Exorcising Turkey's Islamic imps

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Exorcising Turkey's Islamic imps
March 13, 2009
By Fazile Zahir
Asia Times Online

FETHIYE, Turkey - In an interesting display of Greco-Turkish friendship, visitors from the Greek mainland joined with locals in the coastal Aegean village of Yagcilar as they gathered to watch bulldozers and men with shovels move in on the former home of a Greek Orthodox priest.

Under normal circumstances the demolition of a holy man's home and the excavation of his garden would have prompted political commentary, but in this case the events had been arranged collaboratively by the current Turkish landowners, the great grandchildren of the exiled priest, the Ministry for Culture and Antiquities, and the governor of the district of Urla.

The aim of the excavators was to uncover 400 kilograms of gold



and money buried in the garden in the mid-1920s for safekeeping. It had been entrusted to the priest by his religious community as they found themselves forced to evacuate Greece in the exchange of population that took place at the time.

The tip on the whereabouts of the treasure came from a diary entry found by the priest's descendents, in which he indicates that he hid the money on the grounds of his house. After three days of searching, nothing but dirt was unearthed, leaving the treasure hunters with suspicions that the priest may have protected the treasure with a special spell.

In desperation, Turks called in a well known local hoca, a local religious leader, to pray at the site. Eyyup Hoca directed the operation to new areas to in which to dig and, with the second excavation attempt coming out empty-handed, he announced that jinn (fairies or imps) had changed the hiding place of the money every 41 years since the date of its burial. This was accepted as a reasonable explanation, and the quest continues.

The concept and existence of jinn is widely accepted in Islam. God is said to have created the jinn before humans from "hot wind" and "smokeless fire", and some jinn are Muslim. Like humans they were invested with intellect, discrimination, freedom and the power to choose between right and wrong. They live all over earth on a separate plane of existence from man and cannot easily be seen, though they are often thought to take the shape of snakes and black dogs.

It is believed that some areas are particularly attractive to jinn - deserts, ruins and places of impurities such as dunghills, bathrooms and graveyards - but jinn can quite easily live alongside humans in their homes.

Bad jinn are forever looking for ways to interfere with humans, and Muslims are supposed to take measures to prevent their meddling in human life. According to Islam, men are supposed to abstain from having sex with their wives when they are menstruating, as this can let in evil spirits, and a child conceived at this time will be sterile and considered a child of the jinn. Also as one begins to undress, the blessing Bismillah (in the name of God) should be uttered to stop the jinn from seeing your nakedness. The same blessing said upon entering a house or sitting down to dinner prohibits the jinn from staying overnight in the house or eating with the family.

The proximity between human and jinn is an accepted part of an Islamic believer's life, and though the Koran provides no example of this, popular superstition is that the barrier between the realms can occasionally be broken, whereupon humans become possessed by jinn.

In 2007 a 24-year-old mentally handicapped woman, Emrah Kaya, was undergoing treatment at the Ekrem Tok Mental Hospital in Adana, south-central Turkey, when a scandal over the abuse of its patients tainted the hospital's reputation. Her parents brought Emrah home and chose to call a jinn hoca from nearby Antakya, Abdullah Yesiltepe, for help. The hoca took Emrah to her room to start the exorcism that was to last for three days. The first day he said prayers over her, and the second day he made a blessing with water and olive oil. On the third day he cut her leg, burned the blood and then sat on her back to force out the jinn. When he heard the scream of a little girl, Emrah's father burst into the room and found the hoca squeezing the life out of his daughter, shouting that if he didn't kill her then Emrah would kill them all. Emrah died.

As in many other cultures it seems that young women who have the most to fear both from jinn and from those who claim to combat them. In 2005, 17-year-old girl known only as "ET" consulted a man who claimed to have paranormal powers that enabled him to free her from what she believed was a jinn possession. He subsequently raped her, claiming it was part of her exorcism. Similarly, a 2007 incident involved the young female partner of an imam and the keeper of a sacred tomb she visited regularly in order to pray for guidance in her life. The tomb's attendant, a 61-year-old retired teacher named Yucel Ugur Kilicyaldir - known locally as "Mad Yucel" - informed her that her problems stemmed from the fact that a jinn was lodged in her womb. He reassured her that he could help but not at the tomb - at a special place he used for treatments. He then took her to his own house and attempted to rape her. He stood trial for sexual assault and kidnapping but was released in 2008 due to a lack of evidence.

