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In Long-Secular Turkey, Sharia Is Gradually Taking Over
(Washington Post) Soner Cagaptay - During the first two days of Turkey's military deployment in Syria, which began on Jan. 20, the government's Directorate of Religious Affairs ordered all of Turkey's nearly 90,000 mosques to broadcast the "prayer of conquest" from the Koran through the loudspeakers on their minarets. Turkey was established as a secular republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk at the end of World War I. But in recent years, the Erdogan government has been limiting individual freedoms, as well as sanctioning individuals who "insult Islam" or neglect Islamic practices. Since November 2017, the national police has been monitoring online commentary on religion and suppressing freedom of expression when they find commentary "offensive to Islam." The Ministry of Education has been pressuring citizens to conform to conservative Islamic practices in public schools. The writer is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.