The fourth graders in this “Basis of Orthodox Culture” class are discussing some pretty heavy duty concepts.

“God is a creator,” says the teacher. “How do you understand this? what does it mean?”

A small girl answers, “he created the whole world.”

The teacher is using brand new textbooks and audio/visual materials prepared by the education ministry.

This little classroom in St. Petersburg is one of the fruits of a two-decades-long battle by the Russian Orthodox Church to introduce religious education into every school in Russia. Church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin says it was a tough slog.

“We had very uneasy and sometimes emotional discussions with some state officials,” said Chapin. “Some members of the pedagogical bureaucracy are still very much Soviet-minded.”

In the end, Chaplin says, the church is pleased with the outcome.

“I think both children and their parents understand that such an education brings more ethics into the life of the child and the family, it brings more understanding of what is the difference between a Muslim and a Jew and a Christian and a non-believing person,” Chaplin says.

But the new course wasn’t what the church bargained for. Analysts say the Church had to accept compromise with the deeply secular Russian state bureaucracy. The Church initially pushed for religion classes only on Russian Orthodox Christianity.

While polls find that between 70 and 80 percent of Russians consider themselves Orthodox believers, many are clearly uncomfortable mixing religion and secular education. Nationwide, only a third of parents chose the class on Orthodoxy for their children.

One mother, Natalia Sapruga, who considers herself a devout Orthodox Christian, says religion doesn’t belong in public schools.

“We think religion is a really private matter and religious education should start in the family and continue in the church,” says Sapruga. “That’s why we chose this secular ethics course that is aimed at helping our children developing qualities like honesty, kindness and justice.”

At this “basis of secular ethics” course, the class is discussing Abraham and his importance to both Jews and Muslims. The class is the most popular of the six choices, both nationally and at this school. In fact here, only four out of the 110 fourth graders take the Russian Orthodox class.

Teacher Natalia Savinova says the class may be so popular because it goes beyond religion. She says parents want their children to be more moral people but don’t feel confident in their ability to teach them at home.

“This class has been introduced, I think, because families don’t give enough time to the upbringing of their children and have placed this responsibility on the shoulders of the school,” says Savinova. “The course has the potential to affect the upbringing of children and is meant to help solve the problem of morality in Russia.

The third most popular course is a survey of world religions. In addition to that course, the secular ethics curriculum and the class in Russian Orthodoxy, there are basic courses in Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. Political commentator Konstantin Von Eggert says the Russian Orthodox church may not have gotten what it had hoped for, but he commends the church’s efforts to make itself more relevant in today’s society.

“Our hierarchy can not just sit and think that because we are in theory an Orthodox majority country they can have their cup of coffee,” Von Eggert says.

As a national church, Russian Orthodoxy has never had to compete with other faiths, Von Eggert says. Until now. He says the fight for hearts and minds will make the church stronger. However Russian parents choose to teach religion to their children, it probably wont be through education in public schools.

“Assalamu Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuh” says host Rustem Arifdghanov, a seasoned Azeri journalist who also heads the channel. He says the mission is to reconnect Russian Muslims with their faith after 70 years of enforced atheism during the Soviet era.

“It was a big break so many Muslims don’t know what Islam is,” Arifdghanov says. “We would like this channel to tell the real story of Russian Islam, not Arabic, Turkish or Iranian Islam.”

But the goal isn’t just to re-acquaint some Russians with their heritage. Armed Islamic militants are fighting several violent insurgencies across Russia’s northern Caucasus. So Arifdghanov says another important mission for AL RTV is to encourage “moderate” Islam by filling the information vacuum for Russian Muslims.

“What is Islam like in reality?” says Arifdghanov. “What is the history of our ancestors? Is it true that Muslims have peacefully coexisted with Christians in Russia for centuries? We will give answers to these pointed questions. And we will have more influence than those preachers who want to persuade people to pick up arms to fight for mythical Wahabi or Salafi Islam.

The problem is partially a result of the failure by the state to offer serious resources for Islamic education in Russia, says religion analyst Geraldine Fagan from the Forum 18 news service. So starting 20 years ago, many Muslims went abroad to study.

A talk show underway at Al RTV. (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

“The government decided they should try and counter this influence by encouraging a moderate homegrown version of Islamic education,” Fagan says.

Experts see the new state-supported channel as part of this new approach by the Russian state.

Timur Bulgakov, a producer at AL RTV, says the tone of the channel will be secular, informative and fun. It will be celebratory during holidays and appeal to several generations of Russian Muslim families. Content-wise, he says, the enormous cultural diversity of Muslims in Russia provides plentiful material.

“And although the channel is in Russian, we will leave in the original languages to show the rich variety of Russia’s many Muslim regions,” Bulgarkov says. The audience will be able to enjoy the sound of languages like Avar, Chechen, Ingush, Tatar, Bashkir and Udmurt.

In an editing booth, editors are adding Russian subtitles to a show about cooking, in a Dagestani language.

Islam experts say the channel will be a success if it can foster dialog between Russia’s disparate Muslim communities. Alexander Sotnichenko, at the St. Petersburg State University, says the Russian state is good at dealing with insurgents in only two ways: using money and force. But the state is horrible at dialogue with religious communities about what it means to be a citizen of the Russian Federation.