Although these cases might be enough to make one wary of the folklore and images surrounding jinn, and not all are negative. For example not all instances of possession are deemed to be malicious; sometimes it is thought that the jinn or the family of the possessed has been hurt accidentally or that the jinn has fallen in love with the human. The classic book 44 Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos (first published in 1913), demonstrates the popularity of the use of jinn in folklore. The stories cover the usual fantasy episodes of quests for the hand of a princess, evil step-relations, wizards and witches, magical transformations and brave but simple peasants, but in almost every single one there is an encounter with a supernatural being. These storybook jinn are a cross between a fairy and an imp, and though they are, more often than not, malevolent towards the protagonist, they are always overcome - and in some cases even help the hero reach his goal.

Author Mayra Calvani, whose book Dark Lullaby tells the story of a female jinn called Kamilah, describes her experiences researching the supernatural beings in Turkey as haunting.

"I lived almost five years in Turkey, and there I heard many stories about the jinn. The whole idea fascinated me. And what's even stranger is that many, many people believe in these supernatural beings. The jinn has similarities to what we call 'fairy', but it's something very different. For the Turkish people, a jinn is a being that originates from the forests, though it may appear to people in the cities as well. It is volatile, childish, easily angered, and delights in playing pranks on its victims. These pranks can be from harmless to fatal. They eat the liver of humans (nobody really knows how) and they have backward feet. The image haunted me for a few years before I was able to actually sit down and write the story."

Farah Yurdozu is Turkey's leading female expert on unidentified flying objects (UFO), and a paranormal researcher and writer. An authority on the paranormal and metaphysical, she has her own views on jinn, who they really are and their relationship with the Turkish people:

"In our mythology and creation stories, there are many legends related to inter-dimensional beings such as jinn. Jinn are made of energy; they have no physical body and are shape-shifters. Jinn often visit humans and human children at night and take them away. The next morning, the abductees wake up with a brown-colored substance on their hands. In the Western world, some abductees find a similar type of brown substance on their skin after the abduction [by extraterrestrials]. ET [extraterrestrial] abductions and jinn encounters can also have a paranormal effect on humans. Some abductees develop paranormal gifts - such as healing and remote viewing - after the contact. In Turkey, I met and interviewed many people who had jinn encounters and subsequently developed paranormal gifts such as seeing the future. By the way, nobody is scared of jinn in Turkey."

More traditional Muslims will tell you that UFO and alien sightings are just jinn playing tricks on gullible humans.

Perhaps one of the most frequent activities still associated with jinn is their use in fortunetelling and spell casting. Both activities are also pre-Islamic and, though banned by the Koran, continue prolifically today. A fortune teller will love to boast that they have battled with jinn for 45 days in order to gain mastery over the spirits and can now bend them to their will.

The Turkish state also takes a dim a view of fortune telling, and there are often arrests made. In 2006 Abdullah Yamanol had business cards that advertised his services that offered to rid the inhabitants of Antalya of evil spells, epilepsy and jinn - success guaranteed. Yamanol was taken in by the police and fined 800 lira (US$458). In May 2007 an undercover police operation caught another fortune teller, Mustafa Akyol, as he was busy preparing a protective charm for a plainclothes officer. He later defended himself at court by noting that business cards advertising his services for protection from the evil eye, spells and jinn had been made for him by a friend who had left them in his apartment. His three-month jail sentence was changed to a 800 lira fine. As recently as January 2009, a covert operation in Kahramanmaras, led to the arrest of three soothsayers in one day.

It seems that disapproval from state or religious institutions is unlikely to dissuade people from attempting to engage with jinn. By virtue of the Koran's reference to these entities, their existence is undeniable, for Muslims. Even those not committed to Islam are likely to have inklings about good and bad spirits - ideas that can be linked directly to pre-Islamic shamanistic beliefs. Their dual nature helps to secure their place in contemporary consciousness; they are both unreliable friends and governable foes. After all, the Turkish proverb says, Seytan baska, cin baska (A devil and a jinn are two different things).

Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full time since then.