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The religion of Turkey is, by overwhelming majority, Islamalthough with with some peculiarities we tell you about on this page.
And you will appreciate it during your trip.
But you may also have the opportunity to come into contact with people of other religions, so we also mention this in the following lines that will help you to better understand the religious reality of the country.
The territory we know today as Turkey underwent a process of progressive process of progressive Islamization, later than that of other Arab countries around it.Although the Byzantine empire (of Orthodox Christian religion) was attacked by the various Arab caliphates since the 7th century, it managed to resist until 1453, when its moribund but symbolic capital, Constantinople, fell.
Up to that point, the Byzantine Empire had been progressively losing ground.
First to the SeljuksThe Turkic people, the first to settle in Anatolia, were nomadic and were pushed by the Mongols into the territory of today’s Eastern Anatolia.
The Seljuks had embraced Islam centuries ago, even controlling the Abbasid caliphate in the 11th century.They even controlled the Abbasid caliphate in the 11th century, which shows their commitment to this religion.
The final push was given by the Ottomans OttomansAnother Turkic people continued the advance towards Constantinople, taking it in 1453 and bringing down the Byzantine empire, which now had only a few scattered and unconnected territories.
Since then, all the territory of present-day Turkey has been entirely under Muslim domination, this empire being a promoter and defender of this religion in other in other European and Near Eastern territories.
Although official and unofficial data vary from one to another, a rough estimate indicates that 95% of Turks are Muslimsof which more than three quarters profess the Sunni branch, while the remainder opt for the Shiite alternative, mainly Alevis, spread across regions of Eastern Anatolia.
Officially, the Republic of Turkey is secularThis was one of the main premises of Mustafa Kemala Atatürk’s nationalization process in the 1920s.
For this reason, freedom of worship is guaranteed, although with limitations and work for those religions that are not Islam.
In addition, in recent years, especially since the governments of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a certain religious conservatism that limits the secularization of institutions, especially the public school, where students receive Sunni Muslim education, is appreciated.
In addition to Sunni Muslims and Shiite Alevis, there is also a part of the Kurdish ethnic group that professes a type of religion of its own, Yazidism. YazidismYazidism, which predates Islam but is also monotheistic in character and has some aspects in common with Islamic Sufism, as well as influences from Persian Zoroastrianism and other Mesopotamian religions.
Despite the data indicating the overwhelming majority of Islam as a religion in Turkey, different studies indicate that the number of people who, despite being officially Muslim, declare themselves to be non-religious. non-religious or, at least, non-practicing: around one-third of the one third of society.
In addition, it must be said that most Turks do not follow the Islamic precepts as strictly as they do the as in other neighboring countries.
For example, Friday prayer is not conceived as a moment of obligatory pause in daily chores.
And small details such as the large proportion of Muslim women who do not wear the hijab will also attract the attention of the traveler.
In any case, the celebration of the obligatory Muslim festivals, with their corresponding prayer in the mosque, as well as fasting during the month of Ramadan, are generalized.
If your trip to Turkey will be your first experience in a Muslim country, it will be useful to know some key aspects of this religion.
The most important are its 5 pillars or precepts that every Muslim must follow:
The holy book of Islam is the Koranwhich is the written reproduction of the word of Allah, that Muhammad received from Allah through the Archangel Gabriel.
This archangel, in fact, is also present in the other two monotheistic religions (Judaism y Christianity), with which it has many elements in common, such as the recognition of the status of prophets to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus (the latter only for Christians), and in fact they are mentioned in the Koran.
However, the differentiating element for Muslims is that they consider Muhammad the last and most important of the prophets, and their religion the perfected version of the previous ones.
Turkey’s remoteness from the central places of Islam (Medina, Mecca, Jerusalem) means that Muhammad did not come here. Muhammad did not reach here and, therefore, in its territory there are no places as sacred as those of other countries of the Near East, related to this prophet or his immediate successors.
In this sense, the only sacred place that has a mythical character for Muslims (and for Christians and Jews) is Mount Ararat. Mount Ararat where, according to the biblical account, Noah’s Ark landed after the universal flood.
This imposing mountain, the highest in Turkey, is located in the far east of the country, near the border with Armenia.
However, there are countless mosques in Turkey, some of them absolutely monumental, which enjoy the highest regard among the faithful.
A brief list of the main mosques are:
In addition to these mosques, we can highlight the madrasas and madrasaswhich are also very numerous all over Turkey: these are Koranic schools where future imams and other personalities related to religion in Turkey are trained.
Some of them are historical and monumental.
In some cases, there are madrasas inside mosques.
This has been the case since Ottoman times, since an innovative concept that developed with this empire is that of the mosque as a social center: thus, the temple was not only used for religious purposes, but also as a common meeting and support point for its people, with other spaces such as libraries, hospitals, etc.
The importance of the Sufi tradition in this country also deserves special mention. Sufi tradition (the most mystical and spiritual version of Islam), thanks to the mystical poet Jalal al-Din Rumiwho created a school through the order of whirling dervishes: despite his Persian origin, he settled in Konya at the time of the Sultanate of Rum (Seljuk Turkic empire), so that his legacy has been forever associated with this Turkish region, where these mystical dances have become a sign of identity.
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