Turkey, the European Union and religion. Faith in Europe

The Turkish republic is not as secular as it seems. To become European, it will have to change

AN EVER closer partnership between Turkey and the European Union, culminating in full Turkish membership, can only be good for relations between Islam and the West. It will show that western nations have no insuperable prejudice against Islam - and it will confirm Turkey's role as a nation whose Muslim heritage is fully compatible with democracy.

Those are the main reasons why European leaders were expected on December 17th to endorse the opening of talks to make Turkey the EU's first mainly Muslim member. The Turks have worked hard to groom themselves for Europe. But the negotiators from Brussels and Ankara will be deceiving themselves, and perhaps riding for a fall, if they underestimate the amount of ground they still need to travel. Among the trickiest issues is the existence in Turkey of a relationship between religion and the state that differs from the varied, and often bizarre, arrangements of western Europe.

Paradoxically, the aspect of Turkey's system that Europeans find strangest is the curb it places on its own prevailing religion. Turkey is often called a secular state, whose citizens happen to be Muslim. In fact, Turkey is far from secular, if that implies an arm's-length relationship between faith and politics. The masters of Turkey's 81-year-old republic have always felt that religion is too sensitive to leave to clerics alone. A vast state bureaucracy oversees spiritual life; it hires imams, tells them what to preach, and runs religious schools.

One size fits all

The effect is to steer most Turks down a narrow religious path; they are taught to be devout Muslims, but they may not push their piety further than the state allows. By banning headscarves in universities as well as all government premises, the state imposes a far harsher restriction on devout Muslim women than the ban on scarves (and other obvious signs of faith) in French schools. As a result, some Turkish women get no higher education. Nor is life easy for millions of Turks who follow the liberal Alevi form of the Muslim faith, not the Sunni Islam taught in schools. For the state, all Muslims are the same; too bad for Alevis who want to opt out of Sunni education.

What about Turkey's tiny non-Muslim communities? Here again, history weighs heavily. As Turks learn at school, the avoidance of any special status for religious minorities was a master-stroke by their state's founders: the western powers wanted such privileges, but the republic resisted their wiles. Those negotiations ended in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which promises limited cultural and religious rights for the Greek Orthodox, the Armenians and Jews - with the result that Turkish policy still distinguishes “Lausanne minorities” from others. When some Turks argued recently that the treaty, properly read, implied fair treatment of all minorities, this triggered a furious row - and dark murmurings from the military.

In any case, joining the EU will oblige Turkey to be far more decent in its treatment of religious minorities than the Lausanne treaty ordains. As evidence for a lack of decency, witness Turkey's de facto ban on training for Christian clergy; and the recent Turkish-American row over the Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul. As Turkey's government reaffirmed, it disputes the right not just of its own citizens, but of Christians in America, to accord the patriarch his “primacy of honour” in the Orthodox world: this is a curious act of discourtesy to a religious leader who warmly backs Turkey's European hopes.

Whatever Turkey's failings, do Europeans have any right to lecture the Turks? Europe's religious scene is full of weird anachronisms. The British prime minister still chooses the senior prelate of the Anglican Church. In one part of Greece, Muslim muftis exercise judicial powers, while in Athens, Muslims cannot get official recognition for a single mosque. Denmark is one of Europe's most secular societies, but its Lutheran church enjoys huge privileges. All these arrangements are likely to be challenged as Europe grows more diverse.

Where does that leave Turkey? It would be nice, but naive, to regard its system as simply one small variation in a colourful religious scene. It is one thing for a state to give privileges to a particular church, which then governs itself; quite another for a state to micro-manage the whole of religious life.

Given its own diversity, it would be silly for the EU to impose on Turkey some precise model for religious affairs. But Turkey won't be a liberal democracy in the European sense until state interference in the world of faith becomes the exception, not the rule - and unless all religious communities can worship, own property and form associations freely.

Editorial feature which says that the Turkish Republic is not as secular as it seems. To become European, it will have to change.

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