Turkish Religious Affairs Directory’s 2024 budget increases by 151 pct

Cevdet Yılmaz, an aide to the president revealed that the budget proposed for the Religious Affairs Directory was 91 billion 824 million 805 thousand Turkish Lira (3 billion dollars.) This is a 151 percent increase from the budget of 2023.

Saturday November 25 2023 09:33 pm

Duvar English

The Turkish National Assembly’s Planning and Budgeting Commission began its sessions for the 2024 budgets of the presidency and its directorates. Cevdet Yılmaz, an aide to the President of Turkey, stated that the proposed budget for the Religious Affairs Directorate was 91 billion 824 million 805 thousand Turkish Lira (3 billion dollars), a 151 percent increase from last year’s budget.

Yılmaz said during his presentation that the Religious Affairs Directorate will continue to guide and illuminate many sectors of the public about religious topics, mainly children and the youth. According to the aide, the directorate spent 23 billion, 552 million 361 thousand Turkish Lira (815 million dollars). The directorate spent 36 billion, 468 million 836 thousand Turkish Lira (1 billion 200 million dollars).

Critics have regularly found the budgeting for the Religious Affairs Directorate extravagant. The directorate faced backlash in early 2023 for holding a tender worth 23.2 million Turkish Liras (118 thousand dollars) to print 160,000 Qurans "gilded and leafed with gold, changing color in the heat.”

The directorate later denied extravagance claims saying the Qurans in question would be gold colored, not gold-plated.

In June 2023, Quran instructors, preachers, and religious service specialists from the Religious Affairs Directory were assigned to one-third of all schools in the Aegean İzmir Province.