ANKARA, 4 December 2004 — EU candidate Turkey is helping to avert a “clash of civilizations” by sending to Europe hundreds of scholars who espouse a moderate, inclusive form of Islam and are versed in Western culture, a senior official said.
Ali Bardakoglu, who heads the Directorate General for Religious Affairs or Diyanet, also told Reuters in an interview Turkey’s secular system of government guaranteed protection of religious freedoms for all, a key concern of the European Union.
“We have sent around 700 scholars to Germany (to serve its large ethnic Turkish Muslim community), around 70 to France, 100 to the Netherlands and 35 to 40 to Belgium,” he said.
“And these countries thank us because we send modern men,” Bardakoglu said, adding that the Diyanet tried to select only educated scholars with a sound “scientific” knowledge of Muslim teachings and preferably a knowledge of Western languages.
The emergence of firebrand scholars in some European countries preaching an anti-Western message underlines the need to educate people in a correct understanding of Islam, he said.
“When scholars are appointed by the Diyanet in the West we have no problems, but when congregations themselves appoint them problems emerge,” said Bardakoglu, a gently-spoken academic.
“Religion engages the emotions and when not accompanied by knowledge it can be destructive ... When the public lacks healthy religious instruction ... religion can become an instrument of politics, of terror and social tensions,” he said.
Partly through the Diyanet, the Turkish state has kept religion on a tight rein since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern republic in 1923.
The Diyanet, founded in 1924, plays a unique role in Turkish life, employing some 70,000 scholars across the country and carefully regulating the practice of a faith which claims the allegiance of 99 percent of the population. It even writes the sermons which are read in Turkey’s mosques every Friday.
Some commentators see a direct link between the traditional moderation of Turkish Islam and the paternalist influence of the Diyanet, an arm of the state bureaucracy but which proudly claims independence from the politicians.
“We don’t let the state intervene in religion. Secularism is the biggest obstacle preventing the state intervening in religion and speaking about it,” he said.
Turkey is by no means immune to militant-inspired violence, as was most dramatically demonstrated by a series of devastating suicide bomb attacks on Jewish and Western targets in Istanbul in November 2003.
Turks claiming links to Al-Qaeda network claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which more than 60 people were killed. For Turkish secularists, the attacks confirmed the need to keep close tabs on religion.
Bardakoglu said the Diyanet had warm contacts with minority religions in Turkey such as the Jews and Orthodox Christians. He also denied allegations the Diyanet is biased against Turkey’s large Alevi community and favors the majority Sunni Muslims.
