Erdogan Islamizes education system to raise 'devout youth' - Al-Monitor: The Middle Eastʼs leading independent news source since 2012

Kadri Gürsel

Kadri Gürsel

Dec 9, 2014

Students of Tevfik Ileri Imam Hatip School eat and chat during a break in Ankara November 18, 2014. Turkey has seen a sharp rise in religious schooling under reforms which President Tayyip Erdogan casts as a defence 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 s — Students of Tevfik Ileri Imam Hatip School eat and chat during a break, Ankara, Nov. 18, 2014. — REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Türkçe

School girls perform during the singing competition of the Turkish Language Olympics in Istanbul June 3, 2009. The Turkish Language Olympics -- in its seventh year -- has drawn 700 children from 115 countries to Turkey to compete in singing, poetry reciting and prose composition, and receive encouragement in their studies with a visit to the president. Picture taken June 3, 2009. To match feature TURKEY-RELIGION/SCHOOLS REUTERS/Halit Omer Camci (TURKEY EDUCATION SOCIETY) - RTR24DSP

Erdogan's 'New Turkey' aspires teaching 'Old Turkish'

Pinar Tremblay

Demonstrators hold signs in front of the High Education Board (YOK) during a protest against the suspension of academics from universities following a post-coup emergency decree, in Ankara, Turkey, September 22, 2016. The sign in the foreground reads "Let the emergency decrees go. We are remaining." REUTERS/Umit Bektas - RTSOY0Z

Turkey’s 'devout generation' project means lost jobs, schools for many

Sibel Hurtas

Turkish girls attend a class at the Kazim Karabekir Girls' Imam-Hatip School in Istanbul February 10, 2010. The imam-hatip network is a far cry from the western stereotype of the madrassa as an institution that teaches the Koran by rote and little else. Originally founded to educate Muslim religious functionaries in the 1920s, the imam-hatip syllabus devotes only around 40 percent of study to religious subjects like Arabic, Islamic jurisprudence and rhetoric. The rest is given over to secular topics. To ma

Erdogan's reforms meant to educate 'pious generation'

Orhan Kemal Cengiz

Orhan Kemal Cengiz

Turkish students up in arms over Islamization of education

Sukru Kucuksahin