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Sep 16, 2016

There Goes Turkish Secularism

by Robert Jones
September 12, 2016

At least a thousand Muslims worshipped in the mosque of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s presidential palace in Ankara on August 6. They performed a ceremony known as dhikr (“remembrance” in Arabic).

This event was heavily criticized by the country’s many secularists on the social media.

According to a video of the event, the Islamic cleric Ali Yetkin Sekerci, also known as “Galibi Sheikh Ali Yetkin Sekerci,” had the dhikr filmed. Sekerci often leads dhikr rituals in mosques.

Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara, in January 2015, that the presidential palace (or complex) would be re-named the “Presidential Kulliye” and would contain a mosque, convention center and a national library.

“Kulliye” refers to an Ottoman architectural concept of buildings that surround a mosque and are managed by the mosque.

While the Turkish-language website of the Turkish Presidency refers to the presidential palace as “the Kulliye”, the English website refers to it as “the Complex.”

The Millet Mosque, opened in Erdogan’s kulliye in July 2015, is a huge mosque can hold as many as 3,000 people. During the opening ceremony, Erdogan said: “Wherever there is a dome, a minaret today, we know it is the homeland of Muslims.”

Mucahid Cihad Han, (“Mujahedeen Jihad Khan”) who, while wearing his old-fashioned Islamic turban and cassock, conducts street interviews for the Islamist Ehli Sunnet TV, posted the video on his social media account.

“Dhikrullah in the heart of the Turkish state itself,” he wrote.

The expression “in the heart of the state” gives away the psychology of those who take pride in this ceremony. They appear to think that such public acts of “extreme Islamic devotion” right in the presidential palace are indications of their taking over the state.

This was the first dhikr performance held in a Turkish presidential complex in the history of republican Turkey.

Those who practice a dhikr at Erdogan’s presidential palace know that as the pro-government Muslims, they are the only religious group that could practice a religious ritual at such a high-level state institution. In a country where Islamic azan, or call to prayer, has been recited in Istanbul’s historic Hagia Sofia Church/Museum, now being converted into a mosque, no non-Muslim community would be allowed to practice such an open act of worship in any public setting.

This dhikr show seems to be another “test of patience” by the Islamist government applied on non-Islamists in Turkey, to measure the reactions of non-Islamists and convey an open message to them: Today is the day of dhikr in the heart of the state; get ready for more.