RFE/RL
- 25 May 2002
Posted 26 May 2002 on RELIGIOSCOPE
Reversing
centuries of tradition, Turkish authorities have decided that
women will be allowed to participate more actively in the
country's public religious life, arguing they should be granted
responsibilities equal to those of men before Islam. The move
appears to be an attempt on the part of religious authorities
in the predominantly Muslim but strictly secular country to
catch up with transformations that have been stirring in society
for many years. It could also serve as a test for Turkey's
social cohesiveness.
Religious
authorities in predominantly Sunni Muslim Turkey have taken
an unprecedented step by ruling that women should be allowed
to participate in public religious life in the same way as
men.
The
decision was made at a four-day seminar earlier this month
in Istanbul attended by religious clerics and university scholars.
The Directorate for Religious Affairs, the state-controlled
body that monitors Muslim communities in this secular country,
made it public on 19 May.
Provisions
of the new religious code state that women should be allowed
to attend regular prayers in mosques along with men, although
they will be required to stay in separate rooms. Likewise,
the new regulation says women should be allowed to attend
funeral services, but only if they stand behind men.
Although
the public participation of women in Turkey's religious life
has never been governed by written rules, female believers
have been customarily kept from mosques and regular prayer
meetings, effectively forced to perform religious rites at
home.
Reversing
centuries of tradition under which women were considered unfit
to perform sacred rites during menstruation, the clerics and
scholars also decided that women should be allowed to pray
and read from the Koran during these times.
In
comments published in the Hurriyet daily newspaper
on 19 May, the head of the Directorate for Religious Affairs,
Mehmet Nuri Yilmaz, said believers will remain free to follow
the new rules or ignore them, but that clerics and priests
will have to abide by them and answer all questions they might
raise among the public.
Participants
at the conference justified their decision by saying that "there is no legal, moral or social differences" between men and women and that Islam should grant them equal
responsibilities. Such an assessment invalidates the traditional
belief that the testimony given by one man to a religious
court equals that of two women.
Hurriyet
quoted Yasar Nuri Ozturk, the dean of the faculty of theology
at Istanbul University, as describing some of the new provisions
as revolutionary.
Nilufer
Gole is a Turkish scholar who teaches sociology at the Paris-based
School for Higher Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS).
She is the author of many books on women and religion in Middle
Eastern societies, including The Forbidden Modern: Civilization
and Veiling.
Gole
says that, if the decision to open mosque doors to women may
be seen as revolutionary, it also meets a social demand: "This
reform follows practices that have already been taking place
and that have sometimes stirred public outcry, such as women
reading prayers at funerals. Such practices are seen as illicit.
They are banned under Islam, rather under Islamic rites. [This
reform movement] began with women demanding the right to read
funeral prayers on the front row, alongside men. This public
debate on how to reform Islam has been going on for two or
three years now."
Semih
Vaner is a Turkish researcher at the Paris-based Center for
International Studies and Research (CERI). He told RFE/RL
that he, too, believes the Directorate for Religious Affairs
decided to catch up with ongoing social changes that were
most noticeable in urban areas: "I think there was
a push in that direction which, to some extent, was limited
to Istanbul, Ankara, and other major cities. But the Directorate
[for Religious Affairs] did not seem to be shocked by such
practices. In my view, [it] has simply decided to accompany
this movement, but I doubt it was the initiator of the process.
I believe there was a process in the making, that things were
changing and that, simply, the Directorate for Religious Affairs
chose not to oppose them."
Turkey
has been a secular state since the proclamation of the republic
in October 1923 and the subsequent abolition of the caliphate
by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Fearing a backlash by supporters
of the Shariah, or Islamic law, Ataturk chose to give secularism
a strong anticlerical character, banning religion from public
life. His objective was not to abolish religion but rather
to free his fellow countrymen from what he considered Islam's
sometimes oppressive and backward-looking influence.
The
democratization of Turkey's political life in the late 1940s
allowed for some infringements on Ataturk's staunch secularist
principles. That softening paved the way for a lift of a ban
on religious education and the opening of training courses
for preachers.
