Religion
There are no statistics of people's religious beliefs nor is it asked in the census. According to the government, 99.8% of the Turkish population is Muslim, mostly Sunni, some 10 to 15 million are Alevis. The remaining 0.2% is other - mostly Christians and Jews. The Eurobarometer Poll 2005 reported that in a poll 96% of Turkish citizens answered that "they believe there is a God", while 1% responded that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force". In a Pew Research Center survey, 53% of Turkey's Muslims said that "religion is very important in their lives". Based on the Gallup Poll 2006-08, Turkey was defined as More religious, in which over 63 percent of people believe religion is important. According to the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, 62% of women wear the headscarf or hijab in Turkey. 33% of male Muslim citizens regularly attend Friday prayers.
Religious groups according to estimates:
- Muslim - 96.83% (80-85% Sunni, 15-20% Alevi)
- Christian - 0.13% (60% Armenian Orthodox, 20% Syrian Orthodox, 10% Protestant, 8% Chaldean Catholic, 2% Greek Orthodox)
- Jewish - 0.03% (96% Sephardi, 4% Ashkenazi)
- Bahá'í Faith - 0.01%
- Atheist - 3%
The vast majority of the present-day Turkish people are Muslim and the most popular sect is the Hanafite school of Sunni Islam, which was officially espoused by the Ottoman Empire; according to the KONDA Research and Consultancy survey carried out throughout Turkey on 2007:
- 40.8% defined themselves as "a religious person who strives to fulfill religious obligations" (Religious)
- 42.3 % defined themselves as ""a believer who does not fulfill religious obligations" (Not religious).
- 2.5% defined themselves as "a fully devout person fulfilling all religious obligations" (Fully devout).
- 10.3% defined themselves as "someone who does not believe in religious obligations" (Non-believer).
- 4.1% defined themselves as "someone with no religious conviction" (Atheist).
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Turkey
Famous quotes containing the word religion:
“Magic is the envelopment and coercion of the objective world by the ego; it is a dynamic subjectivism. Religion is the coercion of the ego by gods and spirits who are objectively conceived beings in control of nature and man.”
—Richard Chase (b. 1914)
“Whereas Freud was for the most part concerned with the morbid effects of unconscious repression, Jung was more interested in the manifestations of unconscious expression, first in the dream and eventually in all the more orderly products of religion and art and morals.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to children by the hands of storytellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the philosophers celebrate in vain. And nothing stands between the people and the fictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal truths, and that there is nothing in religion but fiction.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)