From education to health, especially the exploited and oppressed sections of society, they were all carried out by sects and congregations during the AKP governments, from meeting their daily and social needs.
Journalist Iskender Bayhan evaluated the situation of cults and congregations in Turkey at Universal WEB TV ‘Gündem Özel’ with the presence of Zelis Irmak.
Iskender Bayhan’s reviews are as follows:
“Although this geography (Anatolia) differs in terms of sects and community organizations, it is an issue with a history of hundreds of years.
One the one hand, they become more visible, and on the other, they have a more reputable position. Especially during the Erdogan’s governments for the past few years. The debate over the Gulen Community, where Erdogan is now ‘bloody knife’, is always at the forefront when he thinks of the one-man government front. The congregations became governments. Became government partners. Religious cults have come to this day with their main power from the state. If we look at what is based on increased credibility in society, its organization, it mainly reveals the support they receive from the government and the state. For a long period of time, forms of organization of sects and communities such as non-governmental organizations, foundations and associations were encouraged. They’ve grown so big that they're causing problems from time to time to the same system they feed, becoming an obstacle for the system.
In the country, any events that are not accepted from the community's point of view can be considered individual. When errors are made by the congregations or religious cults in question, it is called 'wrong sheikhs, wrong disciples'. It’s turning into constant ‘non-conviction’. We also don't know if it's isolated because religious cults and congregations are closed organizations and there is no democratic functioning and auditability. If he had a transparent, known, auditable, visible life, it is possible to say something if we knew the villas where religious cults, sheikhs lived, and all the dirty untold business that occurred in their private residences in large lands. But as it stands, we don't have clarity about the answer to the question of whether an abuse incident, for example, is isolated or not.
Religious cults and congregations are very common, especially from three terms of heavenly religion. It's not something that can be eliminated as a matter of preventing them from exists or ruling on its existence. But if there is a mechanism in which the state is completely disabled, oversees, and stands at equal distance in the relations established by individuals, communities, religious organization’s individuals, believers or people who are genuinely associated with them, then maybe they can lose their effects in the process without damaging society, weakening and weakening them. Erdogan's administration, on 12th September, a significant number of sects in the history of an entire republic, congregations have always been intertwined with capital, capitalism formed a certain clergy class. society had distinguished, property owners, landowners, commercial foundation associations and the religious cult leaders with signed managers, who worked as capitalist enterprises and each partner edify those businesses. It shouldn't be like this. To say that societies are not cults in its entirety, this should be prevented, it may be possible in the development of societies, in a society without class, at the level of unexploited society. These structures that need to be eliminated in terms of today. State-sponsored, intertwined with the sermon, they themselves must end their organization in the state of clergy, which has become a capitalist enterprise, and all forms of state support should be cut off.
In terms of the bourgeoisie's interpretation of secularism, it is something has always worked with certain expressions in certain historical period. When we looked at the collapse of feudalism, the collapse of the aristocracy, the years of the bourgeoisie coming to power, the reform Renaissance and the establishment of the rule of the bourgeoisie in the 1800s, it was positively secularism, separation of religion and religion being left entirely to the savings of personal individuals. In certain bourgeois countries, certain bourgeois democracies, administrations for certain periods of time continued to exist. But religions have always been under the seat of the bourgeoisie. Religious organizations have always overseen the bourgeoisie or have been their backup. In terms of secularism, the bourgeoisie has become a major fraud, given its birth and its claims at the time of the emergence of that class. If it works for the bourgeoisie, secularism is good, if it benefits them, the recipe for secularism changes, and again if they can use secularism for their own advantage, then it can also be considered bad. It all depends on the need to maintain the bourgeoisie's dominance over that society and to put that society under pressure. The bourgeoisie establishes an extraordinary pragmatist relationship with religions and cults.
In addition to strengthening their beliefs, the social, objective and economic aspects are much more likely to be the reason for the commitment of citizens to religious cults today. We know that from education to health, especially the exploited and oppressed sections of society, they were all carried out by sects and congregations during the AKP governments, from meeting their daily and social needs. So, these policies made millions of people dependent on cults and communities. Faith has become the chip of both goods and life. Ironically, in a cult, workers are believed to be equal, yet most remain unemployed, but somehow rich.
But that's just something that's stuck in the conversation. We observe the contradictions and differences of a clear class in the daily life of cults.
Diyanet [An institute depends on the presidency, which governs and organise the religious affairs] is an organization that paves the way for congregation and sect organizations, especially during Erdogan's period, depending on the development of Turkish capitalism and leading the clergy.”
Hediye Levent
Yusuf Karadaş