Divine Warning or Prelude to Secularization? Religion, Politics, and the COVID-19 Pandemic in Turkey
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Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 2021, 82:4 447–470
https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srab033
Advance Access Publication 22 October 2021
Divine Warning or Prelude to Secularization?
Religion, Politics, and the COVID-19
Pandemic in Turkey
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Ateş Altınordu*
Sabancı University, Turkey
Religion was a major pillar in the government’s pandemic management and featured centrally in a
string of public controversies in the course of the coronavirus crisis in Turkey. This article analyzes
the role of Islam in the political and social responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey, with a
focus on four dimensions: (1) religion as a tool of governance, (2) the regulation of collective religious
practices, (3) religious interpretations of the pandemic, and (4) predictions about the future impact
of the coronavirus crisis on religion. Based on this analysis, the study concludes that the salience and
political function of religion in the course of pandemics are contingent upon the place of religious mobi-
lization in the political repertoire of the ruling party and the balance of power between the government
and the religious field, respectively. The government's extensive instrumentalization of religion in
pandemic management, on the other hand, is likely to give rise to a political backlash against organized
religion.
Keywords: religion and the state; Islam; health and illness; politics; Middle East; secularism
The coronavirus crisis has posed a major challenge for governments across
the globe. At the same time, for many individuals and communities, the over-
whelming nature of the pandemic—its unexpected emergence; existential threat
to human life, health, and economic well-being; and fundamental transformation
of daily life—has led to a search for religious explanations and answers. While
the content of these interpretations and prescriptions varies across different re-
ligious traditions and social contexts, the recourse to sacred transcendence in
making sense of the pandemic has been a common pattern across the world.1 The
1
Berkley Center’s “Faith and COVID-19 Repository” offers a comprehensive list of
English-language sources on religious responses to COVID-19 across the globe. https://docs.
google.com/document/d/1FLxwvN6ICTxWWYOwRiv9sBLgf7v0vstsSzV7_o_1-B8/.
*Direct correspondence to Ateş Altınordu, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabancı
University, Orta Mahalle, Tuzla 34956, Istanbul, Turkey. E-mail: atesaltinordu@sabanciuniv.
edu.
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association
for the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail:
journals.permissions@oup.com.
447448 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
intersection of pandemic management policies on the one hand and religious
practices and discourses on the other offers a valuable opportunity for studying
interactions between religious and political actors, organizations, and discourses
in the contemporary world.
In Turkey, religion was a major pillar in the government’s management of the
COVID-19 pandemic and featured centrally in a string of public controversies
related to the coronavirus crisis. This article will examine the role of Islam in
the political and social responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey between
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March 10, 2020, when the first case of the disease was confirmed in Turkey, and
June 1, 2020, when coronavirus restrictions were temporarily eased by the gov-
ernment. It will focus on four aspects of this case in particular: (1) religion as a
tool of pandemic management, (2) the regulation of religious practices in the
course of the pandemic, (3) religious interpretations of the pandemic, and (4)
competing predictions on the impact of the pandemic on the future of religion
in Turkey. Based on this analysis, I will seek to identify the factors that deter-
mine the salience and political function of religion in the course of pandemics
and investigate how interactions between religion and politics in the context of
pandemics influence societal attitudes toward organized religion.
Religion, Politics, and Pandemics: An Analytical Framework
In the course of pandemics, religion and politics might intersect in various
ways. Local and national governments typically mark congregations as potential
sites of contagion and thus restrict religious activities, which leads to a range of
reactions by religious groups. Religious leaders might assist or hamper the imple-
mentation of government-mandated pandemic measures by urging their followers
to observe or defy them. Religious authorities might attribute divine meaning
to pandemics, identifying social sins that are responsible for the outbreak and
promoting particular political agendas as remedies. They also often prescribe the
proper attitude believers must adopt in the face of the suffering caused by the
pandemic—illness, death, social isolation, anxiety, or economic hardship. These
messages might foster political engagement and emphasize government respon-
sibility, or, alternatively, recommend resignation to God’s will and promote an
apolitical focus on contemplation and worship (Baker et al. 2020).
In examining the different facets of the relationship between religion and
politics in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, this article will draw analytical
attention to two key factors that help determine the salience of religion in pan-
demic management and religion’s political function in the course of pandemics.
I will argue that (1) the salience of religious authorities and discourses in pan-
demic management is contingent upon the place of religious mobilization in the
political repertoire of the ruling party and (2) the balance of power between the
government and the religious field has a crucial impact on the diversity and polit-
ical implications of religious discourses on the pandemic.
Government politicians who have used religious identity and discourse as
major tools of political mobilization in the past are also likely to utilize themRELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TURKEY 449
as central elements in their pandemic management. Their practical mastery of
religious mobilization strategies, existing alliances with religious leaders, and es-
tablished links to religious constituencies facilitate the deployment of religious
authorities and justifications in order to legitimize the government’s pandemic
policies.
The balance of power between the government and the religious field, on
the other hand, has a decisive impact on the diversity and political implications
of the religious discourses on the pandemic. Governments that possess the po-
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litical and institutional means to control the major players in the religious field
are likely to use these to ensure the dominance of religious discourses that pro-
vide their pandemic policies with legitimacy and divert criticism from political
authorities. To the extent that religious authorities enjoy independence from the
government, however, one can expect the public sphere to feature a greater di-
versity of religious discourses, some of which are bound to be critical about the
government’s handling of the pandemic.
Finally, an equally important question concerns how interactions between pol-
itics and religion during pandemics influence societal attitudes toward the latter.
