You hold the light in front of the eyes, not into them: "Research on Religious Life in Turkey"

Last week the report "Religious Life Survey in Turkey", which I knew the Presidency of Religious Affairs had been working on for quite some time, was shared with the public.

The Presidency, whose job description is defined as "striving, in uninterrupted attention and sensitivity, to meet the religious needs and expectations of each of our citizens who feel themselves within the authentic and firm bounds of our exalted religion, Islam," of course needs above all to learn the expectations, needs and perceptions of citizens.

In this country, it is very clear that those who can readily pronounce every kind of verdict when the Diyanet is the subject, who dismiss it in a single stroke on the basis of its relationship with secularism, who speak of its closure as if it were very easy, have not the slightest knowledge either of the function of the Diyanet or of the people's perception of it. The Diyanet is without doubt an institution that has taken shape within history and has fused with society through its discourse and institutional organization. It is not merely a simple organization.

Because of the nature of the service it provides, the Presidency of Religious Affairs is intertwined with the people, and it is possible to obtain very strong data from the personnel's total experience and dialogues alone. Yet without doubt these data would still remain incomplete as regards the profession and the dimensions of this profession related to general sociological developments.

At the center of all the developments Turkey (and in fact our whole world) has recently been living through is religion. Religious life, understandings and perceptions occupy a very important place, from the modernization and globalization of the world we live in to regional and global points of tension and conflict. The sociology, political science and cultural studies departments of universities of course follow these developments in their own way. But it is without doubt more important that the Presidency of Religious Affairs has an attention and evaluation that follows and assesses developments in this field well, independent of day-to-day political considerations.

Let us first say that the research is extremely successful in its design, in its implementation and in its reporting. It is a study carried out under the direction of Necdet Subaşı, who reflected very well his vision in his prolific works in the sociology of religion during the Alevi workshops process and who now serves as the institution's Head of the Strategy Department. Beyond being a study that will shed light on the Diyanet's services alone, it provides a very important horizon, for sociologists and political scientists too, on religious affiliation, perceptions and levels of religiosity in Turkey, everyday religiosity, and the foundations and development of religious knowledge.

We have known for a long time that modernization does not destroy, nor even reduce, religious affiliation. And we see that even while the process called secularization continues at full speed, it still probably does not obstruct the development of religious life even beyond its pre-secularization conditions.

Indeed, I must note that these data more than confirm a conviction I have long held about the need to question the general approaches to secularization. Moreover, I hold the same conviction not only for Turkey but for the whole world that we are observing in parallel with the process of globalization. The expectation that, as the public sphere is stripped of religiosity, individual lives will simultaneously be abstracted from religion is proving false.

Different religious views, and differentiations and debates within a given religion, do not create a sense of relativity about religion whose outcome would mostly be secularism; on the contrary, this diversity and religious pluralism also produces the result of people clinging more to their own religious affiliations.

There are many aspects of the study to be evaluated. But I would like to mention some of the difficulties and reactions it encountered while the study was being carried out as an additional gain of the study that will give social scientists a good idea.

The questions asked while the research was being conducted became news in many places, and it was alleged that the Diyanet was profiling people according to their beliefs and ideas. Similar reactions came not from one or two but from many quarters. Of course many people (among them CHP deputies) did not refrain from citing, as the reference for these reactions, the constitution's wording that "no one shall be compelled to disclose his religious belief."

Of course, if we take this as a basis, we must accept that no sociological research, or even survey, could be conducted, because every kind of survey question is an invitation to people to disclose their opinions on one matter or another. Yet a sociological study is never imposed on people by force, and unfortunately no other way of doing sociological work has been found.

Such research is carried out everywhere in the world (of course wherever an open society or democracy exists), but there is nowhere else where reactions like those in Turkey are shown.

The reactions received in fact also show what kind of difficulty the social sciences in Turkey are afflicted with.

In our age surveys and sociological research of course have many functions, but one of their most important functions is that they contribute, even if indirectly, to democratic governance. Especially if, from the start, the study is focused on the goal of seeking the ground for a service of higher quality that takes people's expectations into account...

The research tries to produce a photograph of religious life in Turkey. No sociological study can illuminate everything, but each one certainly sheds light on some side of reality. Provided, of course, that it directs that light not into its own eyes but at the reality it wants to see...

All contributors, above all President Prof. Mehmet Görmez and Necdet Subaşı, must be congratulated for this research that sheds light on reality.