Turkey

SECULAR TURKS UPSET OVER PROPAGATION OF ISLAMIC SCHOOLING UNDER ERDOGAN…….

Since the day Kemal Ataturk breathed his last breath on earth, Turkey has been on a long slide back into the Islamic swill that kept it in a permanent state of retardation.

The debate over education straddles a faultline in Turkish society dating back to the 1920s, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk forged a secular republic from the ruins of an Ottoman theocracy, banishing Islam from public life, replacing Arabic with Latin script and promoting Western dress.

Rise of Islamic schooling in Turkey upsets secular parents

turkey school istanbul

Turkish girls in an Istanbul school. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Istanbul- Turkey has seen sharp rise in religious schooling under reforms which President Tayyip Erdogan casts as a defense against moral decay, but which opponents see as an unwanted drive to shape a more Islamic nation.

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.

The schools teach boys and girls separately, and give around 13 hours a week of Islamic instruction on top of the regular curriculum, including study of Arabic, the Koran and the life of the Prophet Mohammad.

“When there is no such thing as religious culture and moral education, serious social problems such as drug addiction and racism fill the gap,” Erdogan told a symposium on drug policy and public health earlier this year.

But in the drive to create more imam hatip places, parts of schools have been requisitioned, prompting protests from parents who want secular education for their children.

More here.

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