Presidency of Religious Affairs

Activities and history

In 1984, the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Türk İslam Birliği, or DİTİB) was opened in Germany to cater for the religious needs of the large Turkish minority there.

At least prior to 2010, the Diyanet had taken some non-traditional stances on gender and health issues. In 2005 450 women were appointed Vaizes (which are more senior than Imams) by the Diyanet, and it allows in vitro fertilisation and birth control pills.

In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI travelled by car to the Diyanet, where he met with its then president, Ali Bardakoğlu, and with various Turkish Muslim leaders, among them the Grand Mufti of Ankara and the Grand Mufti of Istanbul. Bardakoglu's successor was less accomdating, publicly called the Pope “immoral” in 2015 over his stance on the Armenian genocide.

Turkish Muslims outside the Diyanet

Diyanet has been criticized for following mainstream Hanafi Sunni Islam and being "indifferent to the diversity of Turkish Islam", i.e. the non-Hanafi who make up "a third to two fifths" of Turkey's population. Non-Hanafi self-identified Muslims in Turkey include "about 15 million Alevis, perhaps three million Shi’a, and over a million Nusayris (Alawites)", plus the 12–15 million Sunni Kurds who follow the Shafi’i and not the Hanafi school. "In Alevi villages, imams in Diyanet-built mosques have no work aside from issuing the call for prayers that no one attends".

2010 and after

In 2010-2011, Diyanet began its transformation to "a supersized government bureaucracy for the promotion of Sunni Islam". Diyanet chairman Ali Bardakoğlu, who had been appointed by a secularist president, was fired in late 2010 and replaced by Mehmet Görmez. In 2010, while the AKP was involved in policy changes that "ended bans" on hijab, Bardakoğlu refused to recommend that Muslim women wear the hijab, saying the religion does not require it.

Under the AKP government, the budget of the Diyanet quadrupled to over $2 billion by 2015, making its budget allocation 40 percent greater than the Ministry of the Interior’s and equal to those of the Foreign, Energy, and Culture and Tourism ministries combined. It now employs between 120,000 and 150,000 employees.

The Diyanet runs İmam Hatip schools for training Imams and offers Qur’an courses. Reforms undertaken in 2012 have led to what one Turkish commentator called “the removal, in practice, of one of the most important laws of the revolution, the Tevhid-i Tedrisat (unity of education)".

In 2012, Turkish President Abdullah Gül visited the institution and said “it is undoubtedly one of the most important duties of the Religious Affairs Directorate [i.e. the Diyanet] to teach our religion to our people in the most correct, clear and concise way and steer them away from superstition”.

The Diyanet has been accused of serving for the ruling AKP party, and of lavish spending (an expensive car and jacuzzi for its head Mehmet Görmez).

In July 2016, Mehmet Bayraktutar, the head of Diyanet proposed a ban on the interactive mobile game Pokémon Go, as it undermined "the prominence and significance of mosques, which are the most beautiful worship places in Islam,”

Following the July 2016 coup, President Erdogan removed 492 religious officials from the Diyanet.

Also in 2016, Diyanet instructed affiliated imams and religious instances to collect detailed information on the Gülen movement. It handed 50 intelligence reports from 38 countries over to the Turkish parliament.

Fatawa

The Diyanet began issuing fatawa on request sometime after 2011, and their number has been "rising rapidly". Among the activities it found forbidden (haram) in Islam over a one year period ending in late 2015 were: "feeding dogs at home, celebrating the western New Year, lotteries, and tattoos". (Although the Diyanet is a governmental body, its fatawa do not have the force of law in Turkey.)

One activity the Diyanet has not forbidden is the use of toilet pager. In a April 2015 fatwa that made news outside of Turkey's borders, the Diyanet ruled its usage permissible within Islam though it emphasized that water should be the primary source of cleansing.

Fatawa of the Diyanet that have come under criticism from some members of the Turkish public include an early 2016 ruling that engaged couples should not hold hands or spend alone time during their engagement period.

In January 2016 a controversy arose over a fatwa which briefly appeared on the fatwa section of the Diyanet website, answering a reader's question on whether a man's marriage would become invalid marriage from a religious perspective if the man felt sexual desire for his daughter. The Diyanet posted a reply stating that there was a difference of opinion on the matter among Islam’s different Madhhab (schools of religious jurisprudence). “For some, a father kissing his daughter with lust or caressing her with desire has no effect on the man’s marriage,” but the Hanafi school believed that the daughter’s mother would become haram (forbidden) to such a man. A "social media storm" ensued with "scores of users appealed to the Telecommunications Presidency’s Internet Hotline accusing Turkey’s top religious body of `encouraging child abuse`.” The Diyanet subsequently removed the answer from its website, posting that the fatwa page was “under repair.” It later issued an official statement to the press, insisting that its response was distorted through “tricks, wiliness and wordplay” aiming to discredit the institution, and that it would take legal action against news reports of the response.

List of Presidents

The following people have presided over the institution: