Turkish Parents Complain of Push Towards Religious Schools

Turkish Parents Complain of Push Towards Religious Schools

When Itir Erhart, 39, wanted to enrol her daughter in primary school, she found that it was almost impossible to find somewhere that did not teach Sunni Islamic religion and Sunni religious practices.

“We are a non-religious family,” Erhart said. “I don’t want my child to learn about God in school.”

In the end, she had to turn to the private sector for fear that her daughter would be marked out as the only non-religious child in the class. “Religion has become so dominant in Turkish state culture that I was afraid my daughter would be completely marginalised. Read More

Erdogan Launches Sunni Islamist Revival in Turkish Schools

Erdogan Launches Sunni Islamist Revival in Turkish Schools

Newsweek, Alexander Christie-Miller

When Hasan Erol and other parents learned that their children’s school would be converted to specialise in Islamic education, they hit the streets. Yeşilbahar Middle School is among five in Istanbul’s staunchly secular district of Kadıköy to have been earmarked for conversion into imam-hatips, religious schools in which 20% to one-third of hours are dedicated to Sunni Islamic study. “They want to transform this area into something else,” says Erol, whose 13-year-old son goes to the school. “They want to make it more conservative by bringing imam-hatips here.” Yeşilbahar was spared. Authorities relented in the face of protests and a petition and, for now, it remains a general middle school. There have been drawbacks, however. This year, no new students have been registered. In a meeting with officials, Erol claimed, the regional education director threatened to stop enrolling students altogether so that, in time, “they will have no parents to deal with”. Read More

Rise of Turkish Islamic Schooling Upsets Secular Parents

Rise of Turkish Islamic Schooling Upsets Secular Parents

Almost a million students are enrolled in “imam hatip” schools this year, up from just 65,000 in 2002 when Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party first came to power, he told the opening of one of the schools in Ankara last month. Read More

Two Views on Education: With Neşe Özgen and M. Alper Dinçer

Two Views on Education: With Neşe Özgen and M. Alper Dinçer

TR: Have enough studies been done in Turkey to get a general idea about the benefits of attending hazırlık (prep) courses?

Alper Dinçer: There are very few studies on this specific issue and almost all of these studies focus on the role of prep courses for the university exam. Thus, we know very little, if anything, regarding the impact of prep courses on SBS [TEOG, or Transition from Primary to Secondary Education] exam scores. Read More

Turkey’s Long Game: How 12 Years of AKP Rule Has Eroded the Secular State

Turkey’s Long Game: How 12 Years of AKP Rule Has Eroded the Secular State

The National, David Lapeska
On a brilliantly sunny afternoon in September, dozens of pre-teens kicked footballs and chased each other across a concrete playground in front of the 60th Year School in Sancaktepe, a working- class district on Istanbul’s Asian side.

Among a group of mothers keeping watch, some had recently protested against the school’s colonisation by a religion-focused middle school, known in Turkey as an imam hatip school. Last year, as a pilot project, the imam hatip school commandeered nine classrooms and welcomed 300 students. This year it has 20 classrooms and 750 students. Read More

Turkish Reforms Entangle Education

Turkish Reforms Entangle Education

New York Times, Ayşegül Sert
The term “New Turkey,” meticulously coined and methodically delivered by the government to penetrate the public psyche, and reiterated during the campaign for Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bid for the presidency, continues to reverberate long after he has won. Read More