EurasiaNet Civil Society - Turkey: European Court Delivers Landmark Religious Rights Ruling

CIVIL SOCIETY

TURKEY: EUROPEAN COURT DELIVERS LANDMARK RELIGIOUS RIGHTS RULING
Nicholas Birch 10/26/07

In a landmark decision that highlights the tensions between Turkey’s idiosyncratic secularism and its hopes of European integration, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in early October in favor of a Turkish parent seeking an exemption for his daughter from compulsory religious lessons at school.

Turkey’s insistence that Eylem Zengin attend religious education classes, the ECHR ruled on October 9, was in breach of international conventions requiring the government "to respect the right of parents to ensure education in conformity with their own religious� convictions." Eylem, now 19, was a seventh-grader when her father initiated the suit, which was rebuffed by Turkish courts.

Like her father and at least 10 percent of Turks, Eylem Zengin is an Alevi, a sect with beliefs influenced by Sufism and pre-Islamic practices, and distantly related to Shi’ia branch of Islam. Turks are predominantly Sunni Muslims.

The ECHR acknowledged that mention of Alevism is made in the syllabus of "religious culture and ethics" courses that were made obligatory for 9- to 14-year-old children in the military-inspired 1982 constitution. But, it added, "only pluralism in education can enable pupils to develop a critical mind to religious matters." It added that the official syllabus is so heavily slanted towards Sunni Islam that it cannot be considered to meet the criteria of objectivity and pluralism.

The judgment also questioned why non-Muslim Turkish children were permitted to skip a lesson that purported to be a course on different religious cultures.

The decision was greeted with joy by Alevi groups in Turkey. "This is a milestone in our 20-year struggle", said Ali Kenanoglu, head of the Hubyar Sultan Association.

The Zengin’s lawyer, Kazim Genc, believes the judgment could not have come at a better time. "There’s been a huge amount of debate recently about the justice of compulsory religious education", he says, referring to discussions over plans for a new liberal constitution. "The ECHR has solved the problem � religious lessons have to come out of the new draft."

"This country claims to be secular," adds Husniye Aydin, a mother of two secondary school children in the eastern Anatolian town of Tunceli. "If that’s the case, why are my kids taught that all good Muslims must pray five times a day? With luck this decision will change that."

Tucked between high mountains and one of Turkey’s biggest dams, 25,000-strong Tunceli must count as one of Turkey’s oddest settlements. Everybody here � apart from the 20,000 soldiers and 1,000 policemen � is Alevi.

In Mus and Erzurum, barely three hours to the east and north-east respectively, finding a bite to eat during Ramadan is almost impossible. Here, all the restaurants carry on regardless, and the fine modern mosque in the town centre remains unused.

That’s because Alevis neither fast during Ramadan, nor pray in mosques. For their religious ceremonies, they congregate in the cemevi on the outskirts of town. The weekly ceremony here unfolds to the sound of a saz, the metal-stringed lute played throughout Anatolia. At its climax, a group of men and women whirl together in a stylized circular dance.

Persecuted by the Ottoman Sultans, most Alevis wholeheartedly aligned themselves with Kemal Ataturk’s secular revolution of the 1920s. Many continue to describe themselves as staunch Kemalists. Over time, though, increasing numbers became concerned with the way in which the Turkish Republic sought to turn Sunni Islam into an instrument of social control.

Tunceli schoolteacher Nuriye Bagriyanik ascribes the resurgence of Alevi identity to pogroms in the late 1970s, during which well over 100 Alevis died. About 45 more were killed in a second bout of sectarian violence in the mid-90s, in Istanbul and the central Anatolian city of Sivas.

Alevis have watched more nervously than anyone the successive electoral victories of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a party with its roots in political Islam. Out of the 360-odd AKP MPs in parliament between 2002 and 2007, not one was Alevi. There is one now, but Alevis have no doubt that the AKP is staunchly Sunni in its orientation.

It certainly behaves like one, says Izzetin Dogan, head of Turkey’s most influential Alevi group, the Istanbul-based Cem Foundation. "Previous governments may have been cowardly on the Alevi issue, but at least we could talk to them," he says. "With the present government, all contact has been lost."

The breakdown in communications led him to take the Ministry of Education to court over the lack of mention of Alevism in the religious syllabus. The ministry responded by inserting a few paragraphs he describes as an attempt "to hoodwink Brussels."

It’s certainly the argument Ankara has used in response to last week’s ECHR decision. "We took copies of the new syllabus with us [to court], but they were apparently disregarded", an Education Ministry spokesperson said last week. "The mentality of the new school books is quite different."

A religious culture and ethics teacher who knows the new syllabus well, Mustafa Cemil Kilic is unconvinced. He points out that, like himself, religious teachers are products of theology faculties. "You can change the syllabus as much as you like. The fact remains that most of them are conservative Sunni Muslims who see themselves more as missionaries than teachers", he says.

Other than scrapping religious lessons altogether, he thinks the only long-term solution lies in thoroughly re-educating teaching staff, and keeping a close eye on them. "The trouble is, of course, that the people [in the Education Ministry] who would be doing the overseeing come from the same religious background."

Editor�s Note: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

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