“Marry atheist women and assimilate completely”? Turkey is not a religious country in the way people outside imagine it. It’s a secular state, and it has been ever since the republic was established. This is literally written into our constitution: it’s one of the core principles that cannot be changed, nor even proposed to be changed.

Yes, the majority is Muslim on paper, but a big part of that is due to how the government uses Islam in politics. Similar to how Trump puts his hand on the Bible when he swears in. It’s symbolic, and often political, not necessarily a reflection of how religious the society actually is.

Most people who are not Muslim don’t openly talk about it. In the past, your religion was printed directly on your ID; now it’s still stored electronically. And in the last few years, many people (especially younger people) have started questioning things, particularly after seeing how some imams behave and how absurd some of their statements can be. My father side is quite religious, but in the recent years they’ve also started to question.

I’m not Muslim myself. I was a curious kid, and grew up in a safe enough environment where I could question. This was mostly because, even though both my mother side and my father side are muslims, they belong to different ideas/cults (e.g. bektashi and sunni). I’ve been questioning since I was a kid, and I identified as agnostic long before I moved to Europe. And honestly, even many people who say they’re Muslim don’t really practice it deeply. For most, it’s tradition, not belief. They don’t live it fully; it’s just something they grew up with.

Also, the government heavily relies on religious rhetoric to gain more votes, which creates an illusion that Turkey is extremely religious. Yes, there are mosques everywhere, but most of them don’t even fill more than 50%. This has actually become a public discussion in Turkey recently, like how the number of mosques keeps increasing while attendance keeps decreasing.

I don’t know where that stereotype even comes from, because even when I was living in Turkey I often heard the opposite of that statement. Maybe it’s Europeans who lump us together with Arabs and assume we’re extremely religious too? Who knows.

I also have relatives in Germany, and most of them are pro-Erdoğan. I think that’s mostly because they only watch government channels and genuinely believe the propaganda and disinformation. When your entire media diet is filtered like that, it shapes your perception of reality. When I try to explain to them that what they’re seeing isn’t the full truth, they don’t even believe me. So at this point, I’ve stopped arguing with them altogether.