HVK Archives: Turkish police shut 8 illegal Islamic centres
Turkish police shut 8 illegal Islamic centres - The Asian Age
AFP, Reuter
()
29 April 1997
Title : Turkish police shut 8 illegal Islamic centres
Author : AFP, Reuter
Publication : The Asian Age
Date : April 29, 1997
The Turkish police have closed down eight illegally operating Islamic schools
after the country's top body urged the government to step up a fight against
pro-Islamic radicalism, interior ministry officials said on Monday.
It was the first confirmed report of concrete action since the secularist Army
demanded a crackdown against an Islamic revival two months ago. Halting illegal
Islamic education is one of the generals' main demands.
The police in the western province of Bursa swooped on seven buildings housing
unofficial Koranic education courses on Sunday, a spokesman for the governor's
office said. "The courses were closed," the spokesman said. "They were found to
be operating outside the writ of the religious affairs directorate," he said.
Another Islamic school was closed in the northern town of Zonguldak under the same
pretext.
The latest move raised the number of illegally operating religious schools closed
by police to 11 in less than two months. The Ankara governorship ordered the
closure of three other such schools in the capital in March.
Turkey's military-dominated National Security Council on Saturday ordered the
implementation of previously agreed tough measures to curb pro-Islamic extremism,
including an education reform which calls for the closure of hundreds of Islamic
schools.
Theoretically, the MGK, which groups the country's top civilian and military
officials, is a consultative body, but its resolutions are traditionally
implemented by the government to the letter. Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan's
pro-Islamic Welfare Party and the military, which sees itself as the guardian of
modem Turkey's secular heritage, are locked in a bitter row over creeping
Islamisation.
The MGK, effectively a vehicle for Army influence on politics, forced the
government in February to approve a package of measures aimed at halting the
trend. Other measures agreed at the time included a ban on pro-Islamic propaganda
on television, the sacking of religious extremists from state services,
limitations on religious dressing and tighter controls on Islamic foundations.
However, Welfare reluctance to implement the measures has kept tensions high in
recent months.
But senior MPs in Mr Erbakan's Welfare Party have said that they will try to block
any bid by Parliament to restrict religious school education.
The Milliyet daily on Monday quoted an unnamed senior military officer as
criticising Mr Erbakan for his delaying tactics. "The Prime Minister accepts
everything in the National Security Council and says he agrees but then Welfare
spokesmen outside say the complete opposite," the officer said.
The officer accused Mr Erbakan, secularist Turkey's first Islamist leader, of
takkiye - a practise under which Muslims can hide their true feelings for the good
of the faith.
Two ministers from the conservative wing of the Islamist-led coalition resigned at
the weekend because of Mr Erbakan's stalling.
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