“It is weak in identity,” Sotnichenko says. “We have to present a new project of post-Soviet new Russian identity. 20 years now after the fall of the Soviet Union but we don’t have this project. Is Russia a national state? Or is it an empire? What is it? We don’t know.”

The questions are so difficult, Sotnichenko says, because even Russia’s governing party doesn’t know the answer.
“And that’s why they are afraid of discussion,” Sotnichenko says. “But we need this discussion, and maybe in this discussion we will find the new Russian identity.”

Al RTV could be a hopeful sign he says. But with political violence by Islamic groups spreading to other Russian regions beyond the Caucasus, pressure is growing for some kind of a more aggressive non-military approach.

“There is no logic, there is no any sense when experts say that this is extremism and this is not,” says Yaroslav Sivulski, a member of the church’s presiding committee.

“We are very active,” Sivulski says. “We are preaching, we approach people at home, we are preaching on the street, we are visible. Maybe it’s [that] our activities could be viewed like a threat to [the] Orthodox Church.”

The church had 40,000 members when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. They now have 165,000. Church leaders say they’re being persecuted as extremists, when all they’re doing is peacefully following their religion.

“The anti-extremist law in Russia is very problematic precisely because it is so broad and vague,” says Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch. Human rights groups like hers have condemned the law on many fronts.

“It is essentially designed for selective use and sometimes it is being arbitrarily used, including against religious minorities,” says Lokshina.

Lokshina says the law has been used to go after “sects.” She notes that writings by L. Ron Hubbard made it onto the Federal List of Extremist Materials. The list has more than 1500 titles, half of which are religious. Geraldine Fagan is a religion analyst from the Forum 18 news service.

“There was an attempt recently to ban the Hare Krishna’s most revered text which didn’t work, partly because there was such an outcry in India,” Fagan says.

Fagan says that every extremism case she’s looked at has centered on charges that one religion has said that it’s better than others. She says the strategy is identical to how authorities treated any kind of dissent during the Soviet era.

“And there’s in fact an uncanny parallel between cases against Jehovah’s Witnesses now and the types of things which were happening in Soviet times in the 60s, 70s and 80s, right down to the use of the world ‘extremism,” Fagan says.

The extremism law is used against groups directly connected to violence, such as militant Islamic groups in the north Caucasus and neo-nazis. Its prosecution of religious minorities raises a lot of concerns. The Russian Orthodox Church denies that state authorities are acting on its behalf by cracking down on the competition, but Church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin says that Jehovah’s Witnesses should be prevented from using inflammatory language, like calling the Russian Orthodox Church a false church.

“Some of the texts which they disseminate hurt the Orthodox Christians,” Chaplin says. “Sometimes they use toward us very impolite phrases which I can easily call extremist.”

The US Council on International Religious Freedom says the situation in Russia is “deteriorating” as the government increasingly uses the extremism law against peaceful religious groups and individuals. Five years ago, the law dropped the requirement for the use or threat of violence. And starting next year, participating in a “banned group” will be punishable by three years in prison.

The idea was cooked up in the Gulloglu baklava shop in Istanbul. In the shop’s six decades in business, only three other historical figures, all Turks, have been so honored. Owner Nadir Gullu says the portraits require enormous craftsmanship.

“Under the command of one chef with five assistants, it takes 10 days to make one,” Gullu says. “In each piece of baklava there are 55 layers of pastry. It’s all handmade and is very hard. Obama’s big ears made it very difficult, but we managed.”

Gullu doesn’t like politics. But he says he and other Turks had high expectations of Obama and they were dashed.

A Gulloglu shop manager and the Barack Obama baklava. (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

The shop smells sweet, of butter and syrup, an ambiance not conducive to talking politics.

Turks were clearly excited by Obama’s visit in April of 2009. But as chef Gullu says, disappointment soon set in.

“When Obama first came to power all the countries of the world cheered him and declared him an angel,” says mechanic Enes Durmus. “But I said then and I say now, ‘it doesn’t matter who is in power, the foreign policy of the United States will never change.”

Indeed, Obama did try to tamp down the high expectations during his visit. He said that US foreign policy is a big ship which takes a long time to turn around.

Ayten Sucu, a biology teacher, says she’d still vote for Obama.

“I think he has solved problems which other presidents have been unable to, like health care reform. His own mother suffered from cancer and had trouble getting medicine. He cares about how the lower classes of society feel. He feels close to those people,” Sucu says.

Another customer Aykut Calikusu says he supports Romney. But for a different reason: Obama is too close to Israel.
“Even though they say that Obama is a Muslim, I think Romney will have closer relations with Turkey than with the Jews,” Calikusu says.

With the Syrian civil war heating up on Turkey’s southern border and escalating attacks by Kurdish militants, Turks have not been focusing much on the US elections. Just ask anyone at the Gulloglu shop. Most will tell you: they’re much more interested in baklava than the Baracklava.

The reawakening of religion in Russia, 20 years after the end of the athiest Communist system, comes as the church tries to find a new place and relevance in Russian society.

Theologically, Russian Orthodox Christianity has always focused more on the spiritual world, following rituals and living a life free of sin, than on the earthly “good works” practiced by western churches. So a mobile soup kitchen in St. Petersburg is actually not the first place you’d expect to find an Orthodox church group.