The
rise of the leftist movement in the 1970s resulted in the
political and military establishments becoming increasingly
influenced by the so-called "Turkish-Islamic synthesis," an ideology that imparted to the Turkish nation a quasi-messianic
mission against socialism and communism. This ideology, which
culminated after the 1980 military coup, materialized in the
opening of new mosques and religious schools throughout the
country.
By
contrast, the Turkish military -- which wields considerable
influence on domestic policies -- adopted a radically different
attitude over the past decade, pushing for a further "secularization" of Islam to counter the growing influence of Islamic parties.
CERI's
Vaner believes the decision announced last week, which would
not have been possible without the blessing of secular authorities,
can also be seen as part of a strategy "to involve
women further in politics through religion."
Yet,
Gole argues that, even though the new regulation may appear
to be a bid to force changes on society, it still meets the
expectations of many Turkish women: "In my opinion,
this reform represents a kind of unexpected convergence between
secular women, who have always wanted to be allowed into mosques
and occasionally join men for prayers; educated Islamic women
who have made similar demands; and traditional women who,
too, have strong religious feelings. There is here a new,
previously unknown, convergence between these three different
figures of [Turkish] woman."
Turkey's
Islamic parties have not reacted yet to the publication of
the new religious code -- a delay that could be explained
by a political agenda focused on internal divisions and the
prospect of early parliamentary elections following Prime
Minister Bulent Ecevit's recent illnesses.
Gole
believes the way Islamic circles respond to the proposed religious
liberalization will show whether the convergence she anticipates
between the different types of Turkish women could help consolidate
society. Otherwise, she argues, the consequences might be
dramatic for the country: "Today we witness a tendency,
among secular women, to respond to the rise of political Islam
by showing that they can go to mosques and behave in a 'secular'
way. To some extent, the religious space is having its sacred
character taken away. On the other hand, Islamic women have
started appropriating secular spaces such as parliament or
universities, also sparking public outcry. So we will see
whether the religious reform [adopted last week] will bring
those two milieus closer or whether, on the contrary, it will
create a gap between them and spark a new social conflict."
Participants
at the Istanbul seminar chose not to address the sensitive
issue of head scarves, which they said will be debated later.
Controversy
over veils and Islamic head scarves have stirred Turkish society
for most of the past two decades and culminated three years
ago when Merve Kavakci, a deputy for the moderate Islamic
Virtue Party, was evicted from parliament after a failed attempt
to take her oath wearing a head scarf. Last year (22 June
2001), the Constitutional Court cited the outcry she had caused
when it ruled to ban Virtue for alleged antisecular activities.
Last
December, prosecutors charged Kavakci with insulting the state
and the military by publicly stating that Turkish women who
wear head scarves and female students who demand the right
to adorn Islamic headgear in classrooms are persecuted.
In
the late 1920s, Ataturk announced the abolition of veils and
head scarves as he was proceeding with plans to emancipate
Turkish women from the semi-slavery he argued they had been
kept under by centuries of Ottoman rule. Yet no legal action
was taken to enforce women's dress codes until the early 1980s
when, to counter the rise of political Islam, the government
imposed a ban on head scarves in universities and other public
institutions.
In
Gole's opinion, the Islamic head scarf should not be regarded
as a symbol of Turkish women's submission to tradition. On
the contrary, she writes in Forbidden Modern, veiling
conveys a political statement and should be regarded "as
an active re-appropriation on the behalf of women of Islamic
religiosity and way of life rather than its reproduction by
established traditions."
The
sociologist says she is anxious to see how Islamic women will
react to the liberalization of the religious code. But she
cautions against the temptation to politicize the Directorate
for Religious Affairs' decision, saying it might not only
provoke a rift within society but also put Turkey in an uncertain
position toward its Muslim neighbors: "If this issue
is examined only from a political viewpoint, Turkey might
be, as has often happened in the past, perceived by Islamic
militants -- within the country as well as among the rest
of the world Islamic community -- as a country that goes against
Islam and against its Muslim identity. But if one puts the
emphasis on women, if the analysis focuses on the gender issue,
then the convergence of demands made by Islamic, secular and
other women will become obvious."
Gole
concludes: "What we see in this reform is not an attempt
to establish equality between sexes within religion. Rather,
it is an attempt to redefine religious rites in the light
of equality between the sexes."
Jean-Christophe
Peuch
