, each one feeding and reinforcing the other. As we open up, the fear inside becomes more intense. Imagine all the people living under this ideology that says that we are alone, that we are superior, but that everyone fears us. What do you with the burden of this ideology? The opening of frontiers – in the world at large and in our minds – radicalizes the Turkish defensive identity. We are now living in the middle of this clash.

What I mean by a new Turkish identity is not just a global, liberal, or cosmopolitan identity. It is more complex. Part of this new identity is the overcoming of the ruptures of Kemalism. Kemalism required a rupture with the Ottoman era that defined it as an ancien regime. It involved a rupture around borders. It created a Turkishness on this territory with Arabs, Kurds, and others, but this required a rupture with the Arabs of Arabia, the Kurds of other countries and so on. Today it is not necessary for a nation-state to isolate itself this way. Our task is to reconstruct the bridges with all those populations and histories with which we have ruptured.

This new identity is looking for new words, new definitions.

As Barrington Moore described the transition to democracy as wrought with discord and violence, so perhaps is the journey to new, more open, more complex cultural identities. Much has been made of the rise of ultranatonalism in Turkey in recent years, the street protests and ethnic clashes that have erupted on the streets of Turkey's cities with an unwielding, defensive sort of hatred (see Ece Temelkuran n the Guardian, 2007); yet, is this perhaps a sign that things are getting better, that Turkey is moving forward in some sort of cultural transition of which we have yet to see the arc?

Provocatively, Kentel lays out a possible journey, eschewing cosmpolitianism, liberalism, and racist traditionalism for something far more intriguing -- and perhaps, liberating.

So we can make a three-fold distinction. The first is cosmopolitanism or the loss of specific Turkishness. The second is the concentration, redefinition, and reshaping of Turkishness in a more racist way. And the third is an open-ended alternative: we don’t know where we are going but there is another way. This third situation, the creation of new meanings, is the revolutionary tendency.

This new identity, if we summarize, is made also by linking to the past. It doesn’t involve returning to the past but, rather, struggling against the ruptures of history, against the categorizations of old/new, rational/irrational and so on, and against all the modernist constructions created by these categories.

Examining the construction of Turkish identity as affected by a series of historical ruptures, Kentel goes onto explore how Islam is bringing to light the ruptures of Kemalism.

Right now society is caught midway between Islam and modernity. Or, rather, there is no distinction between Islam and modernity as it was defined by modernist approaches. When you listen to some Islamic actors who focus on the authenticity of the Islamic message, they say that the majority of Muslims are lost now, that they have become almost like Protestants, that they only think about symbols of wealth, that they have lost the original message of the religion. But other, modernist voices inside the Islamic universe say that, no, the religion is not frozen in the 7th century, that Moslems as individuals must adapt to the new situation. This is a more liberal, maybe “Protestant” Islam, more individualized. They don’t forget that they are Moslem. They are still good believers. “I am essentially a businessman,” this kind of believer will say. “But five times a day I pray and then it is finished. My practice of Moslemhood doesn’t take more than one hour a day.” There is no difference with people who do gymnastics for one hour a day or do Indian meditation. This person’s identity is that of a businessman first.

So, they are not just Moslems, but they have a class position too. The Moslem businessmen’s union and the labor union of Moslem workers do not necessarily share the same communitarian Moslemhood. They are in conflict. The bourgeois Moslems say, “We are all Moslems, so accept your salary.” But the workers say, “No, we are not all Moslem brothers. You are rich and we are poor!”

There was a declaration recently launched by three Moslem women. “We are not free yet,” they said, referring to the liberalization of headscarves for a couple months before the constitutional court forbad them again. During this period, they said, “We will not be free until the Armenians, the Kurds, the Alevis are free too. We will not be free until the rights of shipyard workers are recognized.” They are very Moslem. They wear headscarves. They dream of living in an Islamic society in which Islam is recognized totally. But in their minds there are other possibilities for how to live with others. If someone doesn’t want to wear a headscarf, she is free to do so. This is something new. This is not the traditional Islam or the Islam of Kemalism. This third version has links with the new Turkish identity, which in turn has links to the past. They are important actors for this new Turkishness. Their Turkishness is not defensive. It is not racial. They are Turkish because they live in Turkey.

Turkey can be perceived as a model or a laboratory for the whole world.

Just what that model will be or laboratory yield remains to be seen, but it truly is incredible, not to mention intellectually humbling, to be the midst of it.

A Turkish New Year

Left: Father Christmas comes to Istanbul in time to be featured in a New Year's advertisement with one of his rather true-to-life looking reindeer. PHOTO by the lovely and talented Monica Marks. Right: New Year's trees adorn Istanbul streets. PHOTO by the equally lovely and talented Sarah Fischer.

Returning to Istanbul from Texas just before the Epiphany, I found plenty of Christmas lights and Santa Claus images to greet me -- and this well after most Americans have taken their trees down. Instead of putting up trees for Christmas, Turks have made many European/Western Christmas holiday traditions their own by incorporating them into New Year's celebrations. For further explanation of just how this happened, see this story from the Global Post's Nichole Sobecki.