Nikolai Fomitcheff, a leather designer, is a volunteer. Fomitcheff says that churches in Russia are getting more crowded. He notices it at every service. The church is also becoming more socially active: a change he attributes to Patriarch Kirill, who took over in 2009. Fomitcheff says the church’s social activism is a way to reach out and offer comfort to believers who feel lost in the modern world.

“World events are making people think about the meaning of their lives and why they are here,” says Fomitcheff. “And in our church we have a lot of young people.”

Russians are still figuring out what role the church should play. (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

“I think his primary motivation is to raise the profile of the church in society,” says religion analyst Geraldine Fagan. She says Kirill is more of a politician and diplomat than a pastor. So Kirill is trying to make the church more relevant, through social work, religious education and active engagement on social issues, like homosexuality.

“If the church actually is to have a future, then it has to be present in society,” Fagan says. “And I think he would understand it in those sort of terms.”

At the recent Queerfest in St. Petersburg, activist Olga Lenkova says the gay community feels singled out by a more confident church.

“The church has very strong anti-gay rhetoric, its getting stronger and stronger all the time,” says Lenkova. “Five years ago, they would ignore the issue and now they say homosexuality is a sin.”

Lenkova says the church’s new activism has enabled politicians to use the increasingly conservative mood of Russians to distract public attention away from real social ills. The most controversial measure, supported by the church, is a ban on “homosexual propaganda.” Legislator Vitaly Milonov says the law represents the morality of a large part of Russian society. And he denies the public criticism that the church had anything to do with writing the law.

“This is a problem of conflict inside our society, not inside our church,” says Milonov. “Because our society is split into two different parts, one direction is moving toward absolute freedom, and another part is trying to conserve our country, key values, stone values to build a house called Russia.”

Russian spirituality doesn’t get much stronger than at the Sergiyev Posad monastery. From here, Russia’s patron saint, Sergius, helped unite Russians against Mongol control in the 14th century. Today its one of the holiest places in Russia. And many would say, the keeper of the spirit of Russian Orthodox Christianity.

Outside, worshiper Yulia, who like many Russians doesn’t give her family name to strangers, says the church doesn’t belong in politics. But it should speak loudly about issues dear to Russians like: “confirming moral values,” she says. “Including fighting with such things as homosexuality, which should be in the blood of each normal person. The so-called freedoms you have in Europe and the US are not suited for us, they would be the ruin of us Russians and our souls.

But the church clearly faces a big job filling the pews with the faithful. Many Russians do support the position and moral authority of the church; it’s the institution they distrust. Anthropologist Jeanna Kormina says that most Russians identify themselves as religious but almost none go to church.

“This is also a question of control and freedom,” says Kormina. “People want to be religious and want to be Russian Orthodox. But they don’t want to be under control of someone they don’t trust, they don’t trust the institution.”

In fact, statistics show that more than 70 percent of Russians consider themselves Orthodox believers. But only one percent go to church even monthly.

At a recent opposition rally in Moscow, some of the banners and slogans normally directed at President Vladimir Putin also attacked the Russian Orthodox Church, seen as a key Kremlin ally. Gleb Pavlovsky, who was a Kremlin political adviser for 15 years until he was fired last year, said Russia has been deeply affected by Pussy Riot.

“There is a tremendous split,” he said. “I know a lot of families in Russia in which the topic of Pussy Riot is forbidden to talk about at the dinner table.”

Pavlovsky attributes the political muscle of the Orthodox Church to Russia’s immature political culture. Simply put, politicians are losing credibility and there is no other game in town. The Pussy Riot case brought this trend out into the open.

“It has shown that in our culture, a secular alternative has not yet formed,” Pavlovsky said. “That’s why many so people turned directly from the religious indifference of the Soviet years into fierce religious warriors.”

The divisiveness of the Pussy Riot trial has fuelled talk about two Russias. Pyotr Verzilov, husband of convicted Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, said the government has used the case as a wedge between two Russias. One – urban, educated and worldly – supports Pussy Riot.

“And the other Russia, lives in small cities or villages, doesn’t use Internet, is very disconnected from mainstream media and from mainstream western culture and to that portion of society,” Verzilov said. “It was very easy to explain that what Pussy Riot did was some horrible blasphemous act they should be brutally punished for.”

A protester at a recent Moscow opposition rally. (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

Politically, some commentators see the Pussy Riot uproar as a victory for President Putin in the short-term.

“He made the church fend for him, fend for the Kremlin, pretending rather that it was solely an offense to religion rather than an offense to the Kremlin and Putin personally,” said Konstantin von Eggert from Komersant FM in Moscow. “And it presented the opposition as a bunch of marginal idiots whose idea of being in opposition is dancing in churches.”

This political maneuvering between the Kremlin and the church was the result of a few church officials, according to Priest Georgi Mitrofanov. He said most church officials are indifferent to politics. Mitrofanov agrees that the Kremlin used the church for political cover.

“That’s why I think the church should be keep a maximum distance from the state, so that the state won’t be able to use the church to protect its own actions,” Mitrofanov said.

Among politicians who support close ties between the state and the church is Vitaly Milonov. He is a legislator in the regional parliament of St. Petersburg from the governing United Russia Party. Milonov makes no apologies for using the levers of the state to protect religious belief.

“This faith should be protected because faith is the most deep inside tender feeling,” he said. “If we protect health, we protect private property, why should not we protect faith?”

