ALMOST every village in the north has a mosque, and each mosque has an Imam who calls the faithful to prayer five times a day. Such sights and sounds might easily convince the Western visitor that he or she has arrived in the East. However, if one waits around to see how many, if any, Turkish Cypriots answer the call to prayer, it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that very few were interested in religion.
Some years ago I joined a “pilgrimage” of Turkish Cypriots to the Hala Sultan Tekke, a mosque of great religious significance in the Islamic world. This was in the days before holes had appeared in the Green Line and around 1,600 of us were taken there under police escort in a convoy of more than 30 buses.
On arrival at the mosque, “pilgrims” either sat in the grounds and begun tucking into lavish picnics or made a beeline for the restaurant for a blow-out on pork chops and 31 brandy. A few curious members of the group milled around the building marvelling at its beauty; fewer still actually put their head around the doorway to take a look inside. A mere handful actually went inside and used the building for what it had been designed.
As a die-hard atheist myself, I was heartened by these people’s ability not to be impressed by more than the building, the setting and the novelty of being able to travel south of the Green Line.
But ever since my first days in the south I have been aware of an imbalance. Greek Cypriots are Orthodox Christians, I know, but I had always assumed they would be laid-back, nominal Christians mirroring the Turkish Cypriot relationship with Islam. I have since learnt that many Greek Cypriots, young and old, have an intimate relationship with the Church.
When I asked a Turkish Cypriot journalist working in the north about her relationship with religion she told me that despite being taken to a mosque “one or twice” during her early childhood, she had never returned.
“I never felt there was something there for me. From a certain age, when I started to think for myself, I found the whole thing irrelevant,” she said. She added, however, that she had received compulsory lessons in Islam at school – something common to all Turkish Cypriot children.
Asked why she thought the younger generation of Turkish Cypriots appeared to be so disinterested in religion, she said: “It might have something to do with the political situation in this country. The young are disillusioned with authority in general and reject what their elders tell them. Religion, coming from older, more conservative elements is another one of the things they reject.”
I asked Sinem, another young Turkish Cypriot woman, whether she had any kind of religious belief. Her answer was unequivocal.
“I don’t believe in God at all and I know hardly anyone who does. The only one I know well is a relative who is getting old now. When he was young he lived the high life and I think he is scared of dying a sinner, so now he goes to the mosque five times a day.”
She added that when at school there was so little regard for things spiritual that the teacher allowed them to paint pictures during the time designated for religious instruction.
Turkish Cypriot psychologist Dr Mehmet Cakici explains the phenomenon by describing the Turkish Cypriots as “perhaps the best example of Turkish secularism – a much better example than can be found in Turkey itself”.
“In Turkey, despite the fact that it is a secular country, religion plays a much bigger role. There are people there who campaign through political means to seek the implementation of Muslim law. Nothing like this happens here.”
He adds, however, that it would be unfair to label Turkish Cypriots as Godless or atheists.
“Most Turkish Cypriots believe in God, although religion does not play a part in their daily lives. It’s a personal issue, so they do not feel pressurised by their spiritual feelings.”
Cakici believes the morality of Turkish Cypriots comes predominantly from the West and is based on liberal ideals. He does not believe Turkish Cypriots live in a moral and spiritual vacuum.
Researcher and historian Mete Hatay says the secularism of the Turkish Cypriots goes back a long way and cannot be explained away by modern phenomena such as the founding of secular modern Turkey. He strongly believes current trends are directly influenced by particularly non-fanatic Islamic immigrants that arrived on the island in the past.
“In the late 18th century, members of around 30 nomadic tribes were banished to Cyprus from Anatolia. These were heterodox Muslims, who tended to have a more superficial interpretation of Islam. Already in Cyprus were the Janissaries. They were Bektashi Muslims, another heterodox mix with a more relaxed approach to Islam,” Hatay explains.
“Until 1826, Cyprus was covered with Bektashi Tekkes (lodges), and although they were Muslim, they drank wine and carried out customs that had less to do with orthodox Islam than with a host of other religions present in Anatolia at the time, including Manheism, Zerdush, Christianity, Buddism and Shamanism.”
Hatay says that in 1826, the Ottoman Sultan sought to replace the Bektashis with more fundamental Islamists and sent Nakshibandi Imams to the island to take over the Tekkes in towns and cities across the island.
However, Hatay says their influence was limited to urban areas. Rural communities, he says, tended to carry on as before.
Turkish Cypriot secularism received a further boost a century later.
“During the last half of the 19th century the Young Turks movement, who were seeking reform and modernisation of the ailing Ottoman Empire, gained considerable support in Cyprus as the island was used as a penal colony for Turkish intellectuals opposing the Sultans.”
Support for the movement was expressed, Hatay says, as a rejection of religious belief.
“And, of course, Kemal Ataturk’s secularism was massively influential here in that it completely stripped the Sultans of political power.”
But even before the Sultans were banished, the Ottomans made “very little religious investment” in Cyprus. “It was more an island of banishment than a hotbed of religious fervour.”
Asked whether contemporary family life is influenced by religious belief, Hatay says: “Any thought that familial restrictions on women stem from Islamic sentiments is wrong; it’s simply because Turkish Cypriots have spent so long living in small, isolated communities.”
Certainly, when one looks at young Turkish Cypriot men and women, the last thing that comes to mind is religion: they wear modern clothes and behave like people from any other Mediterranean island. Clearly, then, they are characterised not by religion, but by their dependence on one another and their belief in their families and communities.