In recent years, some Turks have even gone back to history to find Turkish connections to these "appropriated" Christmas traditions. Click here for one archaeologist's claims that the Christmas tree has its roots in pre-Islamic Turkish cultural traditions. Also possible to raise a bit of controversy are Culture Minister Ertegrul Gunay's plans to request that Italy repatriate the bones of St. Nicholas to Turkey. Of course, Nicholas died in fourth century Asia Minor (in the Greek colony of Myra in what was then Lycia), long before the Turks arrived in Anatolia. Nicholas' bones were removed in the eleventh century by Italian sailors preceding an invasion of Myra by Arab forces.

UPDATE I (1/12) -- Mustafa Akyol searches for more fun-filled Muslim traditions.

Conservative Vakit Causes Firestorm Outside Topkapı

From Jenny White at Kamil Pasha:

On the evening of July 11, the world-renowned classical pianist Idil Biret and the Whitehall Orchestra performed at the Topkapi Palace, one of the early palaces of the Ottoman Empire, now a museum that contains the artifacts of empire — among them the Ottoman crown jewels and important Islamic relics. For decades parts of the palace, especially the vast courtyards, have been the site of world-class music concerts. The day before, a far-right Islamist newspaper Vakit had fomented against the fact that alcohol was to be served at this concert in the hallowed halls of an Ottoman palace in proximity to the relics and at a time of concern for outrages against the (Muslim) Turkic Uighurs in China. A group of fifty to a hundred protestors led by an ultranationalist group called the Alperenler Hearth rampaged in front of the concert doors, calling out Allahu Akbar and tearing down and burning the concert posters. They knelt on a Turkish flag (the Vakit account states they knelt on an Alperen flag) to pray. The show went on as planned, but the performers had to escape out the back door. The Alperenler crowd, held in check by the police, then made its way through local neighborhoods shouting Allahu Akbar.

For full post with analysis, click here.

An Imam, a Priest, a Rabbi, and a Buddhist Monk . . .

From the Guardian's Robert Tait:

It sounds like the beginning of a joke: what do you get when you put a Muslim imam, a Greek Orthodox priest, a rabbi, a Buddhist monk and 10 atheists in the same room?

Viewers of Turkish television will soon get the punchline when a new gameshow begins that offers a prize arguably greater than that offered by Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Contestants will ponder whether to believe or not to believe when they pit their godless convictions against the possibilities of a new relationship with the almighty on Penitents Compete (Tovbekarlar Yarisiyor in Turkish), to be broadcast by the Kanal T station. Four spiritual guides from the different religions will seek to convert at least one of the 10 atheists in each programme to their faith.

Those persuaded will be rewarded with a pilgrimage to the spiritual home of their newly chosen creed – Mecca for Muslims, Jerusalem for Christians and Jews, and Tibet for Buddhists.

The programme's makers say they want to promote religious belief while educating Turkey's overwhelmingly Muslim population about other faiths.

"The project aims to turn disbelievers on to God," the station's deputy director, Ahmet Ozdemir, told the Hürriyet Daily News and Economic Review.

For full article, click here. Tait has an audio commentary available here.

Beyond Bananas: Hopes for the Kurdish Minority in 2009

PHOTO from the New York Times

President Gül received praise from those serious about resolving the Kurdish problem when he invited Hakarri DTP deputy Hamit Geylati to Çankaya Palace this November. With Geylati, Gül discussed the status of the Kurdish minority with the president, including cultural and political rights. What made the meeting so remarkable was its contrast to the politics of Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose staunchly nationalist remarks in Hakarri in late October helped ignite protests against the prime minister throughout the region. Sparked by reports from imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan's attorney that the exiled head of the infamous separatist group is being mistreated, thousands of Kurds rallied against the prime minister's appearance, prompting stores to be shut down in protest and demonstrators to clash with police. The Prime Minister's failure to fully recognize and promote the cultural and political rights of Turkey's Kurdish minority has been a sore spot for Kurds for some time, and was quite palpable when I visited Diyarbakır last May.

The political differences between Gül and Erdoğan evince the incoherency of the government's policy toward the Kurds, especially at a time of considerable rapprochement, even cooperation, between AKP and the Turkish Armed Services. Like other contrasts between the policy positions the president and prime minister have taken, Gül is more willing to make fundamental reforms, escape from the vicious cycles of past politics, and move Turkey forward. Erdoğan, on the other hand, is playing a role more molded to the traditional statist/nationalist politician. Intellectuals like Mehmet Altan, Ece Temelkuran, Altan Tan, and Hasan Cemal, among scores of others, have expressed scorn at AKP policy as of late (see TDZ, Dec. 2; Yavuz Baydar, Dec. 1). Cemal, who writes for Milliyet, went so far as to compare Erdoğan's increasingly cozy relationship with the Turkish Armed Services (TSK) to Tansu Çiller, who served as prime minister as the state's war against the Kurds escalated in the early 1990s. Indeed, the prime minister's Kurdish policy is so bemoaned by Turkish liberals as to catch the attention of the not-so-long-ago enamored international press: both the New York Times and the Spiegel recently ran stories on the prime minister's disconcertingly nationalist proclivities.