At the end of the interview, legislator Milonov shared his frank opinion about living in a democratic society.

LGBT protestors at a recent Moscow opposition rally hold an image of the three Pussy Riot women as the Holy Trinity in a Russian Orthodox-style Christian icon. (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

“Most of the people in Russia, they absolutely agree that this action should be punished,” Milonov said. “Without any doubt. Of course there are a certain number of people whose reaction is different. But no, we are living in a democratic society. Unfortunately.”

A good number of those who feel differently are young people. Religion analyst Geraldine Fagan said Russians over 30 grew up in the Soviet era when the church was a symbol of resistance to state oppression. So they are used to giving the church the benefit of the doubt.

“The younger generation whose conscious experience is really only living under Putin, what they know is a privileged church, a church that’s shown on television, a church that’s allied with the regime. And they think negatively about the regime,” Fagan said. “For them, I think there isn’t this automatic feeling of support for the church when something like this happens.”

While the Communist state tried to crush the church, analysts note the government today is trying co-opt it. The Russian parliament introduced a bill on Wednesday enacting criminal penalties for “offending religious feelings.”

“Any civil society which respects itself, at some point starts to understand that it is not possible to live only on the grants which come from abroad,” Lukashevich said. “There are other sources of financing, including inner sources of course, which help NGOs to exist and solve tasks. I don’t see anything dramatic here.”

NGOs are often the favored means of western governments to help develop “transitional” countries, such as those in Eastern Europe. They work in areas like democracy-building, environmental protection and public health. Often staffed by educated young people, Western policy-makers say they allow local people to build local institutions. At Moscow’s Komersant FM, commentator Konstantin von Eggert said that in Russia, the government views them as dangerous because they are beyond state control.

“Putin sees Western-funded NGOs as direct agents of regime change in Russia,” Von Eggert said. “These entities of course don’t have any other sources of financing, because Russian businesses and Russian charitable foundations will never give them money because by monitoring elections they play against the Putin regime. So they have to rely on Western funding.”

In the Moscow office of vote-monitoring NGO Golos, the Russian national seal and the Russian word for "elections." (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

In its statement Tuesday, the Russian foreign ministry accused the US government of exerting influence, through grants, on Russian politics and elections. One Russian NGO frequently accused of furthering foreign interests is Golos, Russian for “voice.” It has a $3 million USAID project to help monitor elections. Project manager Ksenia Sokolova said that journalists and political parties will still be free to monitor elections, but Golos will not be able to help train and coordinate in the same way.

“Golos was like the main trainer, the main organization which provided materials, expertise, knowledge and trainers to educate observers,” Sokolova said. “It’s just another step to close NGOs who are trying to tell the truth.”

Almost all of the funding came from USAID she said, funding which is impossible to find from Russian sources. Sokolova also rejected accusations by the Russian government that Golos and other NGOs are following orders from foreign governments.

“The process of financing starts with our application,” she said. “We say, ‘Guys, we Russian people want to do something good for Russian people, we don’t have Russian money. Can you please support some democratic initiative in Russia. Can you give us money?’”

Project manager Ksenia Sokolova, in the office of Golos, holding the Sherlock Holmes doll, symbolizing the group's dogged search for electoral irregularities. (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

Other NGOs that have nothing to do with democratic institutions will also close up. USAID funds 100 percent of the budget of the Russian Health Care Foundation. Its $10 million budget goes to help improve tuberculosis treatment. Director Dmitry Goliaev is grim about the future after October 1, 2012.

“Nothing will happen,” Goliaev said. “The project will be closed.”

Russia has a high rate of tuberculosis. Goliaev’s NGO is trying to improve the efficiency of treatment that will help slow the spread of new cases. He said that Russia also spends the most money in the world on tuberculosis treatment per patient, without results.

“Efficiency is very poor,” Goliaev said. “That’s why our task to prepare scheme[s], to prepare technology, to prepare program[s], is less costly and more efficient.”

Critics charge the Russian government with deepening the country’s isolation and turning back the development of its democratic institutions. But the government may score points by kicking out Western projects on the grounds that Russia can do the job just fine on its own.

Muslims in China make up less than 2 percent of the population. But that’s still 23 million people, almost the population of Texas. And Zhang Jian from the Chinese state religious body, says the exhibition is meant to inform international audiences about the richness of Islamic culture in China.

“To know more about how Chinese Muslims live their lives in China and how they live their religious life,” says Jian.

There’s a lot of rumors he says, that the Chinese government prevents Muslim men from wearing beards for example, or that it stops women from covering their heads.

It’s not true, he says. Muslims live freely in China and the exhibits are proof of this reality.

“The reasons we hold such kind of activity, to know what really happens in China,” he says.

The exhibition features traditional songs and dances by two Muslim performing groups. The Uygur dancers are dressed in intensely colorful costumes as they perform tightly choreographed songs and dances. But unlike the music, and the rosy picture painted by the government official, life for Uygurs in China isn’t especially joyful.

“I don’t want to speak Chinese,” says a Uygur émigré I spoke to at the performance. She didn’t want to use her name, fearing reprisals against her family in Xinjiang. She says the Chinese government is trying to wipe out the Uygur language.

“I’m afraid for the future. I fear for the Uygur language that everyone will forget it everywhere it’s only Chinese,” she says.

