TEACHING OF RELIGION

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25082, 14 January 1947, Page 3

TEACHING OF RELIGION

TURKISH POLICY FREEDOM FOR WORSHIP UNDER STATE (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 28. During a debate on the budget of the Ministry of Education in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, several members drew attention to Communist propaganda in the schools and expressed the opinion that the teaching of religion in the schools should be favoured in order to counteract the effects of subversive propaganda, says the Istanbul correspondent of “The Times.” The Prime Minister (Mr Recep Peker) replying to supporters of this view, said that the practice of the Muslim religion as well as of other religions, was absolutely free in Turkey and worship was under the State’s protection. However, the Turkish people had suffered so much in the past from an excess of clericalism and religious prejudice that they were averse from using it to counteract Communism.

This, he said, would be tantamount to taking one poison to fight another. The example of Greece and Spain, two religious peoples, showed 4hat clericalism was not the best weapon to fight Communism, and therefore, said Mr Peker, the Turkish Government, remaining loyal to Kemalist doctrine, believed that the best way to counteract Communism was to strengthen Turkish national ideals while not indulging in propaganda among Turks residing outside Turkey, or in discrimination against non-Turks living in Turkey. After a 10-day boycott of the Grand National Assembly the • Democratic Party has decided to take part again in the sittings of Parliament for discussion of the budget. Their bdycott was because of the Prime Minister’s saying that the Opposition’s criticism of the budget betrayed “morbid and psychopathic pessimism.” at which the Opposition felt insulted. The satisfactory end to this incident is due to the personal mediation of the president (Mr Inonu). His intervention is interpreted by the Opposition as a first step towards giving the President of the Republic a status above party Strife, and enabling him to act as an impartial arbiter between the political parties-.