AKP won re-election in 2007 with high hopes that the party would transform politics in the Kurdish southeast, thereby easing tensions between the Turkish state and the PKK terrorist group. The PKK assumed a dominant position in the 1980s following the reactionary-led military coup of 1980 that devastated its politics. Throughout the 1980s and the bitter war the organization fought with the Turkish state in the early 1990s, the PKK declared a right to self-determination for all Kurdish people to be secured by its winning full territorial and political independence from Turkey and forming its own state. Since then, the "Organization," as it is referred to by many Kurds, has expressed its willingness to negotiate a settlement with Turkey that provides the country's Kurdish minority with cultural and political rights to self-determination within the confines of the Turkish state. Since Öcalan's capture in 1999, the PKK is far from monolithic in its structure, ideology, and practical politics, and neither is the DTP (Demokratik Toplum Partisi), often recognized as its political wing. One might think of the DTP's relation to the PKK as similar to that between the IRA and Sinn Feín in Northern Ireland or ETA and Harri Batasuna in the Basque country, although its association is probably even more obfuscate and control weaker. The PKK is largely a destructive force in Kurdish politics, preventing more moderate, compromising voices from rising to power, and conflict between hardliners in the Turkish state and those in the Kurdish minority has the effect of further empowering the hardliners while undermining compromise. This is true in terms of military relations between the PKK and the Turkish military just as it is between nationalist politicians in Ankara and the more radical politicians in the DTP. (For further discussion of this dynamic, see my post on the DTP party conference from last August, as well as my assessment of Kurdish politicians' reactions to the Ergenekon investigation.)

In Hakarri, Erdoğan declared that those who question the idea of "one nation, one flag, one state" should leave Turkey. This is exactly the kind of thinking that will empower hardliners in both the PKK and the DTP, and in an environment in which over 90 percent of Turks would rather live in Turkey than an independent Kurdistan, is likely to disenchant a significant number of Kurds before hopeful that their cultural and social rights might be accommodated within the Turkish state structure. Politicians as far back as the 1960s have recognized that the Kurdish problem affects all of Turkey, and that the only peaceful and just solution is an arrangement in which the Kurdish minority is assured cultural and political rights, and perhaps even given some measure of limited autonomy from Ankara. Just as there are similarities between Turkish and Kurdish citizens, there are also differences, and there is certainly room to negotiate smart, lasting solutions premised on multiple sites of sovereignty, identity, and participation, all secured by rights. Indeed, it is the denial of even the most basic political rights that pits Kurds against Turks (for example, see Lale Sarııbrahımoğlu on freedom of expression and the Kurdish issue), not to mention invasive practices of torture and police abuse that inflict severe psychological damage and ill will. And, while there are plenty of reformers -- Turks and Kurds alike -- who are determined to change the status quo, rhetoric like that from the prime minister in Hakarri is sure effrontery to the spirit of progress first engendered by the more conciliatory politics of AKP, especially when Gül exerted a leadership role within the party.

Disillusionment with AKP's commitment to cultural and political rights for Kurds was already greatly waning at this time last year following the PKK's renewed attacks in fall 2007. My description of the situation I wrote about last February for the most part holds true. Kurds continue to be prosecuted under restrictive speech codes as torture and detention of suspected PKK-members is on the increase. Further, AKP is less likely to offer its support to local efforts that promote Kurdish culture or education. Although the EU still has a very important role to play in implementing law that legalizes rights for Kurds to hold cultural gatherings and conduct Kurdish language education, AKP support for such undertakings remains half-hearted. Further, even though Turkey's recent efforts to make way for a 24-hour Kurdish broadcast channel are hugely laudable, 2008 brought with it more problems as well, including the recent conviction of Leyla Zana, an increase in "open air" torture and detention, and the continued prosecution of Kurds under draconian restrictions of freedom of expression. For the most recent examples, see the cases against journalist Veysi Sarısözen, who is alleged to have praised the PKK in his writings, and Kurdish politician Mahmut Alınak, who was recently sentenced to four months and five days in prison for organizing people to take part in civil disobedience. Harrassment of Kurdish politics is evidenced by the cases brought against Diyarbakir mayor Osman Baydemir and the city's DTP leader, Nejdet Atalay, for referring to members of the PKK as "guerillas" versus "terrorists." Violent protests during Newroz celebrations this March in Van and Hakarri further belie any claim that much progress has been made to stem state repression of Kurdish dissent and open the southeast up politically.

Instead of talking about political and cultural rights, Prime Minister Erdoğan is more keen to talk about economics. Turkish intellectual Ece Temelkuran has compared AKP policy in the southeast to giving out Islamist bananas, an attempt to perhaps bridge the development gap, but an approach that ultimately fails to address the demands of Kurds for the state to recognize their unique identity and standing in Turkish society. (For a similar argument, see Kerem Oktem, who assesses these Islamist bananas as tantamount to co-optation.) While some Turks far too often decry such a demand as separatism, other Turks and most Kurds see recognition as the foundation of basic human rights -- the right to address each other in their own language without state interference, to educate their children in the language of their grandmothers, to celebrate their culture in free assembly, and to enter politics as individuals with identities that might be both Kurdish and Turkish, and therefore, more difficult to negotiate than that of the average Turk. However, what Temelkuran identifies as "Islamist banana politics" and the politics that analyzes in his consideration of AKP policy, fall far short of meeting this demand. Nonetheless, AKP holds economic development and the creation of a state television channel as sufficient compromises, a secret battle plan to combat a war on terrorism that fails to extirpate the root of the problem. While AKP's realization of the need to develop the southeast is light years ahead of the thought asserted by other political parties, it still simply not enough, and as a result, likely to fail. Nonetheless, even when AKP's economic policies for the Kurdish southeast are highly dubious, they have often tacitly endorsed by some in the Western media (see the New York Times' treatment of GAP this March).