The woman says the Chinese government is trying to assimilate Uygurs by force, eliminating Uygur-language education and giving economic opportunities only to the majority ethnic Han Chinese.

Human Rights Watch concurs. A recent report said, “under the guise of counterterrorism and anti-separatism efforts, the government maintains a pervasive system of ethnic discrimination against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities.” Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, in Turkey, the people and government are sensitive to Uygur pleas. Hugh Pope is a Turkey analyst and author of “Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World“.

“Every Turkish school child is taught that the Uygurs are brothers,” says Pope. “Eight million people who are under Chinese sovereignty in Xinjiang, or as it used to be known East Turkestan, because it’s the eastern bit of where Turks still live in Central Asia, still in the Turkish consciousness as being a Turkic people, blood brothers according to the state ideology of the Turkish Republic.

China hopes that cultural exchanges like the one happening now will help ease Turks’ reservations about Muslims in China. But Pope says PR is probably not even needed. China’s economic power will always move Turkey more than the human rights of their Uygur brothers.

“Most people are interested in buying Chinese products, Turkish companies are building things in Chinese cities just like everyone else in the world,” Pope says. “We are seeing the beginning of a military relationship. Turkish leaders do go and visit Xinjian and wear Uygur dress. And China is happy with that because it shows that everything is alright.”

Turkey is a rising regional power but it’s still a medium-sized developing country. Its not in Turkey’s interest to have trouble with China, says Pope. Whats more, most of the Uygurs’ ancient cities have already been razed, to make way for new cities likely to be dominated by majority ethnic Han Chinese.

“Greek politicians gave the church immunity from taxation,” Zachariadis says. “This relationship gave the politicians more political power, a bigger audience and voter base. But at the same time, the state budget was losing an important source of revenue and running up a deficit.”

For its part, the Greek Church announced that it paid some $15 million in taxes last year. But no one knows the true extent of its wealth. The church is a complex organization of thousands of independent legal entities with enormous land holdings and economic enterprises. And it’s never had a comprehensive outside audit. He says the church needs to be held to more scrutiny under existing tax laws.

“We don’t want to punish anyone, but we want to spread the economic burden equally across society and to do what the bible says: whoever has two cloaks, should give one to the poor,” Zachariadis says.

But the church argues it’s already doing that.

The Church in the Streets program provides 1,300 boxed hot meals every day here in central Athens.

Nikos Ptsas says he wouldn’t survive without the church’s help.

“It’s very significant,” Ptsas says. “For me and everyone else around here, we would be starving right now if it weren’t for the church. It’s not in my character to steal so without the food from the church, I would be dead right now.”

The Church provides some 12,500 meals each day in Athens and many thousands more across the country. Father Ioannis Lambrou runs the program here. He says raising taxes on the church would diminish its ability to help people who need it.

“It would be a huge problem, and leave a huge gap in the church’s philanthropic work. Many of the church’s social institutions would have to limit their services or close down completely,” Lambrou says.

Church officials say the church has been hurt by Greece’s economic crisis as well. The income from its properties is down an average of 60 percent, either because tenants ask for rental reductions or simply leave. Bishop Gabriel, the chief secretary of the Holy Synod, or the ruling body of the Church of Greece, says the church resents accusations that it is removed from Greece’s social reality.

“We are a member of society,” says Gabriel. “We try to contribute to society positively, in order to promote development of the society. Spiritually but also materially, we try to do the best we can, to overcome this crisis. It is totally unfair, totally unfair.”

But there are privileges enjoyed by the church which does set it apart. Even as pressure grows on Greece to shrink its bloated civil service, public tax money continues to pay the salaries of the some 9,000 priests and other church officials.

A “tax the church” campaign on Facebook claims that amounts to more than $300 million per year. And that doesn’t include the cost of Church buildings.

“This is a sacred cow that no one dares touch,” says Panayote Dimitras, a human rights activist from the Greek Helsinki Monitor. He says there is no good reason why, in Europe in the 21st Century, the church should depend on the state and public tax money.

“I think this church should be fully independent from the state and get full control of its properties, of its staff, and be accountable for it the same way churches are in other countries of Europe. Or the same way other religions are in Greece,” Dimitras says.

There is a lot of economic plans being hashed out in Athens these days between the government and the troika of international lenders. But few expect the church to pay a larger share unless and until leftist parties come to power.

The Greek constitution says that while Orthodox Christianity is the “prevailing” religion of Greece, the state guarantees freedom of worship for all faiths. But it doesn’t look that way to many who aren’t Orthodox Christians. Like Muslims in this unofficial basement mosque in Athens.

The Greek government has not allowed an official mosque to be built in Athens since the country became independent from the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1821.

Ziad el-Sharkawi, born in Athens to Egyptian and Lebanese parents, says freedom of worship doesn’t mean the same thing for Christians and Muslims. “The difference is people pray in churches and I pray in an underground basement,” he says.

A 1936 law requires houses of worship to get a permit which Sharkawi says the government won’t hand out. At least not to Muslims. So this mosque is one of dozens in Athens alone operating illegally.

Authorities do turn a blind eye. But congregants say that’s only a half-way solution. The government plan to build an official mosque has been stalled for more than a decade.

At a nearby cafe, some local residents say they’re unhappy about their Muslim neighbors. Hristina Yanaki has lived in the neighborhood for 35 years. “If they build the mosque here in the neighborhood I would oppose it along with many others,” says Yanaki. “But if they want to build it on the top of a mountain I would have no problem.”

