The new school year in Turkey is scheduled to start on Sept. 15, and is already mired in chaos and controversy.

Since it came to power 12 years ago, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has had five education ministers, with each rearranging the schooling system in their own way and coming up with the most controversial projects in the ministry’s 94-year history. Some have been accused of entertaining ideological motives and seeking to create backyards for the AKP, while others were slammed as tokens.

Yet, none of them has been as controversial as current Minister of Education Nabi Avci, who introduced the Transition from Elementary to Secondary Education (TEOG) system, which determines the high schools students attend after 8th grade and involves a nationwide exam. The system, which took effect this year, outraged both students and parents as thousands of pupils landed in schools dozens of miles away from home. And much to the amusement of Christian parents, a number of Christian students ended up in imam-hatip schools, which teach the Quran and train Muslim clergy. And while the public awaited an explanation from the Ministry of Education, a new scandal followed: The grandson of Turkey’s chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva was also placed in an imam-hatip school, in the district of Sile outside Istanbul.

Even before the TEOG results were announced last month, speculation was rife that the exam had been designed to promote the imam-hatip schools and lay the ground for a shift to a religious education system. The ministry statistics, revealed in the wake of the exam results, confirmed that students were placed in schools they did not wish to attend, namely the imam-hatip schools whose number has kept growing in recent years.