Kurdish Turks/Turkish Kurds?? protest in Ankara. PHOTO FROM REUTERS

Islamist banana politics gained further legitimacy this fall when the government and military began working more closely together. As indicated by the recent resignations of former AKP deputy chair Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat, an ethnic Kurd, banana politics are likely to become even more entrenched as the government further eschews cultural and political rights . As Lale Sarııbrahımoğlu elucidates, his replacement, Abdulkadir Aksu, also Kurdish, "has been widely viewed as a reflection of the AK Party's shift in policy from one that supports the greater engagement of Kurds in the political process to one that has further narrowed the room for maneuver for Kurds to express their political opinions." Further signalling this new era of cooperation and consensus on the Kurdish issue, the military top brass, typically quite reticent on political approaches to the Kurdish problem, has publicly agreed with the prime minister that the solution is economic. While this is undeniably in-part the case -- and, despite the TSK's discussion of non-military solutions being a positive step -- the danger is that too exclusive a focus on the economy is incapable of leading to a comprehensive political solution, thereby risking failed policy, and likely more violence as a function of resulting frustration. Not only are banana politics not fair to Kurds, but they are not pragmatic.

Insidious defenses of banana politics cite AKP's decisions as made in agreement with Kurdish public opinion (though the polls are dubitable, and show only the slightest of majorities placing economic over cultural/political concerns), in addition to an exaggerated disconnect between Kurdish intellectuals/political leaders and the overwhelming majority of Kurds, who are overwhelmingly very poor people. The myopia of the banana defenders is on full display in arguing the last point since any amelioration of the living conditions of Kurds will likely raise consciousness of cultural repression, not diminish it. For examples of banana defenses, see Abdulhamit Bilici and Mümtaz'er Türköne. In one defense, Türköne argues,

"For [DTP], the victory of the AK Party, especially in Diyarbakır, will be a
nightmare. If the AK Party wins in southeastern Anatolia, the Kurdish question
will enter a new phase. The PKK and the DTP will not remain the sole powers
designing pro-Kurdish politics. Pro-Kurdish politics will be ‘pluralized.’"

Plural societies value multiculturalism, and rarely does one see pluralism used as a verb; what Türköne means is more closely approximated by the term assimilation, and prosperous, multi-ethnic societies are just as, if not more, likely to resist assimilation and make self-determination claims (see Quebec, the Basque Country and Cataluña, Northern Ireland, Belgium, etc.).

Further undermining its credentials in the southeast, AKP has failed to take a strong stand against DTP's potential closure, leaving many Kurds, even those not necessarily fond of DTP, feeling betrayed. DTP is in the process of preparing itself for potential closure, including forming a backup party, though it is possible that the Constitutional Court will not reach a decision until after March's local elections (see Bianet, Dec. 18).

In an interview this Novemeber in the Spiegel, DTP co-chair Ahmet Türk, a moderate within the party who has denounced PKK violence, characterized the Turkish state's treatment of the Kurdish minority as cultural and social genocide. Although such claims are difficult to adjudicate, they do reveal just how oppressed many Kurds feel by a state that has historically been reluctant to even recognize the fact of a distinct Kurdish identity. It is important to remember that Turkey has gone leaps and bounds from where it was in the 1980s in its treatment of the Kurds (and, this is not to discount the work of leftist before the coup), but it has further to go still. (See Nicole Pope's column from yesterday wherein she recounts remembering a time when "Kurd" was not kosher in policy discussions).

And, while Erdoğan's remarks in Hakarri give cause for concern, President Gül's actions give reason to be hopeful. There are indeed other reasons for hope. In the course of ongoing preparations for local elections, political parties are undertaking intense efforts to win Kurdish votes in the southeast. AKP's recent release of TRT-6 -- and Erdoğan's interview introducing the channel, in which he wishes for its success in Kurdish -- is just one example of the progressive reform that might come about if such competition for Kurdish votes continues. AKP and CHP both have welcomed the recent opening of departments of Kurdish literature at Dicle and İstanbul University, a bill introduced in November by DTP deputy Siirt Osman Özçelik. For its part, CHP has also attempted to court Kurdish voters, though the party, as AKP-leaning Today's Zaman concludes, is less likely to win large percentages. Even so, that the party is making a serious effort despite knowing it is unlikely to have much success is even more indicative of the importance of the Kurds' burgeoning vote in the country.

Also, as the Christian Science Monitor's Yigal Schleifer reports, worthy of note is that the competition for votes is also affecting DTP's politics. In the course of campaigning, DTP has boosted efforts to appeal to religious Kurds and shed its Marxist secular image. DTP's transformation is just as groundbreaking as that of CHP or AKP, if not more so, as a vote-savvy, politically conscious DTP courting religious Kurds is less likely to be beholden to the PKK, and from a stronger position of power, more capable of participating in a political solution to end PKK violence. As Schleifer notes, Kurds are among the most religious of Turkish citizens, and as DTP moves to win Kurdish AKP-voters, AKP will feel even more pressure to win religious Kurds who also demand cultural and political rights. According to Taraf, DTP deputy Hasip Kaplan has already proposed a law allowing that the Kurdish letters Q, W, and X in government correspondence, and attention is focused on the continued prohibition of the use of Kurdish by public officials, including parliamentarians.

