Posted on 11/25/2003 12:15:20 PM PST by yonif
ISTANBUL, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Two young women sit side by side in the waiting room of Haydarpasa station in Istanbul, waiting for a train to take them home to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of Ramadan with their families.
One, a 24-year-old university student named Sibel Ates, wears jeans, ear-rings and make-up. The other wears an all-encompassing black chador covering her hair and body.
These are the two faces of European Union-candidate Turkey -- an overwhelmingly Muslim country which has been a secular state for more than half a century and which gave the vote to women in 1934, before many European countries.
Four suicide bombings which killed more than 50 people, most of them Muslims, have shocked a country that is often held up by Washington as a shining example of a moderate Muslim democracy.
From the border with Iran in the east to the cosmopolitan metropolis of Istanbul in the west, many Turks are asking themselves how fellow Muslims could have done such a thing as the end of the holiest month in the Muslim calendar approached.
"They killed our own citizens so people are shocked," Ates said. The constant refrain is: "Muslims wouldn't do that."
"It's sinful what these people did. They are not Muslims, no Muslim would murder another person and leave their families to mourn," said 23-year-old Nuriye, lining up with her husband and children at a pay-phone to call her relatives in eastern Turkey.
A few go further, raising conspiracy theories that U.S. or Israeli spies were behind the attacks.
"Coming up with conspiracy theories is the easiest way for us Muslims to escape responsibility," said an editorial in Hurriyet amid national soul-searching at this year's holiday.
Muslim prayer leaders used Tuesday's Eid, or Bayram, sermon to condemn terrorism in the wake of the bombs that targeted two synagogues, the British consulate and London-based HSBC bank.
"Terror, violence and anarchy have no connection whatsoever with Islam," Anatolian news agency quoted the sermon as saying. "Our religion clearly outlaws any kind of anarchy, sedition, enmity, cruelty, torture, terror or violence."
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Islam had nothing to do with terrorism. "I cannot stand it when I hear the phrase Islamic terrorism," he said at a traditional Bayram breakfast.
A statement purporting to come from an al Qaeda unit claimed responsibility for the attacks which were also claimed by a small Turkish Islamist group acting in the name of al Qaeda.
"They are the Taliban of Turkey, very marginal, a very small minority," Milliyet newspaper columnist Sami Kohen told Reuters.
"Police estimate they are just a handful, just 200-300 supporters of this movement. But you don't need a large army to do this nowadays."
SECULARISM PROVOKES RADICALS
NATO-member Turkey's close links with Washington and Israel made it a target for Islamist extremists. But Kohen said equally important was its status as a secular state founded on strict principles outlawing any moves towards Islamic Sharia law.
Kohen said the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders Front (IBDA-C), the obscure Turkish group that has claimed the bombings, made a habit of attacking monuments to Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk during the 1980s.
"From the point of view of the Islamic society these people are trying to create, Turkey is a secular society, an open society," said Ilter Turan, professor of political science at Bilgi University in Istanbul.
"Even during the month of Ramadan places to eat are open, there's no police out to make sure you don't eat," Turan said. "Some of the youth in neighbouring countries are rather attracted by what Turkey has to offer. Turkey will have been seen as a corrupting influence."
The picture he paints fits Istanbul and other cities. It is less true to the reality of life in southeastern Turkey, in towns such as Bingol where the bombers came from.
In villages near the Iranian and Iraqi borders women are barely seen out alone on the street and while girls are officially guaranteed the same educational opportunities as boys, they are often married young and denied by their families the chance to work.
"In the sense of what you might call sociological secularism, there are parts of Turkey where this secularism has probably not advanced far enough but formal secularism is well established," Turan said.
Despite the exclusion of religion from politics, religion is firmly controlled by the state's Religious Affairs Directorate.
"The imams and other religious people are on the state payroll. They're considered to be civil servants," Kohen said.
Even wearing a headscarf is banned for civil servants and university students, a ban that has caused some discomfort for Erdogan whose grassroots supporters are religious conservatives.
"All these are ramifications of this basic problem, how secular can a country be and what is in practice the meaning of secularism," Kohen said.
While Turkey grapples with that question, its image abroad has been deeply tarnished. As carpet seller Ilhan Yuksel put it: "Most people just think of Muslims when they think of Turkey. Now they think we are barbarians."
But it helps to have a state-paymaster.
This is Turkey's gift to the world, and Ataturk's gift as well. This is hope for the middle east.
These days a lot of young men in Istanbul also wear ear-rings in a pathetic attempt to imitate the West.
I guess it's a matter of taste
but one of the things to which I look forward getting out of North America and travelling East
is
not seeing young men wearing ear-rings or with hair dyed blue.
Fortunately
outside of Istanbul and Ankara
these fashions have not taken hold much in the rest of Turkey.
I feel kind of sorry for them.
Blessings upon you and yours this Holiday. Stay safe.
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