Based on the empirical analysis that follows, I will argue that the government's
extensive instrumentalization of religion in pandemic management tends to give
rise to a political backlash against religious authority. This is consistent with the
findings of the comparative-historical literature on secularization (Casanova
1994; Gorski 2003; Martin 1978) and research on religious disaffiliation in the
contemporary United States (Hout and Fischer 2014; Putnam and Campbell
2010), which suggest that the deep entanglement of religious authorities with
political power tends to lead to disillusionment with organized religion.
Religion and the State in Turkey
Three factors in particular have been decisive in determining the salience and
political function of religion in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey:
A government party which routinely uses religion in political mobilization (the
AKP), a form of secularism that relies on a centralized government bureaucracy
for the management of Islam (the Diyanet), and the near-total control the gov-
ernment established over the Turkish religious field in the aftermath of the failed
coup attempt of 2016.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) was established in 2001 by the
reformist wing of the recently banned Virtue Party, which in turn belonged to
a line of “National Outlook” parties that represented political Islam in Turkish
politics since the early 1970s (Altınordu 2016). While the AKP leadership ini-
tially de-emphasized religion in the party’s political identity in order to appease
the secularist military and high judiciary, after the party successfully eliminated
the secularist resistance within state institutions, Islam became a salient element
in the party’s agenda and discourse once again (Somer 2014:259–260). Following
the nationwide anti-government protests in the summer of 2013, Erdoğan and450 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
other AKP leaders adopted an exclusionary populist discourse, pitting the Sunni
and conservative “people” against a putative secular elite and identifying them-
selves with the former (Altınordu 2021). The central position religious mobili-
zation occupies in the political repertoire of the AKP leadership and their recent
strategy of political polarization along the religious–secular cleavage explain why
the AKP government deployed Islamic authorities and discourses when faced
with the massive challenge of managing the coronavirus crisis.
In using religion as a central component in its pandemic management, the
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AKP government had at its disposal the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet),
a government agency which represents the epitome of the “bureaucratization of
religion” in the Islamic world (Künkler 2018). The Diyanet was established in the
founding era of the republic to keep the religious field in check against potential
challenges to the new regime and propagate a version of Islam compatible with
Turkish nationalism and scientific progress (Davison 2003:337–342). Since the
transition to multiparty politics in 1950, the agency has provided employment
for members of the Sufi orders that formed informal alliances with conservative
parties in government (Lord 2018). Through its control of all officially registered
mosques in the country, employment of a large staff of religious functionaries,
and provision of sermons, religious opinions, and religious literature, the Diyanet
helps allocate massive public resources to Sunni Islam and supports its de facto
status as the established religion in Turkey (Gözaydın 2020).
As a government agency, the Diyanet has consistently been put at the service
of Turkish state policies, from anti-communism in the postwar decades to the
“Turkish–Islamic synthesis”—an education and culture policy promoting national
integration around Sunni Islam and Turkish ethnic identity—in the aftermath of
the 1980 military coup (Eligür 2010). Under the AKP government, however, the
agency was transformed into a direct instrument of the party’s narrow political
interests. Öztürk (2016:632) sums up the organization’s recent political functions
in the following way:
(a) supporting and legitimizing via religious approval mechanisms the discourses and actions
of the AKP and particularly Erdoğan; (b) diverting the political dimension of popular debates
from the dominant political structure to itself and by doing so diffusing the pressure on these
structures; (c) suppressing opposition movements and actors, and finally; (d) converting con-
tentious dominant structure policies to religious-based, indisputable facts which cannot be
openly and widely discussed, as they are bound by Islam itself.
The Diyanet’s religious legitimation of official policies, its deflection of poten-
tial criticism away from the government by asserting itself in public debates, and
its promotion of patience and trust in God against political engagement in the
course of the COVID-19 pandemic thus represent a continuation of the previous
decade’s pattern of the ruling party’s political instrumentalization of this agency,
as will be subsequently discussed.
Finally, the near-total subservience of major Islamic communities to the
AKP government at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that theRELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TURKEY 451
pro-government religious messaging of the Diyanet faced little challenge from
influential actors in the Turkish religious field. Following the failed coup at-
tempt of 2016 in which members of the Gülen movement reportedly played a
central role, the AKP government carried out a massive purge of the Gülenists
inside and outside state institutions. The crushing of what until recently had
been the most influential Islamic movement in Turkey demonstrated a “clear
determination on the part of the Erdogan-led state to wipe out all the op-
positional Islamic structures” (Öztürk 2019:93). At the same time, religious
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communities that pledged their loyalty and support to the government con-
tinued to receive political protection, government jobs, and preferential treat-
ment in public contracts (Öztürk 2019). The Erdoğan regime’s effective use of
this carrot-and-stick approach meant that all major religious communities toed
the government line during the pandemic.
While these factors allowed religion to assume a central role in pandemic
management in Turkey, the government’s extensive instrumentalization of Islam
in the course of the COVID-19 crisis also prompted a major political backlash
against the Diyanet, as will be discussed in subsequent sections.
SOURCES, DATA, AND METHODS
The following case study seeks to generate new hypotheses and identify dis-
tinctive mechanisms concerning the relationship between religion and politics in
the context of pandemics.2 My reconstruction of the policies and discourses on re-
ligion and the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey is based primarily on data presented
in news and opinion pieces published between March 10, 2020 and June 1, 2020
in selected online news sources. In order to track down Turkish-language items,
I conducted online searches on the news tab of Google.com for the terms korona
din (corona religion), korona İslam (corona Islam), koronavirüs din (coronavirus
religion), and koronavirüs İslam (coronavirus Islam). I filtered the search results by
the relevant date range and analyzed the news reports published by independent
(i.e., non-pro-government) Turkish media outlets Bianet, Birgün, Cumhuriyet,
Gazete Duvar, Sözcü, and T24 and the Turkish-language services of BBC News,
Euronews, and VOA. For relevant data not covered by these sources, I referred
to other sources included in the search results, including pro-government news
outlets. I supplemented these with data collected from English-language news
reports published by Reuters and The New York Times. When the aforementioned
items referred to relevant television shows or social media posts, I traced these
back to their original sources.
