By Sa’ad Abdul Majid, IOL Correspondent
ISTANBUL, February 10 (IslamOnline.net) – Turkish authorities are racing time to put into effect a Supreme Court ruling on closing down and confiscating the funds and property of the National Youths Endowment, one of the main charities catering for more than 70,000 university students.
On February 6, the Supreme Court order the closure and confiscation of 126 students’ hostels, two orphanages and 900 offices owned and operated by the in different provinces.
The Administrative Court ruled on January 19 against a similar measure but the prosecutor general challenged the verdict with the Supreme Court which ruled in his favor.
The new ruling can not be appealed.
Anti-Secular
The prosecutor general accused the charity of engaging in several activities without the permission of the Endowment Authority.
The accusations also included propagating ideas running counter to the country’s secularism, drawn up by the republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as well as supporting the banned Islamic-leaning Welfare and Virtue parties.
Ataturk, considered the father of modern Turkey, drew up a secular constitution replacing the then Islamic caliphate.
The prosecutor presented to the court as evidence against the charity books, video tapes and magazines which allegedly propagate for an Islamic state.
He also accused the charity of sending graduates of Islamic schools, who were unable to join Turkish universities, to study in the Egyptian Al-Azhar University, the highest seat of leaning in the Muslim Sunni world.
In 2001, the Constitutional Court approved taking precautionary measures against the charity.
Catering for Youths
The National Youths Endowment, the largest in the country, was established in 1975.
It boasts more than 370,000 memberships with branches in all Turkish governorates.
The charity also runs two orphanages and some 126 youth hostels, catering for more than 15,000 university students, both males and females.
In early 2004, it launched, in tandem with the Anatolia youth magazine, a nationwide campaign to hand out one million copies of Noble Qur'an among Turkish citizens.
The campaign coincided with holding celebrations for Qur'an recitation in a number of Turkish cities and governorates with famous Qur'an reciters from several Islamic countries attending.
The drive came to face proselytizing activities, on the rise in the country since the EU accepted, in principle, to launch talks with Istanbul on joining the bloc.
The Turkish army warned in a report published Friday, December 31, that Protestant missionaries were planning to proselytize some 10 per cent of Turkey's 70 million population by 2020.
Approximately 99 percent of Turkey's population are Muslim, the majority of whom are Sunni.