'They want a devout generation': how education in Turkey is changing

After 25 years of teaching, Ayşe Kazancı decided to retire early.

The social sciences teacher, who asked that a pseudonym be used to avoid repercussions from the government, had long faced difficulties because of her activism, joining teachers’ union strikes and advocating for leftist and Kurdish causes. After last year’s coup attempt in Turkey, she was put under investigation.

But the introduction of a new curriculum at schools across the country this academic year was the last straw.

As children return to school after the summer break, they will find the introduction to the theory of evolution gone from their high school biology textbooks.

The time dedicated to teaching the secular ideals espoused by the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, has been greatly reduced, and public schools will now have to teach the concept of jihad, an attempt, the government says, to counter the use of religion to justify violence, but one that has elicited widespread opposition from secularists.

“The government has an agenda for education because affecting the minds of youth is of the utmost importance to them,” Kazancı said. “The changes [to the curriculum] are ideological, not scientific and academic. This manipulating of history and avoiding evolution is no good for children.”

Education has emerged as a key battlefield in a polarised Turkey that has yet to come to terms with a traumatic coup attempt last year. The country’s divisions have been exacerbated in the year following the coup with a wide-scale purge of suspected coup plotters as well as dissidents, and a controversial referendum that broadly expanded the powers of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, before elections in 2019. About 33,000 teachers have been dismissed as part of the crackdown.

The battle between secularists and conservatives to influence the direction of society is just one of many divisions in Turkey today.

Opponents of the changes to the curriculum say they betray the founding values of Atatürk’s secular republic and are an attempt to instil Sunni Muslim religious values in youth. The government insists the changes are necessary to prepare Turkey’s student population for a competitive career.

“We are a middle-way people. We are moderates,” said Ismet Yılmaz, the education minister, at a recent press conference introducing and defending the education reforms. “We want a quality educational system that helps us look forward.”

The elimination of evolution from the high school curriculum is one of the most controversial changes. Education officials said the the subject was too complicated for students and would therefore be deferred to university.

Numan Kurtulmuş, the deputy prime minister, has described it as a theory that is archaic and lacks evidence. There is little acceptance of evolution as a concept among mainstream Muslim clerics in the Middle East, who believe it contradicts the story of creation in scripture, in which God breathed life into the first man, Adam.

The concept of jihad has been added to the curriculum of religious classes alongside other tenets of Islam such as prayer, fasting and the pilgrimage to Mecca. The aim, officials say, is to seize control of the word, which means struggle, and emphasise Islam’s peaceful nature, so students do not see jihad as a violent concept.

“We will teach it the right way,” Yılmaz said. “Islam is the religion of peace.”

The July coup attempt, which is widely believed in Turkey to have been orchestrated by followers of Fethullah Gülen, an exiled US-based preacher, will also become a topic taught in school along with how it was defeated by people marching through the streets in protest – though the legacy of the coup attempt remains fraught amid ongoing trials for the alleged plotters.

The changes were based on a broad public consultation in which parents and the public played a key role, Yılmaz said.

They come hand in hand with an increase in the number of İmam Hatip schools, which were founded in the early years of the republic to train imams and preachers.

Gaye Usluer, an MP with the opposition Republican People’s party (CHP) and a member of parliament’s education committee, said there was now an İmam Hatip school for every 5,000 people in Turkey, when in previous years that number had been as low as one for every 50,000.

“The purpose of the new curriculum and also the issue on evolution are all ideological,” she said. “They want to raise a generation best suited to their ideological ideals.”

Yılmaz defended the government’s decision to remove evolution, saying topics such as genetic mutation and adaptation would continue to be taught in school. The curriculum will also emphasise the contributions of Muslim scientists such as Avicenna, he said.

But Usluer, the opposition MP, argued that the changes were just one step in an attempt at a wholesale transformation of society that aimed to raise a devout generation.

In the undermining of secular values, the growing emphasis on religion and morality, and the decline of scientific discipline, exemplified by removing evolution from the curriculum, she saw a focus on Sunni Islam as the basis of religious education.

“The values they will teach are not universal values,” she said. “They want to impose their own ideologies on children.”

“Erdoğan said he wanted a religious, devout generation, and these changes are made for this wish,” she added.