The holy pollster

Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) is so rich (its budget surpasses that of a dozen ministries combined) that it regularly produces data for social and political sciences.

In a poll it carried out last year, its pollsters asked Turks a set of entertaining questions, including:

- Do you play loto (a football betting game)?
- When you visit a friend’s home, do men and women sit in separate rooms?
- Is it a sin to drink but not to get drunk?
- Do you use bank loans on interest?
- Do you tell small lies?
- Do you cover your head when you go out?
- Do you think angels visit homes where inhabitants keep dogs as pets?
- How devout is your family?
- Do you consider a political candidate’s piety when voting?

In July, Diyanet released the findings of another research for which it polled 21,632 Turks – an unusually large sample size. Some of the findings are even more entertaining than the questions asked in last year’s poll. Some findings are not interesting at all. For instance, at times like this when even Satan, out of fear, would say he is a devout Muslim to any government pollster, Diyanet found that 99.2 percent of Turks are Muslims.

Moreover, we learned that 87.5 percent of Turks were either “devout” or “very devout.” Similarly, 87.1 percent said they raise their children in line with “Islamic sensitivities.” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should be proud.

It was good to learn from Diyanet that more than 78 percent of Turks thought it was a big sin to lie. That must explain why Turks almost never lie. I smiled, though, when I learned from the survey that nearly 42 percent of Turks are capable of reading the Quran in Arabic. If you consider the...