In an aggressive move to position itself as the intellectual centre of the Muslim world, Turkey announced in late October plans to open an Islamic university similar to Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the oldest and most respected centre of Islamic learning.
Ankara’s announcement comes amid years of legal stonewalling for Turkey’s Christian minorities to build their own seminaries. The Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs put forth plans in October to transform the private Istanbul 29 Mayis University into an Islamic school. According to state officials, it will become an ‘example’ to Al-Azhar.
‘We want to found an international Islamic university in Istanbul and this is an important project for humanity’, Turkey's Department of Religious Affairs head Mehmet Gormez said in a public statement. Turkey’s relations with Egypt have soured since the Muslim Brotherhood was removed from power in July 2013.
Hopes of new seminaries or even re-opening old ones have been impossible for Turkey’s Christians to realise over the decades. The State holds a tight monopoly on opening religious schools of higher education. Most notably, it forcibly closed down the Greek Orthodox Halki Theological Seminary in 1971. Requests by the Armenian Apostolic Church to open an institution to train its priests under the General Directorate of Higher Education have been ignored for seven years.
Turkey’s ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) has held out the possibility of re-opening Halki Seminary for years. But Erdogan has made the re-opening contingent on two conditions: the Greek Government not to interfere with its Muslim citizens choosing their own mufti; and Turkey to be allowed to renovate two Athens mosques from the Ottoman era.
Any Christian citizen among Turkey’s Armenian, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant minorities who wants to receive a seminary education must study abroad, or remotely. The high cost of education abroad as well as limited participation due to language restrictions are recurrent problems, according to a 2013 Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC) report on religious freedom in Turkey.
Religious freedom expert Mine Yildirim of the NHC says there is no State initiative that will result in the opening of a seminary for any belief other than Islam. Turkey’s insistence on the principle of reciprocity continues to block the reopening of the prestigious Halki Seminary.
Only a handful of Turkey’s approximately 50 Protestant pastors have a formal seminary education, due to the language barrier and high costs.
Some analysts say the opening of the university is more about Erdogan’s aggrandisement rather than the nation itself. Perhaps President Erdogan sees himself as a new Sultan, or even Caliph.
Turkey has been on a building binge of mosques since the Islamist AKP began its rule 12 years ago. Approximately 17,000 mosques have opened in the last decade, increasing the country’s total from 76,000 to 93,000. They are all funded by the government. All imams receive their salary from the State.
