6 February 2010 / TAHA AKYOL MİLLİYET,
The recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights calling for the religion box to be removed from national identity cards is, from the perspective of the general liberalization of secularity in Turkey, a very important one.
This is because, according to the court, the state cannot have duties in relation to an individual’s religious beliefs. All people have the freedom to live according to their own religions, even working to spread these religions, as they wish, as long as they are not harming others in doing so. In other words, religious communities as well as missionaries are free to carry on! And the state may not identify various places of prayer for different groups; for example, the state may not declare that “Cemevleri [Alevi places of worship] are not proper places for prayer.” It is quite clear that the views described above of what secularity really is go far beyond those strict lines drawn by the Turkish Republic’s definitions of secularity.
