Ways of making you think secular

The Turkish republic is a secular state, more than 99 per cent of whose inhabitants are Muslims. Turkish secularism ( lâiklik ) drew its inspiration from the French model ( laïcite ), and, as in France, it divided society. But the parallel should not be pushed too far. While in France the aim of the secularists was to effect a clear separation between church and state, in Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular republic, kept to the sultans' practice in retaining state control over organised religion or, more precisely, over Sunni Islam of the Hanefi rite, the religion of the majority of Turkish citizens. The chairman of the department of religious affairs, appointed by the prime minister, thus inherited many of the functions of the seyhülislâm , the head of the Ottoman Sunni establishment, nominated by the Sultan. The department appoints all mosque personnel, checks sermons, and even defines worship and practice. The essence of Turkish secularism is that religion should not exercise any influence over public policy.

There is another difference between Turkey and France - because there is no clergy in Islam, at least in theory, one cannot speak properly of clericals and anti-clericals, but rather of secularists and traditionalists, the former rejecting and the latter advocating the idea that Islam should inform public policy. But, as in France, the conflict between the two camps has been intense. Hidden from public gaze as long as Turkey was ruled by the single party founded by Ataturk, it came into the open when free party politics were allowed after the second world war. Since then, the traditionalists have been repressed more than once, the armed forces being the ultimate agent of repression. But this has not eliminated support for the Ottoman tradition or the growth of radical, political Islam. Is Turkey, therefore, a country where religion is repressed in a manner that offends even secular western liberals?

David Shankland's study has the merit of showing that the question misrepresents the complicated relationship between the state and religion, a relationship that is, at one and the same time, symbiotic and conflictual. Civil society is allowed to support trusts that build mosques; the state then maintains and staffs them. The same is true of religious schools, which the state, at the instigation of the armed forces,is trying to restrict to their theoretical function of vocational establishments for the training of mosque personnel, but which had become an alternative to strictly secular schools.

Controlled as it is by the state, the department of religious affairs tries in turn to impose uniform orthodoxy on believers who were often free and easy in their practice of Islam. The armed forces themselves, while proclaiming their support of secularism, promoted after 1980 the ideal of a "Turkish-Islamic synthesis", and instituted compulsory school lessons in what was termed "religious culture", but was effectively education in Sunni Islam. Cooperation between civil, military and religious officials of the state has disturbed the heterodox community of Alevis, whose way of life is sympathetically described by Shankland, and who, as he says, now plays a major part in the defence of secularism.

Shankland puts to good use his experience as a social anthropologist in describing the official organisation of belief in Turkey and the social reality, which encompasses a vibrant Islam and organic secularisation, noticeable particularly in economic life. He provides useful information on Muslim brotherhoods, which are officially banned but are tolerated within shifting limits. He points out the dangers in the rise of political Islam, which threatens the diversity allowed within the current secular dispensation. He concludes that "the Turkish solution of controlled, but permitted, worship is a better solution than is commonly realised".

Shankland believes that the cause of tolerance in Turkey will suffer if the country is frozen out of Europe. Since his book has been published, the European Union has decided that Turkey should be admitted as a full member if it meets European democratic criteria. However, if these criteria allow greater freedom to political Islam, Turkish liberals will feel threatened. Shankland's study is a reminder that uninformed policies can have unintended consequences.

Andrew Mango is the author of a biography of Kemal Atatürk .