Have Turkish Muslims in Germany Become More Religiously Conservative?

In my last post I asked whether there were any data confirming the common view that Turkish Muslims in Germany have become more conservative over the last few years.  The answer appears to be yes.

The Foundation Center for Studies on Turkey published a trio of mini-reports in English last April that offer findings from a “telephone survey in summer 2005 among 1000 migrants of Turkish origin.”  That is literally all the authors say about the data and their methodology, so I have no idea how the sample was chosen or who it’s supposed to represent.  The authors also refer to “a similar study from the year 2000″ that they use for comparison. [UPDATE - I spoke with researchers at the center and they forwarded me the full-length German documentation in a flash!  The English version was just a summary.  Thanks, Dirk and Can!]

For now let’s just assume the surveys were done carefully and represent migrants of Turkish origin throughout Germany.  What did they find?

• In 2000, 73 percent of Turks in Germany defined themselves as religious.  By 2005, 83 percent did.
• In 2000, 27 percent of the sample approved of Muslim women wearing the headscarf in public.  By 2005 the figure had risen to 47 percent.  Women are more likely to approve than men.
• In 2000, 19 percent of the sample was against co-ed school field trips and P.E. classes.  In 2005, the figure was 30 percent.
• Only one-third of Turkish migrants would not have a problem with a son or daughter marrying a non-Muslim; this was the same in both surveys.

Although the percent defining themselves as religious has risen, the authors say there is greater polarization today.  That is, more Turkish Muslims perceived themselves as either “very religious” or “not religious at all” in 2005 than in 2000.  Something similar can be seen in the Pew report I wrote about earlier, which showed that Muslims in Germany are fairly divided over whether Islamic identification is growing, whether it’s a good thing or not, and whether they’re concerned about it.

This is just a snapshot of the survey results, but unfortunately the authors don’t provide much more to work with.  The Center has a Berlin office not far from mine, so I’m going to see if I can hunt down more information as well as the dataset itself.

If nothing else, Germans seem to be right about those headscarfs!  (Assuming approval translates into wearing…)