Underlining that the 1982 Constitution establishes the country as a secular state and provides for freedom of belief, worship, and the private dissemination of religious ideas, the report stated:
“Core institutions of the state, including the presidency, armed forces, judiciary, and state bureaucracy, have played the role, implied in the Constitution, of defending the country's tradition of secularism throughout the history of the republic. In some cases, elements of the state have opposed activities of the elected government on grounds that they threatened the secular state.”
Unveiled on Monday by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Turkey section of the 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom went on to say that the government “continued to impose limitations on Muslim and other religious groups and significant restrictions on individuals' Muslim religious expression in government offices and state-run institutions, including universities, for the stated reason of preserving the ‘secular state'."
One example the report mentioned is that the closure case last year against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).
“The Constitutional Court found the AKP guilty of serving as a center for antisecularist activities in violation of the Constitution. Six judges voted to ban the party; however, the Constitution requires that at least seven judges vote in favor of banning for a party to be closed. The 11-member court instead agreed to halve the party's state funding.” Covering the period from July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009, the report indicated that some members of the military, judiciary and other branches of the bureaucracy continued to wage campaigns against what they label Islamic fundamentalism and that the Turkish General Staff categorized religious fundamentalism as a threat to public safety. As Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner elaborated on the report at a press briefing on Monday, a Turkish journalist from Hürriyet asked whether or not “the ban on headscarves should be lifted in Turkey.”
Posner said: “Our hope would be that societies would find a way to allow people to express their religious attitude, their religious belief in nonviolent ways. I don't know that we've got a government position on headscarves, but it -- I think raising that in the report suggests that we are trying to encourage, in a general way, governments to find -- look, revisit questions about symbolic representations of religion that are nonviolent, and to the extent possible, encourage people or allow people to make those decisions for themselves.”
The report also stated that representatives of Alevi organizations maintain that they face obstacles when attempting to establish their houses of worship: “Alevis also charged there was bias in the Diyanet, which did not allocate specific funds for Alevi activities or religious leadership. In effect, the Diyanet budget is reserved for the Sunni community, covering the salaries of imams and other costs.”
Regarding religious minorities, the report stated that they reported difficulties opening, maintaining and operating houses of worship.
It also indicated that the “Ecumenical Patriarchate” in İstanbul continued to seek to reopen the Halki seminary on the island of Heybeli in the Sea of Marmara.
Another point made in the report was that non-Muslim religious leaders are being identified and portrayed as threats to national security during military training. Referring to the Malatya trial hearings, the report stated that retired Gen. Veli Küçük testified that Christian missionary and Islamic extremist activities were treated the same by state institutions, and gendarmerie intelligence official Erkan Yılmaz confirmed that the gendarmerie equates missionary activities with terrorism.
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