Erdogan’s religious commissioner Ali Erbas: enthusiasm for the homophobic sermon

As of April 27, 2020 The | Reading time: 4 minutes.

MeIn Turkey a dispute has arisen over homosexuality or, in his view, about homophobia. The debate was sparked by Ali Erbas, president of the Diyanet Religious Agency. In his sermon at the beginning of the fasting month of Ramadan, he spoke for the first time on Friday about fighting the crown virus and then said: “Islam considers fornication as one of the greatest sins; condemns homosexuality. “

This leads to disease and causes “generations to rot.” Erba also criticized sexual relations between single people: hundreds of thousands of people would have extramarital affairs and become infected with the HIV virus. It is “scientifically proven” that “this and other similar viruses” are spread through dirt; This is why Islam declares that cleanliness is an important requirement of faith.

Diyanet religious agency has become one of the most influential insights about the country in the nearly two decades of the AKP government. Their budget exceeds that of many ministries, almost 130,000 people work for them. This also includes the nearly 1,000 imams working in Germany at DITIB mosques, who are subject to instructions from the religious authority.

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Erbas, the 48-year-old theology professor, was appointed to this position by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2017 and is his close confidant. In 2018 they opened the DITB Central Mosque together in Cologne, and the following year he again participated in a conference on Islam in Cologne.

Erbas regularly comments on current political and social issues, and causes outrage just as regularly. A year and a half ago, when he visited a fundamentalist preacher and declared him an enemy of Ataturk, on the day of the death of the founder of the secular republic Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The prosecution investigates the bar association

Again, the outrage was swift: LGBTI associations, human rights defenders and politicians from the Social Democratic CHP and the left pro-Kurdish HDP accused Erba of sedition. The relationship between crown and homosexuality, which Erbas had indirectly established, was found by many to be particularly scandalous. The Ankara Bar Association said Erbas would stand outto religiously legitimize hatred of women and to trivialize child abuse. “No one should be surprised if Ali Erba’s upcoming speech would ask people to burn women as witches in public places.”

Support for Erbas was no less numerous and prolific. “Ali Erbas, who has expressed God’s instruction, is not alone,” Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted. Fahrettin Altun, Communications Director for the Office of the President, also wrote on Twitter: “The norms of Islam are not questionable after the welfare of those who attack Ali Erba without respect.” And the Speaker of Parliament, Mustafa Sentop, said that the “attacks” The head of the religious authority would actually be Islam.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey. But gays and lesbians always complain about social discrimination. The LGBTI movement began to take shape in the mid-1990s. In 2002 the first Pride of Turkey took place in Istanbul. In the same year, Erdogan, then an opposition politician, spoke in favor of “also guaranteeing the rights of homosexuals.”

At Pride 2013, following the Gezi protests, a record of around 100,000 participants was set. Since the Gezi protests, the left-wing opposition has increasingly addressed the LGBTI issue. At the same time, the authorities increasingly acted against the activists. Pride was banned in Istanbul for the first time in 2015, and remains so to this day. However, anyone who took to the streets faced tear gas and police batons. Since then, even smaller events have been repeatedly banned, including a gay and lesbian film festival in Ankara with the support of the German embassy in 2017.

The prosecutor is now investigating this matter, not against the President of the Religious Authority, but against the Ankara Bar Association. Suspicion: “degradation of religious values”.

On Monday night, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also interfered in the debate: the Diyanet chief’s statements are “completely correct,” but only binding on Muslims, he said in a speech. For everyone else, it’s just an expression of opinion. For the Ankara Bar Association, he said: “This is not a matter that is the responsibility of the Bar Association. Everyone should know their place, everyone should know their limits. An attack on the president of the religious authority is an attack on the state. “

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