Like almost every other country in the world, Turkey has been hit with the coronavirus. And like other Muslim countries, in Turkey there has been a clash between religious authorities, unwilling to lock down shops, or mosques, or cities, and the medical specialists, who insist such measures are necessary.
The latest report on the situation in Turkey, from the journalist Can Dundar, is here:
Over the past two weeks, Turkey has been witnessing a lethal tug of war between reason and belief — one that shows us again how dangerous politicized religion can be.
Turkish health-care professionals and scientists, led by the Turkish Medical Association, have been advocating fact-based policy responses to the coronavirus pandemic. But they face a powerful opponent in the country’s religious establishment. The government’s enormously influential Directorate of Religious Affairs, an agency that is supposed to regulate the role of Islam, has become one of the key institutions in the fight against covid-19 — and not always for the better.
It was clear from early on that the biggest threat would come from outside Turkey’s borders — and especially from those making their Islamic pilgrimages to Mecca. When authorities in Saudi Arabia identified 100 coronavirus cases, they quickly moved to cancel visits to the central Kaaba shrine. Some 21,000 pilgrims from Turkey returned home by March 15.
Experts insisted that returning pilgrims should immediately be quarantined, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) did not want to annoy those religious people who mostly vote for the AKP.
The Directorate of Religious Affairs, the state institution in charge of managing the mosques, requested that returnees self-isolate at home for 14 days, without receiving any visitors.
Erdogan’s refusal to impose a quarantine on the pilgrims returning from Mecca, crowded with people, was a serious error. He did not listen to the medical experts, but rather to his political instincts. He did not want to antagonize either the religious pilgrims, nor the religious establishment, by requiring such a quarantine. Instead, those pilgrims were merely “requested to remain in self-isolation.” The government was apparently more afraid of antagonizing the religious authorities, who were opposed to a quarantine, than it was of the angry reaction from the medical establishment. There was no enforcement mechanism: no fines were imposed on those who were found outdoors.
The majority of people did not listen. Social media filled with photos of returning pilgrims making visits and accepting guests. Confronted with the public refusal to cooperate, the government suddenly decided to quarantine the last group of returnees. More than 6,400 returning pilgrims were placed in university dormitories; all the students who had lived there were evicted.
Erdogan, having realized that many were not complying with the request to self-isolate, then decided that he would impose a quarantine on the last group of returning pilgrims. But there was again an enforcement problem with religious pilgrims who had their own ideas about what created the coronavirus and about how it spread. Too many of them refused to accept the scientific explanation for the virus, and continued to think that their own piety would protect them from the wrath of Allah, who they believed used coronavirus as a weapon against those who were insufficient in their faith.
Some of the pilgrims, citing the unequal treatment, tried to escape quarantine. Some of them tried to force open the doors of their dormitories; another group that managed to get out was caught traveling to another city in a rented bus.
But it was too late. Thousands of people had spread across the country. Within a week, the number of cases surged from one to more than 1,000….
The second big mistake was made at Friday prayers, which draw around 18 million people each week. Friday prayers have been canceled in many Islamic countries. Iran pulled back on February 27; on March 13, Kuwait put out the message that people should pray in their homes. In Turkey, the Directorate of Religious Affairs made a similar announcement — but only in the form of a suggestion. Bars, night clubs, libraries and museums were closed, but mosques remained open — and they were crowded with believers. On March 16, the government announced that communal Friday prayers were being suspended.
But it was too late again. The death announcements began on March 17. Within one week, Turkey had surpassed all other countries in the rate of increase of cases.
Erdogan stayed inside his presidential palace for a full week following the first announced case. On March 18, he finally emerged to host a meeting on “Coordinating the Fight against the Coronavirus.” Officials from the Directorate of Religious Affairs participated, but there was no one there from the Turkish Medical Association. As he left the four-hour conference, Erdogan chose to speak like a cleric rather than a president, citing traditional Islamic texts: “It is up to us to behave in accordance with the hadiths, to take precautions and leave judgment to Allah. I believe that we will make it through this period with patience and prayers.”
As the educated everywhere know, “patience and prayers” have nothing to do with “making it through” the coronavirus crisis. It takes test kits, masks, ventilators, it takes doctors and nurses. “Patience and prayers” have been of no efficacy to stop the spread of the virus. A week after Erdogan’s meeting with Diyanet officials, on March 25, when the number of deaths had risen to 59 and the number of cases had reached 2,433, Erdogan gave a televised address in which he assured the nation that the government would end the spread of the virus in two to three weeks. To experts who had argued that the illness will be transmitted even faster in the coming weeks because of the initial delayed response, he said simply: “Our Lord’s help will be on our side.” A few days later, the death toll in Turkey from the coronavirus had risen to 108, with 7,402 cases. Allah did not come to the rescue.