2
On the generation of new hypotheses and identification of mechanisms through case
studies, see George and Bennett 2005 and Gerring 2011.452 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
In order to reconstruct the debate on the impact of COVID-19 on the future
of religion in Turkey, I read and analyzed all opinion pieces that appeared in the
Google news tab search results. For civil society organizations’ public statements
on Ali Erbaş’s controversial sermon on Islam and health, I consulted their official
websites (unless the selected news items quoted these statements). Finally, for all
relevant Friday sermons, religious opinions, public statements, and other material
issued by the Diyanet within the study’s time range, I referred to the official web-
site of the agency.
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FINDINGS
Religion as a Tool of Governance
For governments across the globe, the COVID-19 crisis posed a test of com-
petence. Pandemic management required the dynamic evaluation of risk; a
delicate handling of public communication; decision making under clashing
epidemiological and economic pressures; and the provision of adequate testing,
medical care, and vaccines in the course of an unprecedented public health
crisis. For the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has controlled
Turkey’s government since 2002, the pandemic broke out at a time of consider-
able challenges. The party had suffered significant losses in the local elections
of 2019 (Gall 2019a), faced new competition from conservative parties founded
by former members (Gall 2019b), and presided over an economic crisis. Given
this fragile political state, the coronavirus crisis threatened to further weaken
the party’s hold on power. For Erdoğan and the AKP, the projection of admin-
istrative competence in response to the pandemic was thus a matter of political
survival.
The government responded to the challenge with a carefully choreographed
response, forming a Coronavirus Science Committee consisting of medical
experts, staging periodic coordination meetings under the leadership of Erdoğan,
and presenting the amiable health minister Fahrettin Koca as the face of the
government’s pandemic management, all the while reiterating the basic message
that the Turkish government’s response to COVID-19 was a striking success.3
Those who posed a threat to this carefully maintained image faced draconian
consequences: hundreds of social media users were detained in the first month of
the pandemic alone for allegedly seeking to “stir unrest” through their posts on
the spread of the virus in Turkey, while local journalists reporting on officially un-
confirmed cases were arrested (Reuters 2020; RSF 2020).
Religious authorities and discourses were a central component of the AKP
government’s pandemic management. A major coordination council presided
For general accounts of the Turkish government’s COVID-19 management policies, see
3
Gall 2020 and Kirişçi 2020.RELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TURKEY 453
by President Erdoğan that met the day after the first official COVID-19-related
death in Turkey included Ali Erbaş, the President of Religious Affairs, along with
cabinet members, business and labor representatives, and heads of major govern-
ment agencies (Diyanet Haber 2020). Erdoğan’s numerous references to religious
sources in his public statement after the meeting signaled that Islam would serve as
a central element in the government’s pandemic discourse. The president recited
the Turkish adage “cleanliness comes from faith”4 to underline the importance of
personal hygiene in the fight against the coronavirus and argued that those who
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perform ritual ablution five times a day “do the perfect cleaning Islamically as well
as medically.” He referred to Prophet Muhammad’s reported admonishment “not
to go to places where there is plague and not to get out of places where there is
plague,”5 stressing the need to avoid crowded places and the importance of self-
isolation for those exposed to the virus: “What is incumbent upon us today in
accordance with the hadith is to stay away from places where there is a possibility
of contracting the COVID-19 virus and to terminate personal contact with other
people if we have been exposed to the virus.” Finally, he told a story recorded in
several hadith collections about Umar, the second caliph of Islam:
As the venerable Umar is about to leave for Damascus, he hears that an epidemic disease has
broken out there and abandons the trip. Someone from the prophet’s companions asks the ven-
erable Umar: “Are you running away from God’s will?” The venerable Umar’s answer to this
question is, “Yes, I’m running away from the will of God to the will of God.” Our duty today
is to leave things in God’s hands, after having taken every necessary precaution. It is precisely
with this mentality that we as the state have mobilized all of our resources in order to eliminate
the threat posed by the virus . . . in the shortest time possible. The greatest responsibility in this
process falls—person by person—on our nation. (Diyanet Haber 2020)
The President thus referred to Islamic sources in order to encourage citizens to
observe pandemic measures and preemptively shift the responsibility for future
surges from government to society. He also proclaimed that this was a time for
“contemplation” and “trust in God,” prompting citizens to adopt a disposition of
contemplative resignation (Diyanet Haber 2020).
The main state agency that helped formulate and implement the government’s
religious policy during the pandemic was the Directorate of Religious Affairs
(Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), widely referred to as the Diyanet.6 One of the first
pandemic-related initiatives of the agency was the nightly “corona prayer” which
was chanted through the loudspeakers of mosques across the country starting on
4
The proverb is based on the saying attributed to Muhammad in Muslim Book 2 Hadith
12: “Cleanliness is half of faith.”
5
The full hadith is, “If you hear that there is plague someplace, do not enter it. If plague
breaks out where you are, do not go out.” (Buhârî, Tıp, 30; Müslim, Selâm, 32/92–100).
