The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) is one of the country’s most powerful public institutions. In 2002, when President Recep Tayyip Erodgan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to power, it employed a staff of 72,000 people.
Today it has 130,000 employees. Likewise, the funding it received from the state budget was 450 million euros in 2002 and €1.5 billion last year, which is more than the Ministry of Interior gets. It is expected to spend €10 billion in 2020-23 (source: Ahval, 29/12/2019).
The Diyanet also runs the country’s Quran Sunday schools, or Kuran kursu. There were 3,699 such schools dedicated to the study of the Quran in 2002. Today there are 18,675 and the cost is €1.45 million a year (source: Ipekyol, 01/06/2020). A similar trend is seen in public education.
Apart from these schools, Turkey also has Imam hatips, religious schools for students aged 10 to 18. Traditionally, they emphasize the teaching of the Quran and used to be aimed at young men who wanted to become imams. In 2012, they were granted the same status as other public schools. In 2002, Turkey had 450 Imam hatips with 63,000 students.
This number had shot up by 2019 to 5,138 schools with 1.3 million students (source: Ahval, 26/10/2019). At the high school level, the 645,000 pupils attending these schools represent just 11% of Turkey’s total high school student body, yet the state spent 23% of its school budget on Imam hatip high schools (source: Reuters, 25/01/2018).
The Diyanet also runs all 85,000 mosques in Turkey (10% of which were built under the Erdogan government, according to 2015 data), as well as 2,000 abroad, 900 of which are located in Germany and officially run by an affiliated organization called DITIB. They are staffed with imams appointed by the Diyanet and paid by Turkey (source: Deutsche Welle, 28/09/2018).
The Diyanet also intends to build 30 gigantic mosques on all five continents. It has so far built 103 regular mosques in 12 countries at a cost of €440 million: €109 million in Moscow, €30 million in Tirana, €34 million in Cologne, €23 million in Cambridge and €90 million in Maryland in the USA (sources: theblacksea.eu & Ahvalnews 05/05/2020).
Η συνέχεια στην ΠΗΓΗ……
