Is Islamophobia on the rise in Turkey?
A researcher in Turkey’s southeast says radical Islamist groups and the bloodshed in Syria have fueled estrangement from Islam in the Kurdish-majority region, where Islamist-secularist tensions have simmered for decades.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Rising Islamophobia has recently manifested itself in rallies organized across Europe by a group called Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West. Surveys show negative perceptions of Islam are on the rise in the United States as well. But is Islamophobia an issue unique to non-Muslim countries, as many might assume? Not so, according to Mehmet Yanmis, a scholar of religious sociology at Dicle University in Diyarbakir, the largest city of Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast.
In an interview with Al-Monitor, Yanmis said the rise of the Islamic State (IS) and its slaughter of civilians had fueled Islamophobia in Muslim societies as well, a process he believes will strengthen trends toward secularization.