Thanos Plevris is a member of parliament for the right wing ruling New Democracy party. (Photo: Matthew Brunwasser)

“I don’t want to send the message to the illegal immigrants that here in Greece we are a friendly place for illegal immigrations,” says Plevris. “We have a huge problem with immigration. We have to solve this problem first. And then we can solve the problem with freedom of religion.”

Human rights groups say the issues are separate. And that it’s not just Muslims facing religious persecution. Panayote Dimitras, a human rights activist from the Greek Helsinki Monitor, says pure and simple, church and state are not separate in Greece.

“Not every state has to be like France, but no state should be like Greece,” says Dimitras. “Greece is a state which has nothing to do with the criterion of state neutrality vis-à-vis religions and respect of religious minorities that exist in all other European and North American countries.

One key example of that lack of neutrality, says Dimitras, is the oath taken by Greek parliamentarians.

Lots of places have lawmakers swear in with a holy book, if they choose. But this swearing in ceremony of the Greek Prime Minister in June was done in front of a group of black-robed Greek Orthodox bishops.

Such ceremonies are not officiated by high religious officials anywhere else in Europe, Dimitras says. But they are in Iran.

“The legal status is not the same for every church,” says Theodor Kontidis, a Catholic priest.

Kontidis says Catholics face administrative obstacles. While the state allows him to worship freely, Kontidis says the Orthodox church essentially controls state policy toward other religions.

Kontidis says: “The Orthodox Church is the state church and is the most important and very close to the state. For all other religious communities, something is problematic.”

As a result, Kontidis says, the Catholic Bishop is not recognized as the CEO of all the churches in his diocese. Paperwork and property decisions are a big headache. Panayote Dimitras, the human rights activist, says the idea of Greeks being of different faiths is foreign to Greeks. So foreign that religious minorities are dealt with by… the foreign ministry.

“Even with religious minorities, on serious issues, it’s a division of religious minority communities in the foreign ministry which deals,” says Dimitras. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs knows better about minorities.”

Until recently the official name for minority religions in Greece was “foreign dogmas.” Dimitras admits there have been some improvements in recent years. Laws preventing the opening of new temples of other religions have been relaxed or abolished. And while the law criminalizing proselytizing by other faiths remains on the books, it’s no longer enforced.

It came as a shock. The criminal indictment of internationally acclaimed Turkish pianist Fazil Say for insulting “religious values.” Say tweeted verses attributed to the Great Persian poet Omar KKhayyam a thousand years ago:

“You say rivers of wine flow in heaven, is heaven a tavern to you? You say two hours await each believer there, is heaven a brothel to you?”

Say faces up to 18 months in prison. But the charges are perhaps not such a surprise, coming amidst Turkey’s slow-motion avalanche of legal cases against writers, artists, activists, intellectuals and critics of the ruling AK Party government.

If Khayyam were to write about the hypocrisy of religious men in today’s Turkey, there’s a good chance he too would be dragged to court says Sanar Yurdatapan.

He should know. Yurdatapan has been a free speech activist for decades, including 12 years in exile. He says freedom of speech is at its lowest point since the AK Party took power 10 years ago. He says Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan uses Turkey’s strong economic growth and the AK party’s electoral support to justify attacks against critics.

“They have much confidence,” says Yurdatapan. “‘We got 50 percent of the votes.’ Okay you got 50 but there’s another 50. That’s also 50.”

Yurdatapan says Erdogan has gone mad with power, accusing critics of working against Turkey. As a result, fear about speaking about politics in public is growing.

“How can you say every second supports us?” says Yurdatapan. “I can also say every second person does not. But they feel that because they are strong at the moment. Unfortunately, the personality of Erdogan makes him feels like God.”

Eugene Schoulgin, the vice president of Pen International, says there were high hopes for free speech in Turkey when the AKP first took power. Now he says Turkey is among the world’s worst offenders.

“What is most shocking is to see how fast it goes in the wrong direction,” Schoulgin says. “In 2007, we had approximately 30 cases of journalists who were prosecuted for political reasons.”

Now there are more than 100 in jail he says, plus 200 more journalists and writers awaiting trial. That’s more journalists in jail than any other country. But at the same time, Schoulgin says, there is still real and open debate in Turkey.

“That is what makes turkey so difficult to really explain and so interesting also,” says Schoulgin. “Because in theory, this is an extremely advanced society, socially-spoken. They have all the structures in place which should indicate that they should be a full functioning democracy.”

While Turkey is no China or Iran, Clearly the system still needs work, says Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch. One major problem is that Turkish law gives public officials more protection from insult than citizens, which is the opposite of how democracies should operate.

“The state can not be criticized,” says Sinclair-Webb. “People at the top, the people in power are somehow immune from the dangerous people below them, and that they can speak as they want, and do what they want without transparency and without accountability to the population.”

Anti-terror laws are often used to convict people for non-violent political speech. Sinclair-Webb says the courts fail to throw out cases based on flimsy evidence.

“The principle of legality is so missing in all these prosecutions,” Sinclair-Webb says. “You are basically linking A to B to B to a terrorist organization on the basis of people’s social connections, networking and not on their activities. So terrorism becomes an infectious illness, that if you meet someone with a political involvement, you become infected by their political involvement.”

