When A State Imposes Religion On Society

Turkey has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) twice because of the content of mandatory religion lessons taught in middle schools and high schools. The ECtHR said these lessons were too one-sided, only teaching and imposing Sunni Islam. The first decision was in 2007. After this decision, Turkey made a few changes to the curriculum, but apparently they were not enough in the eyes of the ECtHR, which condemned Turkey a second time in 2014 because of these lessons. Both cases were brought before the ECtHR by Alevi students, claiming that these lessons disrespect their beliefs and that they are forced to study a version of Islam that they do not believe in.
Immediately after the second judgment of the court was announced, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said even though he is a Muslim he knows about Marxism, and therefore one does not need to be a devout Muslim to learn about Islam. It was obvious from his statement that they will defy the judgment one way or another.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's words also show that they will continue imposing these mandatory lessons, in spite of the fact that there is a decision from the ECtHR that they must be removed from the curriculum. As Today's Zaman reported yesterday, President Erdoğan, referring to the ECtHR decision, said: “The decision is a wrong one because there is no such practice in the West… You cannot see, anywhere in the world, compulsory courses on mathematics, physics or chemistry being made a matter debate. But for some reason, classes on religious culture and morality are always a matter of debate… If people debate whether religion courses should be compulsory, why are there complaints about drug addiction? Why are there complaints about terrorism, violence, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia? If you remove compulsory religious culture and morality classes, then naturally drugs will fill the vacuum; violence and racism will fill the vacuum."
You see how Erdoğan uses irrelevant arguments to defend mandatory religious lessons? He cannot give up mandatory lessons on religion. And as I was trying to explain in this column before, mandatory religious lessons are just a small part of the whole project of the de-secularization of the education system. Well, what we are witnessing right now is massive, state-sponsored missionary activity. Missionary activities, namely introducing one's beliefs to others, either on one's own or as a group of people, are part and parcel of freedom of religion. However, if certain religious beliefs and values are imposed on society, and in particular in schools run by the state, this is not freedom of religion. In strong contrast, the imposition of a certain religion by the state is a gross violation of the freedom of religion of people who do not believe this religion or the version sponsored by the state. And where there is the imposition of certain religious values by the state there is institutionalized discrimination against those citizens who do not share the same beliefs and values that are sponsored by the state. And this is exactly what has been happening in Turkey and will apparently continue at full speed in the near future.

ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ (Cihan/Today's Zaman)