Cold War in the Pulpit: The Presidency of Religious Affairs and Sermons during the Time of Anarchy and Communist Threat

Abstract

This study investigates the use of religion during the Cold War by the Turkish state via the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet Ísleri Baskanlığs), the state agency that is responsible for regulating and monitoring the conduct of religious services (in mosques and elsewhere), as well as for the imposition of ‘proper Islam’. This essay examines sermons delivered during Friday prayers (khutba in Arabic, hutbe in Turkish) which were sanctioned by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (PRA) and recited from pulpits throughout the country in addition to articles published in various PRA periodicals that the PRA distributed primarily to train and inform imams (clerics, prayer leaders) and circulated in cities, towns, and thousands of villages across the country. The essay specifically examines sermons1 in the late 1970s on the eve of the 1980 coup when Islamic anti-communism was at its zenith. Before 1980, imams were de jure free to prepare their own sermons due to certain legal loopholes. However, the PRA provided imams with sermons, which were supposed to be used as models, even if these model sermons were not expected to be read verbatim. These model sermons were distributed via the PRA’s periodicals, first and foremost Diyanet Gazetesi (PRA Journal) in the late 1970s during the cultural Second Cold War in Turkey.