Ataman Hotel - Turkey -

RELIGION

The Turkish population is 99% Muslim, mostly of the Sunni creed; there are groups of Shütes in the east and south-east. As nonmuslim groups make up less than 1 % of the population, to talk about Turkish religion is to talk about Islam.
The story of Islam's founding is covered in the History section.

Principles of Islam

The basic beliefs of Islam are these: God (Allah) created the world and everything in it pretty much according to the biblical account. In fact, the Bible is a sacred book to Muslims. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus were prophets. Their tcachings and revelations are accepted by Muslims, except for Jesus' divinity and his status as saviour. Jews and Christians are called `People of the Book', meaning those with a revealed religion that preceded Islam. The Koran prohibits enslavement of any People of the Book. Jewish prophets and wise men, and Christian saints and martyrs, are all accepted as holy in Islam.

The Koran

God's revelations to Muhammed are contained in the Kur'an-i Kerim, the Holy Koran. Muhammed recited the Suras (verses or chapters) of the Koran in an inspired state. They were written down by followers, and are still regarded as the most beautiful, melodic and poetic work in Arabic literature, sacred or profane. The Koran, being sacred, cannot be translated. It exists in its true form in Arabic only.

The Islamic Commonwealth

Ideally, Islam is a commonwealth, a theocracy, in which the religious law of the Koran is the only law - there is no secular law. Courts are religious courts. In Turkey and several other Muslim countries, this belief has been replaced by secular law codes. By contrast, Ayatollah Khomeini attempted to do away with secular law and return to the exclusive use of Islamic law in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In Saudi Arabia, religious law of the strict Wahhabi sect rules as well.

Religious Duties & Practices

To be a Muslim, one need only submit in one's heart to God's will and perform a few basic and simple religious duties:
One must say, understand and believe, `There is no god but God, and Muhammed is his Prophet'.
One must pray five times daily: at dawn, at noon, at mid-afternoon, at dusk and after dark.
One must give alms to the poor.
One must keep the fast of Ramazan, if capable of doing so.
One must make a pilgrimage to Mecca once during one's life, if possible.

LANGUAGE

Turkish is the dominant language in the Turkic language group which also includes such less-than-famous tongues as Kirghiz, Kazakh and Azerbaijani. Once thought to be related to Finnish and Hungarian, the Turkic languages are now seen as comprising their own unique language group. You can find people who speak Turkish, in one form or another, from Belgrade all the way to Xinjiang in China.

In 1928, Atatürk did away with the Arabic alphabet and adopted a Latinbased alphabet much better suited to easy learning and correct pronunciation. He also instituted a language refomy to purge Turkish of abstruse Arabic and Persian borrowings, in order to rationalise and simplify it. The result is a logical, systematic and expressive language which has only one irregular noun (su, `water'), one irregular verb (etmek, `to be') and no genders. It is so logical, in fact, that Turkish grammar formed the basis for the development of Esperanto, an artificial international language.