PRAYER IS FORBBIDEN HERE(*) with two bold Bs

(original publication is 6th July 2024 in Turkish)
If someone asked me to describe Turkey in a single sentence, I’d say: “The defeated country of the Cold War.”Our country is still governed by old people who lived through the Cold War and were deeply politicized by it.The economic, political, and social damage that the Cold War inflicted on us could fill volumes. The fact that we still haven’t managed to repair that damage means, in a way, that we never truly emerged from that era.While certain practices and mindsets from the early years of the Republic are harshly criticized as if they happened yesterday, there is a strange silence and indifference toward the far more recent Cold War policies whose effects are still with us today.In the bipolar world of the Cold War, one side represented the “free world” led by America; the other was the godless, atheist communism of the Soviets. Between 1945 and 1991, Turkey stood firmly on the American side against the Soviet Union. And the strongest anti-communist weapon in our arsenal was always the claim that Marxism was hostile to religion.By reducing communism to a triangle of godlessness, immorality, and depravity, it became easy to sell almost any policy to the masses and manipulate them.
“If communism comes, mosques will be shut down, women will be shared like property, religion will be finished.”That narrative worked for decades. It turned the country into a living hell for anyone who dared open their mouth in dissent. Labor rights, women’s rights, human rights — anything progressive — was branded as “playing into the communists’ hands” or “destroying religion.”Military coups stepped in whenever normal politics couldn’t get the job done. The 1980 coup (12th September) in particular symbolized its anti-communist stance with a general who paraded around holding a Qur’an. Across the ocean, Reagan was doing the same thing: clutching the “good book” to bury the Soviets forever. Afghan mujahideen were welcomed to the White House as if they were the Founding Fathers reincarnated.It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the planes that struck America on 9/11 took off from the White House room where Reagan saluted mujahedeens.America may have torn down the Berlin Wall on top of the Soviets in the early 1990s and declared the free world saved from communism, but the genie of political religion — especially political Islam — had already escaped the bottle through the Green Belt strategy.In Turkey, where all opposition had been crushed, it took only about ten years (even less if you count the momentum from Istanbul municipial election victory) for a party with strong Islamic sensibilities to take power.Since 1980, Turkey has been struggling with the consequences of a Cold War policy that turned religion into a direct political tool. The marriage between religious politics and the state apparatus — sometimes tense, sometimes smooth — has never truly broken, even when it pushed the country to the brink of another military intervention.In 2024 Turkey, the rhetoric of “religion is under threat” and “our values are eroding” doesn’t just work — it mobilizes people and drags the country further away from universal values.The conversion of Hagia Sophia back into a mosque was the most blatant example. To give a dying economy a shot of adrenaline through religious politics, Atatürk’s decision and signature were openly ignored in front of everyone’s eyes. Nationalists — longtime best friends of the Islamists — happily provided the theoretical backing. Academics and oposition figures like Yusuf Halaçoğlu acted as if the Cold War’s Turkish-Islamic synthesis had never gone away, shamelessly claiming Atatürk never signed anything of the sort.Most recently, the Chora Church (Kariye) went through the same process and was turned into a mosque. I visited shortly after. Perhaps public sensitivity had some effect: the mosaics outside the prayer area are still beautifully presented and viewable.But turning a vast portion of the building into a mosque — as if we were short of places to pray — and posting a security guard at the door who watches everyone like a hawk feels like a bizarre Cold War relic.When that guard told a tourist who was quietly praying with his back against the wall, “You can’t pray here,” the glass didn’t just overflow — it shattered.When I and others reacted, his response was: “You don’t know — there are unwritten instructions.” That sentence alone proves the Cold War spirit never died.I bought the Canadian tourist — who had been praying silently — a tea in the garden outside and explained how and why religion is used as a political tool in Turkey. He said something similar had happened to him at Hagia Sophia.The day religion can no longer be weaponized to gain or hold power in Turkey will be the day the Cold War finally ends here. We should declare it a national holiday.

Until then, we’re stuck in the same loop — and there’s no way out.