Turkey’s post-coup purge rolls over religious affairs agency

Turkish leaders last week suspended more than 2,500 people from their jobs in the country’s religious affairs agency, the Diyanet, in the latest purge since the July 15 failed military coup.

Some fear the clampdown on certain sects of Islam ultimately will harm all religious minorities in Turkey, where Christians and Jews have always had tenuous rights to worship and live out their faith.

Andrew Bennett of Cardus, a Canadian-based Christian think tank, told The Catholic Register the current approach was “quite concerning.”

“Religious freedom needs to be understood as a foundational freedom,” Bennett said. “We’ve seen in other countries, once religious freedom is increasingly curtailed, you generally find other freedoms curtailed as well—freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly.”

Turkey’s Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors continues to issue thousands of suspensions over suspected ties to what it calls the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization/Parallel State Structure, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

In May, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan labeled followers of Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen and his Hizmet movement terrorists, a designation some legal scholars consider unconstitutional, according to Al-Monitor.

Since the coup attempt, authorities have fired, suspended, or detained teachers, police, military, and government personnel on a “nearly unprecedented” scale, according to The New York Times.

CNN estimated more than 70,000 suspensions, 35,000 detentions, and 17,000 arrests. Amnesty International reported detainee complaints of abuse, torture, and even rape.

Erdogan blames Gülen, who lives in Pennsylvania, for the uprising and has demanded his extradition. Gülen denies the allegation and describes his philosophy as “inclusive and pluralist Islam,” according to his own Hizmet News outlet.

Erdogan and Gülen, both Sunni Muslims, once were allies “against Turkey’s authoritarian secularists,” according to Al-Monitor. But disagreements began in 2012 and magnified as Gülen’s followers began criticizing the Erdogan administration of corruption in 2013.

The latest Diyanet purge brought the total suspensions from the agency to 3,672. The agency’s purpose since 1924 has been to oversee and maintain control of Islam within Turkey. Its role expanded over time to include appointing imams, writing sermons, and promoting Islamic education, according to Svante Cornell of The Turkey Analyst.

“Like many of Turkey’s powerful state institutions, Diyanet constituted a check on political Islam as long as the state was controlled by the republican establishment. But once the state came under the control of political Islam, it became a handy tool for the propagation of this ideology,” Cornell wrote. Under Erdogan’s AKP party, the agency ballooned in size, budget, and power.

Human Rights Watch criticized Erdogan’s reaction to the coup, saying the purge “goes far beyond holding to account those involved in trying to overthrow it” and warned it is “weakening the democracy.” HRW urged the international community to pressure Turkey to “reverse course,” provide due process, and conduct fair trials.

Under the current state of emergency declaration, the prime minister and cabinet can rule by decree without parliament.

“The president has claimed that democracy has been victorious in Turkey, but the government’s repressive measures this past week are endangering the rule of law, human rights protections, and a vibrant civil society, including a free media that can scrutinize and criticize government actions,” wrote Katy Pownall of Amnesty International.

Citizens are concerned too.

“We are worried of course about the state of emergency because to a certain extent our freedom will be restricted,” Sermin Dalgic told Voice of America. “We want a country where we can freely speak our minds and hold rallies. That’s the kind of country we want to be.”