The communication competences of Turkish religious officials in France according to the mosque congregations

Cami cemaatine göre Fransa’daki Türk din görevlilerinin iletişim yeterlikleri

Abstract

Turkish origin immigrants in Western Europe have been living in those countries for a half century since 1960’s. These people that had initially aimed at earning money and then returning to Turkey eventually came to understand that it is not that easy to go back to Turkey as the third and even fourth generations grew up and settled there. One of the difficulties experienced by Turkish immigrants is the recruitment and employment of qualified religious officials (imams and preachers) to serve in the mosques. In this study, we focus particularly on the communication competences demanded for religious officials. No matter how deep knowledge a religious official has regarding his religion, he will fail to achieve the desired success if he has any problems in terms of communication competences with the congregation he addresses. As the communication is a process whereby the participants produce knowledge/symbols and communicate the same one another, it is inevitable for a religious official to ensure that this process is implemented in a healthy way in order to become successful in his job. For the congregation of a mosque, the indicator that reveals whether that process is successfully implemented or not is the level of good conversation between the religious officials and adults, adolescents, and children. In other words, the congregation defines the religious official that can implement the communication process in a health way as “he gets along well with adults”, “he gets along well with adolescents”, or “he gets along well with children”. Thus, there is an obligation for a religious official to have the necessary background in order to implement a healthy communication with people from each of the said age groups. A religious official with a good training becomes successful in his profession and satisfies the group he serves. However, it is not always possible to achieve this result only on the basis of vocational training. The ability of a religious official to bring into force his vocational training is in direct proportion to his communication competences. The significance of religious services rendered can be measured via their reflections of the congregation served. From this standpoint, it is important to see how the different mosque congregations evaluate their religious official in terms of communication competences. The population of the research is constituted by composed of 459.611 Turks living in France according to the data of official bodies for year 2009, and the samples of research consists of 706 Turks to whom we applied survey and who reside in the settlements having mosques in various regions of France. In order to form the sample, we interviewed first with the various official and nongovernmental organizations / institutions, and we found out in which region of France the Turkish origin population centers around and what kind of differences there are between them in terms of socio-cultural aspect. Then, in the light of this information, we decided to survey in 30 settlements. From the samples to whom we reached through the mosques and associations and whom we selected randomly, we obtained 706 filled surveys which we can subject to assessment. The survey we developed and applied to the samples was used as a main means of collecting data. However, apart from trying to reach the written information by literature screening about the issue, we also visited many mosques established by Turks in France, interviewed with the congregations, and found out their opinions and expectations about the communication competences of the religious officials. This information obtained was used to develop the questionnaire, and also provided facility in interpreting the data. The survey forms to be taken into assessment were entered in the SPSS statistics program and the breakdown on the frequency and percentages of all questions were taken together with the Likert scale values. Likewise, the tables of “binary variable analysis” (cross) of the related questions which was made according to the independent variables and the breakdown of chi-square values were obtained. When we assess the results obtained in this research, we can suggest that the occupational and other competences, as well as the communication competences of religious officials should be taken into consideration by the concerned authorities and that the required educational support should be given. Since, according to the findings, the religious officials were found “partially competent” in their communication with adults, adolescents and children.

Özet

İyi eğitim almış din görevlisi mesleğinde başarılı olmakta ve hizmet sunduğu kitleyi memnun etmektedir. Ancak sadece mesleki formasyona sahip olmakla bu sonuca ulaşmak her zaman mümkün olmaz. Din görevlisinin sahip olduğu mesleki formasyonuna işlerlik kazandırabilmesi, iletişim becerisiyle doğru orantılıdır. Yapılan dinî hizmetin ne anlam ifade ettiği, hizmeti alan cemaatteki yansımasıyla ölçülebilir. Bu açıdan çeşitli kategorilerdeki cemaatin din görevlilerini iletişim yeterliği açısından nasıl değerlendirdiği önemlidir. Bu anketli araştırmada, Fransa’da hizmet veren Türk din görevlilerinin cemaat tarafından iletişim yeterliği açısından nasıl değerlendirildiği ele alınmaktadır. Elde edilen bulgulara göre din görevlileri yetişkinlerle, geçlerle ve çocuklarla iletişimlerinde “Kısmen yeterli” bulunmuşlardır.