Ertugrul Ozkok: Turkey’s foreign minister's slander

The reason being that Turkey's FM began to spend the bulk of his time working “to prevent the closure of ruling AKP” since then.

How can we explain the latest statement he delivered to members of the External Relations Committee of the European Parliament in Brussels, in which he said, ”Turkey's Muslim majority also has problem with religious freedom.”�

“Was it a simple slip of the tongue?” 

“Was it a move in a campaign to become the AKP's new leader after PM Erdogan?” 

“Was he not aware of what he was saying?” 

“Perhaps there is a more innocent explanation?”  

For example, the “aspersions cast on the Turkish Republic's regime”.

* * *

Have mosques in Turkey been closed?

Do you know of anyone who prevents others or themselves is prevented from praying in mosques?

Who prevents worshipers from making a religious pilgrimage to the Holy land?

Have you seen anybody prevented from offering assistance to the poor as part of Muslim religious celebrations?

Has anybody forcibly silence pious individuals wanting to pronounce their faith?

Mr. Minister, please do not evoke so much injustice against your own country.

Even the freedom to construct the most hideously styled mosques in the Islamic world exists in this country.

Some even have the freedom to place religion deep into politics.

Even commercial entities that collect money in the name of religion are free.

***

I attended a dinner at the Istanbul meeting of the European Foundation Center last night, where I sat next to a renowned executive from a foundation, who during the course of the evening leaned close and told me:

“I was in Tehran last week.”

“I didn’t hear the call to prayer there as much as I do here in Turkey.”

“There are also fewer mosques than there are here in Turkey.”

I had only one answer for him:

“I have been to Iran too and I made the same observations.”

There is a difference between Iran’s Shiite structure and Turkey’s predominantly Sunni structure.

But in my opinion the major difference is that:

A regional class utilizes Islam as a totalitarian ideological system to govern the state.

The Constitutional Court in Turkey does not allow the religion to become an ideology that governs the state.

After this comment, I told my neighbor what I was intending to write in this column:

In my opinion, Turkish society is more religious than Iranian society.

More importantly, the pious in this country practice their religion more freely than in Iran. �

In no other country in the world, including Muslim countries are there more mosques in existence than in Turkey.

Let me ask this: When were all these mosques constructed?

Were these mosques not constructed by the secular Turkish Republic, the same one that is now being harshly criticized by a peculiar liberal-religious coalition?

* * *

I started to think that we should not keep silent about these attacks against the Turkish Republic founded by Ataturk, especially after reading the FM's statements.

If a minister of the Republic of Turkey is able to make a statement about the “suffering of the majority of Muslims,” then it is our mission to reject this offensive lie.

A complete renunciation of this statement is a more important and urgent reaction than taking up the debates about the tapping incidents in Ankara.