Prominent Creationist Reveals Dark Side of New Internet Law

Adnan Oktar, whose pseudonym is Harun Yahya, is an Islamic fundamentalist author/activist with fervent creationist views. Oktar is the head of a prominent creationist organization, the Scientific Research Foundation (Bilim Arastırma Vakif—BAV), and was recenty entangled in a criminal court case as a result of his political activities. Oktar and BAV have been making headlines for sometime in the Turkish press, but his efforts to take advantage of a new law passed in November making it possible for individuals to petition to close websites have gained the attention of the international press. The court case against the Islamist occurred in the heat of the closure case launched against AKP for allegedly being a center of anti-secular activities, and while no doubt politically inspired, fell amidst Oktar's own political machinations, especially his zealous attempts to limit freedom of expression.

Oktar's most famous target is Richard Dawkins, whose website he successfully petitioned to have shut down in September. Since that time, he has successfully shutdown other sites, including the newspaper Vatan and that of the Education Personnel Union. One of the first websites Oktar had shut down was the popular website Ekşi Sozluk, a type of urban dictionary replete with sour humor. Accusing the site of libel, his petition was granted and access to the site restricted by Türk Telekom. His publications have a broad readership throughout the Muslim world, where he is well-known for his anti-evolutionist views, and his publishing house is devoted almost exclusively to the issue.

Oktar (Yahya) recently appeared in The Guardian, which featured an interesting, but none too flattering profile in a larger story about the evolution debates. As a Texan, it is particularly amusing to read he has ties with a bizarre creationist organization in Dallas, Texas.

But ideas do not die, they spread and mutate. Creationism might be on the back foot in America, but it is blossoming elsewhere as Richard Dawkins discovered when Turkish readers told him they could no longer access his website. Dawkins's offence was to satirise Harun Yahya, the pen name of Adnan Oktar, the front man for a wealthy Islamic publishing house. Its lavishly illustrated Atlas of Creation spends 500 pages comparing fossils with present-day species to argue that evolution never took place. Dawkins looked at a picture of an ancient fossilised eel and a picture of what Yahya claimed was a modern eel and pointed out that it was in fact a sea snake.

Yahya went on to represent the immutability of God's creation by claiming that a fossilised insect had survived unchanged for millions of years. Unfortunately, the modern version of the caddis fly Yahya chose to illustrate his point was not a fly at all, but a steel fish-hook with a fake insect on top to lure fish on to the line.

Yahya is a joke, but few Turks are laughing. Index on Censorship reported last week that the Turkish courts and the Islamist government were banning Turks from accessing YouTube and the hosting sites Blogger and WordPress for various moral and political reasons as well as richarddawkins.net. When Bianet, a Turkish human rights group, published a critical piece, Yahya told its journalists: 'This is an insulting article, take it off the internet or we will have you banned like Richard Dawkins.'

'On the one hand, fundamentalists say all they want is a debate,' said Padraig Reidy of Index. 'But as soon as they get power, they close debate down.'

Westerners say that Yahya reminds them of American creationists. The link is more solid than they know. In Atlas of Creation, Yahya acknowledges his debt to Duane Gish from the Institute for Creation Research in Texas. Gish has spent years arguing that the fossil record contains no evidence of species evolving and blustering whenever a palaeontologist contradicted him. As a Muslim, Yahya did not need to accept the institute's Protestant fundamentalist 'young-Earth' doctrine - the notion that God made the world in 4004BC or thereabouts. But he happily borrowed Gish's equally idiotic delusion that today's species cannot have evolved and must therefore be identical to their ancestors of tens or hundreds of millions of years ago.

Vast sums of probably Saudi money are fuelling the move of creationism across the Atlantic. In Turkey and the Middle East, poor schools are grateful for Yahya's free books and scientists are becoming frightened of speaking out. Last year, the Council of Europe warned that Yahya was also targeting schools in France, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland. In Britain, academics talk of expelling mainly Muslim science students. They do not make a fuss about it in case post-modern relativists in the mould of Steve Fuller accuse them of religious discrimination, but say, very quietly, that if religion stops their students accepting evolution, there is no point in them staying at university.

Maybe in a generation's time, Americans will patronise Europeans as quasi-fascist bigots. If we are to avoid their condescension, we must accept that creationism will not go down with the American conservative movement. It is evolving and its opponents must evolve, too, if they want to defeat it.

Interestingly, to some degree, Oktar's views may be moderating, as he recently expressed told a group of a reporters a few weeks ago that Muslims can believe in evolution, and still be good Muslims. There are plenty of evolutionists in the United States who do not apply the same attitude toward Christianity.

For a wonderful article in the international press about Internet freedom, see Yigal Schleifer's recent piece in the Christian Science Monitor. Schleifer's article focuses on Oktar, but also assesses the impact of the new Internet laws:

Turkish officials have admitted problems with the law’s enactment, but defend its intent. ‘The fight against elements that aim at degenerating societies and poisoning the youth and children is the fundamental task of each country. Every country has different regulations related to the Internet,’ transportation minister Binali Yildirim, who is also responsible for communications, recently said.

‘Our aim is not to ban websites. Such measures will come to an end as soon as our courts are able to ban problematic content instead of entire websites,’ he said.

