On June 31, Mehmet Gormez, a Turkish cleric who headed the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a government department that runs more than 85,000 mosques, bid farewell to his post he had occupied since 2010. Gormez’s term didn’t end until 2020, which is why his early departure triggered a heated discussion in the media and on social media. As with most other changes in the state bureaucracy, many people believed that the departure of the erudite theologian had something to do with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plans to single-handedly build a “New Turkey."
More:<a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/en/originals/2017/08/turkey-why-erdogan-dismiss-top-cleric.html">Why Erdogan fired Turkey’s top cleric</a>