One study in Turkey reported that 95% believe in
God while 74% identify as "
religious".[10][11] Another study conducted by the French company
Ipsos which interviewed 17,180 adults across 22 countries, stated that
atheists accounted for 7% of those who were interviewed from Turkey, while
agnostics accounted for 3%.[12]
Overview
It is difficult to quantify the number of
Deists,
atheists, and
agnostics in Turkey, as they are not officially counted in the national census unlike
Christians,
Jews, and other religious groups. But religious information on both online and physical
identity cards can either be blanked out or changed on the wish of the ID holder by requesting, with either a visit to the local municipal office or by an
e-signature in the official government website or app.[13][14][15] Since irreligiousness is not counted as “religion”, atheism,
agnosticism, and such are left as blanked out. Data also suggests that 85% of all irreligious people in Turkey are younger than 35.[16]
There is a stigma attached to being an atheist in Turkey, and thus a lot of the Turkish atheist community, rather than forming individual groups, teams, organizations and communities in real life, actively communicate with each other actively via internet forms and channels across many sites. But specially today, such beliefs being expressed freely or discussed in the public is not uncommon at all, and rather quite common.[17][18][19][20]
According to a poll made by MAK (Mehmet Ali Kulat of
Ankara) in 2017, 86% of the Turkish population declared they believe in
God. 76% declared they believe
Quran and other holy books came through
revelation by God, while 14% said that they don't believe that it did, and 10% did not answer.[21] According to a survey by the pollster
KONDA, the percentage of atheists in
Turkey has tripled in 10 years and rose from 1% in 2008 to 3% in 2018, while the percentage of non-believers passed from 1% to 2%. Among those aged between 15 and 29 years old, these figures rise to respectively 4% and 4%.[citation needed]
According to another poll made in 2019 by OPTİMAR, which interviewed 3,500 people 89.5% of those interviewed declared they believe in Islam, while 4.5% identified as Deists, 2.7% identified as agnostics, and 1.6% as atheists.[22]
A survey conducted by MAK in 2020 found that among the Turkish people interviewed, more than 8,000 young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 (82.8%) of the Turkish young adults identified "as a person who has religious beliefs", while 7.7% reported they have no belief, 9.5% gave no reply, and 72.7% believed in the afterlife, while 11.7% did not believe in it and 15.6% gave no reply.[23][24] Another poll conducted by Gezici Araştırma in 2020 interviewed 1,062 people in
12 provinces and found that 28.5% of the
Generation Z in Turkey identify as irreligious.[25][26]
An early April 2018 report of the
Turkish Ministry of Education, titled The Youth is Sliding towards Deism, observed that an increasing number of pupils in
İmam Hatip schools was
repudiating Islam in favour of
Deism (irreligious belief in a
creator God).[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] The report's publication generated large-scale controversy in the
Turkish press and society at large, as well as amongst
conservativeIslamic sects,
Muslim clerics, and
Islamist parties in
Turkey.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] The
progressiveMuslim theologian Mustafa Öztürk noted the Deistic trend among
Turkish people a year earlier, arguing that the "very archaic, dogmatic notion of religion" held by the majority of those claiming to represent Islam was causing "the new generations [to get] indifferent, even distant, to the Islamic worldview". Despite lacking reliable statistical data, numerous anecdotes and independent surveys appear to point in this direction.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Although some commentators claim that the
secularization of Turkey is merely a result of
Western influence or even an alleged "
conspiracy", other commentators, even some pro-government ones, have instead claimed that "the real reason for the loss of faith in Islam is not the West but Turkey itself".[27]