But critics like Yaman Akdeniz, a professor of law at the University of Leeds and director of Cyber-Rights.Org, believe Turkey’s Internet law is too flawed to be salvaged and would most likely not stand up to a legal challenge at the European Court of Human Rights, whose judgments are binding on Turkey.

‘The current law should be abolished and the government should start from scratch when it comes to controlling the Internet,’ he says.

Mustafa Akgul says without a new approach, Turkey may find itself increasingly left behind when it comes to utilising the power of the Internet.

‘Turkish politicians haven’t had any real vision on how to develop the Internet. There are more people working on censoring it than developing it,’ he says.

USCIRF Reports on Religious Freedom

Turkey appears in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom's 2008 annual report on the status of religious freedom in 22 different countries. Founded in 1998 to monitor religious freedom in conjunction with the State Department, USCIRF considers Turkey a country under review rather than a country of of particular concern or in which religious freedom violations warrant being put on its watch list. Nonetheless, USCIRF observes the country's struggle with its laicist understanding of religion and the state, as well as state discrimination against Muslim minorities, e.g. the requirement that Alevi children be subject to Sunni religious education. The report also includes a description of discrimination against Turkey's non-Muslim minorities, e.g. the lack of legal recognition afforded to the Greek and Armenian Patriarchates. The report also alludes to the anti-Semitism still encountered in the Turkish media and other sectors of civil society.

USCIRF joins other groups in criticism of the recently passed Foundations Law. Although the Foundations Law is a positive step in the right direction of returning property of religious minorities seized by the state, it makes no provision for the re-appropriation of property sold by the state to third parties. Admirably, the bill does allow non-Turkish citizens to open up foundations and reduces legal barriers to gaining foundation status for Turkish citizens as well.

Washington Post Condemns AKP Closure

Contra Rubin (see April 18 post), the following editorial appeared May 2 in the Washington Post:

SECULAR AND ANTIDEMOCRATIC
In many countries where elections and Islam overlap, religious political parties are suspected -- often rightly -- of trying to use the democratic system to advance an illiberal agenda. Turkey, the most advanced democracy in the Muslim world, has the opposite problem. Its mildly religious ruling party has led the way in introducing progressive political and economic reforms and preparing the country for membership in the European Union. Its secular opposition, meanwhile, has repeatedly resorted to antidemocratic tactics.

Last year the Turkish army, which sees itself as the ultimate guardian of Turkey's secular constitution, tried to stop the Justice and Development Party (AKP) from electing its candidate for president by posting a threatening statement on its Web site. This "e-coup" led to a ruling by the Constitutional Court against the AKP -- and then a general election that the party won decisively over secular parties that had abetted and cheered the court ruling. Abdullah Gul, a moderate and pro-Western politician, duly became president.

Rather than being chastened by this reversal, the secular establishment is attempting an even more radical maneuver. Egged on once again by opposition political parties, a state prosecutor filed a case in March seeking to ban the AKP and 70 of its members, including Mr. Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on charges of violating the constitution. The case is based in large part on the party's move to lift a ban on the wearing of head scarves by women in Turkish universities, a highly charged if largely symbolic domestic issue. The prosecution mainly serves to reveal the weakness of the constitution, which makes it far too easy for courts to outlaw political parties on flimsy grounds.

In other developments in the United States, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a religious freedom watchdog group, criticized the free exercise of religion in Turkey and criticized the closure case. Turkish laicism, similar to the French treatment of reliigion in society, varies drastically from the American treatment of religion and the state. In the Turkish/French model, free exercise of religion is restricted from public institutions and its influence is held apart from the public sphere. In te United States, it is perfectly normal to make arguments influenced by religious belief and exert a religious identity in public debate.

Poll Cites Increase of Religious Tolerance

Today's Today's Zaman included an article about a recent poll conducted by "independent polling company Veritas on 4,500 individuals across 33 cities for the Star dailÿ." According to the poll, "An overwhelming 92 percent define themselves as believers. Of those surveyed, 49.2 percent responded that they prayed five times daily, while 43.6 percent said they do believe in religion but do not practice it regularly. Only 7.2 percent said religion has no place in their life."

The main objective of the poll was to measure religious tolerance—a phenomenon the poll seemed to largely measure according to peoples' felling toward the türban. Based on interpretations by Today's Zaman, "the poll suggests that about 95 percent of the society has no problem with a woman covering her head."

The poll also evidenced a strong support for separation between church and state in Turkey.

Most alarming to a newcomer, though, and despite Today's Zaman's seeming dismissal of the finding, 16.5% of those polled expressed intolerance for Turkey's Alevi population. The Alevis are criticized for their religious unorthodoxy (they do not observe the Five Pillars), their Shi'a influenced beliefs, and their well-known adoration for independent thought. The Alevi community continues to fascinate me, and although I have posted little on them before, I hope to be able to do so in the near future.

Additonally, the poll also attempted to gauge religious piety among members of Turkey's political parties by using a measuring how many people claimed to observe namaz five times a day. According to the poll, "About 18 percent of those who voted for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) -- known for its hard-line secularist discourse -- say all the daily prayers, while that figure is 65.9 percent among voters for the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and 46.4 percent of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)."