Mural says
The foolish religious antics of Erdogan has finally caught up with him. I am sure he will fail to see reason again and go back to his idiotic ways.
Beverly says
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – Islam and science ARE mutually exclusive. The inbreeding, the totalitarianism, has left the Islamic world with a bunch of people who believe whatever their Imam tells them. Erdogan is a hardline Islamist who wants to be Caliph. Nothing of scientific value has come from the Islamic world in eons.
Boromir's Horn says
+1
Westman says
With Inshullah(Allah wills it) as a belief, there is no need for Allah to do anything. Allah could be a stone figure and nothing would change. Allah could have been a tourist in the universe who thought to have some fun with the dullards on a planet then left, never to return. More likely, Allah was Muhammad’s creation.
Mustafa Ataturk would be dismayed to see Turkey sliding back to 7th century ignorance after so much reform during, and beyond, his lifetime. Both China and the West should be wary.
elee says
Will Turkey use its expat communities in Europe to introduce al Lah’s little viral soldiers into Dar-al-Harb? Were they already doing that in January?
Kepha says
Disclaimer: I accept the validity of repeated observation an experience, value reason, logic, and evidence, and would never shut down faculties of physics, chemistry, and astronomy. And do I ever despise Islam!
But I have become a skeptic towards scientism–science as a dogma, and anything said in its name is not to be doubted or questioned.
But, as someone raised to genuflect slightly while repeating the word “science” in a semi-hushed tone, I have come to wonder if it is worthy of the name, which is nothing but a fancy Latin term for “knowledge”. When I was a small lad, it was “scientific fact” that the great sauropod dinosaurs “had to” spend their lives bouyed up by water and munching oddles of soft swamp plants. But then I grew to man’s estate, and along comes Dr. Robert Bakker to tell us they were active, warm-blooded, and ran about in herds on dry land stripping conifer needles. In high school, I learned that the electron was the smallest particle possible; in college, I heard about quarks, and I guess another generation will figur out a few things smaller and smaller, turning me into a middle-sized denizen of the Creation rather than something small.
Now, with the Wuhan vius (and even my wife, who is Chinese, calls it the Chinese virus), they are now weighing the relative risks of having lots of people risking infection by going back to work against having lots of people losing their health and sanity by tanking the economy by social distancing.
There is Dr. Dawkins (or someone like him) telling us that for a good person to do really bad things, it takes religion (understood, apparently, as a belief system in existence before 1800, with exceptions made for Mormonism, Bahai, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and a few others). Does he mean that germ, chemical, and nuclear warfare were launched in Presbyteries?
All the while, Michael Polanyi’s warning that all science is tentative lurks in the back of the mind.
How strange it is! Anyone you don’t like is “anti-science”. But what of that great social experiment of the 20th century, launched in the name of “scientific progress”, of which FDR’s brain trust members wondered aloud “why should the RUssians have all the fun of rebuilding society on a scientific basis?”, yet murdered, exiled, imprisoned, and otherwise ruined more people in one century than sufferd for heresy in 15 enturies of established theism?
Yes, empirical science is wonderful. But Oliver Wendell Holmes (someone else whom I don’t like very much) noted it’s great brain furniture for someone who’s feet are grounded in common sense, and horrible in one who isn’t so grounded. I fear that we in the USA are possibly seeing this as our national and state governments shut us down, and millions of us face the scourges of poverty and its attendant ills due to the economy being shut off. Life is full of risks, and sooner or later, we’ll have to make a calculated on to repon our schools, churches, businesses, etc and trust that our immune systems and anitbodies kick in.
Further, using the infalible empirical method of repeated observation and experience, I am convinced of the fundamental malevolence of inanimate objects, especially items of clothing…;)
Sure, Islam and the Erdogan regime are not to be trusted. But prhaps the problem isn’t their being anti-science, but being anti common sense?
James Lincoln says
In the feature article, Hugh Fitzgerald accurately states:
“As the educated everywhere know, “patience and prayers” have nothing to do with “making it through” the coronavirus crisis.”
Reminds me of the endless calls for “thoughts and prayers” following each terrorist attack – as if it would prevent the next one…
jca reid says
The megalomaniac Erdogan is now really losing it! The Turkish Authorities had better look to their consciences. He is leading Turkey on a path to Destruction.
elee says
There used to be Turks who would do that, he has purged them. And “conscience” is most emphatically not a Muslim concept, nor is individual responsibility. Read Annjuli Pandaver’s piece today for insight into Muslim beliefs.
gravenimage says
In Turkey, Religious Authorities Get in the Way of Science (Part 1)
………….
I’m shocked, shocked! Oh…wait…no I’m not…
Jack Holan says
If Europe had any brains the would remove Turkey from NATO since they re are hardleyloyL to the pact and ban them from the EU since their actions prove their ulterior designs.