The Fear of Subtle Differences in Faith

​​ It seems the best way to make headline news in Turkey is to express opinions taken for granted elsewhere. At the beginning of December Nihat Ergün claimed that religious education in schools should be voluntary. The comments created a sensation because Ergün is deputy chairman of the governing AKP's parliamentary group.

Although Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP, or Justice and Development Party, likes to talk about religious freedom, this is mostly restricted to women's freedom to wear a headscarf in universities. When it comes to compulsory religious studies in schools, the party retreats behind the Turkish constitution, of which it is otherwise often critical.

Aberrations from the true beliefs

The majority of Alevis have been fighting compulsory religious education for years. Around 15% of the Turkish population belong to this religious community, itself deeply divided. Its ideas and symbols are rooted in Shiite Islam; its worship in Anatolian traditions, but its theology is reminiscent of Gnosticism. Till 2005 the Alevis' beliefs were not represented in Turkey's Sunni-dominated religious lessons at all.

Hundreds of legal battles to have their children excused from the lessons, some of them fought as far as the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, finally resulted in a new curriculum which mentions Alevis for the first time, although not in a way which pleases them.

The curriculum relegates the religious community, which numbers at least ten million, to the status of a mystic order within Islam. In the guidelines for teachers it says that the teachings of the Alevis are the work of human beings and thus an inadequate interpretation of the true faith, and should not be put on a level with those of Islam under any circumstances.

​​ Whether the issue is compulsory religious studies, the recognition of their houses of worship (the cemevi), the training of their priests or their representation within the state ministry for religion, the Alevi have continually hit a brick wall in Ankara over the last twenty-five years. Although all the parties regularly like to make promises in the run-up to elections, the problem is never tackled.

According to the majority of Turks and the state, the Alevis' convictions are simply aberrations from the true beliefs, providing a gateway for radical left-wing ideology. Turkish officialdom, which so often speaks of how its laicism protects it from political Islam, is equally afraid of diversity within Islam.

Pressure from abroad

The Alevis' breakthrough occurred abroad. From the beginning of this school year Alevism has been taught as a separate subject within Islam in several parts of Germany, where Alevis are part of the large Turkish immigrant population (Bavaria, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia). In Hamburg Alevism is being included in the general religious studies curriculum and in Berlin Alevi religious lessons have been taught for the last five years.

The pressure on Turkey was also increased in October 2007 when the European Court of Human Rights decreed that Turkey's religious lessons violated the rights of atheists and agnostics and infringed the rights of parents to raise their children according to their own convictions.

​​ Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP, whose leading lights once espoused Islamist politics, was initially even more reserved towards the Alevis than the other parties. However pressure from the EU, which has been demanding a solution to the problem for years, and the party's own political discourse of religious freedom, along with more liberal voices from within the party itself, finally led Erdogan to make an initial concession to the Alevi, in January 2008.

There was certainly no talk of equal status or separate religious education lessons, but much emphasis was placed on the common ground between Alevis and Sunnis, stressing that the points of difference were not really so important.

Politics is changing course

Most Alevis reacted bitterly to this attempt at religious appropriation. Petitions and sit-ins for the abolition of compulsory religious education lessons culminated in a mass protest at the beginning of November in which 50,000 people demonstrated in Ankara against compulsory lessons, for the recognition of Alevi houses of worship and for the abolition of the state authority for religion.

In March 2009 the next local elections will take place; the Republican People's Party (CHP) is promising to recognise Alevi houses of worship for the first time, and even the right-wing, nationalist MHP is seeking to woo the Alevi.

With the option of voluntary religious education lessons and extra tuition for Alevi children, Erdogan's party is suddenly placing itself at the head of this trend. If the reforms really take place, they will represent a model example of democracy in action; the Alevi have never resorted to violence or even threatened to use it. Instead they have shown great patience, and their success might give other movements hope.

Günter Seufert

© Qantara.de 2008

Translated from the German by Steph Morris

Qantara.de

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