Obviously, measuring a value like "religious tolerance" is a difficult and multi-faceted task, but the poll and its interpretation in Today's Zaman are food for thought. Amonf notable variables missing are toleration for alcohol consumption (an issue in the news of late since an AKP-sponsored law is set to ban alcohol in sports clubs at the end of the month), other Abrahamic faiths, faiths outside of the Abrahamic tradition, and atheism. It would also be interesting to measure the attitudes of those polled toward issues like public prayer, science in classrooms, the teaching of other religions in schools, and similar issues that embroil the separation issue in state-society relations across the globe.

Turkey and Islamic Modernism

Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs, the government department in which Turkey has regulated religious affairs since the formative years of the Kemalist Republic, have gathered a group of theologians at Ankara University to undertake a comprehensive revision of the Hadith. Since before the days of the Young Ottomans, Turkey has been at the forefront of what some scholars have referred to as 'Islamic modernism.'

Mustafa Akyol examines the project in his column that appeared in yesterday's Turkish Daily News.

WELCOME TO ISLAMIC REFORMATION 101—Mustafa Akyol

This week Turkey made international headlines not only with its military's land operation in northern Iraq or its never-ending tug of war over the headscarf. There was also the scholarly and tedious work carried out by a group of theologians in Ankara, supported by the Diyanet (Turkey's official religious body), to revise the “hadiths” – the words and deeds of Prophet Mohammed. “Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts,” read the BBC's headline. “Turkey strives,” the Guardian observed, “for 21st century form of Islam.” According to the Financial Times, this was “Turkey's fresh look at Prophet.”

Are these far-fetched comments, or does the revision of hadiths by Turkey's officially sanctioned Islamic experts really point to something fundamentally important? To find an answer, one first needs to probe what the hadiths really are. And to do that, one needs to go back to the roots of Islam.

Koran, reason, and more

In the beginning, there was the Koran.

Westerners who haven't read this book generally assume that it must be something like the New Testament – i.e., a book which reports the life and works of the religion's founder. Yet that is not the case at all. The Koran actually hardly speaks about Prophet Mohammed. It rather speaks to him. The Muslim Scripture include passages that give orders to Mohammed, warn him or encourage him in the face of the odds he faced. But it does not tell anything about who he was. If you read the Koran, you actually become much more knowledgeable about the life of Moses, Jesus or Abraham than that of Mohammed.

Of course the prophet of Islam must have said so many things during his 23-year-long mission, but he insisted, “nothing from me should be written besides the Koran.” Muslim tradition holds that he said so because he feared that his mortal words could have mistakenly been added to the divine book. Right after his death, the Koran was canonized and copied by his closest believers, and tradition again holds that the holy book came until today “without even a single letter of it being changed.”

Thus, in the first century of Islam, the Koran was the only authoritative book Muslims had at hand. When they disputed about its meaning, or about what to do in a specific situation, there were enough people who remembered what the prophet said or did on such matters. But as time passed, the oral tradition became increasingly vague and doubtful.

Meanwhile, a group of Islamic thinkers emerged who placed emphasis on human reason as a source of knowledge. Having been inspired by the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, these thinkers, known as “Mutazilites,” said that the Koran and human reason would be enough to find the truth. “God gave us both textual revelation and personal intelligence,” the Mutazilites argued, “so we should use both.” They also believed that God was just and merciful by nature, and that He could not have forsaken these principles. (His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI might find this tradition worthy of considering, because in his famous, and controversial, Regensburg speech, he only referred to the “voluntarist” line of thinking in Islam, which is the exact opposite of the Mutazilite tradition, and which says that God does whatever He wills and there is no point in questioning it.)

The rise of the Sunna

In those formative decades of Islam, not everybody was as trustful of reason as the Mutazilites. Ahmed ibn Hanbal (780-855) arose as their main intellectual rival. According to Hanbal, reason could lead man astray, so a true believer had to refrain from being too much of a rationalist. The true guide would be the Koran, of course, but to understand the Koran one needed interpretation, and Hanbal was willing to limit the role of reason in that interpretation process. As an alternative, he emphasized the “sunna,” or tradition, of the prophet. Instead of free thinking on the Koran as the Mutazilites did, a good believer had to look at what the prophet said or did on any specific issue.

The followers of Imam Hanbal soon became known as the “people of the tradition,” or “ahl-al-sunna,” or, simply, the “Sunni”s. And the source of the “tradition” they decided to follow was nothing but the hadiths. But more then a century had passed from Prophet Mohammed's time and the oral tradition had produced so many hadiths that the prophet had to have lived for centuries to produce them. Moreover everybody knew that some people had been making up these narratives just to support their ideas or even to bolster their business. (A famous story is that a honey merchant made up the hadith that “believers should start the day by eating honey.”) People were also unconsciously projecting their ideas or practices on the prophet. Toward the end of the second century of Islam, i.e., in the early ninth after Christ, the “hadith chaos” had become a true problem.

That's why scholars such as Muhammad al-Bukhari and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj decided to evaluate and catalogue this oral tradition. Focusing on the reliability of the chain of transmitters, these scholars created collections of “sahih,” or trustworthy, hadiths. To date, Sunni Muslims regard the works of six of these scholars as trustworthy. These “six books,” which are all made up of many volumes, constitute the “second source” of classical Islam after the Koran. The other two sources, i.e, “ijma” (consensus) and “qiyas” (analogical reasoning) are just tools of the jurists used for evaluating the first two.