6
Directly responsible to the office of the president, the Diyanet has quadrupled its budget
under the AKP governments and employed nearly 105,000 personnel, controlled nearly
90,000 mosques, and ran 16,500 Quran courses throughout the country in 2019. https://
stratejigelistirme.diyanet.gov.tr/sayfa/57/istatistikler.454 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
March 23, 2020 (Sabah 2020). The prayer, which was followed by the reciting
of takbir—a phrase proclaiming the greatness of God—and the reading of salat-ı
ümmiye—a hymn devoted to the prophet—pleaded with God to deliver the na-
tion from COVID-19 and heal the sick:
In the face of the epidemic disease that has besieged the whole world, grant us your favor my
Lord. We take refuge from your wrath in your blessing, from your torment in your forgiveness.
. . . Protect us my Lord! . . . Grant healing to our sick, remedy to the troubled, facilities to
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our indebted my Lord! My Lord, protect our state, nation, the realm of Islam, and the whole
humanity from all kinds of disasters, misfortunes, evils, epidemic diseases. (İHA 2020)
The Diyanet’s practice drew criticism from secular citizens as well as some re-
ligious actors. Mehmet Bekaroğlu, a Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy
known for his progressive Islamic orientation, argued on Twitter that the salat,
which is usually recited in memorial services, reminded the citizens of death
and had a negative influence on their psychological well-being. He then chal-
lenged the authenticity of the practice, focusing his criticism on the President of
the Diyanet: “Is there anything like this in religion? . . . Must the Directorate of
Religious Affairs do something about every matter? @DIBAliErbas, do not come
up with inventions!”7 Journalist Levent Gültekin, on the other hand, pointed out
the practice of reciting salat while sacrificing animals during the Eid al-Adha and
asked rhetorically: “Diyanet, honestly, what is your purpose? Are you trying to
tell us that we are being sacrificed?”8 The controversy grew when Bülent Arınç,
a founder of the AKP and former speaker of the parliament, joined the criticism,
arguing that the practice was ungrounded in the Islamic tradition.9 Rather than
inspiring piety, he contended, the continuous blaring of prayers and hymns from
mosque loudspeakers was likely to engender aversion to Islam. The following
day, pro-government social media accounts responded with a coordinated attack
against Arınç, calling for his resignation from the Presidential High Advisory
Council (Birgün 2020b).
From the very first days of the coronavirus crisis, the Diyanet offered religious
justifications for the government’s policies and advocated contemplative resig-
nation as the proper disposition required by Islam in the face of the pandemic.
A booklet issued by the Directorate’s High Council of Religious Affairs titled The
Outlook of Islam on Epidemics (Din İşleri Yüksek Kurulu 2020a) stressed that it
was a religious duty to protect oneself against the disease and that contracting the
virus to others due to recklessness constituted a violation of the “rightful due of
God’s servants” (15).
Having followed the measures recommended by the authorities, one had to
practice tawakkul, that is, trust in God and surrender to his will. Those suffering
https://twitter.com/MBekaroglu/status/1243227875995717634.
7
https://twitter.com/acikcenk/status/1243966946137255938.
8
9
These critics, while avoiding the term, implied that the practice constituted bid’ah, i.e.,
innovation ungrounded in the Muslim tradition.RELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TURKEY 455
from the health and economic consequences of the pandemic were urged to show
patience and pray. The authors condemned those who, rather than displaying pa-
tience and perseverance, “rebel, try to turn this into an opportunity, and seek to
produce justifications for their lack of faith” (32). While a few passages advanced
a critique of humanity’s exploitation of nature and the excesses of capitalism (20),
the two main takeaways of the Diyanet booklet concerned individuals’ duty to
follow government guidelines on the one hand and resign themselves to God’s
will on the other. These admonishments were supported with various references
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to the Quran, hadith, and Islamic history, including the two hadiths to which
Erdoğan had alluded in his March 18 speech, suggesting that the president’s reli-
gious references had been supplied by the Diyanet in the first place.
The central role the government assigned to religion in its pandemic man-
agement quickly became a matter of controversy. In early April, health minister
Fahrettin Koca announced plans to form a Social Science Council to advise the
government on public behavior during the pandemic, singling out the psychology
and sociology of religion as specialized fields that will be represented on the
council (Öztürk 2020b). Diyanet president Erbaş subsequently told the press that
he recommended experts for these posts to the health minister (Euronews 2020),
while the Union of Diyanet Employees proposed that a religious scholar from the
Diyanet’s High Council of Religious Affairs also sit on the council (Sözcü 2020).
These developments led to a debate among Turkish social scientists on the le-
gitimate place of religion in pandemic management. Ejder Okumuş, a sociologist
of religion from the Ankara University of Social Sciences, welcomed the inclu-
sion of a sociologist of religion in the council: “We need to think about the social
aspects of religion because in Turkey relationships are built through religion and
religion comes into play as a matter of course in many things. If you cannot read
this social reality scientifically, you will mislead society.” At the same time, he
carefully differentiated the scientific orientation of his discipline from the reli-
gious mission of the Diyanet and emphasized that sociologists of religion sitting in
the council would not seek to influence citizens' religious beliefs (Öztürk 2020b).
Ayşe Saktanber, chair of the sociology department at the Middle East
Technical University, had a more critical view of the central importance assigned
to religion: “It is not a rational decision that as soon as a Social Science Council
is on the agenda, the first thing that comes to mind in terms of sociology is the
sociology of religion, and not the sociology of disaster” (Öztürk 2020b). At the
end, the initial seven members of the council included a sociologist of religion
from the Divinity Faculty of Marmara University, and no psychologists of religion
or Diyanet scholars (Usta 2020).
