The short and thorny history of faculties of theology

Whatever anyone says, what was aimed at by the total closure of the Faculties of Theology and the Imam-Hatip Schools in 1933 was as clear as could be. The existence of institutions that provide religious education and have taken on the mission of teaching Islam in one way or another would ensure the reproduction of religious belief and mentality. The opposite was to dry up the roots of religious belief and practice and to remove its visibility entirely.

The expectation that a Turkified religion would disappear completely once its prestige was destroyed over time was nothing but an alla turca imitation of the typical nineteenth-century positivist outlook. This positivism, of course, regarded every kind of religion as superstition and expected religion to vanish on its own with the advance of science. Yet this positivist outlook was never applied in Europe so forcibly by the state. The expectation was that the thing would happen "on its own." Alla turca secularism, however, did not leave the matter to itself. Religion, regarded as superstition in essence, was wiped out of the social sphere entirely by decision and regulation of the state, and even existing civil religious activities were banned. Besides the tekkes and zaviyes, the Qur'an courses and madrasas, in the sense of civil educational activity, had already been closed and all their activities banned. These practices were of a kind seen only in the Bolshevik Iron Curtain countries.

What happened to the CHP, which carried on all these practices in the most radical manner for some twenty years, that persuaded it to reopen the Faculties of Theology and the Imam-Hatip Schools?

There were in fact many important reasons for this. The first was that the transition to multi-party democratic life had been made. Although the CHP managed the first multi-party elections in 1946 with the tricks of "open vote, secret count," it began to see that the situation could not be sustained. From votes that were open yet supposedly counted in secret, a great popular reaction was visibly approaching. It was foreseen that nothing could be gained by clashing further with the people, and it was thought that the best channel of communication with the people could again be built through religion. That is, the opening of the Faculties of Theology and the Imam-Hatip Schools was one of the CHP's first steps in keeping pace with democracy, and constituted one of the people's first gains.

Yet even arriving at this decision was not so easy. For in people who had been cooled against every manifestation of religion throughout the Single Party period, a new ideological obsession had formed. Taking a new decision against this obsession was not so easy. That is why, in the heated debates at the CHP's 7th Congress in 1947, the arguments developed by those who defended this decision to persuade the established ideology tried to show that it would be not a concession to religion (reaction) but a more effective way of fighting this reaction.

Later, when the matter was discussed in the Grand National Assembly, similar arguments would be repeated. What was said was, in sum, this:

"Do not imagine that with the opening of this Faculty of Theology the reaction buried in history with the Revolutions will rise again. On the contrary, in these faculties sociologists of religion and philosophers of religion will be trained who will explain to the people by scientific means the truth of religion's superstitions and mythologies. Fiqh, regarded as the practice of the Sharia, will not be taught there."

For those who might not be content with these assurances, the guarantee was given that the roads back that these steps might open would be blocked by the addition of the famous Article 163 to the Penal Code.

In short, the ideology that had been forced on the people by prohibition would now be transmitted by the scholars of religion who were to be trained. There were also the popular realities of the time that formed the infrastructure of this justification. This in fact constituted the second, more important reason. That is, developments creating the impression that policies of repression and annihilation were gradually going bankrupt. Banned religion had gone underground, and the people had begun to meet their own needs with their own means and in secret. Moreover, unsupervised order and community formations not under the state's control appeared worrying to a power that wished to control everything.

Bernard Lewis, the author of the book "The Emergence of Modern Turkey," published by the Turkish Historical Society, would express this grave situation in these words: "The scarcity of people who had passed through a sound religious education left the field, with mostly unfortunate results... to the bigoted and the ignorant. The restoration of the Faculty of Theology, which opened its doors to students in October 1949, was without doubt, at least in part, for this reason" (Lewis, 1991: 414).

Thus the Imam-Hatip schools and the Faculty of Theology were opened largely as an attempt to regain the control the state had lost over the people. A somewhat strange concern, but one whose outcome, from whichever side you look at it, served the devout people. In the end it can be said that the motives that made the state close the last religious educational institution in 1933 made it reopen in 1949.

Still, the expectations that gave the green light to the reopening of these institutions, that is, the expectation of not a man of religion but a sociologist, scientist and philosopher of religion, remained for a long time decisive as a role definition. When first opened, the entire staff consisted of this kind of people; the Faculty of Theology did not have a single teacher who properly knew Islam.

Yusuf Ziya Yörükan, who had also been a teacher in the earlier Faculty of Theology, was among the first professors appointed to the History of Islamic Sects; Remzi Oğuz Arık, Director of the Ankara Ethnography Museum, to the Chair of the History of Islamic Arts; and Hilmi Ömer Budda, another of the earlier Faculty of Theology's teachers and a member of the Turkish Language Association, to the History of Religions; and Esat Arsebuk, Professor of Islamic Law, was appointed the first dean of the Faculty of Theology.

The first discourses of the Faculty of Theology had, just as expected, as orientalist an approach as possible. In return, through the effect of this first education, names such as Necati Öner and Talat Koçyiğit, as well as Bahriye Üçok and Neşet Çağatay, emerged among the second generation of teachers.

Later, under developing democratic conditions, the Faculty of Theology began to feel more the pressure to answer the ulema expectations of the devout people rather than the expectations of the state. This made it quite possible for the faculties of theology also to turn into institutions offering the means by which Islam could be learned in the best way when desired. In this respect, at least from the seventies onward, the Faculties of Theology, alongside the Imam-Hatip schools, have gradually continued to develop as real gains of the people.

The role confusion we see from time to time today is also in part related to this history, whose brief summary we have tried to give.