Paul Keenan
Europe is ignoring Turkey’s appalling rights record, writes Paul Keenan
“No one has the right to lecture Turkey on what it should be doing.”
It can only be a guess as to how many observers of the recent high-profile visit by European leaders to Turkey caught a stunned breath as these words were uttered. Touring a camp for Syrian refugees, European Council President Donald Tusk thus summed up the provision of material aid being offered by the Turkish authorities to those who have made it across the border, while the accompanying German Chancellor Angela Merkel loudly praised the workings of the EU-Turkish deal which it is claimed is stemming the onward flow of desperate refugees to Greece and beyond.
Even confined to such narrow parameters, however, Mr Tusk’s words were deeply and disturbingly ironic. For, as even the most amateur of researchers will find, in order to get as far as a Turkish camp, refugees from Syria are taking their lives in their hands as they face trigger-happy border guards whose allegedly murderous brutality is serving to reduce the numbers escaping into Turkey. The numbers of men, women and children so far killed in narrow mountain passes is also a matter of guesswork.
Dealings
Such inconvenient truths must not, however, get in the way of current dealings between a Europe frantically working to stem the tide of humanity and Turkey’s seeming eagerness to make gains both in monetary terms and on the question of broader access to the European continent on the back of the crisis.
Thus, the satirical words of German comedians are to be punished if Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan feels slighted (regularly), and kind words must be spoken by European leaders in this new climate of international ‘cooperation’, albeit through gritted teeth given Turkey’s appalling internal dynamics since the rise of Mr Erdogan.
For readers of The Irish Catholic, perhaps interested in viewing these dynamics from a religious freedom perspective – always a good indicator of a state’s drives and agendas – one word will suffice: ‘Diyanet’.
Contained in a newly issued report, ‘Turkey: Freedom of Religion or Belief and Freedom of Expression’ and compiled by the international freedom group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), the word Diyanet surfaces very quickly when the reader reaches those chapters dealing with the experiences of non-Muslims living in the country.
Diyanet, the local moniker for Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs, is the body tasked by the Erdogan administration with managing religious affairs in the state towards national “solidarity and integrity”. This should be an easy enough task, given the Turkish Constitution’s guarantees of religious freedom and prohibition of discrimination on religious grounds.
However, as CSW points out, it is now apparent that Diyanet itself is responsible for an increasing number of violations of the founding document.
“The Diyanet is charged with exercising its duties ‘in accordance with secularism, removed from all political views and ideas’,” the report states. “However, in practice this does not happen. One minority representative described the Diyanet as a ‘Sunni-hanafi missionary organisation’.”
The report goes on: “The office pays salaries to over 100,000 Sunni clerics and also takes responsibility for the construction and upkeep of Sunni mosques… Imams are also given a unique passport that allows them to travel abroad without needing a visa. These visas are not afforded to leaders of minority faiths.”
The report then goes on to detail how minority faiths suffer under such a reality, such as their struggles against a biased system in attempting to gain proper recourse for issues such as church land seizures (in one such incident, when the Assyrian Church successfully fought a legal case against a property developer for land illegally seized for a shopping mall, the government’s answer was to offer a fresh tract of land, one that had been seized from the Catholic Church – the Assyrians declined that solution out of respect for the Catholic community).
The realm of education is another area of struggle for non-Muslims.
Under current state rules, the high-school entrance examination for all pupils includes questions drawn from the obligatory Religious Culture and Ethics Class (RCE), which now includes elective modules on the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad.
Jews and Christians are afforded exemptions from RCE, though not other faith communities whom the state does not recognise as religions. Despite all of this, however, the CSW report points out that it “was discovered subsequently that those who had exempted themselves from classes were still registered as having taken them, and therefore automatically received zero on this section of the exam”, thereby stymying their academic progress.
These are merely snapshots from ‘Turkey: Freedom of Religion or Belief and Freedom of Expression’, but they serve to bolster allegations levelled against President Erdogan that, since he led his AKP party to power in 2003 (as prime minister), he has steadily eroded Turkey’s secular principles in favour of increasingly Islamic ones, all nurtured by subtle discriminations.
Commentators and academics continue to argue over Mr Erdogan’s true incentive in this. Some see a rolling Islamisation of Turkey and cry ‘caliphate’.
Others view Mr Erdogan as playing the ‘faith card’ in order to silence religious authorities as he consolidates power to make Turkey a dominant voice within Middle Eastern affairs.
Either way, the results for Turkish Christians and other communities are the same. As CSW points out: “Despite having previously been critical of the Diyanet’s operations, the AKP decided to strengthen its remit in 2010 and has since expanded it.
In 2010 a law was passed that raised the status of the institution from general directorate to under-secretariat, placing the office directly under the remit of the Prime Minister, alongside government ministries.
Its budget has increased four-fold over the past decade; it has been reported that in 2016 the institution will receive 6.48 billion Turkish lira (just over €2 billion) – more than the individual budgets of 12 other government ministries.
Such are topics not to be mentioned at this time of crisis, described by one Turkey-based journalist (another pressurised category) as a period in which realpolitik outweighs moralpolitik. Thus, as President Tusk and Chancellor Merkel visited Turkey, no mention was made of the European Parliament’s own report of early April in which the country was lambasted for rowing back on democratic reforms which were deemed necessary to Turkish accession to the European Union.
Perhaps the latter argument on Mr Erdogan’s motivation is the correct one, and he is even now steering Turkey aware from the West in favour of a strong position within the Middle East. That being the case, his nation’s minority faiths are in for a rougher ride than to date.
Unless, that is, if they too join the exodus to Europe.
CSW’s full report, ‘Turkey: Freedom of Religion or Belief and Freedom of Expression’ can be read at: http://www.csw.org.uk/2016/04/20/report/3084/article.htm