The Regulation of Collective Religious Practices
As in other countries, pandemic management in Turkey required the reg-
ulation of collective religious practices that carried the risk of spreading the
virus. The existence of a government agency that controls all officially registered456 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
mosques and employs a large body of religious personnel in the country—the
Diyanet—favored centralized, top-down decision-making in this area, resulting
in relatively little local variation in the regulation of religious rituals during the
pandemic. The High Council of Religious Affairs, the Diyanet’s highest body on
religious doctrine, issued numerous memoranda and fatwas on the modification of
religious practices, including funeral prayers and burial procedures (March 22 and
April 9), Friday prayers (April 10), fasting during Ramadan (April 14), tarawih
prayers (an additional prayer performed during Ramadan) (April 23), and the Eid
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prayer (May 21).
As in the rest of the Islamic world, a major question concerned whether and
in what form communal ritual prayers—especially the Friday prayers when the
faithful typically pack the mosques—would continue to be held. This was a politi-
cally sensitive decision for the AKP government, since religion was central to the
party’s political identity and served as a major pillar of its populist mobilization
strategy, especially after the Gezi protests of 2013 (Altınordu 2021).
Despite an announcement on March 12 that schools would be shut down and
soccer games would be played without spectators, the Friday prayers on March
13 were performed in congregation, leading to widespread public criticism. On
Twitter, the Kemalist religious scholar Cemil Kılıç sarcastically remarked, “The
virus which spreads in schools apparently loses its potency in mosques.”10 When
the Friday sermon prepared by the Diyanet, delivered in tightly packed mosques
across the country, advised the faithful to “stay away from crowded environments,”
the irony was not lost to social media users and opposition outlets—the socialist
daily Birgün (2020a) reported, “The President of Religious Affairs, Ali Erbaş,
called on the crowd to stay away from the crowd.” The newspaper claimed that
the Diyanet’s decision to allow Friday prayers to carry on was made under pressure
from several Islamic communities. Following public criticism, the government
announced the suspension of communal prayers until further notice. Mass wor-
ship resumed two months later in a limited number of mosques and under new
safety measures (Ozdal 2020).
Another controversy was set off by the umrah pilgrims.11 Despite many
warnings, the Diyanet—which oversees pilgrimages from Turkey—did not suspend
Turkish citizens’ journeys to Mecca until Saudi Arabia banned the entry of foreign
pilgrims in late February. The nearly 21,000 pilgrims began to return to Turkey in
early March. Thousands of pilgrims were allowed to go home if they passed a simple
temperature check and were advised to self-quarantine, before public reaction led
to the mandatory quarantining of the remaining returnees in student dormitories
(Gall 2020). Yet reports of outbreaks caused by the returning pilgrims continued to
haunt the government. Political scientist Kemal Kirişçi (2020) noted the delicate
https://twitter.com/m_cemilkilic/status/1238346939097374721.
10
Umrah refers to the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that can be made throughout the year,
11
as opposed to the Hajj, which takes place on specific dates every year according to the Islamic
calendar.RELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TURKEY 457
nature of this subject for the AKP government, arguing that the government’s in-
itial reluctance to quarantine returning pilgrims had been caused by “the urgent
need to keep [Erdoğan’s] conservative religious base happy.”
Realizing that the mismanagement of the returning pilgrims had become
a weak spot for the government, pro-government media outlets and Diyanet
officials responded heavy-handedly to critics. In mid-March, the video of an
internal briefing at Ankara University’s İbni Sina Hospital was leaked to so-
cial media, where infectious diseases specialist Güle Çınar told the hospital staff
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that the returning umrah pilgrims had led to an explosion of cases in Turkey.
Following the backlash from pro-government social media accounts and media
outlets, Ankara University launched an investigation, and the doctor had to
issue a public apology (Alan 2020). The Turkish Medical Association responded
with a public statement in support of Çınar: “The expressions used by our col-
league . . . are not entirely unfounded. As of today, it is known that not all of
the 21 thousand people returning from umrah have been tested and not all of
them have been quarantined, and that these people have dispersed to various
cities in Turkey” (Bianet 2020). The umrah controversy returned to the news in
mid-April, when a medical doctor claimed that Turkish pilgrims had been given
paracetamol on their return flights to help them avoid being quarantined due
to fever. Bringing up this claim in a press conference, CHP deputy Engin Altay
questioned the purpose of the Diyanet: “I have not seen any good deeds of the
Diyanet other than producing religious justifications for the desires, ambitions,
and whims of the president.” The Diyanet denied the charge and filed a criminal
complaint for defamation against the doctor and the opposition deputy (Gazete
Duvar 2020).
Ramadan, which was observed between April 24 and May 23 in 2020,
coincided with the peak of the pandemic in Turkey, forcing the government
to regulate the religious and social rituals that mark this holy month. The
Diyanet declared that all Muslims who did not contract COVID-19, suffer from
a chronic illness, or were pregnant or nursing mothers, were still obliged to
fast (Din İşleri Yüksek Kurulu 2020a:53–56). Yet the government canceled
the tarawih prayers performed in congregation during Ramadan, banned the
hosting of communal fast-breaking dinners, suspended the communal Eid
prayer, and imposed lockdown on Eid al-Fitr when people traditionally visit
relatives and friends.
In an effort to shield the AKP government from a potential backlash for its
suspension of these rituals, the Diyanet supplied religious justifications for these
decisions. In its booklet on The Outlook of Islam on Epidemics, the High Council
of Religious Affairs (Din İşleri Yüksek Kurulu 2020:45) declared:
In the event that the threat of infectious disease takes on a global dimension, threatening the
whole society and even humanity, public authority has . . . the right to temporarily postpone
collective worship. In accordance with Islam’s commands “Do not put yourself in danger with
your own hands!” (al-Baqarah 2/195) and “Do not kill yourself!” (an-Nisa 4/29), it is neces-
sary to comply with this decision of the competent authorities.458 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
The Diyanet soon found itself embroiled in another controversy. On March 27,
Diyanet president Ali Erbaş led a “symbolic Friday prayer” at the Nation Mosque
in Ankara for a select group of religious functionaries, violating the recently
enacted ban on communal prayers. Political and religious critics were quick to
condemn the event, which they dubbed the “VIP Friday prayer.”
