Analysis
Smart, independent reporting on Turkey's politics, economy and foreign affairs.
Four staff members of the satirical magazine Leman were arrested after a cartoon accused of insulting religious values triggered violent protests in Istanbul and drew sharp reactions from across the political spectrum.
Hats off to Yusuf Tekin, Turkey’s controversial education minister, for cramming all of Turkey’s thorny subjects into a single speech and creating a debate that drew in political party leaders, actresses, and laymen. It was a performance to steal the limelight from Trump, let alone Erdoğan himself. The Erzurum-born minister, who launched a controversial new curriculum last year, traveled from Baku to Batman, where he presents his education strategy to a large audience. On Nov. 17, he attended COP29 in Baku, where he explained how environmental awareness was now part of the Turkish education system. His critics would say he referred to the controversial project called CEDES, an acronym for “I protect my environment and claim my values.” The project does have an environmental focus, but it also has a “religious values” component under which local imams and preachers are assigned to each school in the project to provide spiritual guidance for students.
İmam nikahı, or dini nikah (religious wedding), has long been a battleground for women’s rights activists who strongly oppose religious marriage and support strict penalties for imams and muftis (Muslim clergy) who conduct religious unions without first ensuring that the couple has undergone a civil ceremony. Turkey’s laws on marriage are regulated by the 1926 Civil Code, which abolished polygamy, introduced civil marriage, and mandated that any religious ceremony—should citizens of the newly established secular state choose to hold one—must follow civil registration in a municipal office. In villages, chieftains (elected officials) conduct the ceremony, while consular officers perform civil ceremonies for Turks abroad. Under the 1926 laws, religious officers—whether imams, priests, or rabbis in Turkey’s multi-faith society— had no authority to perform official weddings, as they cannot verify the legal requirements, such as the age of the would-be spouses or whether they are already married.