It was very heart-warming that the secular Yilmaz government was confirmed quite comfortably with a large vote surplus. It looks like it will last at least until the next election. Also the first important bill it pushed through the parliament, passed just as comfortably, in spite of the efforts by the Islamists and the majority of Ciller's party to prevent it. This bill increases the compulsory secular public education from five to eight years, which was high time. In the process, it forces the middle sections of the imam-hatip schools out of business. This has the advantage that the Islamists will not be able to brain-wash young kids of 6 - 8 grades at a tender and impressionable age. Once a youngster gets a good foundation of eight years of a secular education, he or she will be much more difficult to brainwash in an imam-hatip high school.

Now there is a great controversy on how the government should provide the religious education to the children, while still giving them a secularist mentality. Prime minister Yilmaz is talking about separation of state and mosque. The Alevi organizations think that the government should not be in the business of teaching religion, since the government automatically teaches the Sunni version of Islam. Deputy prime minister Bulent Ecevit thinks, that if the government does not teach religion, that job will be immediately picked up by the Islamists and that is not acceptable. Thus, before anything is done, there is a need for clarity on which principles should be applied and what are the real problems.

Atatürk said, "Religion is a matter of conscience. One is always free to act according to the will of one's conscience. We (as a nation) are respectful of religion. It is not our intention to curtail freedom of worship, but rather to ensure that matters of religion and those of the state do not become intertwined." Thus, when I advocate full separation of state and religion, I am in pretty good company.

The basis of any decision should be of course the Turkish constitution. That document defines the Turkish state as a "laic" state true to Atatürk's principles and reforms. The U.S. press normally refers to Turkey as a "secular" country. These two words do not mean exactly the same thing and we should clarify the difference. The U.S. constitution mandates separation of state and church, which is again quite different. Webster's dictionary defines "secular" as "of or relating to the worldly or temporal, not ecclesiastical or clerical." The definition of "laicism" is, "a political system characterized by the exclusion of ecclesiastical influence or control."

Actually the points of departure in separating state from church (or mosque) have been quite different in the U.S. and in Turkey. European immigrants to America in the 18th Century had all suffered from some sort of religious oppression in their states of origin. Thus when it came time to write the U.S. constitution, their main concern was to keep the new state's hands out of their religion. Separation of state and church must be understood in this way. Of course the law is not one-sided:The church has also no business interfering in state's affairs. Even after two centuries, this arrangement is working quite well in this country.

The point of departure in Turkey in 1923 was just the reverse. Over 95 % of the population was Moslem. All through the Ottoman centuries the Moslem population had been oppressed by the state to conform to strict Islamic rules. In some periods, people caught eating during the fasting month of Ramadan were severely punished. On the other hand, Christians and Jews were quite free to practice their religion and no one oppressed them for anything. The Turkish Republic brought religious freedom for everyone. Also, the push for this freedom did not come from the people as in America, but from the state. However, along with religious freedom came "laicism," that says that religion may not interfere with politics. There would be a compulsory public education of five years to keep the kids from the hands of ignorant religious teachers. Also, the state would manage and control the mosques and their personnel, who all became government employees. The rationale for this government control was that all through the Ottoman years, the imams and preachers (Islam had no organized clergy as in Christianity) have been an impediment to technical progress, declaring many inventions unacceptable because they were invented by "infidels." Also in the early years of the 20th Century, Mustafa Kemal and classmates had been studying the books of the French Enlightenment and had come to the conclusion that one of the reasons of the decline of the Ottoman Empire was that the Turkish people have been using religion, tradition, and superstition in their daily decisions, while the Western people had learned to use their heads and science for the same purpose. The only way to stop the decline, was to change the mentality of the Turkish people to make them survivable in the 20th Century. That required (a) the replacement of the Sharia by contemporary laws, (b) the abolition of the Caliphate, (c) the emancipation of women, (d) a new secular public education, and (e) the restriction of the influence of Islamic "teachers" solely to religious matters. The Christian World never had such a problem, because, unlike the Koran, the Bible did not prescribe a complete way of life. Thus, he Turkish Republic gave full freedom of religious belief to all its citizens, but kept the Islamic clergy under control to eliminate one of the causes of national decline. There was one more reason for the state control of religion: In 1923 literacy was extremely low in Turkey. Atatürk thought, that the combination of an uneducated public with ignorant religious teachers was a dangerous combination, that could be easily exploited by outside forces who were no friends of Turkey.

