One of the contestants in an annual contest for Turkey’s most melodious religious voice leans closer to the microphone, hands to ears, for a tender call to prayer.
“Allahu akbar” (“God is greatest”), he sings in a slow, cascading voice, elbows straightened at right angles, his words echoing off the golden stones of the majestic Eski Camii Mosque in the city of Edirne.
Decorated with striking Arabic calligraphy, the mosque was completed in 1414 when the northwestern city was the capital of the Ottoman Empire. She is hosting the final round of the competition, in which five muezzins — the clergymen who issue the ezan (adhan in Arabic) — are contested. Calling to prayer five times a day from minarets – fighting for a place in the finals on August 17.
A panel of five judges, facing the contestants, eagerly takes notes.
“I started at the mosque at the age of 10 during summer school,” said the eventual winner, Abdullah Omer Erdogan.
The 25-year-old sports an impeccable beard and takes extraordinary precautions to protect his voice.
He avoids the cold, only drinks lukewarm water, and even avoids certain sleeping positions to avoid straining his vocal cords.
His efforts could lead to national fame.
Turkish muezzins – one of whom recited the ezan over the old city of Edirne – captured the top two spots in a televised competition organized in Saudi Arabia in April.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is staunchly religious and faces a difficult election next year, recorded a congratulatory message for the winners the next day.
“May Allah be with you,” said Erdogan, whose two-decade rule in Turkey has built nearly 15,000 mosques.
One appeared opposite a statue of Turkey’s secular founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, the crucible of the country’s polarized and at times restless politics.
– “We saved the country” –
The construction of the Taksim Mosque has shaken Erdogan’s liberal opponents.
The sprawling plaza, long a symbol of struggle between Turkey’s secular and religious forces, was the origin of protests in 2013 whose violent repression is seen by some as the origin of Erdogan’s more authoritarian streak.
His rise to prime minister in 2003 built on his defense of Turkey’s religious Muslims, whose rights had been curtailed in the constitutionally secular state.
The Turkish leader has repaid that trust by building the country’s largest mosque on a hilltop overlooking the Bosphorus and converting the former church of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque in 2020.
Clerics from nearly 90,000 mosques, in turn, responded to Erdogan’s appeals – delivered via FaceTime on a cellphone – urging believers to block an attempted military coup in July 2016.
Erdogan’s supporters thronged the streets and glared at the coup leaders, who were jailed amid a wave of political repression that has left thousands behind bars for life.
“We called the people to the streets and saved the country,” said Edirne-Mufti Alettin Bozkurt.
“That night we saw the power of the Ezan.”
– ‘Like church bells’ –
Erdogan is making religion a recurring theme of his speeches as he nears an election polls say he could lose due to Turkey’s mounting economic woes.
He has accused his secular opponents of trying to “silence the Ezan” – a charge that resonates with Islamic conservatives who form the basis of his political support.
There is no call for the suppression of religion on the platform of any political party.
But Erol Koymen, a postdoctoral researcher studying Turkish and Ottoman social theory and music at the University of Chicago, said secular voters are becoming increasingly concerned.
“I think there’s a widespread feeling among secularists that the volume of ezan has increased as part of the ruling regime’s efforts to transform the Turkish public sphere since the coup attempt,” Koymen said.
“This, in turn, has provoked a growing dislike of the Ezan among secularists.”
Citing health concerns, Turkey’s increasingly powerful Directorate of Religious Affairs in 2017 asked mosques to limit their ezans to 80 decibels — roughly the equivalent of an alarm clock.
In the Old Mosque in Edirne, Mufti Bozkurt was offended that some wanted to dial down the Ezan.
“The Esan is a legal right!” he exclaimed.
“Just as Christians can easily hear church bells, all Muslims should be able to hear the call to prayer.”
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