Conservative but relaxed about it
Saturday, September 20, 2008










A new survey asks an old question, ‘Is Turkey becoming more conservative?' The answer, like Turkish politics, is conflicted. While 94 percent of Turks identify themselves as religious, very few are observing this month's holy fast or regularly pray five times a day. Experts point to the enduring popularity of the AKP, motivating people to adopt a religious mantle without necessarily the belief system to go along with it.

MÜGE YALÇIN
ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News


Questions concerning the extent of conservatism in Turkey have returned with the enduring popularity of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Several surveys on Turkish belief systems and religious practices have yielded different insights at different times.

The recent Global Attitudes survey published Wednesday by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center revealed that although 94 percent of Turkish participants defined themselves as “religious,” only 20 percent were fasting for all of Ramadan, while only 34 percent performed prayer five times a day. Moreover, fasting and praying were the least common in Turkey as compared to seven other Muslim countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Tanzania.

On the other hand, most Turks said a struggle was occurring in the country, where tensions between elements of the country's secular establishment and the AKP have been high over the last year. Of participants, 68 percent said a clash between moderates and fundamentalists was taking place in Turkey.

According to Adil Gür, owner of the A&G research company, conservatism in Turkey is on the rise only in appearance. “During the first half of the 1990s people in Turkey were more conservative. With rising levels of education and income the country has become more flexible and less conservative,” he told the Turkish Daily New on Friday.

Gür said while the number of people who defined themselves as conservative increased mainly due to the influence of the ruling AKP, people became more flexible in their religious practices. “Today people who define themselves as conservative usually have material interests in doing so. On the other hand, the number of people not fasting and not praying or who have a positive attitude toward dating has increased. Conservatism in Turkey is make-believe,” he said.

Former Welfare Party deputy Mehmet Bekaroğlu objected to Gür's idea that conservatism was a fiction, stressing that the definition of conservatism was evolving in response to changes in a globalizing world.

“Previously people who defined themselves as religious felt that it was necessary to pray or fast according to Islamic norms. However, today the world is transforming and people don't feel that way anymore,” he said. “This change is related to the great social mobilization that occurred in the 2000s. People flowing from villages to cities have changed and transformed,” he said.

Nilüfer Narlı from Bahçeşehir University interpreted the issue in terms of a difference between belonging and believing. “When a person says I am religious the reference is to the identity not to the faith and believing. When we look at religious practices we do not find people practicing Islam at the level of believing. Therefore, religion loses its significance as a practice while it gets stronger in terms of belonging, as an identity,” she said.

Although 68 percent of participants said there was a conflict between secular forces and the ruling party, Gür said the secular versus anti-secular, or moderate Islam versus fundamentalism, debates were not actually on people's agenda. “These are only certain elites or political parties' concerns. Polarization in Turkey is not ideological but economic. People do not vote for the AKP on ideological grounds but for economic reasons. In fact Turkey is moving toward wider class differences rather than ideological ones,” Gür said.

The survey also revealed that while there has been widespread concern about the rise of Islamic extremism among the eight Muslim societies included in the survey – both within their countries and in the world at large – only 37 percent of Turks said they were concerned.

The survey also revealed that support for terrorism in Turkey had declined over the last few years. Only 3 percent of participants said they supported terrorism, while 83 percent said suicide attacks could never be justified. Turks have adopted a more negative stance toward Hamas and Hezbollah since last year. A total of 65 percent of participants said they have an unfavorable opinion toward Hamas, compared with 54 percent in 2007. In 2003, 15 percent of Turkish Muslims had positive views of bin Laden. Today, seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden's ratings have plummeted to 3 percent.


Perhaps some of us secularists are getting worked up about nothing. Perhaps it's just another phase that Turkey and Turks are working through.

aka "oh yeah, i'm a muslim...but I don't do shit to show it nor do I care to...and if somebody tries to instill ACTUAL islamic values upon society i'll go batshit insane"

that's the gist of turkish "islam"

Unfortunately this is a very dangerous way of thinking.

Societies who are apathetic to their religion are at most risk for unwanted change instilled upon their way of governance and life.

Such are Turks.

A sizeable amount of damage has been done to the Republic in the past few years...to think that AKP accomplished nothing in its conservative agenda would be rather foolish.

I'm not saying that no damage has been done to the Republic. What I am saying is that we (in the diaspora) should probably give our countrymen a bit more credit. I think that this AKP conservatism bullshit has a shelf life. They are not going to run the country forever. I also believe that if someone or a group tries to take away more and more rights away from Turks, the shit is going to hit the fan sooner than later. The Turkish public is alot more resilient than we give credit for.

Not just Turkish but Human stupidity is shown very well by this example: People STILL aligning themselves to a faith despite not adhering to it. The shallow need to feel the necessity of including religion in one's identity despite not adhering to it is a pointer that humans have mentally, as a group, developed very little since they first walked this planet.