The kernel of shariah

The role of hadiths in Islam is crucial, because they make up the source of much of the shariah, i.e., Islamic law. The Koran is relatively a small book, and much of its focus is on theological issues such as God, creation or the afterlife. There are some Koranic rules and regulations about social life, but they are quite limited. (Moreover, there are different views on how literal they should be understood; but that would take us to “Islamic Reformation 201.”)
Compared to the Koran, the hadiths are huge and they are full of minute details about how a Muslim should live. For example the Koran just says “be clean,” but the hadiths contain long chapters explaining how Prophet Mohammed used to wash himself. Then there are commentaries based on these hadiths giving unbelievably detailed instructions on how a Muslim should be clean by “imitating” the prophet. The content of these commentaries are very similar to the Halakha of Orthodox Jews.

Moreover, the hadiths constitute some of the harsh measures of shariah. The stoning of adulterers, the killing of apostates, the banning of fine arts, the seclusion and suppression of women, or the punishments for drinking alcohol or other sins – all of these are based on the hadiths, not the Koran. Professor Khaleel Mohammed, scholar at the Department of Religious Studies at San Diego State University, argued that hadiths also made Islam less ecumenical. "[While] the Koran viewed Judaism as the chief monotheistic religion,” he noted, “it was the Hadith that demonized the Jews and Judaism."

What went wrong

Once the Islamic shariah was settled in the Middle Ages, the Muslim world took it for granted until modern times. Islamdom, after all, was a glorious civilization that did not need to question itself. But with the advent of modernity, and the obvious ascendance of the West, Muslim thinkers started to have self-doubts. In the 19th century, the misfortunes of the Islamic world gave rise to the search for a change. Soon two different trends emerged: Secularists and modernists. (Fundamentalists, as a third force, would catch up later.)

To the Bernard Lewisian question of what went wrong, the secularists had a simple answer: For them, the problem was religion. It was a chain on Muslim societies, and its role had to be minimized in order to achieve “progress.” The secularist and anti-clerical line of thinking that was prevalent in Europe at the time – and, is quite powerful still today, especially in France – convinced the secularists of the Muslim world that religion was already a myth whose time would soon expire.

Modernists, on the other hand, thought that the problem was not religion, but the traditionalism and obscurantism that it was trapped in. Thus instead of abandoning Islam, they argued for its reinterpretation. Not too surprisingly, they discovered the lost tradition of the Mutazilites and started to question the authority of the hadiths. The first major challenge to the sunna came from the Indian modernist Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898). He eventually came to reject all hadiths as unreliable. Others such as Jamaluddin Afghani or Muhammad Abduh, with varying degrees, tried to diminish the role of hadiths and emphasize the Koran. The great Turkish poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy, who authored the Turkish National Anthem in 1922, was also a modernist who criticized fellow Muslims for venerating the Koran, but failing to use their reason on it.

The Turkish way

Since the 19th century the demand for a re-evaluation of the hadiths is common among Muslim intellectuals. But it is Turkey's official religious authority, the Diyanet, which took the first authoritative step toward a hadith revision. Why is that?
The answer is to be found not only among the team of Islamic scholars at Ankara University, but also in the social reality of Turkey, which has created a demand for a new, updated Islamic understanding.

Societies are less principled than intellectuals, and the majority of people are not interested in religious reform unless their way of life makes it necessary. In that regard, Turkey is an important case study, because as arguably the most modernized of all Muslim nations, its believers face questions that their co-religionists in, say, Afghanistan, don't. Today an urban Turkish Muslim lives in an environment in which equality between sexes is taken for granted and people openly question, or even defy, the religious teaching that suggest otherwise. The same urban Turkish Muslim probably supports the country's EU bid, because that is much better for his business and the future of his kids.

In others words, Turkey has a growing Muslim middle class – also dubbed as “the Islamic bourgeoisie” – which is becoming modern in many ways, but which also wants to be loyal to its faith. Hence comes demand for “modern Islam.” In the past two decades, Turkey has seen the rise of popular modernist theologians who argue that “the Islam in the Koran” is much more rational and liberal than “the Islam in the tradition.” Some of these popular reformists are “Muslim feminists,” who argue that the “male domination ideology” has corrupted the post-Koranic tradition.

Not the secular way

This is not necessarily what the secularist guardians of Turkey have dreamt of – they would prefer to see religion become a non-issue. For a Turkish secularist, to speak so much about religion is, by definition, backward and medievalish. Since Atatürk told us that the true guide in life is science, not religion, they would ask, why these people still care about what the Koran really meant 14 centuries ago? However, some people do care about religion, and modernization doesn't necessarily make them more secular – as evidenced in the United States.

Behind the hadith revision that is still underway in Ankara there lies all of these complex historical and social phenomena. When the new hadith collection comes out, it won't probably be an earth-shattering act of “reform.” But it will be a valuable step to reinterpret Islam by making the distinction between what is “historical” and what is “religious.”

Actually most Muslims don't like the term “reformation.” The president of Diyanet, Dr. Ali Bardakoğlu emphasized just yesterday that “this is not a reform.” The term sounds to Muslims as if it implies that Islam's divine sources have a problem, and they need to be fixed by people. No Muslim worth their salt would say that. But a believer can well accept that there are problems in the “cultural baggage” of Islam – and time has come to deal with them. This is what the “Turkish Islamic reform” is all about. By revising some of the hadiths that have been used to suppress women, and putting some of the others in their historical context, the theologians in Ankara are really taking a big step.