Diyanet, Bardakoglu, and more

My second trip to Ankara couldn’t have gone better. First I had a good discussion with Dr. Ali Bardakoglu, President of the Diyanet. He’s been in charge of the agency since 2003 and many of the people I spoke with last week credit his dynamism and forward-thinking for bringing the Diyanet into a kind of heyday (some outside the agency see the situation differently, arguing that the Diyanet is spending way too much energy meddling in affairs that are none of their business.)

Interviewing Dr. Bardakoglu was the only formal meeting I had arranged for the whole day, but when we finished he sent me to talk with Dr. Izzet Er, a vice president at the Diyanet who oversees religious services, including sermons.

You can’t plan this stuff

This was another helpful conversation, especially because I entered Dr. Er’s office just as a young man was presenting data on the Diyanet’s decentralized sermon policy. More specifically, he was showing Dr. Er graphs and tables breaking down sermon topics by region of the country now that the Diyanet has stopped sending out standard sermons to all 77,000 mosques around Turkey.

I couldn’t believe my luck.

“Can I take a look at the data?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“Could I have a copy?”

“Yes, but it’s raw data.”

“Oh, um, that’ll be fine.”

Fatih

The young man’s name was Fatih, and he turned out to be incredibly helpful. He not only helped me get data I thought it’d be impossible to get, he also explained the current sermon system, pointed me to some unpublished literature on this subject, took me to lunch, drove me into the city and gave me a tour of Ankara’s largest mosque (see the photos), got me a 40% discount on a book I’d been looking all over for, and then shuttled me over to the bus station just in time to hop on a bus back to Istanbul.

One of the articles Fatih gave me was an unpublished paper based on content analysis of Diyanet sermons from 1999. The author, Dr. Ahmet Onay, had done his Ph.D. and post-doc work in social psychology at Leeds University on religious attitudes and Muslim identity among Turkish students in England.

And he just happened to be working for the Diyanet in an office two flights down.

Before heading out on our tour of Ankara, we went to meet Dr. Onay and ask about his research. He gave me some great suggestions for my project as well as a copy of the book based on his research in England. We’ll be staying in touch.

All in all it was a whirlwind day full of fortunate events that I couldn’t have planned if I tried.