That's why those that are strong enough to reset their minds which were programmed by a society riddled with religiosity since birth, deserve far more respect since it shows initiative and and open mind and a willing to think outside the box. In short, those that can stand up against the crowd and say what they really think.

Hahahahha and what gives you the right to judge peoples faith or how they adhere to it?

From what I’ve read in the forums, there’s some people who think I’m a fundamentalist or extreme, its quite hilarious when you consider the fact that they have zilch knowledge about my religion or my norms. I must say it was quite a shock when your only referred as such names only on this very forum and not in real life situation. Who am I to argue with their thoughts? These low life forms (atheists) have evolved from monkeys and were created by chance. There purpose in life is to eat, sleep and shit like animals. Everybody has the right to think the way they like. I’ve said it several times that people should use their own brain and question authority but without researching or studying our NATIONAL religion which has been with us for the past eleven hundred years, in the end coming to a conclusion with false distorted information is just plain bigotry.

Your lives are empty without any purpose, although your brains are overloaded with confusion, so you begin to hate your self and the faithful ones for this very confusion. There is no point to your existence might as well end it now? How do you like that? Treat people the way you would like to be treated your self and let people be.

You lose all validity here.

RoT doesn't have a national religion. Never did, never will.

But if you like living some sort of delusional world where you think, act and speak as if it did/does...just don't bring us down into it with you.

What are you laughing at? I see nothing that's funny because the article itself states quite obviously that the majority of people in Turkey are not adhering to their default religion properly.

Would you like me to quote the obviously relevant parts of that article?

Now you've really shot yourself in the foot.
You say to me "what gives you the right judge how people adhere to their faith", and I answered above with the solid proof that it was the article - with statistical evidence that claimed that, therefore my post was not written on a hunch or snapped out of thin air.
Then you say yourself however that "they have zilch knowledge about my religion blah blah" - with the lack of any news article being written about those people, on what can you base that 'fact'?

Big fat LOL! Sounds like you've been reading too many holy books again and are starting to adopt their hilariously archaic vocab and syntax.

Btw, in case you don't realise it it is YOUR purpose as a human to eat, sleep, shit and reproduce to maintain the existence of humanity like every other human on earth. What makes you think your adding of hypothetical and dreamy 'faith' onto that list makes you more of a human I honestly can't imagine.
You're just a human and you're 99.9% going to die, be buried and lie in the earth for all eternity, a rotting biological part of nature. It sounds scary, which is why the notion of an afterlife was created in the first place to make you gullible chaps feel better.

They do, yes. However in saying that we should not start thinking those who are religious have a 50% chance of being correct in their choice and those who are not religious have 50%. That's like saying the probability of Middle earth and the mines of Moria existing under the Caspian sea is equal to that of it not existing...

Because of the laughable odds involved and the sheer fairy-tale quality religion has about it anyway, those who choose to believe have less of a right to be respected simply because they've made a choice that statistically has next to no probability of being remotely true. I suspect you'll read the word 'statistical' and conclude 'oh, he's a soulless robot that is incapable of feeling faith'. Please go ahead. I feel the forces of nature every day, the sun on my skin and the rain on my face and to believe in anything else is pure hopeful exaggeration that's been passed down from father to son and no doubt you'll pass it on too.

The trouble is, when humans use their own brain when having to decide something as improbable as god existing (rather than a simple task like having to decide what colour pants to wear) their brains are inescapably influenced by those around them, society and the ideas they have grown up with.
If you seriously are telling me that you've gone away in a dark corner and decided that you believe in god and all that hocus pocus all by yourself you are a sorely mistaken naiive guy.
If you were born in a forest and grew up with just nature around you, are you telling me that you'd still have come to the same conclusion?

It's an utter farce, religion and all the cancerous influences is wields on people's weak minds is a creation of mankind and it has always been that way. Sad to see so many people simply cannot or will not see that, and even go to lengths to accuse atheists and free thinkers etc as "low life forms" (to quote you) and such. I don't know whether to laugh or cry at humanities folly!

din dusmanina bak, amini damini siktimini pici. Seni SIKE SIKE musluman yaparim.

I don't swing that way kocum.

Oh and you might wanna start fucking now.



You've got a LOT of people to convert and I hear the number of those infidels keeps going up.

That ought to deserve a punishment or a ban, this guy reminds of of 'besi' if any of you remember him.

Translation for moderators: "look at the enemy of religion, fucking bastard I'll make you a Muslim by fucking you"



I'm sure god will smile on your righteous jihad my friend, and you shall be awarded a place in paradise for your excellent show of brotherhood and restraint.

Sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you're an idiot rather than open it, and remove all doubt.

bokkiran, zaten en cok nefret ettigim kisi sensin, , benim aileme ve anama o ettigin kufuru halen unutmadim ( zavallilar sadece analara kufur eder klavyadan ), deftere yazdim birgun mutlaka senin agzini burnunu kiracagim.