Mehmet Metiner, a former AKP deputy, argued, “It is by no means acceptable
that what is banned to the nation is not banned to the Diyanet elites. Shame
on you!” Alluding to the mosque’s location in the Presidential Complex, Bülent
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Kuşoğlu, the deputy chair of the CHP, saw the prayer as a manifestation of the
government’s increasing distance from the masses: “It is incredible that some per-
form the Friday prayer in the Nation Mosque while the nation cannot perform
it. . . . There is unity in Islam, not privilege.” Yavuz Ağıralioğlu, spokesperson of
the nationalist İyi Party, joined the criticism: “When administrators, who should
be setting an example, perform a VIP Friday prayer, what are we going say to our
people? The mentality that has caused this ugly picture must be quarantined.”
Kemalist religious scholar Cemil Kılıç underlined the mistakes Erbaş made while
reciting Quranic verses and prayers during his sermon and asked, “Could it be
that my Lord befuddles when it’s for show?” (Ayhan 2020). The Diyanet in turn
sought to fend off critics by underscoring the “representational” nature of the
event: “This practice helps mitigate the grief our nation feels due to not being
able to perform the Friday prayer . . . This decision aims to keep alive the culture
of Friday and preserve the consciousness of Friday in our society—it has nothing
to do with an elitist outlook” (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı 2020a).
Religious Interpretations of the Pandemic
Wars, earthquakes, floods, epidemics, and other natural and human-made
disasters have often been interpreted as divine punishment for human sin. While
each religious tradition offers distinctive cultural resources for such an under-
standing, the particular way in which divine wrath is constructed—its putative
causes and implications—often reflects the social and political agenda of the
claims-makers.
The notion that disasters—including epidemics—represent God’s retribution
for societal sins has also been a recurring idea in Muslim communities (Akasoy
2006). In recent decades, numerous conservative Islamic actors explained the
spread of AIDS in Muslim-majority societies as divine punishment for the adop-
tion of Western sexual norms, often concluding that living in accordance with
conservative Islamic norms—avoiding extramarital sex and homosexuality in
particular—would offer protection from the disease (cf. Bangstad 2009; Svensson
2014).
In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Islamic actors of various hues put
forth divine intentions in line with their social and political agendas. For in-
stance, pro-ISIS sources claimed that the initial outbreak in China was God’s
punishment for its persecution of Uyghur Muslims and explained the severity ofRELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TURKEY 459
the pandemic in Iran with reference to the supposedly polytheist orientation of
Shiism (Azman 2020).
The first Turkish religious scholar to depict COVID-19 as divine retribution
for the moral corruption of society was Ali Rıza Demircan, a former preacher of
Istanbul’s historic Süleymaniye Mosque, author of a book in Turkish on Sexual Life
According to Islam, and father of the prominent AKP politician Ahmet Misbah
Demircan. Less than a week after the first official case of COVID-19 was reported
in Turkey, the scholar argued in a news show that contagious diseases can be
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avoided if one steers clear from sexual practices banned in Islam, which included
“adultery, extramarital sex, homosexuality, anal intercourse in marriage, and sex
during menstruation” (T24 2020). These remarks led to widespread criticism on
social media and the show’s host publicly apologized for his guest’s remarks the
following day.
In their initial pronouncements, Diyanet scholars contended that while there
was no basis to assume that COVID-19 was a punishment by God, the pandemic
had to be seen as a divine warning to humanity: “As it were, Almighty God is
sending a warning to the modern human being who has forgotten its creator,
strayed from the awareness of servanthood which is its purpose of existence in the
world, and begun to see itself as the owner and master of everything” (Din İşleri
Yüksek Kurulu 2020a:20). Referring to the Quranic verses al-Anbiya (35, “We test
you with good and with evil [in this world]”) and al-Baqarah (155, “We will test
you with some fear, some hunger, some loss in your goods, lives, and products”),
they argued that the pandemic was a test from God (Din İşleri Yüksek Kurulu
2020a:22).
In April 2020, a major controversy erupted over the Diyanet’s statements on
the causes of contagious diseases. In his sermon on the first Friday of Ramadan,
Diyanet president Erbaş asserted that extramarital sex and homosexuality, which
he argued were banned and condemned by Islam, led to disease. He then linked
the HIV epidemic to fornication: “Hundreds of thousands of people are exposed
to the HIV virus [sic] caused by the great haram of illicit cohabitation, called zina
in the Islamic literature. Let us struggle to protect people from these sorts of evils”
(Din Hizmetleri Genel Müdürlüğü 2020).