The republic progressed quite well in this system until 1950. At that date, the Peoples Republican Party lost the election to the Democrats. At that point Turkey entered into a period, in which politicians were soft on political Islam. They eventually tolerated Necmettin Erbakan's many parties, although these parties were clearly unconstitutional. Not only the Democrats and their reincarnations after the military takeovers, but the Peoples' Republican Party and its reincarnations were just as guilty of ignoring trespasses of the constitution for a few measly religious votes. So we arrived at the 1980's and 1990's when political Islam found a way of infiltrating into the imam-hatip schools and converted these institutions into brain-washing centers that produce fanatical Islamists, bitter opponents of Atatürk institutions and of secularism. The expected result of this infiltration was a steady increase of people voting for the Welfare party.

At the present time, it appears absolutely necessary to review all over again the reciprocal relationships of state and religion, based on 74 years of experience with laicism. I think, that the Turkish state should get out of the religion teaching business, for the following reasons:

(a) The government teaches a Sunni sect of Islam, while 20 percent of Turks are Alevis. The Alevis object that their taxes are used to teach their children a religious denomination that is not theirs.

(b) Why should the minorities of Christians and Jews support Islamic religious education with their taxes? (c) If the government teaches the Sunni sect in compulsory religious education, that constitutes religious oppression to Alevis and to non-religious citizens, thus it is unconstitutional. Thus, complete separation of religion and state should be legislated. This would include the following:

(1) All mosques, except a few historical buildings, should be privatized. They should be turned over to local populations, who should be encouraged to form mosque-supporting societies or foundations. I remember, I had contributed to the construction of a mosque in Karabuk in the late 1940's, which was managed by a society with a board of directors, like any other society. Employes of the Karabuk Iron & Steel Company were members of the society. It worked quite well. The imams and preachers should be paid by these societies. That would eliminate a huge chunk from the national budget.

(2) The few historical buildings such as the Suleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul could be turned over for maintenance to the Directorate of National Museums. But their operation should again be taken over by a mosque society.

(3) The Directorate of Religious Affairs should be abolished.

(4) In order to make sure that mosques are politics-free and

that politicians do not use religion as a political tool, a new civil organization should be started, that should have reel teeth, i.e., the authority to bring suits all the way to the Constitutional Court. Such a society may be called "Society for he Separation of Religion and Politics." It should have a structure similar to the American Civil Liberties Union, that can sue in the name of citizens whose rights have been infringed. This would give Turkish citizens the right to contribute to the preservation of their own constitution. Actually, children in schools should be taught about their constitutional rights and should be trained to be sensitive about them. Once citizens learn to protect their rights, ordinary laws would be fully sufficient to keep everyone in the confines of the constitution.

(5) Another means for the state to control private religious schools, would be to license both the school organizations and individual teachers, as it licenses lawyers, engineers, physicians, and other professionals. And the state should frequently inspect these schools and make sure that they do not break the law. If that is done, then, we do not have to fear that Islamist might take over religious education, if the government does not run it. Actually, if everyone would watch his or her constitutional rights, Islamists could not do anything harmful.

I think, the conditions in 1923 that led the Turkish state to institute government control of religion do no longer exist today. The national literacy has increased to about 85 %. The religious teachers are no longer ignorant. Only some of them are committed to bringing back the Sharia (which is unconstitutional) and should not be permitted to teach. These people should be identified and weeded out. It is all a matter of enforcing the laws of the land. The government's job should be to educate the people in secular public schools. It must also watch and strictly control that private schools do not break the law. If that is done, it does not matter who teaches religion, as long as they do not advocate unconstitutional ideas. The punishment for breaking the law on religious matters should be extremely severe, so that no one is tempted to try.

On the other hand if the government has no stomach for enforcing the law impartially, even its own operation could be subverted, as it was. The other side of the medallion is the use of religion as a political tool. That should be also eradicated (a) by making it easy to indict law-breaking politicians, and (b) by making the punishment for it very severe.

It is time for the Turkish public to make up its mind and to communicate it to its representatives.