The prime minister counters that the journalists are not in jail because of their journalism. Some were accused of aiding terrorists; others were indicted for participating in a plot to overthrow the government.

Critics say that Erdogan’s hardening authoritarianism is unlikely to meet resistance from western governments. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring revolutions, the West needs Turkey to succeed – or it risks losing the one Middle East success story. The trial of Fazil Say is scheduled for October 18th.

One of its nostrils was suspiciously large. Authorities reckoned it was evidence that electronic surveillance equipment had been stuffed inside. For some Turks, it all added up to Israeli espionage. But could birds actually be spies?

“No,” says Ornithologist Cagan Sekercioglu from the University of Utah. He runs a bird-banding station in northwestern Turkey.

“The very word intelligence and intelligence gathering you obviously could not apply to birds, because creatures without intelligence cannot gather intelligence,” Sekercioglu says.

He says bird-banding is a valuable research tool to study birds’ migration routes. One wonders if the bird was a spook, why would it be clearly banded with the name of the country it was supposedly spying for?

Last year another banded bird caught the attention of authorities in Saudi Arabia. They detained a vulture which was also banded Tel Aviv Israel.

“Thankfully the Crown Prince was a smart guy who knew about science and wildlife research,” says Sekercioglu. “He said they are just studying this bird’s movements so let it go.”

Suspected animal conspirators are found beyond the avian variety. In 2010, Egyptian officials said they were investigating a shark attack in the Red Sea which killed a tourist. In a TV interview, Egyptian diving instructor Mustafa Ismail suggested Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, had changed shark behavior to disrupt Egyptian tourism. And, he suggested, they sent deadly jellyfish too.

But perhaps most mysterious was a report in 2007 in the official Iranian, Islamic Republic News Agency or IRNA.

Fourteen squirrels were “arrested” by Iranian intelligence. The IRNA report said the animals were “carrying spy gear of foreign agencies,” and that they “were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services.”

If the US were running a squirrel spying program, Peter Smallwood, a squirrel biologist from the University of Richmond, would probably be running it. He denies the existence of any such program, of course. And anyway, he says squirrels wouldn’t make very good spies.

“I think it’s easy to lure squirrels to a place to get something they want,” Smallwood says. “But that means you have to go there and put the stuff there. For intelligence work, you want to the squirrel to go out somewhere, not come to where you are, if you are going to put a person there to draw the squirrel in, you might as well have a person there to do the spying.”

Though he says squirrels might be cut out for some spy agency work.

“If you wanted a squirrel to just drive somebody crazy, that might be more useful but you’d need to be there with the squirrel,” Smallwood says.

The tensions between Israel and most of its neighbors show little sign of easing in the near future. Similarly, the rich flora and fauna of Middle East conspiracy theories probably won’t diminish anytime soon either.

“I was really upset,” said Erdemli. “Women are being excluded from religious practice, which is in itself un-Islamic. According to global surveys, women are more religious than men. But despite this, in many mosques, the facilities for women were either in bad condition or there was not enough space.”

While the investigators found that women weren’t intentionally excluded from mosques, neglect was widespread. Now Turkey is prosperous, and more importantly, with the Islamic AK Party in power, there exists the political will to fix the problem.

At the 16th Century Kilic Ali Pasa mosque, Imam Selman Okumus admits his mosque was part of the problem. “My mosque was like this. Some cables and different things were in the women section,” Okumus says.

In many mosques, the prayer area set aside for women is tiny, moldy and ugly. But Okumus is proud of the improvements made at his mosque. He shows me the new women’s bathroom, shiny and modern.

“They need slippers because they have to wash their feet,” he says.

Mosques have faucets so worshipers can ritually wash their feet before praying, but they’re only for men. Because women are uncomfortable washing in public and the facilities at mosques are often poor, they generally wash at home. Or they might decide its too much bother and just pray at home.

“They don’t want to show their bodies when they want to take ablution,” Okumus says.

So the mosque got a new machine which might make the difference for women: an electric foot-drier. It looks just like a hand drier, except that its placed near the floor at an angle comfortable to dry your feet.

And Okumus says changes like this appear to be working. Outside, worshiper Zeynep Gunay says public expressions of religion have become more socially acceptable in Turkey since the Islamic AK Party took power ten years ago. And Gunay says she feels the increase of female energy in mosques as well.

“It all started with special prayer times for women,” says Gunay. “And in the past, it used to be only old women who prayed. Now I notice that the average age of women in the mosques has gone down.”

Just a few years ago, she says, women could be forced out of the mosque during crowded prayer times, such as Friday afternoon, when the overflow of men would be channeled into the women’s section.

No one is suggesting that men and women should pray together. The idea is that women should be part of the same whole, separate but not isolated. Vildan Bilisik stopped by for prayers after her nearby marketing course given by an international cruise ship line. She says it’s important for everyone — men and women — to pray in the mosque.

“Praying with the community gives you a special kind of spirituality,” says Bilisik. “When you are praying alone, you might not be able to concentrate so well. Different ideas can pop up.”

Whatever pops up in Turkey’s eternally strained relations between piety and its secular state, analysts say the changes are part of the Islamic governing party’s efforts to extend religion into more spheres of public life.