The sermon sparked outrage among LGBTI+ and allied organizations in
Turkey (Öztürk 2020a). The Lambdaistanbul LGBTI Solidarity Association
and the Human Rights Defenders Solidarity Network issued public statements
strongly condemning Erbaş’s discriminatory remarks, while the Ankara branch
of the Human Rights Foundation filed a criminal complaint that charged the
Diyanet president with hate speech (Cumhuriyet 2020a; Kaos GL 2020b). Turkish
HIV/AIDS organizations Pozitif Dayanışma and Pozitif-iz Association joined the
criticism, denouncing the sermon as unscientific and demanding that the Diyanet
president apologize to individuals living with HIV (Öztürk 2020a). Finally, the
Ankara Bar Association issued a strongly worded public statement against Erbaş:460 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Our bafflement stems from the bloodthirsty audacity of this person whose voice echoes from ages
ago. Basing his discourse on values deemed to be sacred, he provokes the public to hatred and
hostility, while occupying the top seat in a state institution. . . . It should not surprise anyone
if in his next speech he invites the people to burn women in public squares with torches in their
hands for being witches. (Öztürk 2020a)
In defiance of critics, the Diyanet’s High Council of Religious Affairs issued a
public statement with the unequivocal title “Fornication and All Varieties of
Homosexual Intercourse are Forbidden in Islam,” which repeated Erbaş’s claim
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that extramarital sex “leads to the emergence of many diseases.” The statement
stressed that the Diyanet had a constitutional duty to “enlighten society on reli-
gious matters” and proclaimed that it was “unfair and irresponsible to define the
statement that all forms of illegitimate sexual relations are a great sin as hate
speech or discrimination.” This criticism, the Council argued, amounted to “in-
sulting the religious and spiritual values embraced by our people” by depicting
Islam, the Quran, and Muhammad as sources of hatred (Din İşleri Yüksek Kurulu
2020b). The Diyanet subsequently filed a criminal complaint against the directors
of the Ankara Bar Association, charging them with provoking hatred in society
and insulting a public official (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı 2020b).
The Ankara Bar Association’s statement also received a hostile reaction from
government officials, who accused the organization of Islamophobia. Justice min-
ister Abdühamit Gül, presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın, and presiden-
tial communications director Fahrettin Altun expressed their support for Erbaş,
claiming that his sermon had merely expressed divine decrees (Öztürk 2020a).
President Erdoğan soon joined the debate with a statement that affirmed his
government’s unequivocal support for Erbaş and asserted the Diyanet’s monopoly
over Islamic doctrine in Turkey:
If there is an institution that will speak on behalf of Islam in our country, that is the Directorate
of Religious Affairs. The Ankara Bar Association’s statement is a direct attack on Islam, and
an attack on the Directorate of Religious Affairs amounts to an attack on the state. . . . Our
President of Religious Affairs has fulfilled the duties of his scholarship, of his current office.
Every word he has said is true. (Öztürk 2020a)
Shortly after these remarks, the public prosecutors of Ankara and Diyarbakır—
where the provincial bar association had issued a similar public statement—
launched criminal investigations against the directors of the associations with
reference to the infamous article 216/3 of the Turkish Criminal Code, which
punishes acts that “openly insult the religious values embraced by a section of the
people.” In the meantime, religious-conservative civil society organizations added
their voices to the pro-Diyanet campaign. The Council of Deans of Faculties of
Divinity and Islamic Sciences insisted that “the views and opinions expressed
in the sermon . . . are the decrees of Islam as such” (Öztürk 2020a), while Hayat
Sağlık ve Sosyal Hizmet Vakfı, an Islamic medical foundation, charged the bar
associations with “Jacobinist bureaucratic totalitarianism” and asserted that thoseRELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TURKEY 461
who regularly engage in extramarital sex and homosexual relations are in need of
medical treatment (HSV 2020).
Opposition politicians from the secularist CHP and the pro-Kurdish HDP
(Peoples’ Democratic Party), on the other hand, attacked the Diyanet for violating
the constitutional principle of secularism and imposing a conservative version of
Islam on Turkish society. Gökçe Gökçen, the CHP’s vice president in charge
of human rights, warned that Erbaş’s discriminatory remarks would turn many
individuals into targets during the pandemic (Öztürk 2020a). HDP deputy Filiz
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Kerestecioğlu similarly denounced Erbaş’s “sermon of hate” (Kaos GL 2020a)
and problematized the imposition through a government agency of a particular
interpretation of Islam: “The Directorate of Religious Affairs operates as an in-
stitution of the state . . . If this is a secular country, you cannot impose your uni-
formity about faith on the people” (T.B.M.M. Genel Kurulu 2020). Her fellow
HDP deputy Hüda Kaya, who is also co-speaker of the progressive Kurdish reli-
gious initiative DİK (Democratic Islam Congress), contested the Diyanet’s claim
to represent the Muslims of Turkey and argued that the organization imposed a
conservative version of state religion as the normative form of Islam:
You cannot claim ownership of the sacred. . . . The Directorate of Religious Affairs is by no
means an institution that represents me as a Muslim, it is not legitimate. . . . The Diyanet
cannot lay down the law on our behalf . . . If the Diyanet wants to speak on behalf of religion,
it should speak about theft, it should speak about the rape of children, it must defend the right
of the boys who have been raped in Quran courses, it should speak about corruption, it should
speak about people who are unjustly massacred, it should speak for the freedom of thought that
is the most fundamental human value according to the Quran. Attributing all ills to one subject,
while the requirements of being human—all fundamental rights of religion—are massacred,
does not make the Diyanet legitimate. (T.B.M.M. Genel Kurulu 2020)
While representing a minority position in the Turkish religious field, other pro-
gressive religious actors also joined the case against the Diyanet. Progressive
Islamic scholar İhsan Eliaçık, for instance, took Erbaş’s sermon as a manifesta-
tion of the agency’s “views that are oblivious to the conceptions of the present
age”12 and concluded, “The abolition of the Diyanet does not represent hostility
toward Islam; on the contrary, it is required by true Islam. Because there is no
person, family, or institution in Islam that represents God and the prophet on
earth.”13 The string of controversies in which the Diyanet embroiled itself during
the COVID-19 pandemic—over the ummah pilgrims, the Corona prayer, the VIP
Friday prayer, and Erbaş’s “sermon of hate”—thus plunged the organization into
a legitimacy crisis, leading opposition politicians, secular citizens, and progressive
religious actors to question it on grounds of its violation of political secularism,
antiquated conservative doctrines, and political instrumentalization.
