Turkey: Exposing discrimination

On 20 January 2016 AL-Monitor published an article about the Turkish State Organization discriminating between Muslim and other religious leaders. The Diyanet (the Religious Affairs Department) employs 100,000 Sunni Muslim religious officials and the state pays their salaries. Non-Muslim (including non-Sunni) religious leaders are paid nothing. State budget figures show that this has been official policy since at least 2010. According to AL-Monitor, an Armenian Christian foundation (Boyacikoy‚ Yerits‚ Mangonts‚ Church Foundation) recently took the issue to the Diyanet and asked for payment of their clergy as well. The Diyanet refused. The Christians then took the matter to the national ombudsman saying, "There is no clause in the constitution that says the religion of this country is Islam and only Muslims can benefit from services. The Diyanet"s attitude contravenes the constitutional principle of equality." The ombudsman agreed and asked for opinions from the Diyanet and the Finance Ministry. Both opposed the payment of salaries to non-Muslim religious leaders. The ombudsman then took the matter to the prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu who will make the final decision. Rolf Zeegers, persecution analyst at World Watch Research, sees the incident as one of the last convulsions of traditional Turkish secularism: "Secularism is no longer supported by the government in Ankara. Their aim is Islamization. It is therefore not very likely that prime minister Davutoglu will agree to paying the salaries of non-Muslims." He also points out: "Most Christians in Turkey are not really interested in this anyway. Receiving state subsidies for their ministry to be used according to their own evaluation is one thing (most would probably accept that), but it is something else entirely for the clergy to be on the payroll of the state. Christians would then fear permanent state interference and this is something they definitely do not want.