Turkey has noticed the Kremlin’s state-sponsored Islamophobia against Muslims in Russia. Although unofficially and not through the mouths of official representatives of this country, at least through its leading global Turkish television company — TRT. Yesterday, its English-language website, which is read by millions of people around the world, published an article with the telling title «Is Russia on the way to marginalizing its Muslim population? And although there is a question mark at the end of the title, the content of the article leaves no doubt that it is left there only for diplomatic reasons, because after reading it there is no doubt about this.
The article, which would fit perfectly on the pages of opposition Russian-speaking Islamic media, lists the main problematic aspects of the relationship between the Russian state and its Muslims, both in the past and in the present. It describes Catherine the Great’s policy of taming the Russian Muslim community, Russia’s conquest of the Caucasus, and the suppression of Chechnya’s struggle for independence at the turn of the last century and the present.
Analyzing the current Russian establishment’s attitude toward Islam, the author concludes: «Moscow sees Islam as a transnational militant challenge that threatens Russia’s neighborhood.»
The author then goes on to describe and analyze the current state of state-Islamic relations in Russia. She rightly notes that the concept of so-called «traditional Islam» in the mouth of Kremlin propaganda has nothing to do with how this concept is understood among Muslims themselves. As an adequate illustration, Putin’s words that hijab is not part of this so-called «traditional Islam» of Russia are mentioned. Based on this, and understanding the essence of the problem, she concludes that the so-called «traditional Islam» according to the Kremlin, or rather «Russian traditional Islam,» is nothing more than a euphemism for defining Islam rigidly formatted under post-Soviet Russian realities. This description is very accurate because, for example, despite all the criticism of pre-revolutionary Russian policy, starting with Catherine the Great, it did not interfere in the internal affairs of Muslims and did not decide which clothing or other attributes could be considered traditional and which could not.
In the last part of the article, the author writes about the worsening situation of Muslims after the adoption of the Yarovaya laws and in connection with the completely arbitrary practice of banning Islamic literature by Russian courts, including such works as the 40 Hadiths of Imam Nawawi, the works of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, or the translations of the meanings of the Koran by the authoritative religious scholar Elmir Kuliev.
«Just as in the case of China, which oppresses Uighur Muslims, one should ask how far the Russian authorities will go in regulating Islam in the country. To what extent will a significant part of its population be marginalized, and how draconian will be the measures used to suppress the identity of millions of Muslims who are unlikely to tolerate this for much longer,» the author boldly concludes.
And now let us remember that all this was published on the website of the country’s main news agency, essentially the Turkish equivalent of Russia Today. Does this mean a change in Turkish state policy on this issue? Yes and no.
On the one hand, it is to the credit of TRT journalists that they actively report on the persecution of Uyghurs and other Muslims in China, which unfortunately cannot be said of official Ankara, which avoids this issue in its relations with Beijing. On the other hand, it is obvious that in the most important international state media company, which is TRT, the publication of such material requires a certain «signal»…
So how should we take it in this case? As a one-time reaction to one of the many unfriendly actions of pro-Kremlin propaganda in Turkey? Or as the beginning of the unpacking of the «Russian Muslim issue» similar to the Uighur issue?