[Hurriyet Daily News] Thousands of Turkish students have raised their voices in online campaigns to build Jedi and Buddhist temples at their universities, after a series of mosques were constructed on their campuses by rectors who stressed "huge demand."The debate started last month when Mehmet Karaca, rector of Istanbul Technical University (ITÜ), announced that "a landmark mosque" would be built on the campus.
While stressing "huge demand," the rector referred to a petition on change.org that more than 185,000 people signed to demand the construction of ITÜ's first mosque.
Karaca's positive response to an online campaign encouraged university students from other religions around
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
, as well as many others who launched satirical campaigns to point at what they claimed to be a political emphasis on "religious populism" even as many education institutions lack scientific instruments and research funds.
In one of the counter-campaigns on change.org, more than 25,000 people demanded a Buddhist temple at ITÜ.
"I can't fulfill my religious needs because the closest Buddhist temple is 2,000 kilometers away, and I can't go there during lunch break," a petitioner named Utku Gurcag Boratac said on the website.
Zeynep Özkatip, who launched the petition, complained in an interview to daily Hurriyet that the university administration did not contact her despite the "huge demand" for the proposed Buddhist temple.
"If they think that building a mosque is realistic, unlike building a Buddhist temple, for the fact that donations need to be collected for the construction, they are wrong. We have already received enough donation promises to complete the construction," she said.
Özkatip, a third-year student in ITÜ's Civil Engineering Department, also complained that she received "threats" due to the petition.
"We ironically see that those who keep talking about Islamophobia
...the irrational fear that Moslems will act the way they usually do...
have no tolerance for other religions," she said.