Religious rights
June 8, 2011
Turks are set to vote for a new parliament on Sunday, and while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) has a comfortable lead in polls, Kurds in southeastern Turkey are set to increase their parliamentary influence and have made achieving greater religious rights part of their platform.
Every Friday in Diyarbakir, the main city of southeastern Turkey, Muslim worshipers boycott Friday prayers at the state-controlled mosques to hear sermons in their native Kurdish language. Despite the blistering midday sun thousands turn out to worship in front of the city wall.
"We are Kurds; this is our native language, the language that our parents taught us. Let us speak this language in the courts, in the mosques, on the streets," said one man at the gathering. "Until we are no longer forbidden to speak Kurdish in our mosques, we will do our prayer on the street."
Ignored appeals
Kurds make up an estimated 20 percent of Turkey's 70 million people. Until the late 1980s, the Kurdish language was banned. Successive governments have slowly eased restrictions placed on education and broadcasting. But in mosques Turkish remains the only official language. In Turkey, the Islamic faith is strictly controlled by a state body called the Diyanet, which oversees the appointment of imams and writing of sermons.
Protests for more rights have spread across the predominantly Kurdish southeast. The leaders of this growing movement are not your typical rabble-rousers. They belong to Diay-der, a group of retired imams and Islamic scholars. Their demonstrations began when appeals for reform were ignored, according to Diay-der head Zahit Ciftkuran.
Calling the region devout community, he said the Diyanet rejected appeals for sermons in Kurdish.
"Our demands were ignored," Ciftkuran said. "Instead the government sent 10,000 new imams to this land. Who have no connection to this land, so it's a kind of religious assimilation. We won't accept this."
Resurgence in demands
The AKP prides itself as the defender of religious freedom, but the party is engaged in an increasingly bitter battle for votes with the country's Kurdish rights movement. Erdogan gave a speech last week in Diyarbakir and much of his address was devoted to lambasting the protesters.
"They refuse to pray behind an imam appointed by the state; they are not religious," the prime minister said.
Erdogan's speech caused dismay among many Kurds, even among some of his Kurdish senior party members, like the deputy head of AKP in Diyarbakir, Muhammed Akar. A supporter of the protest, he said the boycott of mosques is an indication of important changes in the region's politics.
"The demand for religious freedom is coming from the growing religious Kurdish movement," he said. "Four or five years ago, I feared that there would be a clash between secular nationalist and religious Kurds, but instead, for the first time, Kurdish nationalism has come together with religion. There is now a resurgence in Kurdish religious demands and the state and mosques cannot keep up."
'Point of no return'
The introduction of the candidates at the last major rally held by the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in Diyarbakir showed the transformation the party has undergone.
"We have reached a point of no return," said lawmaker Emine Ayna, campaigning for reelection in Diyarbakir. "Our people have overcome fear."
After drawing candidates from its base, many of whom were linked to the officially outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the BDP was beaten by Erdogan's AKP in the last general election in 2007. For Sunday's poll, the BDP has included liberals and key religious Kurdish figures among its candidates.
Altan Tan is one of the recognized religious figures in Diyarbakir. He said religious rights have been added to the BDP's list of demands, which traditionally includes Kurdish education, regional autonomy and an amnesty for the PKK, which Ankara has labeled a terrorist organization.
Tan added that Kurds in Turkey were ready to fight for those rights if they don't get them through the political process.
"We will make Kurdistan, like Egypt, like Yemen, like Syria," he said, referring to the anti-government protests that have shook governments in the Middle East and North Africa. "We don't want this. We want a new constitution. We want an agreement with the government and the people."
Kurdish language use not the end of the world
Kurdish frustrations have increased over a probe into alleged PKK collaborators that has landed hundreds of people in jail, including mayors and activists and six people who are now on the list of BDP-backed election candidates.
BDP-supported candidates currently hold 20 seats in parliament and, if polls hold true, are set to gain 10 more on Sunday.
The prime minister has committed himself to introducing a new constitution after the election, but he has given few details about it. The Diyanet has also taken tentative steps to allow Kurdish to be used at times in some mosques.
Omer Kilic sang in Kurdish recently during a ceremony in the Ulu Cami, Diyarbakir's main mosque.
"It was a beautiful evening, some of the old men were crying," he said. "It's a start; I don't understand why everything can't be in Kurdish. It is not as if it will bring the apocalypse."
Author: Dorian Jones, Istanbul / sms
Editor: Holly Fox