Journalist Elif Turgut interviews journalist Burcu Karakaş, activist Feride Eralp, Çiğdem Çidamlı and Buse Üçer from Women’s Defense Network on Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs which assumed an increasingly active role in the public space. The interviews discuss its impact on women’s lives and how the feminist struggle should take a position against this process.
The Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), which was established in 1924 as a state-affiliated institution responsible for religious affairs, has always been a topic of debate because of its presence in the state, its function, active role in the implementation of government policies, ever-increasing budget, and shifting political position.
In many areas of life, the Directorate of Religious Affairs has recently been given a “special” role.
Journalist Elif Turgut interviewed journalist Burcu Karakaş, activist Feride Eralp, Çiğdem Çidamlı and Buse Üçer from Women’s Defense Network on Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, which assumed an increasingly active role in the public space. The interviews focus on the Directorate’ impact on women’s lives and how the feminist struggle should take a position against this process.
The interviews investigate the consequences of the unique role that the Directorate of Religious Affairs assumed in public services vital for women, from education to health, combating violence to social services, and how women’s organizations have evaluated this process.
The Directorate of Religious Affairs has a growing budget and has gained power in legislation, institutions and personnel since 1924
It is important to look back at how the Directorate of Religious Affairs has evolved, and its powers have shifted:
“During the AKP rule, the use of the Directorate of Religious Affairs as an instrument of the new social regime became more and more evident, particularly with the regulations implemented in the 2010s. Its growth also occurred when numerous religious communities and sects developed their social activities, organized themselves better, and were hired more at the state level. In 2010, obstacles in front of many religious services were removed: The service units, duties and powers of the Directorate expanded with Law No. 6002. With this move, it started to establish its own media organizations. Also with the Decree-Law No. 633 on the Establishment and Duties of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, the age limit for participation in the Quran courses of the Directorate was removed in 2011.
The Directorate of Religious Affairs sought to steadily increase the number of Quran courses, especially for the 4-6 age range, once the age limit was removed, to make it an alternative in pre-school education.
With the powers granted to the Directorate, Prime Minister Erdoğan (at the time), who openly declared his ambitions of developing “religious youth” in 2012, took significant steps toward his dream of raising a “religious generation.”
The Directorate of Religious Affairs has signed protocols with several ministries on issues such as education, combating violence against women, religious training, and “value” training. The number of protocols signed is constantly increasing, establishing the Directorate as a powerful actor. The provincial and district muftis were granted the responsibility and authority to carry out marriages in 2017.”
Influential designer of the public sphere
Journalist and writer Burcu Karakaş draws attention to the role and plans of the Directorate of Religious Affairs in daily, social and political life in her book “We Are Everything: The Affairs of the Diyanet.” She explains its practices and functions for the regime as: “As you know, the AKP implements family-oriented policies. The Directorate of Religious Affairs has played a major role in the implementation of these family-oriented policies.”
The withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention was carried out on the grounds that it “disintegrates the family.” Women in Turkey are becoming more powerful, and the number of women filing for divorce is rising. When we look at the women who have been murdered, we notice that the majority of them are divorced or about to divorce. The Istanbul Convention empowered women; it was explicitly cancelled to prevent women from achieving their full potential.
Like all right-wing governments, the AKP government sees the family as the holiest unit of society and says that family integrity must be protected for the sake of national unity and solidarity. Divorces are increasing, and they want to prevent this. In order to avoid this, he asks the Directorate of Religious Affairs to deal with this issue. The Directorate fully meets these demands of the government. One of the pillars of what we are talking about is the family and religious guidance offices. These places operate under Mufti offices. Again, the family appears. Why were these offices established? Family problems are expected to be brought by family members and resolved in these offices.”
Protocols and collaborations
Karakaş explains that the Directorate cooperates with almost every ministry and religious community.
“The Directorate signs protocols with practically every ministry and collaborates with them. The Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Ministry of Family, and the Ministry of National Education are the most critical ministries. After the age limit for religious education was removed in 2012, we began to see a rise in pre-school religious instruction for 4-6 year olds.
Women’s movement
Feminist activist Feride Eralp talks about how the women’s movement evaluates this process and how it deals with it as an agenda of struggle:
“Women and girls are compelled to the Diyanet and its worldview. In other words, it is a big problem that an institution that offers advice with tea and a smile to women when they are subjected to violence is alarming because it becomes a place that women who have been subjected to violence can access before the shelters. The Violence Prevention and Monitoring Centers, is located in every province and district. It is a problem that imams (as the Diyanet has a large budget and can employ more personnel) replace social workers and psychologists in children’s homes, and shelters that replace orphanages. The fact that an institution that is not based on gender equality becomes the main actor for all kinds of needs of women and girls, from education to social services, from violence to daycare, makes inequality absolute and deepens the separation from the family.”
“The extension of the Diyanet’s area of influence makes policies based on inequality the norm in a situation where gender equality has been removed from official documents. It is no longer an aim to be accomplished, and a reason for the dissolution of the Istanbul Convention.”
This is a world where women and girls are more unequal, more pressured into oppressive and restricting gender roles, where they are forced to obey. This is a World where the family is empowered by exploiting women’s unpaid and invisible domestic labor-care work and bodies, where child marriages are legitimized, and where being LGBTI+ is hated. But of course, opposition to this is also getting stronger.”
Women’s Defense Network: ‘The struggle of feminist secularism’
Çiğdem Çidamlı and Buse Üçer from the Women’s Defense Network talk about how the Diyanet’s interventions in social life have changed and how the women’s movement can combat this:
“For us, “this issue” is the subject of the struggle of feminist secularism. In our opinion, the struggle for secularism, in the sense of fighting religious institutions and practices that “naturalize” patriarchal domination and exploitation relations, is one of the essential values of the feminist struggle. It is not a gift from anyone, on the contrary, capitalist-official secularism has made today’s “religious return” possible, by distorting these essential values for its reactionary power collaborations, by seizing this fundamental struggle of women for their power purposes.
Today, as in previous centuries, the global patriarchal-capitalist power is covered with religion; male power is trying to supress the women’s struggle also with religious practices. This is a universal phenomenon we see worldwide. It lies behind the attacks against the right to abortion. We find it in the Catholic and Orthodox church, international religious-fascist centres and networks behind the global attacks on the Istanbul Convention. Formations such as the Taliban and ISIS are already “monsters” created by these dynamics.
The slogan “secular state, free body” becomes the global motto of the 4th generation women’s movement in this context. Fascism places a greater emphasis on religious reaction than before. Fertility, maternity-care labour, heteronormativity, abortion, religiousization of family law, divorce restrictions, obedience to violence, demonization of free female body-sexuality, women as sex slaves, war booty, discrimination in the public sphere, normalization and legalization of compliance in the private sphere are all justified by religion. It is, to a considerable extent, the focus of the feminist secularism struggle.”