Monique Jaques is doing important prep work for Europe’s latest dance craze. She’s helping to vacuum-seal sandwiches for dancers at Turkey’s first ever lunch beat. Jaques is a photographer from New Jersey. She’s helping organize the event because she likes the concept.

“Rather than sit in a cafe and have lunch for an hour, you can dance,” Jaques says.

It all began two years ago with 14 people dancing in a parking garage in Stockholm. The founder says she was inspired by the film Fight Club to write a manifesto for Lunch Beat.

“The first rule is if it’s your first time at Lunch Beat, you have to dance,” Jaques says. “The second rule is, if it’s your second time at Lunch Beat, you still have to dance.”

There are other rules. You don’t talk about your job at Lunch beat. Water must be served as well as a take-away meal. No alcohol or drugs. Lunch Beats can’t be longer than 60 minutes and must happen during “lunch time.”

“The manifesto is 10 rules that dictate what Lunch Beat is,” Jaques says. “If you follow those 10 rules, anyone can have a Lunch Beat, host a Lunch Beat.”

Another American DJ and co-organizer James Halliday is helping set up the venue, an underground concrete club in the Karakoy neighborhood.

“The music will be funky, it’ll be nothing too mainstream,” Halliday says. “We love the space, the vibe is very unpolished, it’s very – kind of – come as you are. It’s brief, hour, hour and a half, get in, get out, go back to work. Have fun.”

Halliday says Lunch Beat offers a great alternative to the packed weekend nightclub scene.

“People don’t need to be all over the place in terms of their obligations,” he says. “They can come here, dance, take a lunch on the way out and get back to it.”

When the crowd drifts in, curiosity appears stronger than the desire to dance. Most are Turks, Americans and Europeans of the artist, hipster tech and design variety. Amer Arab is a software engineer.

“I thought there would be alcohol, to be honest,” Arab says. “But there’s no alcohol. But it’s going to be a good party anyway. I’ve never danced sober, but I’m willing to try it.”

While the manifesto specifically calls for one hour of music, the event operates according to Turkish time, which is not so precise. The dance floor swells to 20-odd dancers, with a larger crowd lingering outside checking things out.

Selin Oransayoglu says dancing and club culture is still new in Istanbul and that Lunch Beat is a welcome development.

“But still the idea is weird for me,” he says. “Without alcohol, just a lunch, just sandwiches and stuff. You go to a club in the middle of the day and you just dance. Okay. Like a sport.”

Artist Selin Kocagoncu says Turks are still too concerned about the opinions of others to really let loose. But she expects they’ll be more comfortable next time.

“The idea is brilliant I think,” Kocagoncu says. “One hour, dance party. People overwork, start early and can’t get really a night’s rest. This is the perfect way to energize, actually re-energize and get your nutrition as well.”

One thing you won’t get is a shower before heading back to work. The first US lunch beat is planned for Wednesday (June 6) in Queens, New York.

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For the Geo Quiz, we are looking for a sea that borders six countries, including Turkey.

It is the source of a fish that is called the “rose” of this sea.

Black Sea is the answer to the Geo Quiz and anchovies are sold in Turkey as the “Rose of the Black Sea.”

Vendor in Istanbul. (Photo: David Trilling)

Yuksel Ozevin is singing about his pomegranates. Soft as compared with some of his colleagues. He says the new noise ordinance is ludicrous.

“Imagine going to a stadium to see a soccer game,” says Ozevin. “Would you enjoy the game without shouting? Bazaars are just like stadiums, if you can’t shout there is no joy.”

Mehmet Karlidag is letting shoppers know he is selling anchovies from the Black Sea, otherwise known as the Rose of the Black Sea. He says everyone knows they are much tastier than the ones from the Marmara Sea.

Shouting, Karlidag says, helps his customers make informed choices. Banning the practice makes no one happy.

“I swear its nothing but rubbish,” Karlidag says. “When we shout we attract customers. If I’m selling something for seven lira a kilo, and someone else for nine, they can come and buy from me if it suits them.”

City officials say they will respond to noise complaints first by giving vendors warnings. Then there will be fines. And finally, vendors could lose their licenses.

There’s no question that this market is a noisy place. But most shoppers don’t seem to mind. Turgut Denizci doesn’t get what all the fuss is about.

“This is a tradition normally, they shout their products,” Denizci says. “It doesn’t bother me, unless they go over the top and shout too much, but this is okay.

Denizci says the new law could change the feeling of Istanbul’s commercial culture.

“It will be quiet, it won’t have the same atmosphere,” he says. “This is not a supermarket, it’s an open air market.

But some think the tradition is annoying and backward. Kamuran Dericioglu hates shouting, and wishes Istanbul officials cracked down harder. She says shouting is characteristic of Turkey’s undeveloped society.

“When the level of education rises, the more enlightened people are, the more quietly they speak,” Dericioglu says. “The sellers are so economically deprived that think they will get what they want just by shouting loudly.”

When he sees my microphone, Mehmet Sami Eviz starts singing about his beautiful tomatoes, drumming on the tin bowl from his scale. Then a colleague joins in.

Eviz says he’s famous in the market for having the most beautiful singing voice. But he says the vendors are resigned to the noose tightening around their necks, so to speak.

“Personally I will not resist whatever the lawmakers decide,” Eviz says. “All of our necks will be thinner than a hair when our heads are placed in the guillotine.”

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