Thousands of students in Turkey have joined online campaigns, demanding Jedi and Buddhist temples be built next to mosques, after government authorities said last month that they would build mosques on university campuses across the country. The petitions came after the rector of Istanbul Technical University, Mehmet Karaca, said in a statement that a landmark mosque would be built on his campus because of a growing demand for a Muslim house of worship. 

Karaca referred to a petition on Change.org that sought to have the first mosque built on a university campus. That petition has gathered as many as 188,536 signatures so far. Karaca’s statement sparked uproar among students who belong to other religious denominations. These students went on to launch separate petitions that would help them raise funds to build prayer houses for their respective religions, next to the mosques.

One of the campaigns, headed by a student at Istanbul Technical University, sought the constructions of a Buddhist Temple on university grounds. That petition has so far received 20,101 signatures. Zeynep Ozkatip, drafter of the petition, told the media that the university’s administration had not yet contacted her, despite there being such a huge demand for a Buddhist temple on campus.

“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.

Another student at the university supported Ozkatip, saying those who keep discussing Islamophobia often show little tolerance towards other religions.

“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,” wrote one of the petitioners, Utku Gurcag Boratac, on the website.

Those who want a Buddhist temple constructed on university grounds are not alone in their pursuit to have a sacred place of their own. Approximately, 5,500 students at Dokuz Eylul University in Izmir province signed an online petition, demanding the construction of a Jedi temple, as depicted in the fictional Star Wars film series, on their university campus. Their petition claims there are many Jedis across the world, including Turkey, but the only problem is that they have no place to receive training.

“To recruit new Jedi and to bring balance to the Force, we want a Jedi temple,” says the document that also suggests uneducated padawan learners sometimes “cannot control their anger for power, they go to the dark side,” referring to Anakin Skywalker, who turned into Darth Vader after being lured by the dark side.

In 2014, the Diyanet or Presidency of Religious Affairs said 80 new mosques would be constructed across Turkey. The Diyanet’s chief elucidated that the country would institutionalize mosques on university campuses, making them more than mere places of worship.

“The construction of mosques is ongoing at more than 80 universities in Turkey. We have opened 15 mosques [inside Turkish university campuses] so far. We will open 50 more by the end of 2015,” the organization’s president, Mehmet Gormez, had said.

In April this year, the Diyanet unveiled a mosque on the grounds of Erzurum Ataturk University in Erzurum province. Gormez had said at the time that temples and universities could not function separately.

Officially, Turkey is a secular country with no state religion since reforms were put in place during the 1920s and 30s by President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who served from 1923 to 1938. Yet recently, Islam has seen a revival in Turkey with President Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu both striving to consolidate this religious awakening.

Currently, all public schools have compulsory religion classes that focus primarily on the teachings of Sunni Islam. While the Turkish government claims 99 percent of the country’s population is constituted of Muslims, other polls and academic findings reveal a much lower percentage of Muslim nationals in the country.

Photo Credits: Pakistan News