Ibrahimbaba’s Weblog

Hanya 20% Rakyat Turkey Puasa dan 34% Solat 5 Waktu September 21, 2008

Dipetik dari

http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=115853

di bawah tajuk:

Conservative but relaxed about it

A new survey asks an old question, ‘Is Turkey becoming more conservative?’ The answer, like Turkish politics, is conflicted. While 94 percent of Turks identify themselves as religious, very few are observing this month’s holy fast or regularly pray five times a day. Experts point to the enduring popularity of the AKP, motivating people to adopt a religious mantle without necessarily the belief system to go along with it.

MÜGE YALÇIN
ISTANBUL – Turkish Daily News

Questions concerning the extent of conservatism in Turkey have returned with the enduring popularity of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP. Several surveys on Turkish belief systems and religious practices have yielded different insights at different times.

The recent Global Attitudes survey published Wednesday by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center revealed that although 94 percent of Turkish participants defined themselves as “religious”, only 20 percent were fasting for all of Ramadan, while only 34 percent performed prayer five times a day. Moreover, fasting and praying were the least common in Turkey as compared to seven other Muslim countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Tanzania.

On the other hand, most Turks said a struggle was occurring in the country, where tensions between elements of the country’s secular establishment and the AKP have been high over the last year. Of participants, 68 percent said a clash between moderates and fundamentalists was taking place in Turkey.

According to Adil Gür, owner of the A&G research company, conservatism in Turkey is on the rise only in appearance. “During the first half of the 1990s people in Turkey were more conservative. With rising levels of education and income the country has become more flexible and less conservative,” he told the Turkish Daily New on Friday.

Gür said while the number of people who defined themselves as conservative increased mainly due to the influence of the ruling AKP, people became more flexible in their religious practices. “Today people who define themselves as conservative usually have material interests in doing so. On the other hand, the number of people not fasting and not praying or who have a positive attitude toward dating has increased. Conservatism in Turkey is make-believe,” he said.

Former Welfare Party deputy Mehmet Bekaroğlu objected to Gür’s idea that conservatism was a fiction, stressing that the definition of conservatism was evolving in response to changes in a globalizing world.

“Previously people who defined themselves as religious felt that it was necessary to pray or fast according to Islamic norms. However, today the world is transforming and people don’t feel that way anymore,” he said. “This change is related to the great social mobilization that occurred in the 2000s. People flowing from villages to cities have changed and transformed,” he said.

Nilüfer Narlı from Bahçeşehir University interpreted the issue in terms of a difference between belonging and believing. “When a person says I am religious the reference is to the identity not to the faith and believing. When we look at religious practices we do not find people practicing Islam at the level of believing. Therefore, religion loses its significance as a practice while it gets stronger in terms of belonging, as an identity,” she said.

Although 68 percent of participants said there was a conflict between secular forces and the ruling party, Gür said the secular versus anti-secular, or moderate Islam versus fundamentalism, debates were not actually on people’s agenda. “These are only certain elites or political parties’ concerns. Polarization in Turkey is not ideological but economic. People do not vote for the AKP on ideological grounds but for economic reasons. In fact Turkey is moving toward wider class differences rather than ideological ones,” Gür said.

The survey also revealed that while there has been widespread concern about the rise of Islamic extremism among the eight Muslim societies included in the survey “both within their countries and in the world at large” only 37 percent of Turks said they were concerned.

The survey also revealed that support for terrorism in Turkey had declined over the last few years. Only 3 percent of participants said they supported terrorism, while 83 percent said suicide attacks could never be justified. Turks have adopted a more negative stance toward Hamas and Hezbollah since last year. A total of 65 percent of participants said they have an unfavorable opinion toward Hamas, compared with 54 percent in 2007. In 2003, 15 percent of Turkish Muslims had positive views of bin Laden. Today, seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden’s ratings have plummeted to 3 percent.