in Mecca, also funded by Saudi Arabia, made a resolution from 1987 that it regards Sunnism as the pure teachings at the time of the Messenger and the rightful existence of the Caliphate. The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), follows the religious policy of the Ottoman Empire, providing a Sunni interpretation of Islam. Plans by the Committee of National Unity in the 1960s to convert the Diyanet authority into a non-denominational institution that also integrated the Alevis, failed because of resistance from conservative Sunni clergy inside and outside the Diyanet authority. Since the 1990s, the Diyanet authority has presented itself as an institution that stands above the denominations (mezhepler üstü) The religious education organized by the authority at the Turkish schools is based exclusively on the Sunni understanding of Islam. Self-image of the Sunnis As the "saved sect" A well-known Hadith, which is to be interpreted as Vaticinium ex eventu, says that the Muslim Umma will split into 73 sects, only one of which will be saved. The Sunnis have the idea that they are this “saved sect” (“firqa nā niya”). For example, Abu Mansur al-Baghdadi (d. 1037) explains at the beginning of his heresiographical work al-Farq baina l-firaq ("The difference between the sects" ) that there are 20 Rafiditic, 20 Kharijite, 20 Qadaritic, 3 Murjiite, 3 Nadjāritic, 3 karramitic and furthermore Bakriyya, Dirariyyya and Jahmīya. These are the 72 erring sects. The 73rd sect that is the “saved sect” are the Sunnis (ahl as-sunna wa-l-jamaʿa). According to al-Baghdadi, they are composed of two groups, namely the followers of the Ra'y and the followers of the hadith. They agreed on the fundamentals of religion (uṣūl ad-dīn). There were only differences in the derivations (furūʿ) from the norms regarding the question of what permitted and what forbidden is. These differences are not so great that they considered each other to have strayed from the right path. As center of Muslims Later Sunni scholars also present the Sunnis as the center of Muslim community. The idea already appears to some extent in the Ashʿarite ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī, who emphasizes on several dogmatic questions that the Sunnis hold a position that lies in the middle between the positions of the other Islamic groups. An example is the question of predestination (Qadar), in which, according to the Kasb theory, you hold exactly the middle between the two extreme positions of the