12
twitter.com/ihsaneliacik/status/1254885740594552833.
13
twitter.com/ihsaneliacik/status/1255018660650979330.462 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Competing Projects and Projections: Religion in Post-Covid Turkey
There have been myriad speculations in the global public sphere about the
long-term social and political consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given
the centrality of the religious-secular cleavage in Turkish society and politics
(Çarkoğlu 2019), many in the country’s public sphere focused their predictions
on the question of how the coronavirus crisis would transform the role of religion
in Turkish society.
Religious-conservative actors contended that the existential anxiety
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created by the pandemic would lead to a rise in religiosity in Turkish society.
In its booklet on The Outlook of Islam on Epidemics, the Diyanet’s High Council
argued, “Although there are exceptions, it is often the case that people turn
to religion to a greater extent in times of earthquakes, floods, and epidemics”
(Din İşleri Yüksek Kurulu 2020b:32). Osman Bilen, a professor of Islamic phi-
losophy, similarly argued that the COVID-19 pandemic would strengthen faith
in Turkey and across the globe: “As the conditions of fighting against the ep-
idemic such as cleanliness are also in line with Islam’s principles of worship,
there are many Muslims who see this as a confirmation of their own beliefs. . . .
Not only in the Islamic world but also in other faith groups, the shutdown of the
economy and the curfews have made people lonely . . . I think that the anxiety
and fears people experience steer them toward things that they consider sacred”
(Kızılkaya 2020).
For many secularists, on the other hand, the pandemic threw into sharp relief
the perennial conflict between science and religion. Sociologist and CHP politi-
cian Sencer Ayata suggested that COVID-19 would force Turkish society to make
a choice between scientific knowledge and religious tradition and heralded the
coming of a new Enlightenment: “The dilemma here is, ‘science or tradition?’ . . .
A new Enlightenment looms on the horizon where the authority of the expert
drawing its strength from science will take precedence over traditional authority
and political authority” (Kurtuluş 2020).
Others from the secularist camp argued that COVID-19 demonstrated the
need to invest the country’s resources in healthcare and scientific research rather
than wasting them on religion. In a section of his column in the secularist daily
Cumhuriyet—which he revealingly titled “Either doctors or imams”— Aysever
(2020) argued that the pandemic demonstrated the futility of allocating public
funds to religious organizations and activities:
This country spends billions on religious brotherhoods, communities, the Directorate of Religious
Affairs. . . . Which of these men provides the slightest benefit to society, to humanity? The re-
sources are being wasted. It is clearly evident that training imams is of no use, that we cannot
get anywhere by praying to the creator! . . . The country does not need any imams but we are
desperate for trained doctors. It’s time to decide.
Aysever concluded his article with the suggestion that political Islam was “the
real virus that sucks out the blood of humanity.”RELIGION, POLITICS, AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN TURKEY 463
In the Kemalist daily Sözcü, Turan (2020a) similarly posited a zero-sum rela-
tionship between religion and science. In his column titled “Science or religion?,”
he approvingly quoted a message he had received from a group of likeminded
journalists: “The coronavirus outbreak has shown once again that science is more
important than religion.” According to these journalists, the COVID-19 pan-
demic had clearly demonstrated that “the country needs public hospitals more
than mosques . . . doctors and health workers more than religious functionaries.”
The science versus religion debate gained momentum when Mehmet Ceyhan,
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a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Hacettepe University’s prestigious
Faculty of Medicine, argued on television that God had created viruses in order
to balance the gap between population size and food supply: “Why did God create
viruses? They are completely useless; they are not alive on their own—they only
kill people. He created them because people are not supposed to multiply beyond
a certain number. Otherwise, no one will survive.”14
Secularist commentators expressed outrage at the medical professor’s remarks.
In Sözcü, Turan (2020b) sarcastically asked, “Then why bother fighting against
coronavirus? We should let the bacteria and viruses roam around at leisure and
do their job, isn’t that right? . . . There is no meddling in God’s business!” On
Tele1, sociologist Emre Kongar expressed incredulity: “I couldn’t believe my ears,
my eyes. This man says, ‘God has sent the virus in order to protect the balance
in the world, to stop the reproduction of people who reproduce much more than
the resources’—in other words, in order to kill them. I couldn’t believe it—I re-
ally couldn’t believe it.” Merdan Yanardağ, Kongar’s interlocutor on the show,
situated this incident in the perpetual struggle between the forces of enlighten-
ment and the forces of reaction in Ottoman-Turkish history:
During the Ottoman-Russian War, some sultans sought divine guidance through the dreams
of sheikhs—who were renowned scholars in Istanbul—to determine strategy.15 That’s how the
Ottoman Empire collapsed. . . . The Young Turks and the Committee of Union and Progress
sought to save a collapsing empire by introducing science and reason to society against this men-
tality, by building an administration based on science and reason, by reorganizing society in
accordance with this . . . This effort to introduce science and reason to society was interrupted
with the AKP government. That’s why they say these things . . . That’s why the health of the
public is under threat. (18 Dakika 2020)
Some religious actors expressed irritation at the secularists who, they argued, saw
the pandemic as an opportunity to score points against religion. Habertürk col-
umnist Nihal Bengisu Karaca (2020) contended that those who sought to make
a science-religion conflict out of the pandemic were motivated by hostility to
Islam: “They are acting as if our scientists found a vaccine and Muslims went
and beat up the scientist who found the vaccine.” She went on to stress that
https://twitter.com/KronosHaber/status/1243168641866235908.
14
A practice known as Istikhara, where a believer lies down after ritual ablution and prayer
15
in order to receive divine guidance about an important decision in their dream.You can also read
